(Verona, Dumfries)

I may only be a quarter Scottish, but this land, surely, is the envy of my residual DNA — skies that tingle turquoise till midnight and breathtakingly capacious vistas, much like the set of that old Sunday morning show Land Of The Giants. There must be a scientific explanation why the sky seems so much bigger north of the border. Friar Lawrence points out to me in the parochial, not-entirely un-creepy way that Friars can, that being able to look miles into the distance has a beneficial effect on the imagination. I think everyone in the short-sights of London could do with remembering that. Bartender friends tell me they dream about pouring pints. Which would explain why some of us dream about drinking them.

The straight-talking of the locals makes for a nice change. They say what they mean and mean what they say and sometimes their sayings sound mean. But they’re not. I don’t think. After the Dumfries show a fellow comes up to one of our Romeo & Juliet actors (to spare his embarrassment, let’s call him ‘Benvolio’), and says:

‘Oh. You look— you look skinnier offstage.’

‘Sorry?’

‘I mean, that is, you look chunkier onstage.’

The actor blushes and says, with not a small betrayal of venom:

‘It’s a padded doublet…’

And slinks away. It wasn’t his day — BBC Scotland had previously told him to be quiet or move further away during his own warm-up. Patronization from such people who are only there because of your seven weeks’ graft is a bitter pill. Then again, we did arrive screeching through the car-park, blaring out Justin Timberlake and pretending we were some variety of ghetto-pimp (It’s not belligerent behaviour. It’s make-believe…).

We perform here to our biggest crowds since the Globe, over 500 and counting. If enthusiasm is infectious, Dumfries feels like the bubonic plague circa 1665. Our stage is set alongside a hulking red-brick church, and this serves as our green-room. Talk about overcompensating the rider. If every cast could warm-up in a yawning chapel I think projection everywhere would be much benigned — an hour in there and you can take on the world with a whisper. We have a wedding rehearsal going on alongside our pre-show shenanigans, and do our very best not to upset it until a mischievous cast member pulls down Mercutio’s pantaloons, revealing his ‘fiddlestick’ to one and all. Oh, how we laughed. Oh, how they shooshed.

The hospitality here is beyond anything we’ve encountered, and at the champagne-and-small-feast reception afterwards (note to general public: actors will do anything for alcohol and hot food after three hour’s bellowing on a skiddy stage), I get talking to a roofer from a nearby village:

‘I wasn’t sure about tonight, but the wife booked the tickets…this Shakespeare fella, I tell you—’

He leans in confidentially.

‘I’ve an inkling he’s going to be big.’

Indeed, he may well be. Inklings are lovely things. –>

(Verona, St Andrews)

It’s one-o-clock on a Saturday morning, and we’re playing a game of Sardines in the Cluedo house. That is, our ‘accommodation’ in St. Andrews: the fairy-tale like Cambo House, which I urge anyone with a romantic murmur in their soul to visit.

This is all kosher, you see, because our producer is playing with us. What we don’t realise, however, is that whilst I am trapped inside a closet whose handle has fallen off, and Benvolio is upstairs creeping into a stranger’s room and mistakenly waking them up with a ‘gotcha!’, that the Sardine in question is still waiting outside a window on a parapet. The game is called off on account of us waking all the other guests in the mansion, and the poor Sardine in question (Nurse, since you ask) is left hanging onto the side of the building for a good half-an-hour. We collapse into a writhing mess of giggles. What is scary is that we are all of an age in which we are able to select government.

It seems fitting that in the country that gave us J.M. Barrie and Peter Pan we should revert to small children. We’re performing in the incomparable beauty of St. Andrews’ ruined castle by the sea, and it feels like (employers cover your eyes) a holiday. If you went back in time and told my seven-year-old self I’d end up playing with swords in a toppled castle and getting paid for it, my younger self probably would have kicked you in the goolies for telling naughties. But here we are.

We’re very lucky. Equity recently announced an investigation into outdoor theatre companies that barely —if at all— pay their actors. Apparently, one group was even told to beg for leftover picnics in the aftermath of the show. Top marks for historical accuracy as it was in the time of travelling players. Bottom marks for treating fellow human beings with any respect. There’s even a ‘modern-day’ Shakespeare who works his unpaid actors ragged and has them flyer festivals non-stop whilst he sits back and milks the cash-cow. You know who you are. A plague on your box office receipts.

Now I’d like to find out how the weather affects the actors out there. Because something strange seems to happen to me every time I’m in the sweltering heat. I become an awful, awful actor. In the cold —even freezing— weather, I feel connected, buoyant, resonant; but if I’m sweating, I feel like a drunken ventriloquist’s dummy. Answers on a postcard please.

The upside of being in the middle of nowhere is, well, being in the middle of nowhere. I fall asleep on a log breaching the rift between two sides of a forest stream. Next thing I know it’s five-o-clock in the morning and I’m swimming beneath a patchy sunrise, wondering what happened to my sense of self-preservation. All well and good, I know, but don’t worry: I’m unemployed again come September. Ah, the magic of theatre. –>

(Verona, Portsmouth)

Romeo & Juliet comes to Portsmouth and, not to be outdone by London, we find the great naval city at the hub of artistic controversy. Yes, down by the pier you can actually now saunter into the gentlemen’s W.C. and pee into a bucket. A proper old-fashioned bucket. Someone has actually sat down and thought these thoughts out loud:

‘You know what this place needs? Real Authentic Buckets for patrons to take a whizz in. Genius!’

Anyway, here’s the part where I say something exceedingly nice about Portsmouth.

Portsmouth is sort of the crusty old granny of Brighton. Here is an example of an atypical actor’s difficulties in traversing Portsmouth Town:

‘Hi there. Do you have a vegetarian breakfast?’

‘No. Just the breakfast breakfast. It comes with sausage and bacon.’

‘Is there any chance I could get the breakfast breakfast but without the bacon and sausage?’

Here our chef begins to have a breakfast breakdown.

‘Look—’

‘Maybe you could just pop on a few extra chips?’

‘We don’t do that. It’s getting very busy now. There’ll be queues soon.’

It is just before midday and there is a conspicuous absence of queues.

‘Really? You can’t just not cook the meat? I’ll pay the same.’

‘No, certainly not. You’re just wasting my time now.’

I return later for a coffee and he is still muttering angrily about vegetarians. That said, if I was a portly fifty-something, not-cooking vegetarian breakfasts for precious actors in funny hats, I’d probably have difficulties in adapting my frying habits.

I came to Portsmouth as a nipper and have fond memories of sunshine-lathered pyramids and a small metropolis of crazy-golf tees. I diddled the horse-racing machine (a sweet four weeks’ pocket-money), swam in the pungent sea, and, as if in instant karma for diddling an amusement arcade, found myself getting sick on the way back. Afterwards I discovered that my family, sitting me in the middle of the car on the way back, were deliberately swerving to bang my comatose head against opposing sides of the vehicle. Childhoods are so much fun. There’s my memories of Portsmouth for you.

But this all takes me away from the punters. And they are a wonderful audience. Is it wrong to occasionally want audiences who are out for a little celebration rather than consternation? Perhaps we should have little boxes for playgoers to tick: Would you prefer a Happy-Go-Lucky-Performance, where you may titter at the vaguest hint of larkery…or a Doom-&-Gloom-Production, where you may eat exactly what it says on the tin? Everyone takes away something different from a four-hundred year-old play.

Walking through the city’s pretty sea-rimmed parks, I pass a gaggle of girls and one of them turns:

‘That’s that Shakespeare bloke. Oy, Shakespeare!!’

I find it strangely difficult to admit to not being the man of the millennium. At least they remembered the author’s name, I think. One day they might remember mine. –>