I went to the theatre yesterday evening.
My favourite theatre space in London (or indeed anywhere) is the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse at Shakespeare’s Globe in Southwark, near the wobbly bridge. It’s perfectly described as intimate, lit by candlelight (except when they cheat, subtly, in some productions), and the room folds in on you as you are transported by whatever you’re enjoying on stage. In some productions, members of the cast pass through the audience, and so, at one point last night, even though I was in the gallery, I was sat right next to a spirit, speaking to Posthumus on stage.
It isn’t a theatre that only does Shakespeare though. Hakawatis, which I saw there a couple of years ago, was unforgettable, and in a couple of weeks I’m going to see a dollop of Chekhov in the same place.
Because of its size, and presumably because of the budgets you need to run such a space, they don’t have understudies. At a previous production (Swive), the director had ended up reading a part, but at last night’s production of Cymbeline, one of the ‘minor’ actors stepped up to the plate.
When we arrived at the theatre, I was greeted with the sign below (when I say ‘I was greeted’, I wasn’t the only one to be greeted by it, everybody else saw it too, but I’m writing this from my perspective, so…). Obviously, my first thought was to hope that the missing actor (Gabrielle Brooks) was only mildly indisposed and would be back on her feet shortly (perhaps she already is). Then, remembering what had happened when I saw Swive, I wondered how they’d handle things.
At the allotted start time, a member of the Company came out to tell us that Angelina Chudi would be reading the part of Innogen. Her character is quite central to the play, so it wouldn’t really have worked if they’d decided to just have a disembodied voice.
Instead, Angelina played the part so well that I quite forgot she was holding a black folder. It helped that she was dressed in black, I suppose, which meant that the folder matched, but she delivered her lines almost without hesitation, and with the range of emotions you would expect. The entire company made sure the folder was in the right place at the right time (tucked under a pillow at one point), and apart from one slight moment of panic towards the end, when the pages came out, and which she dealt with very well, finding the right pages in good time and sending the folder to the side of the stage where it languished until the end, it was a masterclass in how to overcome problems.
At the end of the play, the applause for the entire company was real, and the applause for Angelina was special (as were the hugs she got from her colleagues as they left the stage). The folder wasn’t clapped though, which was a pity because it did a good job too.
We’ve all been there, turning up for work and finding out that whatever had been planned for the day has completely changed, but it’s how you react that counts. I can quite imagine that the first thing to go through Angelina’s mind was, quite possibly, to flee, to get as far from the theatre as possible.
But she didn’t, and by staying, and doing her very best, she might even have found stores of resilience she didn’t know she had.
Yesterday, she was a reader, replacing somebody else, but who knows, maybe she’ll have a lead role in one of the productions they put on next winter.
If so, I’ll definitely be there to watch!
Wonderfully written, dear Paul ❤️ xxxx