I first met Roses when she – and I'm
using her own words here – stalked me for months, took me for
coffee, told me that she wrote, directed and starred in some theatre
shows, thrust a script into my hands, and told me she wanted to work
with me. It was equal parts flattering and scary, like many of life's
best moments.
I was doing a bunch of cruise ships
shows at the time, and as they have a habit of sapping ones soul
slightly, I was looking for something different to get stuck into.
Something nourishing, challenging, fun, maybe. I took her script onto
a plane to Miami, and by the time we'd reached cruising altitude I
knew I wanted in.
That was seven years and two
installments of her show ago, and last month I was happily roped into
another episode of Roses' ongoing theatrical crazyness.
The Night Kitchen Cabaret isn't a
cabaret show. Ok, well it sort of is. It's a play masquerading as a
cabaret show masquerading as a play about a cabaret show that is
really a play. Or something. I'll start again. It's a play about a
woman called Ruby Kitchen. She runs a show from her East London home,
which may or may not also be some kind of trans-dimensional tardis.
Long story. She's surrounded by her family, friends and visitors from
far away. Oh, and there's dance and circus and magic and puppetry and
mime and music and monsters and and and...
What it mainly is, is virtually
impossible to describe with any degree of clarity or accuracy. A
multi-disciplinary tour-de-force that is exactly as concerned with
slapstick and spectacle as it is with using delicate theatre to delve
into some of the gentle, dark places that good art can be so good as
illuminating.
I'm lucky. I had a couple of decades of
living as a busker, hand to mouth, but these days I do alright. I get
to bounce around the world doing my thing in interesting places. But
I don't like to keep it too easy. I always want to be doing something
new – doesn't matter if its a new gag, routine, venue, show – I
always want to be concious, always want to be stretching myself a
little, always developing and learning, because otherwise, what's the
point? I'm also a solo turn. I function well on my own. Always have
done. So spending a month in a rehearsal room (At RADA of all places)
being a member of a cast full of way more talented people (or at
least that's how my insecurities will always frame it, although holy crap, this cast was amazing), learning
everything from heartfelt dialogue, to physical theatre choreography,
to full scale Appalachian flatfoot dance numbers – well, that took
me to a place where you couldn't see my comfort zone with
military-grade binoculars.
I struggle to function as part of a
cast. Habit, my inherent shyness, and probably a little fear-fuelled
ego all combine to make me occasionally want to curl up a hide under
a table. But over the course of rehearsals, we fuse together.
Strangers become colleagues become friends, and finally melt into a
single cast. Like an army unit – a collection of specialists who,
together, make one thing happen. By the time we finally got to walk
out onto our beautiful set, we had become the family we were
portraying.
I always tell people that one of the
things I love about my job is that with my skillset and experience, I
can work pretty much anywhere. And sure, on the surface, that sounds
like the kind of thing you tell an agent who isn't sure if you're
right for a gig, and indeed it is, but it's also really true. My
background in street performing instilled in me the ability/obsession
to approach any space as a potential venue, and know how to make it
work best as one. Still, if I'm in a new town and happen to wonder
down the high street, I'll be unable to fight the voices in my head
saying “Ok, you'd pitch up there, facing this way, so you're not
blocking any shop doorways. Nice flow of people, but the street is
wide enough that you're not going to cause an obstruction and get
stopped by the police. Also you could stand on that wall to grab
attention, and put your suitcase on top of that rubbish bin...”,
this is a curse that I'm pretty sure every street performer has. When
I recently talked to Eddie Izzard, who, decades ago, I used to share
a street pitch with, he said much the same thing. He told me that
he'd just played the Hollywood Bowl, and wouldn't have known how to
approach that gig, were it not for his days as a busker. 
But this applies to the nature of the
gig, as much as it does the venue. I think I'm pretty good at being
able to slightly tweak what I do, and more importantly, how I do it,
to suit the style of show I'm in. Punchy and improvy for street
shows, slick and witty for cabaret, stylish and clean for classic
variete. The Night Kitchen Cabaret though, was at the far end of this
range. I wasn't even playing myself, I was Great Uncle Alfie. I'd
played him twice before, and I love him. He's a juggler, sure, and a
butcher. He's also – small detail – been dead for two hundred
years. But when the family needs him, he always finds a way to visit.
He's east end. Where I feel awkward and shy in a pub, he'd be right
at home there, leading a singalong and buying everyone a round. When
I was a kid, my grandmother used to take me down to Edmonton Green
market. She knew everyone, so on the journey there and back, we'd
bump into window cleaners, fruit and veg sellers, and all manner of
central casting 1970's London types. I remember loving it, and when
I'm Alfie, I play him like all of those people. The rough grinning
chancers that would chuck me an apple and ask me what football team I
supported, then take it back unless I said Tottenham.
I'm sure there will be more
installments of the Night Kitchen to come, full of impossible to
describe but beautiful things, so keep an eye out. Regardless of my
involvement, they're something special, as is Roses, the creative
genius behind it all. And I use that word very consciously indeed.
Watch out for her name in the future. You'd be fools not to.
(All the beautiful photos on this post, courtesy of the brilliant Lol Johnson. Go check out her work)
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