(Snapshots From A UK Tour, part 2)

October 1^st…after our two nights in Cambridge we head down to Brighton and the Friends Meeting House for another Sunday afternoon performance.

A 14-year old boy in the audience tells us in the Q and A how much he got from the play, though a year earlier it might have all gone over his head.  Interesting.  So maybe 14+ is about the right age recommendation?  He also says that he loved the props and would never again look at a paper bag in the same way.  (Paper bags with holes cut out for the eyes and mouth are used in the play to cover victims’ facial burns.)

(Photo by Simon Richardson)

Tuesday 3^rd we head back up to glorious Yorkshire.  First stop, McAuley Catholic High School in Doncaster where a very engaged group of students watch the play and come to the workshop the next morning. (Not dressed in sports kit.).  Then it’s across to Pontefract and Ackworth School, where I performed my last (solo) play, THIS EVIL THING, in 2017.  

They are keenly looking forward to seeing this new play of mine, THE MISTAKE, this time written for two actors.  And we’re keenly looking forward to performing it – and afterwards staying for the night in the headmasters’ beautiful ‘Arts and Crafts’ house.

In the afternoon, our setting-up in the school theatre is going well, when Riko nips up the rather awkward stairs at the side of the stage, slips and lets out a cry as she bangs her head against the wall.  Oh my goodness!  Is she okay?  She says her vision is blurred and needs to just lie still where she is.  The headmaster is immediately on the scene, assessing the situation, filling in an accident report, and it’s decided by all of us that Riko should visit a hospital to be checked over for concussion.  She’s talking, able to stand and move, but clearly not up to performing.

As Riko leaves, the head says to me, the disappointment clear in his voice and expression, ‘It seems unlikely then that there will be a performance of The Mistake this evening?’

Our concern for Riko’s well-being is paramount, but as she’s able to move, speak and get to a car to go to hospital (with the head’s wife) for a check-up, I wonder whether a complete cancellation of the evening is necessary – with many students, parents, adults all set to be there. 

‘The show must go on.’  Well, not The Mistake show.  But some kind of show perhaps?

I suggest to the head that I could perhaps read The Mistake to the audience – but no, we don’t feel that would be adequate.  

Thinking quickly, I then tell him that during the first Covid lockdown in 2020 I had worked on and performed an hour-long monologue as a livestream – ‘The Priest’s Tale’.  It was an atomic bomb survivor’s account, a German priest who had been based in Hiroshima at the time of the blast.  So, very much the same subject matter and themes as ‘The Mistake’.  The head seems more than happy to accept this compromise.

We jump into action.  I find the pdf of the script on my phone, someone prints it up for me, I quickly revise it – I’ll need to have script in hand, but I’m very familiar with the material – I look at our ‘Mistake’ props and set, do a bit of ‘distressing’, scattering things around, as ‘The Priest’s Tale’ actually begins just after the atomic blast.  

I quickly work with Kelly to select some ‘Mistake’ sound cues, Japanese music, blast effects, to punctuate the story at certain points – plus the odd lighting cue.  Then we grab some food, the audience start to arrive and after an announcement by the head, away we go.

I make it clear to everyone I speak to that they have missed something very special in not seeing ‘The Mistake’ and Riko’s remarkable performance – but there’s a real sense of gratitude from the audience that at least this is being offered instead.

I didn’t write ‘The Priest’s Tale’, but I adapted it from an account by the American journalist John Hersey.  It’s a beautiful and moving account of a quietly inspiring priest, who survived the blast, witnessed the devastation, but who also, in later years, succumbed to radiation sickness.

The majority of the audience are clearly very held and moved by this story and express this to me afterwards.  I thank them but say, ‘I still wish you’d seen Riko!’

For me, it’s a classic case of ‘the show must go on’ – leaping into the breach, thinking on my feet, and during the reading improvising bits of staging as I go along, letting the text lead me. 

So. That night’s show is over, but what’s the news of Riko, is she okay, will she be able to carry on with the tour? The tour which in two days’ time takes us to York Theatre Royal and its 72-seat studio – which is already sold-out…(to be continued)

(Spoiler alert – Riko is absolutely fine, 100%!)