Second theatre of the day, and I’m only going round the corner. To The Place. The journey’s so short, that as I ponder the possibility of perhaps stopping off for lunch somewhere, I turn a corner, and arrive.
Ah. Well.
I suppose I could still go in search of food. But the thought of foraging on the mean streets of Bloomsbury is too much for me in my weakened state. The sun is out. And The Place has tables and chairs set up on the quite pavement.
I go and have a sit down and try to edit a blog post instead.
It’s not going well. I haven’t posted a blog in nearly a week.
I’ve been writing them. There’ll all there. Sitting neatly in the backend up my website. Unproofread. Lacking links and images.
I just can’t bring myself to get them over that final hurdle. It’s amazing that even half-dead I can still bang out a few thousand words before wheezing my way off to bed, but selecting a few photos to sit amongst those words? No. That’s too much and I simply can’t face it.
So, my blog posts remain unread. All evidence that I am, in fact, still out there, marathoning theatres, and checking off those venues, is lost to the internet.
Oh well.
You know I’m here.
I know I’m here.
Perhaps that’s enough.
I manage to correct a few typos before giving up.
Instead I huddle in my jacket, turning my face up to what passes as sunshine in October. This is my sort of weather. Bright and chilly.
And The Place is looking mighty handsome in it, with it’s old Victorian red bricks gleaming, and the hot pink banners barely wafting in the light breeze.
A few people emerge with drinks to take up tables, but for the most part, it’s just me. On this quiet road.
It isn’t the worst way to spend a Saturday afternoon.
But I can’t stay out here forever. And the time has come for me to rejoin the fray.
In I go.
The box office is tucked away in a side room. Low wooden benches with geometric cushions fit together like Tetris pieces. A notice on the wall proclaims that not only is Free Wifi available, you can also charge your phone if you so choose. There are magazines on the coffee tables. And potted plants on the windowsill, which wave signs, asking questions like “Why walk when you can dance?” which is a little disconcerting. But despite the intrusiveness of the fauna, it’s all very nice and comfortable in here.
I go over to the box office desk.
“Hi, the surname’s Smiles?” I tell the box officer.
“Lovely,” she says, looking through the ticket box and pulling out a ticket. “Can you confirm the postcode for me?”
I can. Funny how that gets easier the longer I’m not actually based in that postcode.
Bit worrisome too.
I’m moving back to Finchley soon, and fully expect to forget the postcode overnight.
She hands me the ticket. And a postcard advertising a not uninteresting upcoming show. Sharon Eyal. She’s the one I saw at Bold Tendencies. You remember. That ravey dance show in a car park.
I grab one of the familiar looking freesheets from the counter. These brown paper wrappers are all over my work at the moment, covering the freesheets for our own Dance Umbrella shows.
I find a spot in the corridor and have a look at it.
Hocus Pocus.
This show is doing quite the tour. It’s going all over the place. Six London venues. That’s quite a lot. I almost ended up booking to see it three times as it popped up everywhere. But date after date fell away, giving up room on my spreadsheet as other, trickier, venues muscled their way in and claimed those days for their own, until none remained. But here it is again. After the matinee I was originally planning to see this afternoon cancelled. Or rescheduled. To 2020. Which is no use to me at all. So here I am. After yet another spreadsheet re-jig. Just like magic. Abracadabra. Alakazam. Hocus pocus.
I go and have a look at the cafe.
It’s nice.
There’s a table full of colouring-in supplies at the back. And each of the tables has a small stack of building blocks just waiting to be played with.
There are also a strange number of children.
The strangeness being that there are lots of them.
Lots and lots of them.
Have I booked myself into a kids’ show?
I don’t recall this being a kids’ show.
I’ve been specifically not booking kids’ shows after I announced that I would no longer be booking kids’ shows. Because I’m a grown up. A kid-less grown-up. And I think it’s creepy for me to be turning up at these things without a kid in tow. Which I don’t have. I don’t even have access to one. I’m so old even my nephews are practically grown up now. One of them just started uni, which is no help to me at all.
I take a seat and try not to think about all the small people scurrying around.
There’s plenty to look at though.
The walls are covered in dance posters. Mainly Richard Alston ones, which is making me sad. His company is closing soon.
There’s another sign advertising the Free WiFi. But when I try to connect it asks for a password. Perhaps they meant the Premier Inn WiFi being pumped in from next door.
“Hello everyone!” says a woman, stepping out into the centre of the cafe space. “Welcome to The Place.” She starts on the usual spiel about turning off our phones, but just as I start to lose interest, her talk takes an unusual turn. “Make sure that there is no light other than what the artists are giving us in the theatre,” she says. “No phone. No watches.” Or, she says with a sinister low tone, the magic won’t work. “Be with your children and with the show.”
And with that, we are directed to the door on the far side.
I flash my ticket to the ticket checker on the door and she clicks at her clicker before nodding me through. In here is a corridor, painted that now familiar shade of hot pink. Through another door and we are into the auditorium.
I have expected to be stumbling through the darkness, but the house lights are on and ready to receive us.
The stage is floor level. And large, as you would expect for a dance venue. It doesn’t look like we’ll be getting much use out of all that acreage though. The set is nothing more than two twin strip lights, placed parallel, little more than a metre apart.
I glance over at the seats. A huge bank of them. Purple. And with entirely the wrong numbers for what is on my ticket. Too low.
People squeeze around me in order to traipse up the stairs to their seats, inching their way down the rows and knocking the knees of those who’ve already taken their seats.
“Can I cross over the stage to go to the other side?” I ask the front of houser.
“Sure, sure,” she says, as if the answer was so obvious it did not warrant asking.
So I walk over the stage. A second later, my fellow audience members join me, and I lead them like Moses to the promised land of high seat numbers.
We’re told to sit in our seats, but warned that we may be moved. It’s all about getting those sightlines for the magic to work.
Seats on the aisles are all reserved. Presumble kept off sale as the angle is all wrong for that tiny set with its two parallel strip lights.
I’m as far to the edge as I can go. Surrounded by empty seats on either side.
Good thing. After my coughing fit this morning, I don’t want to be boxed in.
But my island-state is drawing attention. A bloke sitting in the front row turns round and sees me. Then, twisting back into place, he leans over to his companion, whispers something, and then with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer, points at me.
He glances back and I look away, not wanting to embarrass him.
Okay, not wanting to embarrass myself. I admit it. I don’t want him knowing that I saw his gesture.
A young woman and her tiny little girl are brought in and sat in the front row. The two men switch seats so that the pointer doesn’t have to sit next to the child. I smirk. The big tough man who likes to point at women sitting all on their lonesome is unable to sit next to a little girl.
“Keep her in her seat,” the front of houser warns the young woman. “Don’t let her run forward into the stage.”
The young woman nods. She’s up to the task.
The lights dim, and then go out.
We are left with only the parallel strip lights.
And the green glow of the fire escapes.
Between the lights, a shape emerges from the darkness. A shifting creature of skin and flesh, spine and sinew. A back. It disappears. Only to be replaced by an arm. Then another. Then another. Then another. They disappear the way of the back, returning in forms and patterns that repeat and retreat.
We’re back to backs. Two of them this time. Bumping into one another like balls on an executive toy.
“Is this the show?” asks a small voice sitting behind me.
“Yes,” comes the grown-up response.
“Yeah, but, is this the whole show?”
The grown-up shush represents a grown-up level of covering up. They don’t know. I don’t know either.
Turns out, this is not the whole show. The backs bend back and soon we have faces. Two of them. Victor and Lucas. Friends in the most back-slappy, mock-wrestling, definitely-want-to-kiss kinda way.
Lost in the darkness, they battle knights, drop into the ocean, and meet giant sea creatures. As one is swallowed up by a giant mouth the tiny girl in the front row crawling into her mum’s lap, while further along, two less-tiny girls lean forward out of their seats to touch the haze currently coiling its way through the auditorium. Eventually, the two men find one another again, just in time to indulge in some totally friendly wrestling.
As “Lucas” and “Victor” (or rather, Ismael Oiartzabal and Michaël Henrotay-Delaunay) disappear the front of houser comes back out.
“The company would like to invite you to step forward, to see if you can work out how it’s done,” she says. “And if you don’t want to find out, which is also legitimate, make your way to the back.”
I totally want to find out.
I make my way onto the stage, standing back a little to let the small people get close to the set.
Oiartzabal and Henrotay-Delauney reappear, and turn on the lights. The ones behind the set. And suddenly, it’s revealed, in all it’s glory. Bars to hang from. Wind machines and fabric for waves. Even the giant mouth of a sea monster.
“What would you like to see?” asks Oiartzabal.
The questions come back fast. How did they float? How did they get eaten? Was that dry ice?
“Noooo. Not dry ice. It’s stage smoke.”
“Haze,” explains our front of houser who probably isn’t a front of houser but I don’t know what to call her at this point. “Dry ice would be dangerous.”
Oiartzabal gets out a small machine. “We use this long cigar,” he says pressing a button. And sure enough, a stream of white smoke spurts out the end.
And then it’s over. It’s time to go.
I skip out, utterly charmed by the whole thing.
“It’s so nice how they showed the children how it’s done,” says someone walking behind me.
Yes, it is nice. And being the overgrown child that I am, I’m glad they let the grown ups in too. I love all that shit.