The Christmas show is over an hour of new material which,
considering my general lack of ability to learn lines as quickly as proper
actors, has felt like a bit of a struggle but we’re on track, kind of. The tour
starts next week, it’ll be seat of the pants stuff on stage, but adds to the
excitement of it all – if the audience can sense a little edge in our
performance it’s far more enjoyable for them rather than an actor going through
the motions. Ticket sales have been great in some places, less so in others (in
particular Cambridge, but I’ve come to expect that now) and the press machine
is working well with some notable coverage in Devon, Preston and the Lake
District. And most importantly; it’s a really strong show – we’ve pulled out
all the stops with this one, as much as it’s great to try out darker material
or new methods of working, this one very much builds on the success of the last
tour, it’s joke-heavy and exhausting, in the best possible way. I just wish my
elf costume was a bit…well, bigger. Clearly ‘one size fits all’ isn’t ‘one size
fits Paul Richards.’
After all these rehearsals (occasionally with two different
rehearsals in different locations in one night) it was great to be gigging
again this weekend. On Friday I played with Flaming June in Louth (near
Grimsby) where it felt like we couldn’t do a thing wrong, is it strange that I
feel awkward when people are being so incredibly friendly to us? On Saturday I
played in Royston with Fred’s House and we absolutely stormed it – it was a
long show, but the momentum got us through. Yesterday back with Flaming June
for two afternoon shows in Huntingdon as part of their Christmas lights switch
on. Huntingdon is a thoroughly miserable place, the guys behind the event
worked hard and I appreciate that, and we did well under difficult
circumstances, but I was still quite glad to get home. Last night my new play, ‘Gaps’
was given a first performance by WriteOn at the ADC – cracking cast, cracking
vibe, great direction, happy Paul.
In between all of this I’ve finally finished the script for
a new show, ‘Short Stories For Lanky People’ – it’s being recorded tomorrow
night for an audiobook release, cutting it fine, as always, but I get a strange
buzz out of this. In the meantime my little sitcom, ‘Technically Single’ is
nearly complete, I’ve been unable to make a lot of the recording sessions due
to my schedule but have been kept very much in the loop, they’re a wonderful production
team so fingers crossed this ends up being the perfect calling card for all of
us involved.
The festive season is very much with us now, always the
busiest time of the year. I’m certainly going to have myself an intense little
Christmas…and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
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