Contact with audience actor’s guilty pleasure
Raucous play is packed full of music and humour
When thinking of guilty pleasures, thoughts of eating a Snickers, flipping through People mag or bingewatching The Real Housewives of Botoxland may come to mind.
However for Andrew McNee, the star of his Arts Club Theatre’s production of One Man, Two Guvnors, his current culpable comfort is something that used to make him cringe. That something is the tricky world of audience participation.
“I’m actually really looking forward to that part of it. It’s funny though, because you know when I am in an audience I get so scared when I see an actor come out into the audience. It’s absolutely terrifying. “The audience is not just a figurative scene partner but a literal scene partner.”
— Andrew McNee
“So the fact I get to do it is a real guilty pleasure. I think I might be a bad man,” laughed McNee, whose character Francis breaks the fourth wall all the time.
McNee really had no choice but to embrace the audience portion, as it is integral to the play.
“I would have to say this is the one show that I have done where the biggest missing ingredient is the audience,” said the veteran Vancouver actor. “It’s such a big part of my performance, the interaction and what’s going to happen with them.
“In this one the audience is not just a figurative scene partner but a literal scene partner.”
The play, which was a hit in London and on Broadway with James Corden (the guy who is taking over Craig Ferguson’s Late Late Show gig), is a smart farce that revolves around Francis Henshall and the duplicitous life he finds himself leading as he juggles (barely) two jobs and two bosses.
Written by Richard Bean, the raucous theatre experience is packed full of humour and music including a live skiffle band. McNee himself joins in for some of the musical fun.
“Oh that was terrifying,” said McNee about having to play music on stage. “I have never touched a xylophone in my life. But I love having that kind of challenge to go for.”
Yes, you read that right; it’s a xylophone that McNee plays.
“When you mis-strike a key it is a glaring, glaring mistake,” said McNee, who admits his musical ability is mostly limited to some “noodling on the guitar.”
The play is a period piece set in 1963 Brighton and London. Most of the time Francis is beside himself trying to please both his bosses while also trying to keep them apart. To complicate the exercise the bosses have a shared history.
“The two of them were actually lovers that think the other one is dead,” said McNee. “It’s big kind of comedy of errors.”
While it’s a fast-paced frolic, McNee makes it clear that this isn’t just one of those slapstick farces that relies on doors hitting bums and heads knocking together for its laughs.
“A lot of the times with a farce it is the situation that is funny and the writing can still be a little weak,” said McNee. “But here, he (Bean) has written a script that is funny, with fantastic, well-written jokes.”