An Embarrassment Of Richards: Week One

Last night was the first night of filming for 'An Embarrassment Of Richards.' The concept itself is simple; we want to have six of my plays online as a series, releasing one a week, keeping things very simple with the same cast (helps familiarity for the viewer, helps build a 'team' ethic for the actors/director) and filmed with a camera using one single frame with no fancy stuff in front of a small audience in the function room of a village pub. The complex bit is the timescale - filming six plays in March, two a week for three consecutive Sundays...that's a lot of lines for the actors to learn. Luckily, I seem to have stumbled across some of the most talented professionals out there, and it's not only about talent - it's about dedication, understanding, willingness...this lot have it all. You may remember last year when my play, 'Toxic Tornado' went on at WriteOn and I was buzzing because that cast looked just like a proper team even though they'd never worked together (or even met before), well I've managed to get three out of four of them for this project - Eifion, Amelia and Emma, add to that the wonderful and so in demand it's amazing we've got him Alan Hay (who I've worked with previously on the 'Mr Abernathy' film, the musical at Lodestar - 'You Don't Miss Your Water' and the occasional beer or three at the Edinburgh Fringe last year) and wonderful, wonderful director Sarah Ingram (who I've known for years and she's directed plenty of my pieces including the very successful (well, the critics liked it) 'A Little Light Theatre' piece I wrote for the Brighton Fringe many years back) and we've got ourselves an incredible team. And they are just that. The six plays chosen were initially supposed to be a kind of 'best of' from my 8 years of writing for theatre, but then I realised I don't actually own the rights to some of my own plays anymore due to publishing deals (meaning 'Bed' and 'With Arms Outstretched' couldn't be considered, among others), but it's basically that anyway. Filmed by Mr Dave Martin (a top filmmaker, also the bassist in The British IBM) in the very small back room of The Cock in Gamlingay - a lovely little pub I've become fond of because one of my best friends lives in the area so we drink there - the filming of the first two plays took place in front of a small but enthusiastic audience, it's a very small room anyway so even with just 14 people there it felt packed. The plays were, 'Reviewing Jonathan' (which featured an awful cameo by me) and 'When Jimmy Became James' - both perhaps the darkest pieces of the run, but perhaps some of the most satisfying. The performances were spot on - electric at times, full of energy, loud, boisterous - and the actors were clearly having fun doing them. Today there's been some nice banter between us all, lots of mutual appreciation, working with these guys is a joy - they do work so hard to make this happen because they want to, they are so driven, it makes me very happy indeed. It was a very creative and manic weekend - on Friday we played our first function gig as Popping Candy (I won't do 'gig reports' on covers gigs because this blog is more for my creative endeavours - it was a long show though, felt like we were on stage for ours...actually, that's because we were), on Saturday I recorded an acoustic album with Trevor Jones, Saturday night the British IBM online gig, Sunday bit of family time for mothers day and then the filming...yet everyone I've worked with has been so nice and so talented. These are the good times.