Page 66 - Phonebox Magazine January 2011

DAVID PIBWORTH COLUMN
Theatre
superstitions
As I write this I am sitting in a dressing room at the Deco theatre in Northampton, with full Widow Twanky make-up on, in my underpants with my feet in a bowl of warm water. It’s the 16th December so it’s not really the new year for me yet, but as you probably guessed I don’t write the articles the day before publishing, and usually it’s not noticeable although last month it was. I gave David Cameron a hard time for employing a photographer at the tax payers expense and by the time this publication went to print Cameron had got rid of him. I like to think that our intrepid editor, Ron, had sent a preview copy to the office of the Prime Minister and that Cameron had read it, panicked and sacked the photographer immediately, but I suspect that what really happened was.....no, no, that’s the story I shall stick to. [Right choice. Ed]
Anyway enough of all that. I’ve had a good Christmas albeit mainly sitting in a theatre waiting for the next show. We did about 50 shows of ‘Aladdin’ in Northampton, and it all went very well. In these large
scale pantomimes your role is very clear. You turn up on time, you do what the director says, you turn out for press commitments and you give the public value for money and we all did that. We had a good director, good script and a good cast and production team so it was relatively easy. Playing Widow Twanky is great fun and lets face it.....it’s not exactly King Lear but pantomime is a great British tradition and one that all children should go to. Our children from Olney Drama school enjoyed it and also they loved meeting the cast who included the singer and musician Chesney Hawkes and Melissa Walton from Hollyoaks, who are great fun and always happy to have their photo’s taken. I even took Chesney round to Donzella’s for lunch in Olney during one break. He enjoyed the food and the experience of Julie, Donzella’s well known owner! He told me afterwards that he always enjoyed a meal with a cabaret act thrown in.
It’s all very well organised in these pantomimes and I had a lady called Wendy as my dresser. This means I rush off stage wearing one dress and Wendy is backstage waiting with my next dress for me to hop into
for my next entrance and she was great. She looks after the whole cast and their changes and so she is a very busy lady throughout the show. However I tend to whistle in the dressing room, which is a no - no in theatre. The theatre has many superstitions and NOT whistling is one of them. Wendy would clout me round the ear if I whistled, so in the end I didn’t. This superstition comes from the days when stage crew would whistle to each other in a code to tell everyone when scenery was being dropped in and out and so in those days it was as well not to whistle otherwise you may get a large block of scenery dropped on your head. Nowadays the stage crew use headsets to communicate and so I feel safe whistling but, well, these superstitions linger on.
There are a few other mad theatre superstitions as well. You shouldn’t say ‘Macbeth’ when in a theatre and if you are to refer to it, then you should call it ‘The Scottish Play’. Absurd I know, but many otherwise quite normal actors will go completely barmy if you say ‘Macbeth’. It’s great fun saying it. I refer comedy fans to Blackadder the Third for a full ludicrous showcase of the curse of ‘Macbeth’. (For those interested I’m currently adapting Blackadder for a stage version in September which should be fun.)
What else, oh yes, you should never say ‘Good Luck’ and in fact if you do, you are required to leave the theatre, turn around three times, spit, swear and then ask to be re-admitted. The phrase “Break a Leg” is supposedly the thing to say, although not before a ballet performance.
But the strangest of all is the one where you are not supposed to rehearse the end lines and bows before the opening night of a play. This ties in nicely with the much used theatre saying of ‘Bad dress rehearsal - Good opening night” Total cobblers of course. Much used by companies who don’t rehearse enough. I once had a load of irate actors surround me
when I
insisted on
rehearsing
the end
couplets of a
pantomime
about a
week before
the
production. I
insisted that
they did, and
blow me the
show went
brilliantly. I’m
considering
a new warm
up where all
actors shout
‘Macbeth’
and blow
raspberries but I fear that’s a step too far for some old actors.
Oh and ghosts. Yes, every theatre has a
ghost creeping around. It’s usually a classical actor of some note who fell to his or her death at least 100 years ago from the lighting rigging high up above the stage. What on earth all those classical actors were doing up there in the first place is quite beyond me.
So I fight these mad traditions but they’re harmless enough in the same way as my view is. Talking of ghosts we had a good old line in Aladdin this year when I said “I think we’re surrounded by Ghosties and Ghoulies” and Wishy Washy says “Well, I hope we only get caught by the ghosties”. And, like Max Miller, we leave the rest up to your imagination.
My next learning stint is as Mr Hamilton, the irate American in Fawlty Towers in the episode ‘Waldorf Salad’, which is on stage in February at The Chrysalis theatre in Milton Keynes. Do come along, it’s a good show, with our original cast from last September reviving their roles as Basil, Sybil, Polly, Manuel and the Major. (Episodes also include ‘A Touch Of Class’ and the classic ‘The Germans’.) It will definitely be our last outing with Fawlty Towers and tickets are selling like the clappers already so go online to www.mktoc.co.uk and buy them on line as the last show was a 100% sell out well before it opened.
Happy New Year!
66 Phonebox Magazine
Chesney Hawkes and me with the lovely Julie, proprietor of Donzella, and above Chesney says hello to Giovanni the chef.