Hooray, sold out tonight and it was a brilliant crowd. Saturdays can sometimes be a bit weird, but this lot really seemed up for it tonight and I was so chuffed to have the place full that I couldn't help but enjoy it.
I have managed to get the show more or less down to length, so it's irritating that the show before me is over-running still, meaning I am going on 5 minutes late. In Edinburgh this can be a terrible thing, as audience members on tight schedules can start to get shifty if they think they're going to miss the next show.
It's some one woman show about a child being murdered and the actress involved hasn't even seen fit to apolologise for her continued over-running (which I always do on the time it happens to me) and even makes a big fuss of her curtain call and hangs around talking to audience members as the crew try to get my show set up. She's got a lot of props to clear up and more seats need to be put in, so it's just a bit rude.
I usually come in to the venue once she has over run and see the end of her stupid mawkish play. I know she's talking about a genuine child murder and so it's not something you can speed up, but she seems to be getting slower and more mawkish by the day. I have considered trying to disrupt her performance to show her of my disapproval at her rudeness, but so far have resisted the temptation. But I am starting to hate her, and by proxy the innocent child who was murdered in her story.
Finally it ended and she went behind the curtain. Then she came forward for her bow. I noticed that just as she came into view she theatrically wiped a tear from her eye. You'd think if she had genuinely been moved to tears by her own performance she would have wiped her tears from her face backstage, but it was almost as if she wanted the crowd to see how emotionally affected she had been by the whole thing. Like (the last five minutes of) her performance it seemed fake and cloying. Bear in mind that I am mainly annoyed with her for making me run late and seeming not to care, but I still think I am right.
Personally I don't think the murder of a child is a fit subject for a comedy show and apparently the audience she is getting agrees with me. She hardly got a single laugh. Maybe that should be my punishment for her if she hasn't tightened things up tomorrow.
God punished me for my unsupportive and evil thoughts. I dashed down to the Baby Belly for Political Animal. I was closing the show, but as I ran up the steep steps to the stage, I tripped and my shins crashed against the metal stairs. It is a difficult and inauspicious start to a comedy set that is supposedly about searing and intelligent political thought. Plus it really hurt. It got a good laugh of course. How could people find pleasure in my pain? The world is so cruel. Maybe I should move into slapstick.
