An Embarrassment Of Richards: Week Three

Sometimes things just work out really well – and the final evening of filming An Embarrassment Of Richards was certainly one of those evenings. The whole run of 6 plays (2 a night) has demanded a lot from these actors, with a ridiculously intense rehearsal period, and the final week pushed things even further – these pieces were wordier, and considering the intimacy of the venue – more ambitious than ever. But then again I was blessed with a remarkable bunch of actors, and with a director team (Sarah had pre-arranged other commitments and wasn’t available for the second half of the show so Alan Hay helped out) of supreme quality, I shouldn’t have had any doubts really. A cracking audience crammed in and laughed at all the appropriate times, as a team we felt very comfortable with the space. The first piece, ‘Letters To Sparkle’ is probably the most successful play I’ve written – but one of the oldest (which in itself is quite alarming, it was written in 2006) and it has been performed by some very wonderful people over the years...Eifion and Amelia matched them though with beautifully (intentionally) awkward performances, building to the surprise climax – again, nobody in the audience saw that ending coming, nobody ever has – this makes me very happy. After the internal we went straight into, ‘How About You’ – this was originally written for Lodestar a couple years ago. I do too much comedy-drama these days, this is a proper straight forward comedy, with jokes, big characters and plenty of slapstick. For this we had an extended cast – so alongside Eifion, Emma, Amelia and Alan, also on stage we had the wonderfully confident Adam Daniels and Sylvie England – who are two more ‘proper’ actors, and me, stumbling my way through roles as a mad uncle and a nasty dictator. A play that perhaps needed a bigger performance space but worked so well anyway, it was packed with energy and was met with huge laughs – a proper high, a proper buzz in the air. Like one of ‘those’ gigs, these nights are a rarity and need to be treasured. Luckily, they were being filmed – which of course was the plan in the first place for this project. I have no idea how they will look when they hit YouTube next month, but for now I’m really happy, and grateful, to have worked with this team – ‘An Embarrassment Of Richards’ feels like an unexpected success, which as we all know - is always the most satisfying kind of success.