Saturday 18 January 2020

Life Upon The Wicked Stage

January 18th

Life Upon The Wicked Stage

Have I ever mentioned I love going to the theatre?

Mrs B & I are heading to Sheffield today to visit one of my favourite theatres, The Crucible.  We shall be seeing a production of Guys and Dolls. I’ve heard only good things about it but then again Alex Young is in it and she’s like a lucky charm for me. I can honesty say I’ve never seen any show in which she was cast, that wasn’t amazing. From Follies to Sky’s Edge - all top drawer stuff.

I’d love to have been in a production of Guys and Dolls, it’s on a list entitled ‘Regrets’, along with not learning to play the piano or to tap dance.  I think I have the physique to have made a good Nicely-Nicely Johnson, but sadly I don’t have the voice to match.

My acting career (everybody laugh) did give me a few chances to appear in plays that were great favourites, but I’d have loved the chance to play Hector in The History Boys or Henry Drummond in Inherit The Wind.

But I’ll be content having played Goldberg in The Birthday Party, Thomas Milburn in Close The Coal House Door, and Juror 11 in 12 Angry Men.


12 Angry Men was the first play I appeared in after moving to live in Mansfield. My recollection of being cast is a little hazy now but I think one of the other actors in the play would occasionally visit the shop where I was working at the time…yes, I was a shop assistant for a while.

I think the conversation came around to them staging 12 Angry Men and how they were looking for people to audition and so I offered my services and was apparently the only one who could manage the middle European accent required of the character. I got the part and in a way that changed the direction of my life because I then also decided to became a mature student and study performing arts! HND Distinction.

The production was extremely well put together and around that table I met a range of actors with varying levels of experience and expertise but we all worked so well together and my friendship with Juror 12 (who won’t be reading this) started around that jury room table. I have lost touch with so many of them but I guess that happens doesn’t it?

The reason this has come to the forefront of my mind today is twofold.

First of all, I ran into Juror 4 yesterday. I hadn’t seen him for years and it was nice to have a quick chat.

The other reason is that it’s around three years since Juror 6 died. Such a sad thing to have happened.


He had worked at The Crucible as part of the stage crew and on the day we learned of his death we went there to see Anna-Jane Casey give a wonderful ‘Audience with’. She was starring in Annie Get Your Gun which we had seen the week previously.

All of these memories are washing around in my head and I guess you could get a little maudlin but actually there is only happy memories associated with that production of 12 Angry Men, so I’m just sticking to the good stuff.

It may well be that I never set foot on a stage again and although I do have regrets they are nowhere near as important to me as the joy I often found being someone else on a stage for a couple of hours.

It was fun. (Just don’t ask me about Romeo and Juliet)



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