4663/17322
More late sales projected “We’re All Going To Die!†into sixth place in the league table (the lowest it can now get, unless people start buying tickets for shows that are finished, is seventh - my guess is that Lord of the Dance Settee is going to leap from 12th to about 4th, but we will see) and this late showing from this weekend’s shows means that the average audience for the run is going to be approaching 300, which is not beyond my wildest dreams (in those every human, animal and alien creature in the Universe saw every single show and I was made the Sex-king of the Sea), but is still more than I expected. It’s difficult for me to believe that I have now successfully got through the first 10 of my one man shows. Lord of the Dance Settee should surely be a walk in the park, though there is much to do to Happy Now? before it is fit to view by a paying audience.
Whereas last year the general lack of interest in my play and reduced interest in my stand-up made me wonder whether things were starting to stall and consider my future, this year with steady sales and incredible support for the RHLSTP kickstarter, it does feel like things are going to be OK. And that I’ve found a sustainable level to make a living whilst also producing interesting work that I can be proud of. In the past I might have been frustrated that stand-up shows that I thought were strong and clever were not getting the recognition that they deserved, it now feels good to perform them in from of 200 or 300 people and have most of them going away knowing they’ve seen something special and mildly secret.
Given I last did Die! a mere 16 months ago I thought it would be one of the easier shows. But it’s a tricky and complex piece with two intricate routines in the second half where everything needs to come in the right order and I had to get through the To Be or Not To Be speech, whilst heckling myself. And the first half is a cavalcade of ideas, all one of top of the other, all of which need to be in the right place for later pay-offs to come good. I gave a mildly juddering performance, but i think only forgot one bit (a mildly important part of the 9/11 routine), but once into my stride I gave a good showing of the material. The audience seemed a bit more reticent than usual during the show, but afterwards were more gushing than usual, which just goes to show that you can never really tell how much people are enjoying something and must keep on performing as if they’re the best crowd in the world (because they might be, they just like to internalise their enjoyment).
I managed to talk about Doris’ funeral without getting over emotional, even when mentioning that my kids would never meet her (which is more poignant now I have a child). But Doris at rest is strangely not as distressing as Doris in a nursing home, unable to remember the vast majority of her life. And whilst I concluded in What is Love, Anyway? that my love for her would last until I forgot every person I ever knew, what was interesting about the very last time I saw her (when I introduced her to my then fiancee and she looked impressed at her ring, even though she didn’t know who any of us were), the only person she had any memory of was her own father. Which is rather an enduring testament to a daughter’s love. He lived on in the mind of his child until the very end and she’d forgotten everyone else, so if I can have as strong an impact on my own daughter, I might still be existing in memory form in a hundred years time. Which is a good incentive not to be a terrible dad.
At my parents’ Golden Wedding, when at 98 Doris had forgotten pretty much everyone around her, she was very enamoured with a photo of my dad’s brother, Michael, who she seemed to recall better than her own son-in-law. She said, “You always remember the nice ones.†Later she would be covered in glitter by her forgotten grand daughter and I now wonder if maybe it hadn’t been an accident, but revenge for not being considered one of the nice ones.
It’s been a heady weekend and this run of 10 shows has left me a lot to think about in terms of my life and my career and what I want to do with my shows. I am not sure yet what kind of show Happy Now? will be or if I will be able to inject what I have learned by this time next week. But I am sure that doing all these shows again will make me better at what I do and I am looking forward to initially getting the new show on its feet, before working hard on it over the next few months. I think I need to work on keeping the live shows as tight as possible (even when they’re being deliberately and annoyingly loose). All these old shows are good (in my arrogant opinion) but all of them could have been better. Hopefully I can improve and learn over the next dozen years, as I have over the last dozen. As a person and a comedian. But mainly as a person. Because I hope to be definitely still a person in 2027, whereas it doesn’t really matter so much if I am no longer a comedian.
Thanks to everyone who has come to these shows so far (or bought the downloads or contributed to the kickstarter). I am genuinely moved by this support and will do my best to keep the standards of what I am doing ever better (bearing in mind that sometimes the stuff appearing shoddy is part of the appeal). Still plenty of tickets for Lord of the Dance Settee, but book ahead for Happy Now? And keep your fingers crossed that I will have an hour of new stuff in a week.
