8545/21464
Halfway through the run of Rita tonight and we gave our most assured performance yet, the first time without a prompt and we basically made it through unscathed, though both had to help the other out with an improvised cue once.
I haven't managed to quite get into the emotional space that leads to tears in the last couple of shows and the reaction to the piece seems to vary quite considerably each night. Some audiences laugh more than others (and at quite different bits), some want to clap every scene, some seem invested on an emotional level. I wasn't sure what tonight's audience made of it, but there was loud applause at the end (though nothing for any other scenes, including the end of the first half).
It's a relief to get to a place where we're confident (usually) about the script and what's coming next. A couple of weeks ago I had difficulty imagining that we'd have it under our command and I couldn't picture us actually doing this. But we've done it. Four whole times.
Now I am hoping I can get to the point where I leave myself in the wings and always feel like I am the character on stage. Sometimes I feel like me and am painfully aware that I am acting, but most of the time I am escaping the bonds of my own personality to be the character. Do I sound like a real actor yet?
It's hard to believe he is gone and watching him makes me feel a little sad, of course, but I still love his music. He is so effortlessly cool and this song is so effortlessly beautiful. I still love the song, but its ting
It also took me back to the 90s and made me regret how detached and socially awkward I was back then. Why wasn't I cool enough to become friends with all these people at the time? Why did I spend so many weekends in my flat playing Civ II, rather than making the most of my brief celebrity? Why, when I did get the chance to go out and mix with these people did I get drunk and act stupidly and sabotage myself? I lived my life in inverted commas and couldn't contemplate just enjoying something for its own sake. I had to pretend I was both above and beneath it all. All those people who were being all cool were just pretending. Couldn't I have pretended too?
I was just a silly prick from Cheddar. I couldn't have been friends with Terry Hall (though I did meet him once at a party and told him how amazing I thought the Home album was and that I couldn't believe it hadn't been a huge hit - Terry couldn't believe it either).
Angie Pollock on keyboards is so talented and sexy and 90s. She represents all the women that I was too scared to talk to back then. We moved in the same circles. I could have met her. I would definitely have 100% struck out and annoyed her and she'd have correctly thought I was a knob. But I could have tried!
There's every chance that I did all those things but was too drunk to remember it. Either way, the 90s is just full of regrets!
It was a turbulent and crazy and depressing time for me back then and I did manage to convince a couple of very cool people that I was worth being in a relationship with. Though they fairly quickly realised that they had been hoodwinked and that there was less to me than meets the eye (copyright Willy Russell).
I think seeing the video just makes me want to be young again and for Terry Hall to be alive again. And for it to be 1996, like it still feels it is, not 2026 which is so far in the future that there will be flying cars and sex robots by then.
One day, if I am lucky, it will be 2056 and I'll be wishing it was 2026 and that I could be back in this absolutely wonderful bubble of having a crazy, lovely, young family and the ability to occasionally run 10k in under an hour. What a shame I don't appreciate any of that stuff now. But I've always lived my life slightly out of step, only appreciating stuff in hindsight, like a living version of
the Two Ronnies sketch where the Mastermind contestant answers the question before last.This is my curse.
Anyway, even though my brain can't quite compute that Terry is no longer with us, it's wonderful that we can still enjoy his music. It was (and he was) always melancholy anyway I suppose.
The RHLSTP I did with him is one of my all time favourites and means even more to me now, of course. I didn't always get the chance to tell my heroes what they meant to me, so I am glad I did with Terry.
