The Brighton Komedia today, a venue that I have been coming to for 10 years at least. In fact I not only did Christ on a Bike here back on the original tour in 2002, but I also did a couple of nights of previews for the show back in July 2001. The show was far from ready back then and very unsteady and I think the audience were left rightly non-plussed, so it was good to be back in the exact same room (though there has been some building work since and the space is very different) where I would hopefully get it right this time.
Reliable Pete got us there in good time and I had time to go for a coffee with some friends beforehand. In fact I had a bit too much coffee. I don't have a problem with speaking fast even in normal circumstances, but I was buzzing now and worried my act might only be understood by bees.
It turned out OK, though the Komedia projector gave all my slides a vaguely unsettling sepia tinge. To make up for that the back cloth was sprinkled with lights that made it look like a starscape which we used to good effect in the dream sequence.
The staff were all great and had been impressed when I put my own programmes out on the seats - it's always nice to not turn out to be a stuck up prick with the theatre staff, though things were to take a turn later. But the show went well and was another sell-out, so the positive start to the tour continues.
We had parked at the back of the venue and loaded all our bags and props and the exercise bike in through there and taken them up to the venue in the lift. So naturally after the gig we loaded everything into the lift intending to exit the same way. No one had told us any differently and the people working in the venue had seen us packing up the lift, but when we got down to the back doors, the lady working there informed me that due to the licence at the venue we were not allowed to open the fire doors and move our few pieces of equipment into the car which was just feet away. Sensing my disbelief she seemed to relent a little and suggested that if we didn't have too much we might get away with a sneaky exit. I had walked down the stairs, but by now Pete had come down in the lift and had started unloading stuff. When she found out we had more than a couple of bags the lady said we would have to move our car to the front of the venue and carry all our stuff through. This was a bit annoying as if someone had told us about this, either when we had arrived or at any point before now, we could have brought the stuff down a different flight of stairs. This wasn't her fault and I sensed immediately that this was an issue she dealt with on a nightly basis, but then, in a way, that just made it more ridiculous (for us and her) that no one had pre-warned us about this.
Now we had finished there was no one in the venue who was there to help us move our stuff and a stocky, bald member of staff passing by told us there was no way we could break this rule and that he was too busy to help. The woman was not allowed to leave her post, but things were getting a little fraught and she had now rescinded her earlier suggestion that we might sneak out. I pointed out that all our stuff was now sitting right in the way of the fire doors, which was surely much more dangerous than just allowing us out and she said, "Yes, I was going to say before it all kicked off that you should have put your stuff here." She indicated the lift exit beside her, which was a small flight of stairs up from the exit where Pete had taken out our bits and bobs.
Up until this point I had had some sympathy with her, because the rule was not her fault, but this was just bullshit. She hadn't spotted the potential hazard until I had pointed it out, and had calmly sat back and watched as we emptied the lift. I told her now that she was taking the piss and she reprimanded me and asked me not to swear at her. I told here that I wasn't swearing at her, if piss is even a swear word, I was just swearing. To swear at her I would have had to direct the offending word at her. I know about this. It's my job to swear at people. Just as it was her job to stop people going out of a convenient door. Things got a bit more heated. I was a bit angry now and not necessarily coming out too well from this incident, but as I have said there were lots of ways the venue could have avoided creating a confrontation over this, or at least eased our passage out of the building. I didn't want to get all, "Do you know who I am?" mainly because she clearly didn't , but I felt a bit aggrieved that after so many years of coming to this venue and having sold out my show and thus helped pay everyone's wages it would be cool if they made things a bit easier for us. I wasn't blaming her for the rules, or even for enforcing them, but this was an unpleasant ending to the night, and one that I have to take some responsibility for.
Pete opened the doors to go to get the car, which obviously broke the rules, but there wasn't much anyone could do. I was left to carry on the conversation with this slightly irate woman, although things got slightly more civil. The guy who had complimented me for putting out my own programmes passed by to see me having out with his work mate. All my good work at pretending to be a nice and ordinary guy had been for nothing. The woman told me that there were people having a terrible time in New Zealand and Libya and that I thus shouldn't be aggravated about thus incident, though for me it seemed that you could equally argue that because of that it wasn't really worth her being quite such a jobsworth about this. Not that that was really the issue, just it was a bit of an odd thing to bring up.
The woman told me that perhaps it was fate that my evening had been disrupted and maybe this delay would prevent an accident happening. This at least made me laugh. Equally it could be argued that the delay and the stress might actually cause us to be in an accident. But I calmed down a bit and gave half an apology and she acknowledged that she had to go through this argument on a daily basis. It's something that the venue could address and deal with for the sake of their staff and the performers coming here. It's the first issue I have had with this venue in the last decade, but it doesn't actually take too much to make people happy and it's worth doing so.
In the end we parked illegally at the front of the venue and managed to load the car in just three or four trips, though Pete tarnished his reliable status by leaving behind the merchandise price board. Luckily I spotted it was missing and he had to go back for the embarrassing "I've forgotten my coat" style moment.
We were soon out of there though, leaving the staff thinking what a prick I was no doubt. Ah well.
