4641/17300
This was the show that I was most worried about. It's the one that I haven't done in the longest time and also I never even did any of the bits as stand up. It was long, hard to learn and full of weird Greek names. It is my least favourite of my own shows, yet over this week of relearning it I have come to love it a little bit. It's such a weird concept, it's basis on Greek myth not exactly commercial and it's very personal about an odd time in my life, but listening through to it (again and again) the road away from depression and towards redemption and self-confidence was rather moving to me. I felt sorry for the younger me and glad that by doing all this crazy stuff he moved away from loneliness and self-obsession and sadness. At least for a little bit. He had a bit more to come over the next few years, as you'll see if you come to the next three shows in the run.
But mostly I was worried about getting on top of the material and being able to deliver a coherent show. And although it was a little bit shaky in places and the audience a bit cautious at the start, I managed to get through it all without too many cock-ups (though annoyingly the videos that I had painstakingly found a way to get into the slide show and then start automatically, did not seem to want to play ball when I was hooked up to a projector). Reliving these old battles and managing to squeeze a 2 hour show into 90 minutes (plus a ten minute interval) was as moving on stage as off. I got a bit teary and forgot a couple of important bits at the end, though did manage to reincorporate one of them. There were 274 people in, which is just amazing and it would be terrific if the word of mouth generates and the numbers nudge up for each performance (tomorrow and next weekend look good, but the weekend after that - What is Love, Anyway? and We're All Going To Die! - are looking a bit quieter at the moment). The reaction from the audience both during the show and afterwards was very encouraging and I was massively relieved to have got this show under by (Hippolyta's) belt.
And I headed home and had a small glass of wine with my wife, before she retired to bed and I took on the baby duties. I sat downstairs eating marmite on toast, drinking a glass of Sancerre and doing the Guardian kakuro, which is possibly not the sort of post-gig routine I would have gone through back in 2004/5 when I last did this show. But I felt a whole lot happier doing that than anything I was doing 11 years ago. The two main women in my life upstairs asleep and me coming down from one of my trickiest bits of performance for years. I felt good. Then Phoebe woke up, screaming loudly (very unlike her, but she's not been well) and I had to deal with that. Though even though she stopped my kakuro-ing, this also felt better than the post-gig days of old. I comforted her and played with her and finally managed to cajole her back to sleep with the assistance of Calpol and the Soundsleeper app.
With enough people coming to the shows to make the hard work artistically and financially worthwhile and the kickstarter campaign off to a cracking start (over £5000 on the 1st day - still an awful long way to go, but loving the fact that the viewers and listeners enjoy it enough to want to keep it going) and managing a couple of hours of good parenting (my exhausted wife having taken the brunt of that delicious burden today). Also I now no longer need to listen to the Twelve Tasks of Hercules Terrace DVD audio and relive the painful bits of me awkwardly laughing at failed jokes and doing some weak ad-libs (the one about Paula Radcliffe doing a fart made me cringe every time) and have surely put this show to bed for the last time (never say never).
It had been fun taking my theatrical sword into the theatre on the tube - wrapped in a blanket, but it kept slipping out and I worried about being shot by police marksmen in Leicester Square, (until I remembered I was white so would have to have cut off a few arms before I would have been tackled manually). It was also largely unnecessary as I used the sword for about three seconds in the actual show. But the real performance piece of that was the unseen journey there.
And with Hercules down this difficult challenge does now seem more possible. I am not going to get complacent, but I think I have Someone Likes Yoghurt pretty much down already and the next two more stand-uppy shows should be a whole lot easier. 3/12. It's a quarter! And I'll be a third of the way through after tomorrow. Still the small matter of writing the new show….
But don't miss Someone Likes Yoghurt on Saturday. Still plenty of tickets left and it really has to be seen to be believed.
