I was exhausted today and feeling a bit sorry for myself. I phoned my mum and told her I'd had less than thirty people in yesterday, "Oh that's terrible," she exclaimed with typical Herring tact. "Don't sugar the pill," I told her.
"No, but really, that's terrible," she replied, obviously taking full heed of my advice. To be fair she was just exercising parental concern. My business is a precarious one and I think she is worried about me never working again and blowing what little money I have accrued on card games and dating ever greater numbers of women (though I am currently about £600 up in my poker career, which pays for six of my 50 dates from last year). She said that dad had had an idea - why didn't I start working with Stew again and take advantage of all the publicity he is getting at the moment? I tried to tell her that it doesn't really work like that and perhaps Stew will want to take advantage of all the publicity he is getting at the moment by furthering his own career rather than worrying about mine. But it's nice that they're thinking of me. I look forward to their other ideas. Maybe I should try and work with Ricky Gervais, he's getting a lot of publicity at the moment too!
In reality getting thirty people to come and see one isn't terrible. It certainly isn't fantastic, but probably the most terrible number you could get is around six. With zero people at least you don't have to do the show and no-one actually finds out that no-one was at your show, because they weren't there to witness it. With two or three audience members you probably can justify making up an excuse about being ill or something and ask the punters who have come to turn up another day and double your audience. With six people you kind of have to put the show on, but the six people will be self-conscious and wondering why they are the only people stupid enough to come along. You can still sometimes turn that round and have a good time. But it's a bit embarrassing, especially if three of the audience are your friends. Or if two of them are your mum and dad and half way through they start offering you advice on who you should be working with if you want to get a bigger audience.
I still contend (and boy have I had practice at this - especially in my Australian jaunts) that if you can perform to thirty people and give them a good show then any bigger audience is a doddle. I have got a lot better at not blaming the people who have turned up for the fact that a lot of other people haven't turned up. The people who are there are the last people you should be criticising. I think I've done good performances so far at the Riverside. Yesterday was certainly the hardest and I was the least skittish I have been, but I still put everything I had into it, which helps explain why I was so tired today.
I went shopping with Diane which exacerbated my weariness and I wasn't looking forward to pushing my way through another show. But somehow at around 5 o clock everything turned around. My self-pity abated and my energy returned and I found myself really looking forward to performing. This was certainly helped by some very flattering emails that people who have seen the show have sent me. It might sound as mawkish as something that Emma Kennedy might say, but the honest reaction from ordinary punters means so much more than anything (good or bad) that reviewers might say.
Even arriving at the venue to find there had been a fuck up with the rota and that there was no-one here to tech my show didn't really throw me. Jenny Eclair's tech, Natalie, stepped into the breach and I went through the trickier bits of the show with her in the three or four minutes we had before curtain up.
There was over 50 people in the audience (what superlative would my mum have for that? Possible just "awful". But the theatre was over a third full. Take that "The Producers") and the show whizzed along and Natalie did an amazing job.
I do love this show. It's strange and leaves some journalists cold and confused (the stupider ones thinking that it is all pointless, which in some ways it is, but then that is the point - I might do a dumbed down version for stupider journalists in which at the end I explain what the show is about and how although it isn't a satire of Tony Blairs that it still covers some big issues, rather than leaving them to try and fill in the gaps themselves) and I always knew it was not going to be something that was massively commercial. But when I believe in it and when the audience suspend their coolness and just roll along with it, it's one of the most enjoyable things to do.
It's also something of an important stepping stone in my career I think. I feel it will lead to a very different show for this year, that I would never have done otherwise. And once I have moved on from Hercules, I don't think I will return to it. So we're heading into the last twenty performances of it now. Don't miss out on your chance to be one of the lucky six hundred people who are yet to see it.
Some tickets still available.
