The 2010 Edinburgh Fringe Blog (10)

The Edinburgh Fringe

Fringe 2010 Blog - 10

Final Day at Latitude - Monday 19 July 2010

I once worked with an actor who could never remember his lines. True, the guy had pages and pages of the things to learn, but we also had a 4-week rehearsal period, a 2-month run and at least a month of knowing we had the job before rehearsals began.

The warning signs didn't come until quite far into the rehearsals process, and by then it was too late. It's very rare in my experience that an actor shows up for the first day of rehearsal off-book (with all lines memorised) although some directors and actors of an older generation sometimes insist on doing that. Most directors, however, being the decent God-fearing folk that they are, allow the actors to learn their lines whilst discovering their character and the play during the rehearsal period.

And so it was with this guy. He had hundreds and hundreds of lines to learn. I'd say almost half of the play was him speaking. Throughout rehearsals he struggled with his lines. Nothing unusual there. Many actors do that... except that they eventually learn them. In this case, the rest of the cast had long since memorised their own lines, but still allowances were made for the sheer number of lines he needed to learn.

In the final week before performances began, he seemed to step up on the line learning front a little, but still couldn't quite remember many of them. The problem was that the play is extremely fast-paced and words are used to great effect, often being spat out at lightning speed. The play (a modern one) is renowned for its excellent use of words. There was no time for the guy to think of what to say next. He needed to know his lines inside out. Except that he didn't. Not even close.

Opening night came and went with him still struggling. I cannot tell you the amount of times he dried (forgot his lines entirely) and us other actors on stage with him had to try and feed him clues as to what he needed to say next. In all honest truth, every single person in the cast knew this actor's lines better then he did!

At first it was rather fun. Previews were a little dodgy, but it certainly kept you on your toes. He promised everyone that all would be fine for press night. It wasn't. The pressure of the event caused him to forget almost all of his lines and as a result the play had no driving force. It was slow and stilted and unwieldy. The production got very lukewarm reviews and as a result the rest of the run suffered from lack of audience numbers and the production (of a famous play at a well-known venue) limped towards a distant, easily-forgotten finish.

But here's the thing. As we progressed further and further into the run of the play, the actor's knowledge of his own lines didn't improve! In fact, it got steadily worse and worse! On a good day - and I'm not exaggerating here - on a good day I'd be surprised if he remembered 20% of his lines. Every show was an adventure - and not a good one. Who knew what he would come up with?

There were nights when entire pages of important plot were casually forgotten. I'm talking about skipping about anything from five to fifteen pages, not a paragraph here and there. Imagine telling someone the story if the Titanic and forgetting to mention the iceberg. The story won't make sense. The iceberg is a rather important plot point in the story of the Titanic (although not as important as seeing Kate Winslet's naughty bits). Leave it out and you're left with a mess.

That's exactly what happened in this case. It put everything in question. When do I say my line? When do I make my entrance? How can you know these things when the cue is never the same? At first the director and later the cast begged him to learn his lines. It was to no avail. The man simply couldn't or wouldn't learn the lines.

I mention this because it's quite a common phenomenon in the acting world. Certainly, this guy took it to an extreme, but we've all heard stories of famous actors being unable to learn their lines. Marlon Brando famously needed to have his lines pasted onto bits of scenery and on cue cards held just off camera.

My point is, actors don't have extraordinary memories. They really don't. I myself, have a terrible memory. Don't ask me how I learn my lines (especially when I played Iago when I had tons of them to remember): I couldn't tell you. My brain seems to be capable of learning the lines, retaining them for the exact duration of the production, and then instantly forgetting them. I honestly couldn't tell you a single speech of Iago's in its entirety, and I played the part less than a year ago. Ask me to mention a single line from Fair Trade on 31st August and all you'll get in return is a look of mild confusion. The sort of look that crosses one's face when you're on a plane over the Atlantic and you realise you've forgotten about the dog.

But why the long discussion about memory. The answer is because I'm not sure what to write about the morning of the final day at Latitude. You see, I know I must have done something, but I simply can't remember what. For all I know I could have dressed up as Bananaman and married a midget named Wendy. I wouldn't know.

My notes for this day are a little - how shall I put it - sparse. Ok fine, they're non-existent. Throughout my stay at Latitude, I tired to keep very brief one sentence notes to serve as a reminder of what I did so that when I came to write my blog entries some time later (in this case a week and a half) I'd have to rely on my memory as little as possible. That was the plan.

However as Tony Blair will tell you, even the best laid plans can end up in the shitter. Therefore, I'm forced to assume that I woke up, had something to eat, packed up and dismantled my tent and headed over to the coffee tent. This is where my memory of the day begins. Anything before that is lost in the mists of tiredness and memory loss. I can safely assume I did those things because I haven't yet met a midget called Wendy who calls me her husband.

The first show of the day was Sadler's Wells multi-dance show (that's not what they called it on the programme, but you get the gist). First up was an extract from Act 2 of Matthew Bourne's production of Swan Lake. It was a beautiful day and the sun was absolutely scorching hot. Without a cloud in the sky, the outdoor stage by the lake was bathed in full sunshine. It came as a surprise to no one that the barefoot dancers were forced to cut the show short because the surface of the stage was too hot for their bare feet!

After a quick unscheduled intermission during which they hurriedly pulled on some socks, the Swan and the Prince continued their dance. There was also some other dancing. An internet search tells me that it was Prélude á l'aprés-midi d'un faune. I'm not going to pretend that I know what that is, but it was beautiful and the male dancer's toned muscles made me want to put down my beer and start doing sit-ups right there and then. This was finished off my ZooNation who did some very cool (if slightly repetitive) street-style dancing of the sort that I am very almost adept at doing when I'm drunk.

I stood there watching these incredibly talented performers, beer in hand, the sun shining in the sky, surrounded by happy people all enjoying themselves and I suddenly found myself wishing it wouldn't end. I didn't want to leave this place with its lake and its trees and tents and expensive veggie burgers and girls with flower garlands in their hair and midgets dressed as cartoon characters (I've got midgets on the brain - I'll explain later, but good thing I don't suffer from achondroplasiaphobia). I didn't want to leave. The setting for this dance show was so breathtakingly beautiful. Why did it all have to end? Why didn't everyone just move there for the summer? It was a dangerous feeling. The kind of feeling that could, if you're not careful, have you hugging strangers and possibly going home to announce to the wife that you've bought a VW van and that you're both going to be packing up and heading off to live in peace and love in the middle of a field, man.

"We're off to see Jamie Lidell. You wanna come?" someone asked me.

"I don't know. Who is he?" A fair question. I'd never heard of the fella and for all I knew he could have been some random old man sitting in his tent picking his toenails on the other side of the festival site.

"He's playing the Word Arena. Sort of white funky soul music".

White funky soul. How could I miss that? I had wanted to go and heckle the people in the queue for the mobile phone charging facility, but this sounded much better.

It really was. The guy came on stage and sang a bunch of songs I'd never heard in my life, each and every one of them better than the previous. He also used a voice loop sampler electronic computer thingy that allowed him to record his voice so that he could harmonize with himself. Not only that, but at one point he kindly let his entire band go have a cup of tea backstage somewhere (probably union rules) whilst he used the computer loop thing to create the sound of a band using nothing but his beatbox skills (i.e. his voice). Simply awesome.

Then a quick run to the main stage to watch Mumford and Sons. The crowd was thick and ready for a good time. Mr Mumford and all his male offspring put on a good show. Unfortunately we had to leave early to catch the beginning of Theatre 503's PlayList.

But first a toilet stop. I think it's time I addressed this subject. As you know, I've never been to a festival and so I didn't know what to expect from the toilets. To my surprise, the toilets in the performers' campsite, where we were staying, were fine. I use this term lightly - they were noxious cubicles of toxic contagious pestilence - but they were still miles better than the toilets used by everyone else.

Essentially, they are a tank on wheels. Picture it (but not too vividly). Now place a lid over the tank. Puncture a few holes in that lid, erect a few cubicles over those holes and viola! Festival toilets. Never need to be cleaned! Everything stays in the tank from day one until the end! Smell guaranteed to make you gag! See what everyone else is getting rid of as it happens in real time!

I decided to use the 'common' toilets to be able to report that I'd been exposed to the full festival experience. I'll admit I wasn't expecting much, but they still took me by surprise. I'm not going to go into details. Suffice to say that I was never at a loss for any buoyant objects to aim at in the tank whenever I needed to pee.

I had been looking forward to seeing PlayList. The idea behind it is excellent. A small cast performed a number of short scenes written by new playwrights and inspired by the music of artistes performing at the festival. It also featured two friends of mine from my days training at Webber Douglas. The scenes were funny, captivating and poignant. Altogether, one of my favourite memories from the festival. The two friends of mine seemed to be best (although I might be biased - Webber Douglas was the greatest).

And it was on that note that I strolled back to the campsite, picked up my oversized rucksack still stuffed with unused toilet rolls (I'm not one to waste loo roll) and staggered back across the festival site. Along the way, I chatted with two festival volunteers who kindly gave me directions to the bus stop. I can't get over how friendly everyone is here!

I had one last item on my to-do list before leaving the festival. By now... do you know what? I've just remembered what I did all morning! How could I have forgotten? I watched Tom Jones! OK, so maybe not all morning, but certainly the hour or so from midday till 1pm.

For some reason (maybe because hardly anyone could get in to see him perform on Thursday night, but probably so that he could get maximum exposure for his upcoming album) young Mr Jones gave an unscheduled performance on the main stage on the Sunday. We arrived early, coffee in hand (free coffee too - this also just came rushing back - I discovered free coffee available in a tent literally just around the corner from tattoo girl and Quentin Tarantino) to get a good place to see Tom Jones.

As I said previously it was a beautiful day and Tom Jones was wonderful. In spite of the fact that he had several thousand people shouting "Sex Bomb" at him, he only sang songs from his current album Praise and Blame - a selection of gospel and blues songs. It hardly matters. The songs were fantastic. The atmosphere chilled and relaxed. Tom (I can't believe he's 70 years old!) put on a good show and showed us why he is such a legend. So what if he refused to sing Delilah? Or What's New Pussy Cat? Or Mamma Told Me Not to Come? Or It's Not Unusual? Actually, scrap all I said previously - he was an old git for not singing them and I'm beginning to regret throwing my underpants at him. Still, buy his new album - it's wonderful.

So, back to my back-breaking trek across the festival site to my last stop before heading home. I had one last band I needed to see. I've already waxed lyrical about these guys, so I won't go into it all again. They are of course, Jarmean, and all I'll say is that their audience was even larger this time than their two previous shows. Word is obviously spreading, some of it by me. I'd managed to persuade Lotte to come and see them (although she might have done so just to shut me up) and she also loved them. Anna also showed up and the three of us took a front row seat next to my backpack.

The cherry on the cake was when one of the band, Ben the barefooted clarinet player, dedicated the next song to yours truly ("the gentleman who has attended every one of our gigs at the festival", as he put it). That put a huge smile on my face which stayed with me all the way home, on the bus and later on the train.

It was a wonderful experience and I encourage anyone and everyone to go and experience the festival at some point. Whilst you're there, please buy me a beer.

I'll leave you with one final image from Latitude. As we were walking along on our final day, we passed by a man holding another man's hand. The thing is, the second man was a midget and was dressed from head to toe as a smurf, blue body-paint, white hat and all. now I ask you, where else can you see a sight like that, watch an RSC show and drink your body weight in beer all in one day? The Edinburgh Festival I hear you say. Well maybe. But first, there was London to face.

Christopher Dingli

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