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My friend, the terrific writer and actor Selina Boyack posted this photo on Facebook. It's the cast and director of my 1998 Edinburgh Fringe play, "Playing Hide and Seek With Jesus" either after the first performance or more likely the final one (judging my the champagne - I am pretty sure those were my gift to the cast for all their hard work - not that I could really afford champagne as I'd have lost about £10,000 putting on this piece).
How lovely to see all those fresh faced young actors - I'd forgotten that Emma Kennedy was ever young - and the director Jeremy Herrin - no relation, obviously, his surname is different (actually little sidebar - his name did have some bearing on him getting the job and weirdly he was suggested to me by James Herring - no relation- who worked for my management company. James had been at school with Jeremy, but was no relation - obviously the surname is differet. The name coincidence seemed like a strong indication that we should work together - and the Universe steered me well, Jeremy is now one of the UK's top theatre directors. You don't meet many Herrings or Herrins so we have to stick together).
As lovely as it was to see those faces again, I did wonder why I wasn't in the photo (I don't think that person with their back to camera is me and that's pretty typical of the Pleasance courtyard, that people will sit wherever they can, even if they're crashing a cast party). Then I realised that it was possible that I was the one taking the photo.
Maybe not though. It was a weird Edinburgh for me that year as I wasn't performing in the play and I think just doing a couple of Lee and Herring gigs (I stood in for Paul Putner a couple of times, but only in previews I think- another sidebar: Selina had to miss a performance for a funeral and Sue Perkins stepped in, learned the lines in a day, and did a pretty amazing job with little to no rehearsal). But to be honest most of the Fringes in the 90s were a bit weird and depressing. I think the play was pretty good and sold well, but there was no way of making a production of this size work financially. My four Edinburgh plays of the 90s were never performed professionally - though there were some great amateur productions - and though there were some good reviews and the audiences liked them, there was always some sniffiness from theatre people about a comedian writing a play. I think the humour is organic and it's a group of witty friends so the jokes work (and sometimes deliberately don't work) but there's a snobbishness sometimes that something being funny makes it less worthy (or indeed serious). Being funny is much harder than being serious. There's most going on in my plays than some people gave them credit for. I wrote good female parts at a time when a lot of people didn't bother.
Playing Hide and Seek With Jesus was fictional, but was inspired by real events. The germ of it came from Sally Phillips finding religion and Stewart Lee glibly joking that we couldn't be friends with her any more along with my experience of having gone to Australia the previous year, having met someone that I fell for very strongly, very quickly, taken a few drugs and gone to see Uluru. Whilst the character in the play is a bit more affected by all this than I was, I thought there was something in the way a group of friends fractures and repairs itself when someone rebels against the commonly held views and the way those alliances start drifting apart as proper adulthood beckons. It is, in a way, my Oh Fudge I'm 30 show.
I read the play again and it made me cry (also laugh). There's a lot of me in it, not just in that newly spiritual, stupidly in love character and I was surprised to be reminded that one of the guys thinks he has testicular cancer (though it turns out he has chlamydia, which is something that also happened to me). Some of the sensibilities are a bit nineties, but I think in a way that is taking the piss out of laddishness and casual disablism (the character who espouses those views is not meant to be a great guy. I am pretty pleased with it overall and obviously slightly disappointed that my writing work (both plays and sitcoms) have so often come to nothing in the long run. But at least the plays got produced and the photo reminded me of what a special group of people we had and what fun times we had together (along with the inevitable depression, drunkenness and stupidity of the Fringe).
It made me cry to remember the silly fool that I was (and still am), a weird combination of those three male characters: both romantic and cynical, kind and cruel, faithful and unfaithful, nerdy and super fucking cool (all right maybe not).
Being on Substack and seeing the number of terrific writers who are all working hard, often without the recognition they deserve is strangely reassuring. This is a tough job and the competition is so intense. Of course things pass by unnoticed. And to get any project up on its feet enough to be seen or read by others is an amazing achievement. And looking at that photo, as well as feeling sad about the loss of youth and how a quarter of a century can disappear in a flash, reminds me of a great (and terrible) time, full of emotions and hope and foolishness and greatness. The seven of us made something good, that made people laugh. Anything else is jusst gravy.
Anyway you can read the play here. Some of the references are now so ancient that only people who remember the Falklands will get them. Pia Zadora anyone? But it's a good document of its time and a smeared painting of my life at the time. Some of the poetry is deliberately bad and some of it is stuff I really wrote for the woman I fell for. I will let you try and figure out which is which.
