Friday 16 October 2009

A Visit From The Mail: Petronella Wyatt Versus West End Witch

Oh dear. I was afraid of this...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1220716/Holy-fishnets-My-night-naughty-nun-Sister-Act.html

A few weeks ago, the cast was rounded up after warm-up to be informed that Petronella Wyatt from the Daily Mail would be at the theatre the following day. In a stunt organised by our keen-witted publicity department, she was to come and do a "Day in the Life" piece about Sister Act. Alarm bells were already ringing, but we were assured it would be a sympathetic report designed to promote the show. Any publicity, and all that.

Now, I'm all for a bit of artistic license. Where's a good story, without a bit of embellishment? Heaven knows I'm always tarting up reality for the sake of a cheap laugh. But what I read this morning was so far removed from the truth that I simply couldn't resist setting a few facts straight...

Everything is just how I imagined it. Someone is plonking at a piano and two girls in hotpants, who are auditioning to be nuns, are hoofing on the stage.
Choreographer Ben Clare tells them: 'Great. Thanks. You can join in two weeks.' Talk about fast-tracking holy vows.

Who are these mysterious hotpant-ed girls? Why are they the only people in the whole of showbiz to turn up? And how have they managed to bag a top West End gig without so much as a second audition? Witch herself had to endure six auditions for Sister Act, including a hideous two-and-a-half hour dance call involving improvisation (shudder) and a terrifying singing final onstage at the Shaftsbury in front of Alan Menken and fifty equally scary people. Far be it from me to cast aspersions on our dance captain Ben, but I'm not sure he has all the hire-and-fire power she is suggesting...

Emma introduces me to the gathering by saying: 'As you know, this is Petronella from the Daily Mail who will be in the show tonight.'
There follows the sort of silence that there used to be in court rooms before
hanging judges would pronounce sentence.

If my memory serves me correctly, we all welcomed her warmly whilst she stared blankly around the stage, saying nothing.

We rehearse the scenes in which I appear, including the finale of Act One.

We rehearse the scenes in which Petronella appears, not including the finale of Act One, which took us six weeks to learn and perfect and would be impossible for even the most accomplished performer to grasp in twenty minutes.

We sing Raise Your Voice and Take Me To Heaven.

We sing Raise Your Voice and Take Me To Heaven; Petronella does not.

Time's winged chariot hurries by. Suddenly I am a nun eating dinner with the other nuns as the set becomes the convent. Then Deloris is teaching us how to sing and, as if only five minutes have passed, the first act is over.

I don't know what show Petronella was doing that night, but it certainly wasn't the one I was doing. She comes onstage twice — sitting at a bar in the background of the first scene, and revolving on with the nuns to sing a few out-of-tune lines of Latin for about thirty seconds.

Behind the slider, I say to her, "Are you alright? Excited?" Petronella stares at me vacantly and says nothing. Another nun jokes, "Have you learnt your lines?" Petronella stares at her vacantly and says nothing.

The thing I find so unbelievable irritating about all of this (aside from the fact that none of it actually happened), is the way in which she has made it all sound such a breeze. Any soggy old journalist with theatrical aspirations can just walk into a theatre, have half a day's rehearsal and perfectly execute what in actual fact takes months of hard graft, sweat and injury.

As for all the costumes being from "Primark or the cast's own", well... yes, you've got me there, Petronella. Fortunately all seventeen nuns happened to have identical white-sequined habits lurking in their wardrobes at home and the black ones were bought job lot from Oxford Street.

I can't comment on Sheila Hancock's "basilisk stare" because I wasn't there, but I can only assume it was:

a. Deserved

or

b. Imagined.

All too soon we reach the finale. We wave and laugh and sing Spread The Love Around. Suddenly, I have a lump in my throat.
The curtain goes down and the audience roars. Even if I have not, the audience has performed beautifully. Behind the curtain, my fellow nuns and I embrace. Tears spring to my eyes as the audience claps wildly.


When Act II arives, we are informed that Petronella has a prior engagement and will not be appearing in her other rehearsed scene. In fact, she has already left the building.

Friday 9 October 2009

Wot No Phil: Sister Act Does This Morning

Phillip Schofield and Holly Willoughby host an Air Guitar competition on the back of the Thames, for This Morning

Hello, chickens. Sorry I'm so slack on the blogs these days. It's a busy life, what with trying to edit a ropey old first draft into an internationally-bestselling debut novel, as well as eight shows a week and more time in the Palladium rehearsal room than is necessary — or indeed, healthy. It's like dancing in a dirty old sauna. Even when you open the windows you're blasted with hot air from the generators outside.

Moving on quickly to This Morning.

If ever there was a topic you could move onto without having to fashion an appropriate link, it would be morning television. They do it themselves, every five minutes. Phil and Fer—um, Holly can be interviewing some distraught soul one minute about some dreadful catastrophe that has befallen them, only to switch glossily to camera two to introduce a ridiculous item about canine fashion. The programme coordinators never seem to get the order quite right. I know the age-old device of splicing up tragedy with comedy for greater dramatic effect, yadda yadda yadda, but still, there's only so crestfallen you can legitimately appear when telling several million viewers about their chance to win 25k.

Anyway, today was Friday, so it was an Eamonn/Ruth day...

Right, let's get this one out of the way or it'll hang over the rest of my latest entry like a black cloud of unspoken resentment.

I was disappointed. There, I've said it. Don't judge me. I know you all get it, that sinking feeling when you switch on the telly at half ten for an hour or so of guilty chit-chat pleasure and realise that it's not a Phil-and-Holly day. It's not just me, is it?

However, the disappointment faded slightly when breakfast arrived. You can always tell a group of musical theatre actors in a TV studio. We'll be the ones making the most of the free food. We're not used to it. The television stars drift in and out at their leisure, sometimes only turning up three minutes before they're due to be interviewed (you know who I'm talking about, Mitchell and Webb). They give their finest colloquial chat for five minutes and then waltz out again without so much as a bacon sarnie. The actresses are too busy trying to stay waify to squeeze in a pain au chocolat, and most male actors prefer to maintain a self-styled air of mystic importance on black coffee and nicotine. Besides, they're all so used to catering and runners attending to their every whim that they barely even notice it all.

Not so with us turns.

I remember a chilly afternoon in January when, after a particularly grueling morning of rehearsals, the company manager brought biscuits in for us as a treat. Nothing special, just a few custard creams and the odd Hobnob.

It was carnage.

You can only imagine the excitement of a full English at eight o'clock in the morning. Catering didn't know what had hit them. "Chocolate, before the performance?" "No, but I will have egg, sausage, beans, tomato and two rounds of toast."

I avoided the make-up police successfully, having had a particularly nasty run in with them on GMTV when I tried to convince Linda, one of our wiggies, that the blusher on my cheeks was just a "natural glow". Apparently nuns don't wear make-up. Neither do they break into disco songs and shake their booties every five minutes, I tried to argue, but she wasn't having it. I had to console myself by keeping my pearls on under my habit. A small act of rebellion, but it made me feel better.

No, this time I dodged the baby wipe test with all the finesse of Jack Dawkins on a pickpocketing mission. I even got away with a small amount of natural lip liner and a dab of Eight Hour Cream. Mission accomplished.

Our item seemed to go well. We were following an interview with Sheila and Patina. I'm sure the last thing Patina felt like doing before singing live on national television to a quiet backing track was telling Ruth and Eamonn how she was finding life in London, but she coped very well, before legging it to the other side of the studio to start the number with us in record time.

It was over very quickly. I had a minor skirmish with the dry ice machine, but managed to bat off great swathes of smoke with my habit sleeves. Finally, that horror of a frock has a use.

Eamonn rushed over to us at the end of the programme.

"Girls, girls! Can I get a picture? It's for my mum. She'll appreciate the nun thing."

I was surprised how pleasant he was. Chatted to us for a few minutes, located the Catholics amongst us and compared tales of convent school life — the highs, the lows, the beatings... No sign of Ruth, though.

I bumped into Jason Gardiner on the way out. He was very charming — a kindred spirit, a fellow twirly. I wanted to mention that he knew the Wanderer, but couldn't think of the best way to work "I think you worked with my fiancĂ© in Beirut" into the conversation.

Maybe I should have made like This Morning and done an inappropriate link...