Winter touring should be great - the British countryside looking dramatic, venues welcoming you in with a warm glow, happy punters clapping delightedly like excited schoolchildren at a matinee.
Who am I kidding? Let’s be honest here: for dramatic landscapes, read wet, windswept and dark. How many times have I got instructions to a rural venue that read “Turn left at the duck pond”, when the only way you’ll ever see said pond at night is to drive into the thing by accident? My favourite instruction is “It’s halfway through the village”. How do you know you’re halfway, until you’re full-way out the other side, and turning the car in a quagmire that once resembled a gateway?
Then you arrive at the venue, which has a heating system, but it’s off/on but not until 7pm/ unreliable/ inefficient/ runs on 50p coins (delete as appropriate). I always bring a blow heater (so I can change in something above sub-zero temperatures), which is guaranteed to blow the fuses just as the show starts. The other side of the 50p coin is that I swelter on stage under the lights and freeze backstage in the dressing room that three hours ago was a chair store, and still has the playgroup equipment stashed in it.
One big problem at this time of year is mosquitoes. I wish this was due to extensive foreign tours, but it’s more likely global warning. Want to know where mozzies go in the winter? Church vestries. One church boiler space (our dressing room) had so many the cast held a competition for the number squished between items. I won, but only because I got the big chunk of Boheme in which to vent my spleen on the biting blighters. It was either that or bites the size of walnuts, so appealing for the next night’s close-up audience…
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As for the audience, they have to sit and endure whatever temperature changes the venue throws at them. They either sit and steam on wet nights in warm venues, or resolutely sit on their icy hands in cold churches. If it’s warm and comfortable, they fall asleep in the quiet bits; if the heating is too much, they’ll never come out of the bar in the interval due to dehydration. And they WILL cough at every available opportunity.
If actors moan about having to do pantos, I hate to say it, I get tired of having to do carols. It’s like Christmas decorations: you unwrap them with delight mid December, delighting in discovering old favourites, and by January 2nd you can’t wait to get them back in the loft. After all, as a mezzo, I never get the tune, and rarely get more than five different notes to worry about the whole evening.
Thank goodness for Christmassy opera; stuffing your face with gingerbread in Hansel & Gretel, camping it up in La Cenerentola, having a nice rest during Boheme bits. Then there’s the delights of ie Fledermaus at New Year, when, if you’re lucky, a generous host might even give you real champagne for your glass. (I live in hope – usually it’s Diet Coke with water – disgusting.)
Already I’m looking forward to that traditional January pastime for singers: panicking about the credit card bill and not enough work before the February Valentine’s night work rolls in. Then the Easter oratorios pay off the overdraft and it’s time to bring out the anti-mosquito spray again. If you ever packed it away, that is.
Kirsty Young
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