Wednesday, August 22, 2007

English Bards and Scots Reviewers

Our show's had a curious relationship with reviewers. We had The Scotsman in on our second night. He laughed a lot. The review never appeared.

We had another reviewer who sat down in the front row, opened their notepad, clicked their pen ominously, and, glaring grimly at our actor, made occasional notes with weighty significance. "Like a fucking driving test," sighed Paul afterwards.

Another reviewer sneezed throughout the play, managing a final explosion all over her notebook. We think she was from "Three Weeks" a daily sheet that, from the sheer number of contributors, manages to publish both the best and worse reviews ever written. One opened with the word "Eliding".

But so far the reviews that we have had have been positive. Even the one in The Stage. When we'd read it three times, and discounted the weird factual innacuracies.

Our audiences have been peculiar. We built up over the first week to where 20 people was a low crowd. And then, all those lovely people went home, and we were suddenly playing to six people. Six nice people who laughed loudly, but six people night after night. Apart from one night when we had twelve and thought we'd gone to heaven. By the end of the week, we'd built it up to nearly 36. And then that batch of people went home and we started all over again. Seven people on Monday, twelve on Tuesday, forty-six last night. Including the James Bond fanclub and a camera crew.

Of course, our actor's completely unaffected by it all. But that's because he's taken his contact lenses out and is performing to a blurry haze.

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