claytoncast

My first job way back in 1978  was a  British Council tour Shakespeare play on behalf of the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester. We trotted back and forward across Europe playing for two or three nights in large theatres and attending a number of receptions in British embassies and various other locations. It was an evening reception in the cultural attache's house in Luxembourg on one of our rare evenings off which stays in my mind. By now we had grown used to making chitchat with the various diplomats and their wives we would encounter. We all had our stock reply to that searching question  "How do you learn your lines?". So it was rather refreshing to be taxed in a different way on this particular evening by a  diplomatic wife whose first query about our lives in the theatre was "Don't you find it breaks into your evenings terribly?".  I don't think it was something that any of us had really considered. Having just come out of drama school wher...

So it's the morning of our first preview for "Brimstone and Treacle" at the delightful Hope theatre. Three weeks of rehearsal seem to have flown by and as is always the case, no matter how long the rehearsal period is, one feels less than prepared for putting our work in front of an audience, but strangely excited by the prospect of doing so. It's been a great experience so far and one that I'm so glad I stuck with. Four days before rehearsals were due to start, I was offered a couple of days on a very major movie. Nothing demanding in the acting stakes, but it would have made my bank manager very happy and would have been a great credit. Having spent many hours learning "Brimstone and Treacle",  so that I was off the book before rehearsals started, I decided I had already made sufficient investment in the production not to be sidelined by sheer financial concerns.  The rewards have been great. In the very capable hands of Matthew Parker, an except...