‘The Flanders Pigeon Murderer’

Saturday 19th October saw my final theatrical performance of the year, before A Christmas Carol takes over for the season, and with a remarkable synchronicity it was to be at the same venue that my final performance of A Christmas Carol will be: the beautiful historic Guildhall in Leicester.

I drove to Leicester early in the day so that I could meet my son Cameron for lunch.  Cameron is now in his third year at Leicester University studying Physics with Astro Physics, a subject about which I can offer no comment, other than that I am so proud of him and completely in awe of what he is achieving.

After lunch we said our goodbyes and I spent a little time walking around Leicester in search of a special site.  In 1867 and 1869 Charles Dickens performed in the Temperance Hall (which if you have ever seen the document detailing the contents of his wine cellar at the time of his death, seems to be strange choice of theatre).  A little online research gave me the street address, although sadly building had been demolished years ago.

121 Granby Street was shrouded in scaffolding as it is being converted into accommodation but in Dickens’ day it was a grand theatre owned by Thomas Cook, who founded the travel company which so recently closed its doors for the final time.  In a strange quirk of coincidence Thomas and Charles both had parents named John and Elizabeth.  I grant it would be a greater coincidence had their parents been named Chopper and Kylie, but lets go with it anyway.

I stood in Granby Street as the traffic crawled along filling the atmosphere with carbon monoxide but I was blind to the scourge of the modern age, for in my imagination I saw only the old Palladian Façade  as a Victorian audience excitedly gathered to listen to the great man speak.

On Friday January 25th, 1867 Mr Charles Dickens would read Doctor Marigold and The Trial from The Pickwick Papers, and on Saturday 19 October, 2019 Mr Gerald Dickens would be performing The Trial also.

Having paid my silent tribute to my great great grandfather, I continued my walk around the city, culminating in a stroll along the beautiful ‘New Walk’ an elegant vehicle-free promenade lined with smart Georgian town houses.  As I walked I could hear cheers from the nearby football stadium where Leicester City were entertaining Burnley and by the sound of things were doing rather well in their endeavours.

It was beginning rain as I found myself close to the King Richard III Visitor Centre and I thought it may be fun to visit.  I did not have long as it was already 4.30, but I was told that my ticket lasts for a year so I could always come back and complete my tour next time I am in town.

It may be difficult for my American readers to understand and, in truth, I think it is difficult for me to understand, but we in Britain managed to lose a King.  Richard of York was slain at the Battle of Bosworth Field not far from Leicester, and his body brought to the city and buried in an unmarked grave at Greyfriars Church.  Unfortunately a couple of hundred years later the church was destroyed as Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries and Richard’s grave was forgotten.  Centuries passed and Leicester grew and eventually a car park for some council offices was laid on Greyfriars’s Lane.

Richard would have been lost forever where it not for a keen bunch of experts from the Richard III Society who had a hunch that the remains lay beneath that very car park.  With the co-operation of Leicester City Council and a team of archaeologists, from the university a dig was planned.  Remarkably no sooner was the ground broken that a skeleton was discovered, curled into an almost foetal position.

DNA tests were made involving Richard’s known living relatives and the results came back that there was absolute certainty that Richard III had been discovered.  Over a few years there followed a rather bitter battle between the cities of Leicester and York as to where the slain monarch should be formally buried, but Leicester played the ‘finders keepers, losers weepers’ card and triumphed.  Today Richard has a modern and elegant tomb in the beautiful Leicester Cathedral which is, as it happens, right opposite the Guildhall, my venue for the evening.

I arrived at 5.30 and with the help of Ben, who runs the hall as part of the fantastic museum network in Leicester, loaded my furniture in before parking my car in a municipal car park (I wondered ‘who is buried beneath this one!’)

The Guildhall dates back to the 14th Century and is an excellent venue for my shows.  I have been returning to Leicester for many years and now have a loyal, and enthusiastic, following in the city.

I was scheduled to perform Mr Dickens is Coming and the aforementioned Trial from The Pickwick Papers, and it was the latter piece that gave me most concern, for it is not a regular part of my repertoire.  I decided to do a complete run in the hall, just to put my mind at rest and soon a ‘set’ became clear in my mind: the judge, Mister Justice Stareleigh, would be in a  grand chair up stage right, the witness box would be at centre stage right, whilst the jury would be situated in the front block of the audience (where there happened to be twelve chairs arranged in three rows of four).

Mr Pickwick, the defendant and Mrs Bardell, the Plaintiff in the great case of breach of promise of marriage, would be sat in the stage left block of the audience.

Next: the voices.  Whenever I had performed The Trial before, and in rehearsal, the voice of Sergeant Buzfuzz became positively Churchillian, not helped by his first line being the word ‘Never!’ so I wanted to find a slight variation on that.  I toyed with a lisp, a growl, a splutter of phlegm and saliva until I found the gravity and self-importance of the man.

Next I moved onto Sam Weller, and he was more difficult to find for Dickens didn’t give him many lines in the Trial and yet he was such an important character in the original book, almost single-handedly turning the failing fortunes of the publication around and launching Dickens to stardom.  In Mr Dickens is Coming I relate an anecdote about the artist WP Frith telling Dickens that Sam Weller was not performed as he’d expected during The Trial – what did Frith mean, what had Dickens got wrong, how could I correct it?  Weller is a cockney and reverses his Vs and Ws and some of his accent is written phonetically, but there had to be a voice…..could I find it?

The audience soon arrived and the time came for Ben to welcome me to the stage, and in doing so he pointed out that whenever I visit Leicester City seemed to triumph at home (they had seen of Burnley 2-1 that afternoon).  Maybe I should become the club’s official mascot.

I took to the stage and the first act of Mr Dickens is Coming went well, and I built up a nice relationship with the audience.  I included the Miss Havisham sequence that I have been using all through the year,  and brought the half to an end with a description of Dickens’s death using the final completed passages of The Mystery of Edwin Drood.

And now it was time for The Trial.  How would my voices work?

In the second episode of Blackadder Goes Forth, called Corporal Punishment, Captain Blackadder, played by Rowan Atkinson, is charged with shooting a favourite carrier pigeon belonging to Colonel Melchett who sits in judgement at the Court Martial proceedings.  Fair justice is impossible from the moment that the indignant, florid, furious colonel brands Blackadder as ‘The Flanders Pigeon Murderer!’

There was my Sergeant Buzfuzz.

But the inspiration of the television classic went further, for in the court Blackadder relies upon the witness statement of his trusted, yet dim-witted batman, Baldrick, who admits that: ‘ We didn’t get any messages, and Captain Blackadder definitely did not shoot that delicious plump-breasted pigeon.’

And so it was that Baldrick, who always had a ‘cunning plan’, became Sam Weller for the evening!

The reading of the Trial is quite short, and it comes to rather an abrupt and unsatisfying end, so to bring the evening to a more complete finish I opened the floor up to a question and answer session.

As is always the case on these occasions initially everyone was reticent in putting their hands up (I am the same in such situations), but soon one lady broke the ice by asking the exact address of the Temperance Hall in Granby Street, and so began a very cheerful and enjoyable dialogue.

I was particularly looking forward to one question that I am always asked during such sessions: ‘Mr Dickens, have you ever written a book?’ to which the answer has always been always ‘no’, but on Saturday night I was ready to drop the bombshell that currently I AM writing a book!  Unfortunately nobody asked.

So, here is my news:  having become more and more intrigued by the circumstances surrounding the terrible rail crash at Staplehurst in 1865, I have decided to pull all of the available information together and create an account of the entire day – from Charles Dickens’ departure from Paris, to the aftermath of the event in London.

I will tell the story from the perspective of Dickens himself and from his travelling companions Ellen and Fanny Ternan, as well as observations from other passengers.  I will describe the train journey from Paris to Boulogne and that from Folkestone to Staplehurst.  I will talk about the crossing of the English Channel and describe the boat that made it.  I shall put the reader at the site of the repair works that were being carried out over the River Beult and describe just what went wrong on that fateful day and I will investigate the aftermath of the crash and just how it affected Charles.

Now, don’t get excited and put your orders in quite yet, for the project has no publisher at the moment (any offers or suggestions will be welcomed), but the discipline of working in, a logical and methodical manner has been fascinating and one which I am greatly enjoying.

Watch this space.

 

 

Wedding Flowers

This week my travels took me just a short distance down the A34 road to the little village of Sutton Scotney near Winchester in the county of Hampshire, to perform Great Expectations.

A few years ago I was attending a lunch in Portsmouth, to celebrate Charles Dickens’ birthday in the city of Portsmouth.  I was with my brother Ian and after the festivities were done we started to drive home.  Unfortunately the aforementioned A34 is a fickle highway and on that particular February evening it was choked with heavy traffic, necessitating a change of route to speed our way.  That route fortuitously took as past an attractive village hall, with a bell tower on the top, which bore the legend ‘The Victoria Hall’.

‘That would be a good place to do a show’ I said to Ian and then made a mental note to send an email to the committee and propose that I come and perform.

That email was sent about three years ago and my first show featured the double bill of The Signalman and Doctor Marigold, and whilst very successful and much enjoyed it wasn’t hugely well attended  but I had found two good friends and allies in Eryl and Alistair who together form a formidable team.  Eryl is a professional actor who has done a great deal of work on television (including a recurring role in one of my favourite comedy sketch shows), whilst Alistair is also very theatrical, writing, producing and directing a series of village pantomimes (including the most recent one based on A Christmas Carol).

I was invited back to perform my own, conventional, version of the Carol last year and the hall was filled to capacity, proving what a superb job the dynamic duo had done in spreading the word.  Straight away the question was asked: ‘when will you come back and what can you do for us?’ The resulting answer was Great Expectations on Sunday 13 October, 2019.

It was wonderful to be back and no sooner was I in the door and been hugged by Eryl than she proudly showed me a copy of the Hampshire Chronice newspaper featuring a full page picture of me in dramatic flight, along with an inside article promoting my show.  Alistair had approached the paper and they had responded enthusiastically – I had even stolen top billing from Elton John, which was quite impressive.

There was more excitement too, for a member of the community had created a special Miss Havisham flower display which dominated one corner of the auditorium: the flowers were white and lacey, and the arrangement was adorned with a collapsing cake, scattered champagne glasses and white sugar mice.  Not only was the display remarkable in its own right,  but it was on the correct side of the hall to become part of my Miss Havisham scenes.

Although the show was not due to start until 7.30 the first of the audience started to arrive at 6, so I retreated to my dressing room where I was able to do a complete run through of act 1 to satisfy myself that the lines were firmly settled.

The buzz of expectant conversation and laughter from the auditorium so was so loud that I seriously doubted that I had remembered the start time correctly and I got into my first costume early just in case Alistair should appear at 6.55 to give me ‘the five’.  I was not mistaken however, and the party continued until 7.30.

When everyone was in their seats Eryl got on the stage and before she even said a word there was a loud cheer and a round of applause.  That boded well.  Having finished her opening remarks (which included a cleverly constructed and Great Expectations-themed fire exit briefing: ‘If anyone should spontaneously combust during the performance you may leave by the front door…..’), Eryl left the stage, the lights faded to black and Alistair played the recorded narration which begins my show.

The audience at Sutton Scotney have always been generous and lively but my natural performer’s pessimism made me doubt if they would enjoy the darker, more intense material of Charles’s later works – after all I had already heard that they were a party audience, out for a good time.  I shouldn’t have worried for they listened intently, hung on every word.  The script has an interesting, and unplanned for, rhythm in that the early sequences of Mrs Joe Gargery scolding both Pip and Joe encourage laughter, but as soon as the overwhelming presence of Miss Havisham appears the tone becomes more sombre.

During Pip’s second visit to Miss Havisham’s house I could fully use the brilliant flower display, for the dialogue runs:

MH: So! the days have worn away, have they This is where I will be laid when I am dead. They shall come and look at me here. What do you think that is?” she asked me, again pointing with her stick; “that, where those cobwebs are?”
P: “I can’t guess what it is, ma’am.”
MH: “It’s a great cake. A bride-cake. Mine!

I was able to point my walking cane directly at the tumbled down cake set among the flowers, surrounded by cobwebs, it added a greater realism to the whole scene.

The first act came to an end and the loud applause assured me that everything was going to plan.  I made sure that I drank a lot of water and then got into my second act costume, before waiting for Alistair to come and tell me that we were ready to go again.

The second act is, if anything, even darker than first, although the mood is occasionally, and essentially, lightened by the character of Mr Wemmick and his Aged Parent.

Soon it all kicked off (this paragraph may contain a few plot spoilers): Magwitch appeared at Pip’s lodging, Miss Havisham burst into flames, Pip was attacked by Orlick, Compeyson was drowned, Magwitch died, Pip became delirious and suffered a 3 month fever, Joe and Biddy married and had a child whom they called Pip, Pip met Pip and showed him the grave of Pip, Pip returned to the ruin of Satis House and found Estella there and together (thanks to the revised ending suggested by Edward Bulwer Lytton), they walked away into a future not shrouded by mist.

All the time the audience listened and concentrated and became more and more involved in the story and the applause that greeted me as I returned to take my bows was amazing indeed.  Usually I will take a bow, then bow one to the audience on stage right, once to the audience on stage left, one more to the centre and then leave the stage, but on Sunday the clapping went on and on so I came back and a huge cheer went up as I reappeared.  It had been a successful evening indeed.

Eryl had asked me if I would be happy to mingle with the audience as they left which I was happy to do.  So many people shook me warmly by the hand and told me how much they had enjoyed the evening.  Great Expectations is still a show that fills me with doubt, and one which never fails to surprise me with its reception.

I packed up my props and loaded them into the car and then said my farewells to Eryl, Alistair and the rest of the volunteers with promises to return soon.

As I drove home through the night I glanced at the passenger seat over which my costumes were draped: they were flat, lifeless and dead, but the realisation came to me that an hour or so before these clothes had been vibrant and alive and filled by a cast of characters.  Never was the nature of my profession so profoundly illustrated to me.

 

 

Porthmadog and Englishmen

Last week I was in Snowdonia in Wales to perform for the Ffestiniog and Welsh Highland Railway as part of their annual Victorian Festival.  The railway which was formed nearly 200 years ago is based in Porthmadog on the west coast of Wales (I mention that not because it has any bearing on the tale to come, but because I wanted to use the name in my title!)

It was a long drive from Oxford but as my first commitment was not until 6.30 on Friday evening I had a whole day to make my way west.  Initially the journey took me over familiar roads and then at Birmingham I struck off towards the border county of Shropshire and into the Principality of Wales.  As I crossed the border the gorgeous Welsh flag (white and green and resplendent with a red dragon) flew over many houses and the road signs were all double the size, being in two languages.  On the roads I was encouraged to ‘araf’ rather than ‘slow’ before tight bends.  The Welsh are a proud nation.

As I reached the town of Bala nestling on the banks of its magnificent lake so the enormous vista of the Snowdonia National Park rose before me.  It is a magnificent part of our country and the drive through the imposing mountains with gushing waterfalls cascading through rocky crevices was magnificent.  It was as if I was being filmed for an episode of Top Gear and this image was intensified by the amount of muddy, sponsor-be-decaled cars that passed me (the Rally of GB was taking place in Wales over the weekend and there were lots of support vehicles making their way from one area of forest to another).

As the route took me higher so I became enveloped in swirling low cloud and my only company were a few sheep grazing on the verge or ambling across the road being restrained by no fences.

Eventually I arrived at my hotel in the little town of Tremadog which nestles beneath a towering slate cliff.  I had a couple of hours to rest before I had to get back into the car and drive up the mountain to the little railway station of Tan y Bwlch (I have NO idea how to pronounce that).

I was due to meet my contact Iwan at 6.30, but the station was deserted when I arrived and having unloaded all of my props and furniture I sat in the gathering twilight looking at the tiny slither of a new moon, and the twin golden streaks of the railway line disappearing into the distance illuminated by the last vestiges of a setting sun.

After a short while a car pulled up and out climbed the frock-coated figure of George who acts as a station host on the rail system, and who would be introducing me.  George performed the same role when I performed here two years ago and has the beautifully modulated voice of a BBC radio announcer.

Unfortunately George didn’t have a key to the station either, so we chatted in the chill of the evening until Iwan arrived.  The main room in the station is a tea room and it had already been laid out with seats in a theatre style.  The area where I was to perform was quite small and the front row of the audience would only be a few inches from where I stood, but I managed to squeeze all of the relevant props in.  Obviously being a tea room the lighting would not be theatrical, but there were 8 pendant lamps with enamelled shades spread throughout the room, unfortunately the bulb in one of those over the ‘stage’ area had blown, therefore casting an awkward shadow over me as I spoke.

Quite a gathering of railway staff had arrived by this time and there followed a variation on the old joke ‘how many railway staff does it take to change a lightbulb….?’  The dead bulb was removed and a live one liberated from a less important light, but then the bulbs got mixed up and the deceased one got replaced into its original holder, causing much hilarity!  I left the team to it, as I had to change before my audience arrived.

For the first half of the evening I would be performing Doctor Marigold, so I got into my long socks, britches, collarless shirt and loosely tied necktie and when I was ready still had some time to practice the fast-paced opening sales patter section before the room filled up.

Usually an audience will start arriving in dribs and drabs around 45 minutes before the show starts, with the bulk arriving in the final 20 minutes before curtain up, but on Friday night with ten minutes to go there were no audience members to be seen, but we were not concerned for soon we heard the whistle of a steam locomotive and a train  sighed into the station where it disgorged its passengers, all of whom quickly took their seats ready for the show.

George welcomed everyone and handed over the evening me.  We were up against a slight time constraint as the train had to depart at 10, so I made my opening remarks as brief as possible before launching in to Doctor Marigold which, to quote the man himself, was ‘wery much enjoyed.’  The proximity of the crowd made Marigold feel very natural, as if the kindly cheapjack was really addressing a crowd at a country fair, rather than an audience in a theatre.

The interval could be no longer than 10 minutes if the train was to depart on time, and I didn’t want to be responsible for its late running, so I changed the set as quickly as I could and got into my all black costume ready to recite the ghostly story of The Signalman in a perfect setting.

Usually I preface the piece by describing the circumstances of the Staplehurst rail crash in which Dickens was involved and which almost certainly inspired him to write The Signalman, but with the ever present stationmaster’s watch ticking away I had printed some copies of my blog post on the subject.

(https://wordpress.com/post/geralddickens.wordpress.com/7535) so that people could get a little background information before the show started.

Tan y Bwlch is a remote station half way between Porthmadog and Blaenau Ffestiniog which nestles beneath cliffs of grey slate and heavily wooded slopes.  In the darkness bats flitted here and there and as I told the story we could here the soft hiss of the steam locomotive panting impatiently, waiting to descend the mountain: it all made for a remarkable atmosphere.  George told me later that as I described the ‘wild harp’ of the wind in the telegraph wires a refrigerator in the kitchen started to whirr, causing those at the back of the room to shudder nervously.  All rather fun.

I finished the story at 9.50 and the audience duly filed back into their carriages on perfect time (I must say, I was rather proud of myself for that).  The train whistle sounded a mournful requiem and with a sense of foreboding the passengers began their journey into the darkness to meet whatever fate awaited them……this year I refrained from crying ‘Halloa!  Below there!’ as they rumbled away.

The demand for tickets to my show had been so great that on the Wednesday before I travelled to Porthmadog Iwan had asked me if I would be able to perform for a second night, on Saturday.  I was happy to do so,  although the station at Tan y Bwlch was not available so he had to scout around for an alternative venue.  On Friday evening I learned that I would be performing my second show in the salubrious surroundings of the Porthmadog Football club.

Once again the Saturday performance would be at 7.30 pm which meant that I had a day to myself and I decided to take a drive to Caernarfon, some twenty miles away.  Caernarfon is a wonderful town completely dominated by the castle that sits on the banks of the River Seiont and overlooks the Menai Straight and the island of Anglesey.

I strolled around the town for a while before making my way to the great fortress and walking into a shaky, grainy, washed-out coloured image from my past.  Many many years ago we took a family holiday in this part of the country and an old cine film exists of the grass covered bailey on which a large circular dais was erected where the investiture of Prince Charles had been carried out in 1969.

I have no actual memories of my childhood visit to Caernarfon, only those burnt into a tiny strip of celluloid and it was almost as if I had become part of that home movie when I saw a gift shop proudly advertising that they sold film, complete with a yellow and red Kodak sticker from the 1970s.

I admired the scenery from the top of the ramparts and I was dutifully impressed by the museum honouring the Royal Welch Fusiliers, but eventually I was castled out and left my childhood behind me once more.

It was getting on towards lunchtime now and I decided to drive up into the mountains to Llanberis where I could buy a sandwich and have an impromptu picnic by the side of the lake.  Llanberis is the focal point for those who wish to walk, or take a train, up Mount Snowdon and that mighty peak dominates the town (actually on Saturday a very thick and wet cloud, which contained Mount Snowdon, dominated the town).

Having finished my lunch I drove back to Porthmadog via the mountain road which took me around Snowdon and I was afforded some spectacular views of rock, mountain and wildlife.

Back at the hotel I had a little time to rest before setting off for my evening show at the football club.  After the spectacular atmosphere of the night before I wasn’t very confident that Saturday’s show would work and those doubts increased when I first walked into the brightly lit, rather sticky clubhouse.  Outside the rain fell heavily and I got very wet unloading the car, but soon all of the furniture was in and I placed the items for Marigold on a tiny semi-circular stage separated from the first row of the audience by a dance floor.

 

I was relieved to see that there were two small theatrical lanterns, one on each side of the room, which would illuminate the stage a little, unfortunately only one of them was working but it cast a healthy glow and meant that we could dispense with the harsh fluorescent overhead lights.

George arrived in a rather flustered state of mind having had a day of late running trains and general difficulty.  The weather had been bad and the staff of the railway had been followed by a tv film crew making a fly on the wall documentary, and nothing had been easy.  Other members of the staff arrived and they all had the same story to tell, all sharing their tales of woe.  Passengers seemed to have been a major problem and George muttered at one point ‘we are a narrow gauge railway with Brunel gauge passengers!’

Once more we waited for our audience who this time would not be arriving by train (there not being a station alongside the Porthmadog football pitch), but by double decker bus, which duly arrived, steamed up and full, at 7.30.  In the front row George had placed four paper plates with the word ‘reserved’ on them, for here would sit the royal party of Queen Victoria and her entourage, and who should turn up but my old friend Rita and her husband Frank from Llandrindod Wells.  You may remember that Rita and I performed The Queen and the Commoner together back in August.

With the audience seated and the Queen in place it was time to begin, and once more Doctor Marigold took to the stage and did his thing.  For all my doubts, for all the difficulties of performing in a  football club,  for all the problems with the lighting, for all the general negative atmosphere of a difficult day that hung over the railway and its staff, the show went really well, in fact I would say that my performances of both Marigold and the Signalman were better than the night before.  Indeed as I closed the second half I received a standing ovation (albeit led by my tame Queen who rose to applaud leading others to dutifully follow)

The show over I chatted and mingled before the audience had to make a run through the pouring rain for the bus back to Porthmadog.  One gentleman stood looking at my set for The Signalman and said ‘a very impressive block signalling system you have’.  I was rather proud of this, for I had constructed my own device to represent the inside of the signal box, but then he went on and added the words which I knew would be inevitable when I eventually visited a working railway for the first time: ‘of course, the proportions are all wrong, it is far too big, but very good anyway!’

Eventually the bus departed and I was left to load my car once more in the pouring rain.  I returned to the warmth of The Golden Fleece Inn and sat in the bar where I slowly wound down from the evening’s events.

It had been a most enjoyable two days both from a performance point of view, but also as tourist: Snowdonia is a most beautiful part of Britain and I hope to return one day soon.