'Poor Yorick' Rides Again

Really looking forward to reprising my play 'Poor Yorick' at Blackwood Little Theatre as part of the Gwent Festival of One Act Plays. It proved successful when it was premièred at the No Holds Bard festival at the Dolman Theatre in mid-March.

Since then I have revised the play and re-cast two of the parts - my wife Caroline takes over from Clare Drewett as Yorick's lady friend Bess and David Eynon-Williams steps into the ghostly shoes of Hamlet's late father.

'Poor Yorick' tells how Hamlet’s jester tries to pioneer stand-up comedy but fails and is forced to return to Elsinore to get his old job back, only to become embroiled in Hamlet’s plans for revenge. Complete with busty tavern wenches, domineering mothers, ghosts and the invention of the exploding whoopee cushion, it promises to be a laughter-packed production.

Bruce Campbell, Sue Morgan, Chris Powell and Will Smith-Haddon
in the No Holds Bard production of 'Poor Yorick'

It was one of four one act plays that won a competition organised by Newport Playgoers as their contribution to the nationwide Royal Shakespeare Company’s Open Stages project. One of the plays that was a runner-up in the competition, 'In The Spirit Of Things' by Steven Quantick is being staged by Playgoers New Generation at Blackwood, while Dolman Youth Theatre present another Shakespeare-inspired play, 'Bottom's Dream'. Both of these are also being produced at the Studio Theatre at the Dolman from 12th - 14th April.

Tickets are available online at http://gwentdrama.weebly.com/ or  http://www.ticketsource.co.uk/blt. Alternatively, customers can phone 01495 223485.

Countdown begins to No Holds Bard!

So we’re a mere 13 days away from the opening of the No Holds Bard festival, which features my one act play ‘Poor Yorick’ – and panic has begun to set in as we’ve yet to run the play all the way through..

Yorick (Will Smith-Haddon) makes himself at
home in Hamlet's (Chris Powell) room
at Elsinore

 Focusing on Hamlet’s story as seen through the eyes of his court jester who has gone on tour pioneering stand-up comedy, the play is at least getting plenty of laughs from the cast during rehearsals.

It’s quite a cast too! Will Smith-Haddon is great as Yorick, the clown who’s ahead of his time with his observational humour – “What is it with the Black Death? That's a bit depressing isn't it?” 

Yorick (Will Smith-Haddon) and Bess
(Clare Drewett) may not have much but at least
they have each other

Clare Drewett plays his bawdy wench girlfriend Bess who specialises in knocking back ale and making rat stew. Chris Powell excels as a whinging Hamlet who is fed up of his moaning mother, Gertrude – played to perfection by Sue Morgan in a glittering gown, tiara and Marigold gloves. Bruce Campbell makes a brief appearance as a surprisingly chirpy ghost of Hamlet’s father, offering words of advice such as "Don't drink the wine".

Yorick and Hamlet discuss vacancies for court jester
while Queen Gertrude (Sue Morgan) attempts to
clean the room

The festival is Newport Playgoers’ contribution to the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Open Stages project which aims to reunite the worlds of amateur and professional theatre. With four plays offering a mixture of slapstick, bloody sword fights and romantic mix-ups it promises to be an evening of lively entertainment that gives a thoroughly modern take on Shakespeare and turns his plots into plays for today. For more information check out http://newportplaygoers.wordpress.com/

We're all really excited that our local newspaper, the South Wales Argus, is sponsoring the festival.  Please come along and support us from 15 – 17 March at the Dolman Theatre, Newport. Tickets, which are just £5 and £7, can be booked by phoning the box office on 01633 263670 or visiting www.dolmantheatre.co.uk.

Flickering images from the past

The past is a very surreal country. Just going through old cine film taken at Handsworth Grammar School in 1967. It's so grainy and black and white that lunch hour in the quad looks more like newsreel footage of recreation time in a POW camp. 

School quad or POW camp?

Suddenly there's me in the back streets of Brum wearing a houndstooth jacket, a fez and looking at the world through a tennis racket.There's Lew firing a fishing net from a bow. Scenes of a schoolmate being ambushed and beaten up, the masters versus the boys football match - referee 'Bing' Crosby. Bing again secretly filmed teaching us, and behind him on the blackboard what looks like Arabic but is some weird equation.

Looking at the world through a tennis racket

A passing parade of other masters - 'Winky' Watson, Froggy Knight, Mary Barber, Browning,  World Cup Willy Watton, Ken Doney, 'Gobby' Gilbert - all of them on their way home after a hard day's teaching. An old-fashioned number 70 bus floats down Grove Lane followed by a white-haired old man on a bicycle, me zooming past on the back of Lawrence's scooter, Jimmy Hinks silhouetted in the door of the butcher's shop, and all those young, familar faces: 'Eggy' Eggington, Billy Jackson, Gary Mills, Alan 'Gilligan's Island' Griffiths, Grant, the only black face to be seen. 

The number 70 bus floats down Grove Lane

And spliced into all this are scenes from 'Rodan', a Japanese monster film featuring a giant flying lizard. Thousands of fleeing Japanese and me, 40 years younger and none the wiser. It makes you think.

Rodan, star of Japanese B-movies

Revenge of the Three Stooges

People have always tended to look down their nose at the Three Stooges. Larry, Curly and Moe were never exactly subtle and their comedy was pure slapstick which revolved around poking each other in the eye and handing out a good slap in the face.

Moe, Curly and Larry in typical slapstick action

I’ve always had a soft spot for them, mainly because of an afternoon spent in a cartoon cinema in London with my mate Dancin’ Jones and a fellow film student called Scouse Annie. After spending lunchtime in a pub downing a few pints of Fuller’s London Pride we were up for a good time and found it  in the rolling programme of cartoons and short films.  

As always, we found the RoadRunner  particularly funny but were in hysterics when the Three Stooges flickered onscreen in a grainy old black and white movie called ‘Fifi Blows Her Top’.  I can’t remember a thing about the film except laughing until the tears rolled down my face.

All of this was brought to mind when reading Denis Norden’s book ‘Clips from a Life’ in which he recalls that at an American auction in November 1993 a signed group photo of Larry, Curly and Moe went for $1,820 while a signed group photo of Presidents  Nixon, Ford and Carter fetched $275. Quite right too. The Stooges churned out 200 films - 190 of them shorts - during their prolific career and probably brought more fun and laughter into the world than any President.

Who writes this stuff?

There are several things I find annoying about daytime TV and they’re all to do with the commercials. There are too many of them and often they’re just plonked willy-nilly into the programmes without any thought whatsoever – sometimes in the middle of a scene.

But my other gripe concerns the sponsors of these programmes whose mini-movies pop up at the beginning and end of each over-long commercial break. There's a company called Furniture Village who sponsor a load of recycled TV on channels like ITV10 and their strapline is 'You're in safe hands'. What the hell has that got to do with selling furniture? They’re not offering healthcare or insurance. They sell armchairs. Why shouldn't you be in safe hands when buying a beige sofa? Unless you're buying it in downtown Kabul. 

Why shouldn't you be safe buying a coffee table?

 Another ridiculous strapline comes courtesy of Wickes, the DIY outlet, who proudly proclaim  'It's got our name on it'. Not ‘Great tools for every job’ or ‘We can help you fix that shelf’ – but ‘It’s got our name on it’. What's so reassuring about that? This must be a dependable high-powered chainsaw  – it’s got Wickes written on it.

As for Simply Health with ‘We can be bothered’ well I should hope so. If you couldn’t be bothered I wouldn’t get my health insurance from you. 

Valentine's Night

Having been in agony for 10 days with sciatica I am unable to do very little - even sleep. However, when I did manage to drift off last night - thanks to the pain killers kicking in- I had a very weird dream.


I was walking down the street when I bumped into 1950s heart throb singing star Dickie Valentine. I immediately asked for his autograph on behalf of my old mate Dancin' Jones whom I knew would appreciate such a keepsake.

Dickie Valentine wearing the same coat as
in my dream

Dickie seemed a bit put out at my request and became even more impatient when  I spent ages searching my rubbish-filled pockets for a pen and paper. Eventually, I dug out a really tatty bit of paper and a leaky biro and Dickie duly signed his name. The weirdest thing is, when I awoke I found a scrappy piece of paper on my duvet and on it was scrawled "To Dancin' with best wishes from Dickie". No, not really. That would be ridiculous. This isn't The Twilight Zone, you know.
.

Welcome to the Palace Flophouse Grill

John Steinbeck

Finally watched the BBC4 programme on one of my favourite authors, John Steinbeck. It was good despite Melvyn Bragg who insisted on quoting from 'The Grapes of Wrath' and 'Cannery Row'. Big mistake. He sounded nothing like Henry Fonda - he was all nasal and South Bank Show.

Back in our carefree student days, my mate Dancin' Jones and I had several ambitions - including writing a hit musical about the plumbers of Balham - but chief among them was going to live with Mack and the Boys at their doss-house shack which they called the Palace Flophouse Grill. Nothing to do all day but laze around in the California sun, drinking cheap whisky and scavenging food from Lee Chong's grocery store. It's all in 'Cannery Row'. Here's the beginning:

Mack and the Boys

"Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream. Cannery Row is the gathered and scattered, tin and iron and rust and splintered wood, chipped pavement and weedy lots and junk heaps, sardine canneries of corrugated iron, honky-tonks, restaurants and whore-houses, and little crowded groceries, and laboratories and flop-houses."

Now we need a decent documentary about Ernie Hemingway. He was once challenged to write a novel in 6 words and came up with "Baby shoes for sale. Never used."  So much for his tough, grizzled old git image. Of course writing all those Mills & Boon romances didn't help him any either.

Did either Stenibeck or Hemingway write the Great American Novel? Possibly. Melville's 'Moby Dick' is supposed to be up there as a contender but I must confess I've never read it. I only know the first line ("Pardon me, boy, is that the Chatanooga choo-choo?" Later a hit song for Glenn Miller not to mention his orchestra.) According to Seinfeld, the second time you read 'Moby Dick'  Ahab and the whale become great friends.