Why does it take me so long to realise what’s wrong? Holly GoLightly’s angst ridden ‘reds’ (her stylised variation on the blues) enter stage left with the wimpiest, leanest of monologues. Intangible, irrelevant to the plot at first, they hang round without fanfare or flare, sapping the life out of the scene until the dialogue breaks down and the cast acknowledge that the play is suffering from an aching malady; and it’s definitely the fault of this benign performer. So we converse with it, but it gives us nothing to work with. No cues, no reactions to bounce off of. By a system of attrition we wind the play back to the point where it entered. The audience are asked to leave and rehearsals resume, script edits, costume changes. Unravelling everything until we unearth at what point the demise of this hitherto west end hit occurred. Then, and only then do we acknowledge that it was by our own error that we allowed this errant cast member to infiltrate the performance. Through some blindness, cowardice or laziness, we lay the way open for the amateur dramatics to take place. From that moment on it is possible to start piecing the work together again, fragment by fragment until we return to our chest thrusting, eaves shaking, thespian best, and we allow the audience to start trickling back in.
If only, I could identify that bad actor sooner; cut him off at the car park, or at least give him a job making the tea.
Are you ok, Neil?