It’s good news, the Stratford based playwright Ian Harris (although I see he now credits himself as Ian F. Harris), an old and dear friend, is back and directing his first new play in years.

Ian and I co-founded, with Reg Mitchell, The Bird of Prey Theatre Company in 1997, an event which was a spirited roller-coaster affair that, once up and running, produced some superb plays, most especially Ian’s The Big K, which is a dark comedy about the last days of a faded 1930s Hollywood star awaiting execution in a California prison for murdering a Hollywood mogul.

Not a natural subject for laughter you might think (awaiting execution that is, not the murder of a Hollywood mogul), but in Ian’s devious and creative writing hands the play was one of the funniest, and poignant, pieces of theatre I’ve ever experienced.

The show starred David Troughton’s wife, Ali Troughton, as Irma Kaskade, with Tim Guest as Jack Rock, an aspiring - and extremely naïve - newspaperman who gets to interview her. Throughout the interviews Ian manages to tell not only the stories of Irma’s and Jack’s lives (and a history of 1930s - 40s Hollywood), but also builds a developing relationship between Irma and Jack which, at a heart-rending moment, is cut short by the 20,000 volts of the electric chair. For Irma it was not a good hair day. It’s a play I want to see again. It’s a play you should all get a chance to see.

Ian’s new play, Rhonna’s Tears, is another two-hander, and we again encounter a woman facing death, not this time by frying in the electric chair, but by suicide, which is another subject that might be thought lacking in humour unless its gone through the grinding and finishing departments of Ian’s emotion and laughter factory, a process that makes us look at our ridiculous self-centred selves and, well, laugh.

And, as with The Big K, Rhonna, as she contemplates the past, present and future from the vantage point of a roof from which she intends to make a final dive, will also, like Irma (who might have preferred an electrician to a newspaperman), be visited by a naïve young man - again played by Tim Guest - who tries to change Rhonna’s mind about jumping. Of course, he might just end up jumping himself.

What you will get with this play, with all of Ian’s plays, is lots of lovely words strung together in an hilarious exchange of fast moving, and very moving dialogue.

Rhonna is played by Jen Franey, a much respected Stratford actress who, as Rhonna, has taken on a massive part that only comes around once in a lifetime. And knowing Tim’s work well (I directed him in my play Ancient Pinnacles) there is no doubt the sparks are going to fly!

Rhonna’s Tears will be staged at The Shakespearience in Stratford from the 2nd to the 4th of November 2006. Don’t miss it. I can’ t wait to see it and shall write a full review next week.

To buy tickets click here.

A Walk in the Footsteps of Shakespeare - Part 1

Last Sunday Hilary and I went for a walk, and not just any old walk, but a trek in Shakespeare’s footsteps to Snitterfield and back.

Less than a hundred yards (sorry, metres) from where I’m writing this is Shakespeare’s Birthplace, which sits like a marooned pantomime stage-set amongst the hustle and bustle of photo snapping tourists. It’s a modest half-timbered building that would have been pulled down long ago had it not been for its connection, and, architecturally, there are many much more attractive buildings in the town.

But Shakespeare was born there in 1564 (although some historians, usually the boring ones, still question it) when the house stood alone in an acre or two of its own land at the edge of the town, with a back door that opened onto the gentle rise of the Welcombe Hills. Walk out of that back door today, hop over the large iron gates and you’ll immediately get knocked down by a stream of cars heading for B & Q and Tesco’s as you try and get across Guild Street. And if you survive that mauling you’ll probably get flattened by a big red tour bus going the other way before you reach Gt William Street on the other side.

But let’s go back 435 years to when Will was 7 years old and there was no Guild Street, just a well worn track where the flocks of fattened geese, or sheep, or pigs, were herded on their way to London 100 miles away. There was no Gt William Street either (I wonder what the young Shakespeare might have thought if he’d known the footpath he took two or three times a week would end up a street named after him), just a rutted pathway that ran as straight as an arrow over the ever steeper undulations as he made his way after school to visit his elderly paternal grandparents in Snitterfield, where he feed their livestock, chopped wood for the fire, and drew water from their well; returning home with apples and pears from their orchards.

The view you get today from the top of the Welcombe Hills still gives a ghostly echo of what Shakespeare would have seen as he no doubt ran the three miles from his back door to his grandparent’s home. Michael Woods describes the view well in his book In Search of Shakespeare…

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Watching the hordes far below Humdrumming Mansions I am reminded of the Shakespeare Birthday Celebrations back in April, and the procession through the town that is such an integral part, and why no one seems to smile anymore, if they ever did, and then hearing loud (very loud) and clear above the military band…

” Mr Newman, sir, how the devil are you?”

I couldn’t see him but it couldn’t have been anyone else but my dear old friend Clive Bardell. Then I spotted him as he broke ranks (unheard off, old boy) and headed in my direction, his craggy old face one huge gap-toothed smile, and looking every inch the Shakespearean character he undoubtedly is.

Basically Clive couldn’t give a flea’s doings for the protocol of the moment, whether that’s marching in the aforementioned procession where all the dignitaries look very dignified, and the Beagle looks like a beagle, and the Mayor looks very stern, and Gregory Doran looks very smart,while others look very learned indeed (although most of them couldn’t tell the difference between a Shakespeare sonnet and The Ballad of Dan McGrew, which I think I once heard Clive recite in its entirety), or in the bar of the Falcon Hotel where, after one rather confused performance of my Oliver Cromwell play when two Japanese tourists interrupted half way through to ask directions to Anne Hathaway’s Cottage he made a rather unsteady but nonetheless heartfelt toast to:

” Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth, God bless Her and all who sail in Her.”

A statement which was followed by a moment (no more) of something resembling a stunned silence (although you could still hear the wedding reception going on in the ballroom which by this time sounded as if it had reached the argument stage where the bride accuses the bridegroom of having an affair with one of the bridesmaids, you know the sort of thing) until Oliver Cromwell himself (Steve Devey), gentleman and scholar that he is responded with:

” To her Majesty, God bless her, and all her corgies, and Phil, and Charlie and Camilla, and…”

And on it went, toast after ridiculous toast, until we had all drunk her health very heartily indeed. I remember seeing Clive, as we left the hotel around midnight, sitting in a corner with a full bottle of red wine in front of him happily singing to himself and smiling the smile of the undefeated.

Clive is a good actor, in fact he’s a very good actor who has spent the last thirty years or more working at the RST. Before that he was a professional folk-singer and a drummer in a rock band. He still looks a bit like a professional folk-singer and a drummer in rock band.

When I started The Bird of Prey Theatre Company back in 1997 Clive was one of the first to offer help, and he’s been a very important part of the set-up ever since, whether helping to build sets, take them down, take money at the door, sell wine in the interval, drink wine in the interval, stage manage, drink more wine, show people to their seats, wash-up, finish off any wine that was left over, be the first to buy a drink in the pub, and the last to leave. In other words a jolly good chap to have around - and someone who can act his ancient socks off.

And I soon realised that I had to write for Clive and not just give him a part he might just be able to do reasonably well. So that’s what I did.

In my play about Ernest Hemingway I wrote at least three parts for the old hamster, including the part of a singing waiter at the Paris Ritz Hotel of the 1920s, a French Resistance Fighter during World War Two, and the Russian born Hollywood actor Vladimir Sokoloff (who had a major role in the film version of For Whom The Bell Tolls), which, as Guy Adams (who played Hemingway) will remind you was a riot from beginning to end, and I’m not talking about the film, or the rehearsals of the play either. If you want to know more send at least £100 in a plain brown envelope.

More recently Clive had a leading role in my aforementioned Oliver Cromwell thingy, 1651: An Evening With Oliver Cromwell, in which he played the part of the family retainer Jeremiah Beckett, where he had some pretty meaty scenes, and a couple of lengthy period style songs (written by Clive and myself) that required enormous singing talent to pull-off, which Sir Clive did with aplomb to spare! I like aplombs, don’t you, especially those big red ones…

Clive has just one problem. He gets very angry with himself when he doesn’t get things quite right, with the result that he’ll curse to high heaven. When he played the part of a batty German waiter in my wonderful drama about Elgar and Delius he was required to open a bottle of champagne with as loud a bang as possible (and it was real champagne so there was a genuine incentive for Clive to get it right), but could he get the cork out? No! After what seemed like an eternity the blind and paralysed Delius - momentarily, and miraculously, finding the ability to see and walk - jumped out of his wheelchair, opened the bottle to a repeated and ever lengthening chorus of expletives from Clive, which the audience thought was hilarious. Naturally we kept it in.

Clive Bardell is a gem, and I love him.