cardiff 17 March 2009
All hail Simon Easterby – he is our captain for tonight’s bout versus Wales on a sports quiz called HIGH TACKLE. The show airs on Friday and we are about to torture the Welsh with how many ways we are going to whoop their asses on Saturday (and hopefully we will…) Hector O’Heochagain is the other leggy lovely on our side. Strange to relate the Welsh team have won every week..and it’s recorded in Cardiff…but we are about to start the Irish campaign for Saturday – the war, basically, starts here.
What other way would a gal like to spend Paddy’s Day? – it sure makes a difference from being comatose through enjoyment by mid afternoon.
ps i hear Navan has gone mad and drink is half price in Tesco…lots of sore heads about to land there soon…
whatashow! 16 March 2009
Well, now, (as if we didn’t alreaady know it) the Gay Community can surely throw a party and how! What a joyous event Alternative Miss Ireland was (and is, each year). All proceeds go to charities so the feelgood factor is there already and then there is The Show – crikey! There were 11 brilliant contestants and 3 rounds each, including swimwear. We got everything from Eurovision to prison love and the glamour and style and top dance routines were off the scale. It was all hosted by the magnificent Panti Bar, who is one of the most attractive ladies on the planet – I want her figure! Miss Shirley Temple Bar did a fantastic number featuring her ribbon routine (that swung the title her way some years ago – oh, and the fact that she is fabulous, and SO pretty). Shirley called me a bully, though, as in the 5 minutes we judges had to make our decision I shouted at her to pay attention – hope it won’t be held against me in the long run…Anyhow, the upshot was that the title went to an ‘elderly’ and totally cracking lady by the name of Miss Smiling Canker – I hope that she has now been kissed also as she SO deserves it. I saw my walker, the wonderful Colm O’Callaghan, into an adjacent club SYCAMORE (again and utterly top joint and where us October cast types liked to party and sometimes disgrace ourselves) had a(nother) beer and headed home…yup, quite quite drunk…tried to assault Himself but was swatted off (sensible man). Great night out.
Off to Cardiff tomorrow – will the excitement NEVER END?!?!? – to record HIGH TACKLE a sports quiz hosted by the lovely Gabby Logan. Then onto London’s Town – looking forward to being back there, actually.
Happy Paddy’s Day to all on the morrow!!!! And, Mandy, we Irish spend the whole week celebrating…DUH!!!!
AMI 15 March 2009
I was in the box office before the matinee yesterday and met some audience members for our show and had high hopes for 3 gay lads also in attendance BUt they were in to check on their Alternative Miss Ireland tickets, not to see out play. Anyhow the advice from all of them is that I butch up tonight so I am now off to don a suit and sparkling tie as well as sparkly trainers. I will let you all know how Gay Christmas goes and I am over excited frankly about seeing the show – apparently it is ONLY AMAZING!
big day 14 March 2009
I am headed off to do our last 2 Dublin performances of OCTOBER. It has been a blast to do and I will miss it like mad. Still, we have the opportunity to revisit it when we go to Cork for a week just after Easter. Hope the blues don’t hit tomorrow though. I might JUST avoid them as I am a judge for Alternative Miss Ireland (back in the Olympia) tomorrow night and I have never even attended that fab event let alone judged it – I am told it is THE night out – Gay Christmas, actually. I am in TATTERS about what to wear, though – no point in going formal as I will be surrounded by Drag Queens in fabulous gowns…could be a stressful Sunday, trying everything in my wardrobe on and settling for something that I will hate and regret – EEEK! Advice PLEASE!!!!!!
party 13 March 2009
It’s official – I am too old to party. We had our company dinner last night and it was great fun and then, when we were inches from a clean getaway, we took ourselves off to a lovely club called Sycamore behind the theatre in Dublin’s glittering Temple Bar – now, a good 12 hours later, I am still asking WHY OH WHY? The recovery time just gets longer at my advanced age. Still, good to know that the spirit is certainly willing, even if the flesh is a bit of a disappointment. I am now ministering to myself with tea, and have scheduled a hot shower – it could get ugly…wish me luck…
3 performances to go and I will really miss this show and this lovely bunch of people. We get to go to Cork with it in a month’s time though so it ain’t over just yet…
omission 12 March 2009
Here’s how old and doddery I am getting – I thought I HAD blogged yesterday…As many of the sharpest of you will have noticed I. Did. Not. More than that, I can’t even remember what it was that I had to say and what it was I was clearly convinced I had written up too after the thinking up of same…hmmm, not good. Actually, let me add an EEK to that.
Hope it’s not a sign of how my words are going to come out tonight (they were fine, weirdly, last night in spite of my Senior Moment) I’d like them to flow and be nicely delivered as my UK agent will be along later. It’s a running joke amongst showbiz types that THE WORST show is always the one when your agent is in – or at least an actor always feels so – like the Queen thinking the world smells of paint (as everything is vavavoomed for her visits) agents always hear the phrase ‘you should have been in last night, it was a great show…compared with tonight…’
We think the G might be going a bit blind and deaf – she is yowling a lot these days and gets spooked very easily out in the garden of if we appear suddenly in a room. I hope she’ll have a few good summers left in her yet though – I don;t think I am ready to say any goodbyes to that little wretch yet.
The tongue is on the mend but still manages to hijack me regularly with pain and slurring…
Joyce – thanks for the card! Hope you had a good day in Dublin’s Fair City and sorry, again, that we don’t do a Wednesday matinee that you could have seen – mind you, doing 2 shows a day is a bit of a kick in the head so I am secretly glad we don’t do that more than once a week!
ouch 10 March 2009
Why is it that the simplest things hurt most and are most inconvenient? I bit the back of my tongue last night, during the show, and it is AGONY still. It’s the section between my top and bottom back teeth, left hand side of my mouth. OUCH. When it happened I immediately imagined that my speech had become ‘furry’ and in fact it seemed to me, from hearing me inside of my head, that I sounded like I was speaking through cotton wool. Now it just HURTS and I don’t look forward to spending 2 and a half hours speaking aloud this evening. Similarly, I twisted my neck strangely just looking over at one of the other actors at the end of the play on Friday night and that too hurt like a MUTHA! (sorry for the language, but you get the picture). It sent the neck muscle into a spasm that lasted all day Saturday (for 2 shows). ‘Ah now here, lads,’ as we might say, ‘ENOUGH.’ I once spent an entire show (many years ago) vomiting, quite noisily, into buckets and receptacles around a stage. Actors will tell you though that unless your leg is hanging off you’ll continue – Dr Theatre and all that. And I did on that night – also no one noticed, not even one of the other actors onstage with me. Still, I’d prefer to be motoring without ‘an injury’…AND this latest tongue biting incident has left me a tad ‘spitty’ – not ever an attractive sight in an actor…
protests 9 March 2009
I’m all for a good protest when it’s needed. We live in dire times – recession has hit and taxes are being raised. There is a lot of grumbling in Ireland from public servants about a pension levy that has been foisted on them – although it should be pointed out that it IS a levy that goes toward their later life (although I understand how they might feel it’s an extra tax, even though strictly it’s not). There is an idea afloat that extra actual taxes for us ordinary citizens in an emergency budget soon and I quake at the thought of that – if my acting wages get any more of a hammering I can’t see the point of continuing to work! But we all hope we can get by, of course. And in the meantime workers are protesting…but some protests just don’t cut it. The Husband got caught up in a taxi-drivers traffic stoppage recently in Dublin, when they were protesting about too many taxi licences having been issued (as they see it), and the chant they were lashing out was ‘What do we want? No more taxis! When do we want them? NOW!’ Hmmm, I can’t help but think they hadn’t quite thought that one through….it doesn’t QUITE do what it says on the tin…
special needs 8 March 2009
I used to worry a lot about specialist competitions like Women’s Playwriting contests and so on, because I have always reasoned that if a play is good it is irrelevant that it was written by a woman or a man. Of course, subject matter might be dictated by the sex of the writer, though not necessarily, but the quality should have nothing to do with the author’s gender. I guess I have never wanted women to be seen as ‘special needs’ in any way. For this, I suppose, I have many groundbreaking feminists to thank: if you will, the bra burners of the 60s (though I myself could never burn mine – I need me underwire and would defend it to the last!) and back further to the suffragettes, actually. However, there are moments when it is probably good to segregate an issue and today may just be a case in point. So, Happy Women’s Day to all who’d like that shouted out to them. The reason I don’t feel this is too ‘special’ is that it serves as an important reminder of the plight of many in the world and is specifically aimed at highlighting gender violence this year. Violence against a person is unacceptable in any form and in many countries (including our own) violence against women is a huge problem and one that must be acknowledged, tackled and stopped. If a Women’s Day can go some of the way to helping solve the problem, I’m all for it. On top of that, fact is, women are GREAT – at the moment I am surrounded by some of the finest – writer Fiona Looney, actress Victoria Smurfit, producer Anne Clarke and me Mum is here to visit – good times.
style 7 March 2009
we were talking about style and events tonight before we made an event of our own at the theatre (eh, OCTOBER, heading into the last week now) and i was told the BEST, bar none, description of a doo with no knickers, which is a ‘chavalanche’ – great – nuff said….