Pfaffed about for a while this morning before heading downstairs. And it's raining - gotta love London! The nice concierge was happy to loan me a brolly and off I set. Love this London shot...
And love that as I don't have a functioning mobile phone and need to make a call, I actually need to use one of these. The romantic illusion is quickly broken, sadly, as the first one stinks to high heaven and won't take coins. The second one, it appears someone has brought their dog in to do his business and left it there. However, due to the rain and the brolly wrangling, I just stay to make the call - and the number is discontinued!
Down to Covent Garden for a bite and then back to the Theatre Royal to pick up my ticket for the backstage tour - very excited about this one!
We meet in the foyer and it's just me on the tour - perfect!
..before moving through to the original entrance to the oldest continuous running theatre in the world. This fourth incarnation of the theatre and was built in 1812. The first incarnation was built in 1663! This one burned down.
The second was torn down and replaced by a third, which also burned down. The guy who built the third one invented the fire curtain and would bring it in and get a stagehand to bang on it with a hammer to impress the audience. But he got bored of this and stopped. The fire curtain rusted and when it was needed, it couldn't be lowered. So the place burned to the ground. The owner apparently went to a bar across the road, ordered a rum and watched it burn. Someone asked him what he was doing and he said something along the lines of "a man has a right to a drink by his fire."
The original foyer is much as it would have appeared all those years ago, complete with statue of Shakespeare...
..plus three others. One of whom is Garrick - an actor/director/producer who pretty much changed the way things were done in the theatre. He introduced sets, costumes, props (before that the audience had to imagine. The actors would enter a scene and say, "now I enter a forest..."). He also introduced direction - telling the actors to move here on this line and say it like this.
The entrance area has two sides - the king's side and the prince's side - due to the fact that King George came one night and his son was there. They hated each other and got into a huge fistfight in front of all the theatregoers and from that, they gave them their own entrances, boxes, attendants rooms and all.
We went through to the royal rooms and I sat in the chair all the royals have sat in. The room is tackily opulent. Apparently it is real gold! I didn't manage to get any photos of this room...
Into the royal box where you don't sit to have a good view of the show, you sit to be seen by the audience. This is the view from there. I can see the seat where I sat last night. I had a slight problem getting to my seat last night. As you enter the auditorium, the row in front of you is M. The young usher was directing me towards the back of the theatre but as I had a seat in row H this didn't make sense. He was pretty determined that he was right and I hesitated. Then he ran up the aisle shouting "I might be wrong!" Came back saying he was wrong and he'd only been working here a month. He was very Mr Bean...
She told of Nell Gwynn - the actress who began her career at 13 selling oranges to the theatregoers. These they would cut in half and hold to their noses so they didn't have to smell their fellow patrons - showering and laundering weren't big in those days. They would eat the oranges and spit the pips over into the stalls below - to the bemusement of the people actually sitting down there. Nell became a famous actress who had a longstanding affair with the King and bore him two children.
Apparently they sold tickets to men to come and watch the ladies get changed after the shows! Charged them more for that than the actual show...
After the auditorium we went down to peek on the stage - not allowed to take photos here. Could see the fly tower and the massive stage with some of the sets from last night. It's a huge stage.
Then it was backstage - and typically, not as glamorous as the FOH areas. It's quite a labyrinth. We went though quite a complicated set of corridors down to the Tunnel - part of the original building.
There were a series of tunnels running from here. They ran to various places. One ran to Nell Gwynn's house. Another ran to the Thames and apparently sailors, when docked, would run up and work backstage to supplement their income and that's how some of the nautical terms came to be incorporated backstage - 'crew' and 'dock' and so on.
There are a couple of ghosts said to haunt the place - one just likes to play pranks and move props and makeup around. The other is slightly more malevolent and will tap people on the shoulder. People in the first four rows of the stalls have also reported having their names called out by him. Spooky!
As it was just me in the tour we were able to go underneath the stage to see the bridges and lifts that allow the stage (and different parts of the stage) to move up and down as required. We also had a look at the elevator from last night to see how that worked - she did ask first if I minded losing the illusion!
I could photograph the walkway but not the elevator...
Back through the rabbit warren to the loading dock with the most massive doors.
Another peak in at the back of the stage and then out through stage door and end of tour.
It was a great, informative and really interesting tour!
I then wandered down to the Strand to stop in at Nell Gwynn's Tavern for lunch. So very cute and very, very tiny. Just here, on the left.
Next on the agenda was the blast from the past walk, following my 20-something-year-old self. Starting along the Strand where the temp agency had been located. I had been randomly walking past (registering at agencies to find work after travelling the continent for two months) and noticed a sign in the window for 'clerical work with a science degree'. Very random and quite specific. Went in to have a look and it was clerical work at Sainsbury's supermarket in the food technology department. They wanted a science degree - didn't care what science it was. The fact that I had microbiology was handy but not important. My friend George (one of the funniest men alive) at work had a geography degree - not related to food technology in any shape or form.
Next stop - Blackfriars Bridge, which was my underground stop. Over the bridge to Stamford Street and there's Doggetts pub where we would go after work - not every day!
Down to Rennie Street and it's a demolition zone! The building still stands with the Rennie House entryway but it's not going to be there for long.
Popped in to Doggetts to have a look. Back in the day, when we would come in, we were quite the regulars. The waiters would say, "Hey, Oz." and have my whiskey and lemonade ready for me. I used to drink whiskey and Coke but when I was living in Edinburgh, the waiters refused to put Coke in it. Strangely they were okay to put lemonade in! And I got used to it. It's funny that the only thing remaining from the old days is the pub!
Back for a small rest before heading out to meet Robert - a guy from Whitehorse days years ago. He's working as a costume designer now and doing very well. It was so great to see him and catch up all those years. We met outside the theatre his play is in and went for a coffee, then for a quick bite. Then to the theatre...
No, this photo is not back the front - it's part of it.
And how cool is this?
Costume design - Roberto Surace! I do love that I cut off the title of the play and just got 'wrong' above his head.
We went backstage for a bit of a tour. Just this morning I was touring backstage in the huge theatre across the road and now touring backstage at a tiny theatre. The cast was warming up and we're very friendly. And I got to stand on a West End stage!
Robert had to head off, I still had a few moments to kill so went across to Covent Garden to see a fabulous string quartet playing Pachabel's Canon. They had all moved up to play to a girl who was photographing them
Then back to watch the Play That Goes Wrong, which was hilarious! So very clever - an amateur theatre company putting on a murder mystery where everything goes wrong - sets fall down, props break, the over-actor who reacts whenever the audience laughs at something he does, the actor who mispronounces everything, even when written on his hand, and so on. It could so easily have tilted over the line to absurd and ridiculous but it didn't. It was very, very funny and clever and hilarious. The audience were in stitches from the very beginning right through. And the costumes were great!
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