Cumbernauld Theatre
17/10/98
By Martin
Well, this was an unexpected little show - you know one of those shows that you hear about through the grapevine and then suddenly its on you.
We had heard that the little theatre in Cumbernauld (a new town development on the outskirts of Glasgow) were planning to show the film between their theatre performances. So we telephoned and the staff at the theatre had very little details other than the shows times, eventually we got hold of the manager and all was arranged. The usual emails/phone calls were made to each of the cast members giving details of the rendezvous at the bus station.
The Saturday arrives and we meet at the station, wait - where's Riff? (Rocky having already told us she was unavailable.) A quick phone call revealed she had not got the email and wasn't feeling very well but wished us all the best with the show.
So there we were, Brad, Janet, Frank, Magenta, Columbia & Trixie - Oh well we've done it with less. THE SHOW MUST GO ON!!!
The venue was wonderful, it actually was a proper theatre that had put in a screen to show the film. It is amazing the difference that having some proper theatre lighting and a proper stage space to perform on makes. We even had a proper Dressing Room - sheer luxury!!!
We were then introduced to some of the boys and girls from the resident Youth Theatre Group who were keen to participate - fantastic - at a stroke we had a Riff & a Rocky. After a little scrabble for costumes (this mainly involved asking every male what type of underpants they had on!!!) Rocky eventually got some black cycling shorts and some silver boots - not bad as an improvise. (If you are worried about what Riff got - I had the Riff costume in my bag!!!)
The show went very well but as I was playing Brad and on stage for a lot of the show I wasn't able to do a lot the AP (my favourite bits), still, the show was a great success and we were able to perform more of the show than we had for a long time. We are hoping that some of the Girls who were Trannys' and the guys playing the principals would be interested in doing regular performances with us - we'll see. Another fun show over - still there's always the photos to look at...
[NB sure enough, after this review was written, the lovely Chuck joined us as our regular Rocky - with proper gold trunks! - for the next 2 years]
