Through The Mirror - The Making of a Miss Marple Mystery

foreign [Music] you think it was the wrong murder now what makes you say that well why would Scotland Yard send a Chief Inspector to investigate the murder of a middle-aged nobody how is she killed you know I'm not limited to discuss the case so why are you here well I thought I just pop in the main challenge that comes with touring is just never fully feeling settled in a place every venue informs the play and changes the play it means that it keeps the show really fresh but you've got nothing around you that's your normal stuff you've got your home you learned how to live out of a suitcase it tends to create a bonding amongst the cast that is deeper than if you were in a fixed theater where you can go home the second it's getting too much just not and I'll wrap things up I've been working in the theater since 1979 things have changed massively in terms of Technology my touring life of 54 years just tells me that things have changed a huge amount from beginning to end and often there's just no Rhyme or Reason to what an audience will come and see what worked one year isn't necessarily going to work the next year it's just this big old roller coaster ride but a lot of it Remains the Same you know the the theater a a dog box where a group of people gathered to tell a story is uh never going to go away I hope storytelling is the most important commodity we have as humans to share with each other the theater always grows like grass growing through concrete it'll always somehow manage to make itself felt I don't think you you'll ever really replace the relationship that an actor or actress can have standing in the middle of the stage and talking to a live audience that's the magic of it that's what hooked me when I was six and it's what continues to hook me and the rest is gravy oh what could be more simple than the desirable life [Music] oh [Music] it's a white noise today [Music] um is the first day of rehearsals to remount the tour which we did last year and finished in December good to be back yeah we'll find out in a few minutes [Music] have you ever done hay fever we should do it we should do it we should actually be brilliant [Music] Hello everybody welcome back welcome back the shape of the next few days I hope will be will be quite gentle um what we'll do this morning is a a sort of version of a of a read through obviously without books sorry can I help you yes I'm looking for Miss Marvel yeah but what a lovely surprise oh you're always so quick to the door I thought something must have happened this is Jenny she's been looking after me cherry this is inspector craft it's to make a luxury out of the necessity um but because you know we have to do a line run that's what this is for but to revive the show not in the sense of putting um a defibrillator on a corpse I was watching Bride of Frankenstein last night it's alive um but to to bring it back to its proper life it's funny I only met Heather Lee once and if I'm honest and really take to her but it's still Such a Pity how little we know when our own end will come murder isn't on a spree I'd have no friends left at all I'm not bossy and it's also it's also a an opportunity for us for us to remind ourselves that this is it's it's a it's a play that is witty but not Camp it's dark but it's full of it's full of of love in all its forms and that those real things are what elevates this and the work that you've done on it above the Agatha Christie that people think they're going to come and see it's much more than that and you you've you've discovered that it is um and that's what we want to revive not just getting our head down and and rushing out on the road again um to make it as as good as it was come back from panto I did um Peter Pan in Aberdeen so coming back into it now it feels a bit odd because it only feels like yesterday that we finished the last tour that uh it doesn't it'll all fall into place I'm just now sorting out costumes making sure we've got everything back because it all went for dry cleaning after the last hole I seem to have lost five handbags which should have been in with the hat box but they're not so the worry is where are they I'm hoping that in the trundle that hasn't arrived yet um but if not I'll be going up the shops to buy more but I've been in wardrobe for 48 years and I've told probably 40 41 of those I like the challenge of getting a show in and on in the same day I've done the West End a few times but it's dreary touring life is very very specific because you're somewhere different every week so um Sunday you usually travel to the next location or you might try and dive home Monday you're in a new theater and the show will be a bit different because of the dimensions of the theater and the Acoustics of the theater and mostly really actually because the audience is the different in every place you can have difficulties moving a show from one venue to another one of the issues in the last 18 months to two years has been the enormous loss huge numbers of experienced venue technicians have just left the trade during the lockdown or shutdown or the you know the suspensions of activities in theaters uh they still had mortgages to pay rent to pay kids to feed and they had to find other work and a lot of people have discovered that in fact you can earn as good a living doing something simpler and be able to get home at the weekends [Music] because I trained in London I've grown up in London love my family but um I just feel like I I was looking for that opportunity to get away from home and explore other places so it's actually been a real blessing to be able to just see new spaces really last year I told virtually the entire time and I did four different Productions I can't see a point where I would want to retire to be honest because I love the job still as much now as when I started but financially is the biggest pool because of course said I couldn't live just on a on a pension so I have to keep going [Music] I feel like I have a very massively had a break so I I started my pre-production restage about a week two weeks ago just to start to like get my bearings about what we're redoing uh obviously when you start rehearsing a show you know you're presented with the script the scripts like the changes or adapts or different things you kind of get it on its feet and then after five months of touring you realize that like things have slightly changed you know most for the better some necessarily so it's about returning to First principle returning to first idea moving into this now what I would just like to talk about is these Transitions and what we're doing here is to recap our brains to get into this basically we got so slick we shaved the minutes of the show in a good way but let's kind of get back to maybe a little bit of the messiness a little bit of a storytelling a little bit of the character sprinkled in first of all so what I'd love to do is just go to the top on there [Music] um so we see vaccine change entirely through craddock's emotional landscape well this next one is the is the is Jason's and it is the most important day of all our lives so whatever we bring on wherever we put it however we're feeling whether it's whether it's excited or business-like it this it is tremendously important so Marina mustn't crack up I am going to get this right and get the get the Oscar which I've deserved for 20 years this this is my time so let's try that one more time please I know the previous owner are you feeling all right could it be better why we don't have to do any acting don't do it foreign over Christmas we've had about six weeks off and it's really interesting coming back to the play and seeing how much you remember and how much of it has changed and it's a real sign of how great the play is because new stuff is becoming apparent and and Philip very much is kind of saying that we we want to keep rediscovering it and and I think it's going to be a different a different show than it was before and I think it's going to have grown quite a lot the role of director uh changes from a project to project of course and it also changes as theatrical Fashions change that though when I started off as an actor um when theaters were lit by gas and um horse-drawn carriages through the cobbled Streets of London there was a tendency for the um for the director to be a kind of autocrat that is very much not the case anymore the director when working with the actors is much more of a collaborator than they used to be which is not to say that the buck doesn't stop with you because it does but ideally I I should arrive on day one of rehearsals knowing the script inside out the concept if you like of the production is pretty well nailed down in the work that I've done with the designer there are other members of the creative team who I do some work with before rehearsals started um like the lighting designer and the composer in this case Max papenheimer foreign the exciting thing about the mirror craft was that I worked with with many of the team with the original before and with Pip as director but this time music was going to play quite a central role to the production that we were making the first stage was for Pep and I to listen to various scores of the era we got particularly hooked on David raxson's score for Laura classic 40s film Noir and so our ideas sprung forth from discussions about that and talking about the story and the context of of those movies and ideally you want collaborators who will come to rehearsals as much as possible that's a financial issue but it's uh it's one that most good people like to do they like to be in the rehearsal and respond to what they're seeing so I changed that I thought that was going to be this kind of music cue but actually it works better seeing what she's doing if it's this kind of music you the illusion that we try to create is that a uh a symphony orchestra is playing or at least has played the music but in reality not a single physical instrument has actually been played Initial Ideas pip and I discussed with me playing on the piano and once we had the shape of the musical ideas um then out comes the the laptop and everything is programmed in so that what we call virtual instruments which are recordings of instruments playing individual notes are combined into something which more or less resembles the sound of an actual orchestra playing the bulk of a director's job is is to do with leading up to rehearsals and then making sure that the rehearsal room is a space where people feel safe and safe enough to um to contribute and create um but moving from that relatively small space um into the theater it's very much down to the director to to carry it and allow it to grow and fill that building there in after it becomes very difficult I think to decide what the director's job is I think if the show is in a good shape and the company are working well together the director must allow it to grow by itself so you when you come back and see it in a few weeks time you don't really want to see an identical show to the one that you left behind you want to be able to think oh I see you've discovered that corner the mirror cracked from side to side the Doom has come upon me cried the lady of Charlotte you mean curse I beg your pardon it's curse not Doom oh I prefer Doom I don't think this is the time for a poetry discussion [Music] thank you [Music] today the director is really a surplus to requirements this is a fit up and a lighting focusing session and checking some sound levels and because this is a production that we have already taken out on tour this is a remount fingers crossed it should all just be a question of getting it back up to speed rather than solving an immense amount of difficult problems my name is Jeff timelo and I'm proudly a member for Matthew where I specialize in transport and Logistics storage for theater we move shows up and down the country I'm Tammy Rose I'm original theater's production manager so the production manager is the person who facilitates the production I'm the person that usually has to realize the designs and the ideas that all the creative team have within the scope of the budget and once you get into the theater it's running the local crew the additional production staff that join you for production week and keeping us on schedule and ready to go through the curtain going up on the first performance I think of schedules of something that one takes a dynamic approach to today is it's going okay the sector was adjusted and modified for its last venue which was smaller and narrower and so adjustments had to be made to the set to get it in and we're now going to remove those adjustments any touring show is a great big challenge you need an excellent production manager you need an excellent company manager they earn their money five times over because at the end of every week everything gets packed into cases and it gets packed into cases at the end of the show which means that you don't start work till 11 o'clock and they'll be working on with the local crew till three four in the morning and then driving off to the next venue where you hope and pray if there's a raked stage if the stage is not flat then it won't be so raked that your set pieces start to slide forward and so we build what's called an anti-rank device which is which is flattens it off a lot more work gonna take a lot more time huge amount of additional cost but it has to be done as a light inside I'm responsible for all light on stage it's a bit like painting but with light rather than with paint so it's about angles where the light comes from what colors in the light what level you put the light up so the challenges of touring multiple in terms of everybody who has different kit so you're looking at what can create the same Source it's also positions front of house particularly is very different in all these venues so you're trying to find the same angles but from a very different position so that's the skill of a relighter so I'm really lucky I've got Stuart Glover relighting the mirrorcraft we're in Cambridge right now and the price is seven meters which is quite narrow for this show next we're going to be in High Wickham in the process 12 meters which means basically everything has to point from a different angle which basically is a bit like redesigning the show every time so far we've managed to wriggle the lights and we're just about to focus them so make sure they're in the right position for the show so we catch people perfectly so I've just patched the desk which means hopefully everything should be working the mirror cracked has a big mirror box on stage which means that we can't really like the show from the front because otherwise all the light would bounce back into the audience so there's a lot of sideline for touring that's in some ways it's a good thing because it's easier to get your positions if you've got side light in terms of time it's more difficult because you've got to hang the ladders the ladders for original things are all steel so it takes a lot of personnel to get them into the air and then you've got to rig on them and they're floating objects it's about um 75 generic lights and then eight movers which each have about 12 positions which is I guess another 96 things to focus I've just got a crack on so we try to put some slack into the system uh some of the stuff there has got to be touched up paint wise means we have to have it ready for the painters by seven so we've still got quite a few props that aren't set yet but with everyone backstage and working on stage at the minute we can't really set those props until we have a clear space for them I'll be a little bit calmer once those are set but I know that we have the time to do that tomorrow morning before we do anything and before the casts come in so [Applause] in 24 hours time we will be uh yeah the curtain will be going up it will be absolutely down to them and not done to me I will be as mere and exit door as I can possibly be um uh in in a state of of complete dread um the very first show that I ever directed was production of Dr Faustus at um the Greenwich theater and uh because I knew no better I was sitting in the middle of a row on the Press night and five minutes in the lighting board failed and somehow or other the next thing I remember is being outside theater I had literally just scrambled over people and and run I know many directors Sam Mendes famously doesn't watch his own press nights um he will go for a walk he'll go for a meal he'll do something I think an awful lot of directors lie about whether they've seen the the president yeah it was great never better honestly that's the best you've ever done it and they've been in the pub um because there really is nothing you can do the the best thing to do is to treat yourself well foreign because it is it's a kind of a parlor game as well I think the problem is that the artwork doesn't work with the tight because basically what we do very clear about is who our audience is are we selling it as a ghost story more than I thought [Music] yeah I mean yes I mean it is I suppose it is a ghost Thriller so you find me now on the road to Cambridge um we're pulling in today because we're reopening the show is Tuesday 31st of Jan and this evening 7 30 the mirror cracked after its winter break is reopening at the Arts Theater so the first tour has been pretty successful I think all told um it's our first big show as in we've got a cast of 13 people and big backstage team for a play anyway and post covered everyone's been much more cautious I think in their programming there's lots of horror stories about theater producers losing their shirts in recent months so we were nervous but sort of slightly buoyed by the fact that it's an Agatha Christie play or a novel that she wrote in her name traditionally um tends to conjure good audiences up and down the UK and so it proved kind of throughout September October November the set was changed for Southampton so any marks that you're expecting any glow tape marks you're looking for anything else let us know if you've gone and we'll replace them or anything it doesn't look quite a rope if you remember We Shrunk it right down we did do modifications but it has gone back in recently for Duchess I'm with you this week if this stuff is not working this is the time to tell me so I can fix it contour and have a lovely day I think the first day in every new venue is always the one where we trust ourselves the least just because we're still getting used to the space and we probably had like about an hour to really actually navigate the theater for the first time where would you put your script yeah maybe underneath [Music] cheers [Music] okie dokie could we um could we do it dry first of all so could we go from Lorenzo is on and and everybody's off and we're going to pick up from the final line of this scene I must get to gossington we must get to gossington right away thank you thank you very much without Tech women Captain gottington right away and music happens everybody comes on just pausing there thank you very very much wonderful can we reset that back please and we'll do that again exactly as is when I set up in inverted commas the company I was at University I was in my second year and I wanted to make a show at the Student Union um which at that time was 12th night and they didn't give it to me they thought that I was so um untrustworthy that although they said my idea was good they went with another production and for whatever reason I was so spurred by this so sort of upset that I decided to mount my own production now fortunately I thought I saw a bit more sense to not do that but what I did do which was even more stupid was to then try and go one better which was to produce this massive epic tour um which went all the way around the UK 22 venues everywhere from accrington Stanley football club to the Edinburgh Festival the lyric camera Smith School Halls Cliff tops in Wales I mean it was mad and complete disaster it was absolutely awful um I think the show at the time was quite good but the producing behind it was just shocking and nearly bankrupted me not that I had much to lose but whatever you know I walked a sort of 50 Grand of debt and ever since then we've been learning how to do a bit better each time working with original theater is always an interesting experience and this is solely based on the fact that Alistair and Tom actually like theater working with the original theater is good fun I think that's the main thing that you can take from it there are certainly high expectations but there is also a faith and a confidence that's that's offered to everyone who who works together they are very present as a company what tends to happen is I get called in if there is a trans-related story no if you want my skill set for a touring commercial show and what I absolutely love here is you've asked me in and there's nothing to do with being trans which is so important that there are voices like mine and voices of diversity featured on what is technically deemed kind of a staple of British theaters Agatha Christie so it is both an honor a privilege and a wonderful thing for my community to be working at this professional level as a transgender woman we're going to recap The Curtain Call end of the show has happened Curtin has come down Susie has got off stage and everyone's left same with everybody and then Curtin comes back up again two rapturous applause applause applause there we go perfect that's the center line yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah you've got maybe two breeds of theater producers and sometimes there's rare rare examples of the two going together but you've got a one-handed commercial producer and then um the more traditionally theater-based subsidized producers so the subsidized producers effectively aren't um you know risking their own money they're risking the theater's money that they work for or Arts Council money the aim if you like is not to make money from it often it's to break even whereas a commercial producer can be anyone and you know we've squarely or I have always squarely been the latter so commercial producer where effectively you live and die by the last show that you've put on that sort of is quite can be exciting as well like it is like gambling because you never know whether you're going to be up or down equally you can come out and just get a lucky hand and um walk away with a jackpot I mean that's never happened yet but that's the producer's dream you finally at some point a long career may get one or two if you're lucky one or two big big hits [Music] better I'm trying to make a movie here I'm so sorry I imagine a man might feel cowed in the presence of a star particularly a woman of such beauty well she must be over 50 by now meaning um hello everybody I'm very very well done indeed especially as that by the time we got to the final scene of the play it was going fantastically well I think you'll you'll all have felt that the cogs weren't quite connected in the first half so therefore individual bits which might have been good might have felt weird because there was a mistake before and after it and that is absolutely no problem at all and that's what we have dress rehearsals for I mean thank God we've had the luxury of a dress rehearsal this time around which ordinarily we wouldn't do we'd just be flinging you to the the ravening hyenas of Cambridge without you know with scant rehearsal but that was an extremely extremely useful exercise and progressed in the way that we would all have wished it did a few things along the way um get it right that's a note for everybody uh yeah there was there was there were quite a lot of quite scary uh script slaloms um going on particularly in the scene between uh Ronnie and Susie but you got yourselves out of it by and large then you you do you you do a thing you know like all directing moves down to faster louder and stop doing that thing you do well that thing that thing you do is a little hop before you leave to leave the stage and you did it twice once in that one wanted act two which is charming but not perhaps not perhaps entirely useful it's particularly that one that that I noticed you you've kind of jumped it's a bit of Scooby-Doo even I've done it a few times soon so I'm not I'm not mentioning it thank you that's okay you don't mean thank you thank you I'll hate you till I die I beg you you sight mine what is you know nothing of what it is to love Cuts cut to save the red what's wrong she keeps drying darling well most of the cost probably last night were dreaming about forgetting their lines today and that's not an exaggeration actors um a terrified of I suppose it the show coming off the rails so I often sort of tell you know actors when they're nervous on a first night I mean they should be all right tonight because they've done it before but um I sort of try and say look you've got to treat fertile like it's the most important thing and the least important thing and you need to be able to sort of juggle both those things at once and because as an actor on stage you know you don't want to be thinking about your next line or being frightened or scared of the whole thing falling apart because really what's the worst that can happen but on the other hand you've got to go well it's also the most important thing because why on Earth would you live This Strange Life um where you're living out of a suitcase you know they're not being paid tens of thousand pounds a week it's not enough to Warrant the lifestyle that you know they've they've done but they do it because they love it um I hope that's the reason anyway I just can't see why you would keep doing it otherwise um why sort of embroil yourself in a life full of the challenges the difficulties that it leads with families at home unless you properly love it [Music] foreign [Music] this is the prompt desk so this is where I spend most of my time this is why I call the show from which is my prompt copy which has all the cues in it for the show Lighting and Sound keys there are cue lights here the red ones would be standbys and the green ones would be the go this is my monitor which I can see the show from and I have another infrared one there so when it goes dark I can see in blackouts and things this is my sound equipment so we're on something called qlab which has all the sound cues in a stack so I fire them from the button there at the appropriate time how many sort of costume changes are there throughout the throughout the performance I do 26 quick changes [Music] [Music] we have a special effect in this show where the character Marina Greg incredibly famous movie star an attempt is made on her life in the middle of a filming sequence she's a film star she's making a film about Catherine of Aragon and as she moves away from her throne a huge Studio light crashes to the ground and a pyro of sort of firework effect explodes and a big sound effect and it's guaranteed to make the audience leap out of their seat unless you get as has happened many times a a safety conscious man in the Flies who thinks oh well I mustn't Let It Drop I will have to inch it in which means that it is the least effective um jump start you ever did see as as this tiny thing kind of comes from the ceiling like watching a trickle of rain down a window um and then you have to pretend that it was the most frightening thing in the world like I could have been killed well you you could if you'd hold yourself underneath it um so it's a question of explaining very carefully that really please please go against everything you've ever learned as a fly person throw health and safety out of the out of the window and Let The Wretched thing crash to the floor that's up you can get faster that would be good and maybe six times out of ten we've managed to achieve that we haven't done the play now for five weeks and tonight we're going to be doing it for the first time after all that time and even though we all know it backwards there is always an excitement about a first night and uh so yes I'm not nervous at all do I care enough Studio light with pyro yep boom mic yep walking sticker price tag yes tutor chair yes knitting and yes yeah footstool yep a lot of people have asked you know what it's like to play Miss Marvel because so many people have played it and played it very well and everybody's got their favorite but our director Philip Franks he said it's you playing it so forget all of that when an understudy steps on there's always that added bit of like nervous exercise because we're all excited to see our cast member shine in a new way so I played Ella tonight to be totally honest with you it is very scary um because obviously you've got that pressure of trying to keep everything you have the director kind of you know made it directed it from the beginning and you obviously don't want to sort of take it too far away from the actual actress who to play the performance but also bring your own you know your sort of personality your own side to the character so it is it's a balance I think with understudying I quite like the challenge and if I can kind of get my nerves calm and kind of focused I can actually quite enjoy it when the understudies come on I actually love it um I mean much as I love the people playing the roles I always think it's it's a really good exercise as an actor because you know there's a new ingredient there so I'm still doing my well sort of most of my parts as well so I I play there like assistant director in the in the film studios so when I play Ella the secretary I also play the assistant director as well so we kind of combine the two that's what they pay me for you know get on who am I playing today foreign [Music] after the lockdown finished and we restarted theater I was in Malvern for probably one of the first live performances in the UK with original with plenty of ice and I was fixing something on stage behind the tabs and I could hear the audience's murmur and anticipation which is something you don't get anywhere other than live performance and there's no stopping you're not allowed to break and think that's not quite perfect you've got to make it work every time for the audience they're there that's a challenge but it's worthwhile because people come back and theaters been going for probably as long as human civilization and hopefully will continue thank you [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music]

2023-04-05 02:41

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