carnage 10 October 2011
The carnage in Dublin continues, as worms are dragged in each night and left to shrivel and die – now, though, they’re also sometimes divided into sections so whichever killer cat is in charge of the murders is getting more gruesome and surgical in her efforts – it’s like something from a v twisted thriller. I love worms, I admire their work, they are my gardening friends, I wish the ferocious felines would leave them alone!
I spent most of last week being a very warty, old, Victorian crone for the BBC – all of which can be seen over Christmas in The Bleak Little Shop of Stuff – also featuring Mitchell and Webb, Johnny Vegas, Stephen Fry and Katherine Parkinson. It’s very liberating indeed to be so grotty in a show that no one could possibly think you were just looking dodgy yourself anyhow on the day. When make-up is subtle it can be too plausibly YOU looking like you’re having a bad day, instead of deliberately making you look bad. Also I’ve worn the odd ‘fat suit’ in films and on tv and nobody remarked on those at all – I obviously looked a bit bigger but acceptably so, as if Pauline had ‘put on a bit of weight’ – disappointing for a gal’s real life…
and it’s no wonder the Victorians had to have help getting dressed and undressed every day – layer upon layer of clothage! And a challenge for us ‘moderns’ when needing the loo – apparently, the ladies of those times had a divided gusset in the pants and simply spread their legs and ‘went’…
MOST IMPORTANT OF ALL!!!!
66 BOOKS begins today at the new BUSH THEATRE in the old library on the Uxbridge Road in London. It’s a fabulous new venue and a huge project – 66 responses by contemporary writers to the 66 books of the King James Bible, which is 400 years old this year. I am doing 2 Timothy (a St Paul letter in the original) on various days at various times over the next few weeks – do come along and enjoy – v v exciting to be involved among the 130 actors, many directors, 66 writers and a legion of technicals in this hugely ambitious re-opening of the theatre at its new home.
