ALSO PLAYING
Strutting and Fretting – An Actor Despairs
This play, written and performed by Chris McHallem, is a comic delight. Unlike those painfully unfunny performances where actors drop names and explain how wonderful they are, this is a trip through the progress, or lack of it, of a jobbing actor and the slog of life in touring shows. Coming onstage still wearing the kilt from a poorly-attended performance of Macbeth, McHallem contemplates the home life of the Macbeths, musing on how Lady Macbeth reacted to the message that they were going to kill the king, and taking in, en route, King James the First, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, the assassination of Trotsky and the killing of Osama Bin Laden. Among the delights are his reflections on that most underrated cog in the production process, the stage manager, and the etiquette of not getting up to funny business if it happens to be a woman. There are lots of delicious injokes, including even the subtitle of the show, updated from Stanislavski’s advice to actors.
Michael Moffatt