‘It’s as live as you’ll get without being able to smell us’
LIVE-STREAMED THEATRE IS NO PROBLEM FOR IMPROV QUEEN JOSIE LAWRENCE, HEARS JOHN NATHAN...
THERE is a line in comedy actress Josie Lawrence’s latest play that could have been written for her. The Boss Of It All is about the head of a company who pretends he is a worker in the IT department. So when he has to meet his staff face-to-face, he hires actor Kristina (Josie) to play the role.
‘My character has to give a speech at one point about IT and it’s the biggest load of gobbledygook you’ve ever heard,’ chuckles Josie. Kristina also has to field resentment from the staff while dealing with ‘something sexual’, none of which the actress has been told about. During all this, Josie – the queen of improvisation, who has been performing improv almost weekly at London’s The Comedy Store for 30 years – gets to say ‘I hate bloody improvisation.’
It is, of course, not true. While in lockdown and unable to perform with fellow Comedy Store Players, Josie developed something she calls ‘home improv’ to help fill the gap until the Store opens again. ‘I’ve been going round the house and when I think of something I get my phone out, put it on record and say something in character,’ she says. In which case The Boss Of It All, which has been adapted from the 2006 comedy created by Danish film director Lars von Trier, might be called ‘home theatre’.
This new co-production between Soho Theatre and East Midlands theatre company New Perspectives is a rejigged version by director Jack McNamara and will be performed live on Zoom from the homes of the cast.
‘It’s as live as you can get without being able to feel or smell us,’ says Josie.
‘The designer [Lily Arnold] and Jack had a Zoom meeting with me to check for plain walls,’ says Josie. ‘There are none. I have quite eccentric tastes. They were saying, “No, Kristina is a character who has fallen on hard times. Is there anywhere that hasn’t got Osborne & Little wallpaper?” So we’re doing it in my office, a sort of box room that’s painted in grey/brown.’
The show is the latest online production by a theatre unable to open its doors to the public. In the week Josie’s show starts streaming, a revival of Brian Friel’s three-hander, Faith Healer – starring Michael Sheen, Indira Varma and David Threlfall – will be performing to the Old Vic’s empty stalls for an online audience.
Does Josie worry that such shows are changing theatre-going habits for good?
‘I have a feeling in my bones that when people can go to the theatre, they will,’ says Josie. ‘I think they are chomping at the bit. But we have to make sure it’s safe.’
When playhouses closed in March, the actress was performing at Liverpool’s Everyman in Our Lady Of Blundellsands,.
‘We did it for a week before we had to stop,’ says Josie.
‘I have noticed that sometimes people are saying, “All those luvvies moaning about theatre.” Well, it’s not just luvvies. The majority of people in this business are working people with families and mortgages. There are actors and wigmakers and carpenters and designers and cleaners, and the old lady or bloke who works on stage door,’ says Josie.
The actress has had her own ‘touch of the Covid’ too. After the Everyman play was cancelled she had to isolate in her own house with two friends, one of whom also had symptoms.
‘We are resilient creatures,’ she says. ‘The year 2020 will be full of memories and we will get through it. It will be OK. It’s got to be.’
‘I have a feeling in my bones that when people can go to the theatre, they will’
■ The Boss Of It All streams from September 18-20. sohotheatre.com/shows/the-boss-of-it-all