Educating Rita

After two months at the Watermill Theatre in Newbury I have finally finished Educating Rita. What an experience. Here's what I wrote at my nadir in the second week of rehearsal:

Well tell you what ol' darlin, this is the real bleeding deal!

It's like being in the army, or at least back in school. Three weeks on camp. My morning commute takes one minute, ten seconds exactly. We rehearse all day, have a meal in the pub, and go to bed early, learning lines. On Wednesday I had had totally sleepless night, not a wink, don't know why. The next morning we did a run of the whole play, when my mind was a thing running along behind my body, trying to catch up. It was just like the actor's nightmare. At one point I thought I actually couldn't carry on, I felt ill, panicked, and brain-dead, but my futile look of pleading only got a prompt and I carried on somehow to the end. Simply not at the races.
You can't do it on no sleep.
That night I drove to the all-night pharmacy at Sainsbury's, which, thanks to my new mobile dongle on the computer, I Googled my way to, and bought something called Nytol on recommendation of others. Watched movie in bed, didn't feel at all sleepy, although totally zonked and wet from having fallen in bog when having crafty fag in the moonlit nature reserve opposite our little house. Took another Nytol. Slept like I was in the arms of angels for nine hours. Salvation.
Today we ran it for the first time in front of the production team, our first audience.
It hummed. It flew. Instead of just surviving we were telling a story, playing the laughs, really talking to each other, feeling the emotions.
AT LAST!!!
I had reached rock bottom and actually said to myself out loud, 'whatever made you think you could do this?'. Serious panic for a bit. Still face prospect of actually doing it - and matinees! Twice a bloody day!!
However I am disciplining myself, have lost weight, have cut back on the booze, am working with this quite wonderful girl, Claire Lams, whose Rita is a force of nature. Keeping up is fantastically exciting. Running with it, like we did today, is still scary, but when it works it's just fantastic.
What's really nice now is going back to the script, and re-learning it, learning all the sense, and without the panic.
I haven't worked this hard for a very long time.

That was then. Six weeks later it was playing to packed houses and standing ovations. I'll miss it in due course, but just now the luxury of not having to get nervous every night is just bliss!

Here's a taste for those who missed it:
www.newburytoday.co.uk/News/FlashNewsPlayer.aspx?articleID=11385&CategoryID=

Ipswich Magistrates Court

In December 2005 I was caught by a camera on the dual carriageway inner ring road in Birmingham doing 41 mph. The speed limit on that road is 40mph, but I didn’t realise this stretch was 30mph. In April 2007 I went to overtake a car on a straight stretch of A road in Norfolk. He accelerated and I was forced to exceed the limit to get past, I was flashed by a hidden mobile camera unit. In October 2007, I was photographed doing 49mph on an A road that I didn’t realise had a 40 mph limit on that straight. In July 2008 a mobile camera snapped me doing 64mph on a dual carriageway about 100 yards before it was legal to do 70.

Ipswich Magistrates Court April 22nd - Pleading for Exceptional Hardship to escape mandatory 6 months driving disqualification.

It was astonishing. I'd rehearsed this scene in my head on and off for a year and a half (it's a very long boring story), talking to a stern, morose, heartless bastard who would take my car away from me for six months for doing 64 about 100 yards before it was legal to do 70 and two months before it wouldn't have mattered as the oldest points would have expired. I had pages of mitigating circumstances, having to prove 'Exceptional Hardship', not so much for me, but for other people. I had letters from charities, photographs, maps, hospital reports, you name it. Six powerful arguments - and all, I hasten to add, true. Met the barrister an hour before and he said not to push it, go with two - the work and the charities.

When it got to it, it was like going to see a particularly sweet and fair headmaster who totally understands your position and laughs at your jokes. He hardly needed any persuading, was very sympathetic and said that a ban would be 'entirely disproportionate'. He was about to let me off, when he suddenly paused and said, ' Wait a minute.' My heart stopped. 'If I let you off this means that you'll still have 12 points on your licence and will have to be driving around for... let's see... another TWO YEARS with this sword of Damocles hanging over your head, because you won't be able to argue this again, you'd be banned straight away, and let's face it it's almost impossible to avoid being flashed these days, cameras everywhere (verbatim I swear). What if I disqualified you for, say, fourteen days, then you'd just have a fortnight off, after which all the points would be wiped from your licence, would you rather do that?'

He gave me the choice! I mean I couldn't have thought of a better outcome in my wildest dreams! After ALL THAT WORRY. Just shows - smile, it may never happen.

So Jude's my slave for a fortnight, I'm going to sit in the back of the car and say 'Are we there yet?' all the way to Norfolk.

Whooopeeee!