It all started in a little a small - ish room upstairs in the Radlett centre, where myself and four other members of the cast of Oliver! came to audition for the next RARE Production which happened to be this show. Peter Pan The Musical.
I'm going to structure this review as I have done with all the other posts I have done, as not only just a genuine review of the whole experience but also an interview of myself interviewing myself about the whole thing from start to finish. And I feel I must notify people who are reading this, this review will be
one hundred per cent honest. I'm not one who is known for sugar coating anything.
With any RARE show, it starts with the audition. Now at the audition, you turn up, you fill out a form with your name and address, postcode and any other personal details they want to know. Then once that is done they give you a number and you are called in groups of eight - ten people. In the audition, it feels quite strange auditioning in front of people you know from a show you've just done not so long ago we had the same director and choreographer that did Oliver! Oliver finished in early July and the audition for Peter Pan was in mid-August so not much time had passed since I last saw them, so it did feel strange to turn up at auditions and go "Oh Hi!"
You do the singing first, we sang as a group then individually just to test that we could sing, then we did a dance routine to see if we could dance, then we did a bit of acting, and just read for the character we felt we could get the most character out of. I read for Captain Hook as that was the part I really wanted. As it turned out I had a little competition for that part because somebody else in the audition also read for Captain Hook.
Two weeks had passed, I got a letter in the post and I was get quite nervous when receiving or preparing to receive news on whether you were successful or not. I considered myself lucky to have been chosen for Oliver! and this would be my second show with Rare. So I was preparing myself before I opened the letter as I did with Oliver, for the worst possible outcome. I had in my head that "Okay, It's going to be a no, but that's okay. If it is, it's no and nothing has changed" just so not to get my hopes up and prepare for disappointment. I opened it up and I took out this welcome pack and the letter said "Congratulations Daniel, you've been offered Mr Darling". My first thoughts to this were "Okay, great that I got a part" because there were less dancers and supporting cast for that show, so to get a part is a fantastic achievement in itself, but I also couldn't help but feel a great sense of being let down and disappointed that I didn't get the part I really wanted which was Hook. The feeling of failure to get the better role and be offered the lesser role instead.
I accepted it because I didn't want to not do it. I do enjoy acting, but it's not something I want to get into as a profession and credit where credit is due, I'm a free agent and I find my own work, I can afford to be fussy over what I feel is right for me. Most actors attitude is, the acting world is such a fickle business, you could be in one job on a film for eight months and then be out of work for the next two years and just accept any role that comes, however big or small it maybe. My attitude to acting is to afford to be picky and go with what your instincts tell you to do and advise you. At the moment my instincts advised me to accept and I'm not one to question my instincts. That's why I accepted the part.
As it turned out all my fellow cast members from Oliver got in as well, so I was around people I already knew which made rehearsals that bit more comfortable. Like any rare show, you pay a show fee of £140. That got sorted, and once that went through rehearsals started. Rehearsals started in September. Thursday 1st September in a school in Borehamwood. It was very odd and exciting being in a big room with all these people you didn't know. I'm never one to put myself out there when it comes to meeting new people. I'm quite sheltered when it comes to that, Once I'm used to them then I warm to them and become more friendly as the weeks go on. In the case of Peter Pan that took a long time to get used to. There were people there I already knew and they were interested in socialising and getting to know the new people, where as there am I, too scared and nervous to say "Hello" to anyone new. I just sat in the corner. Not literally but it was like that, not that I am not a very sociable person, I'm very sociable around people I feel comfortable with, it's a thing where I put barriers up around people new, because I don't know you, I don't know what to expect from you and I feel very uncomfortable around you. But once I'm used to you and things start to take hold, I become more familiar with that said person and I don't feel the need to put defences up.
There were a few rehearsals that I couldn't come to, or just couldn't make because I had no transportation to take me there and pick me up. If it's local in St Albans or in the area where I live, I can easily get myself there and back on my bike. It's very easy. No problems with it at all. But if you're talking somewhere like Borehamwood, unfortunately without a car, I would find it very difficult to get to and from this place on my own. I'm normally very good at travelling to places on my own, but in this instance, it just couldn't be done.
In the first week of rehearsals, I can remember it being quite a long one. It started at five pm and ended at nine pm. I can remember getting our books which were these proper big white books with a script and lyrics and musical tunes in them of the words and songs of the show, and going through the first number which was "Something in the air tonight". Then I also remember blocking the first scene in the nursery. I read the lines off the script and I thought, this is not a bad scene, I feel like I could eject a lot of fun and comedy into my character which would create a complete contrast to Bill Sykes in Oliver. The trouble with Mr darling is, he's barely in it, which limited my scene time. And for me, it those two scenes didn't really show off a good example of my talent as an actor. I had two scenes in the whole play. I was offered to be in the pirate scenes, however, to me, that proved far too difficult to keep up with and learn so I ended up having to turn that down.
As far as rehearsals went, there's not really a lot to be said other than, I showed up I did my bits, and in breaks where I wasn't being used, I'd go off somewhere quiet and read my script. To me, anyone else was insignificant. Which sounds horrible and quite ignorant of me to just dismiss people like they are of no subsequent value, but to me they weren't. My fellow cast members acted like children in rehearsals when they weren't being used, at one instance I remember a group of all the other mains and supporting cast, people of around the age of fourteen to seventeen going into another room, to scream their heads off and throw a water bottle around. It's pathetic and stupid and immature and I wanted no part in their activity as I saw it as a distraction.
We also had this group chat like we did with Oliver. It was a facebook group chat where someone from the group adds everyone else in the group to basically chat about nonsense and random stuff that came into conversation. This to me became very tedious, very quickly and I felt "What is the point in this?" "I just can't be bothered with it all" so I left the chat, and then I realised that by leaving the chat, I had established a barrier between me and them. And that bothered me.
We rehearsed for ten weeks starting from the 1st September, I think I managed to make six rehearsals in total, which isn't bad. Only I do recall not being there a lot and that, of course, meant I couldn't establish more of a relationship with these people if I wasn't there to do so. But you can't it when you're busy and have other things which get in the way like university work or another play or no transport to get you there and back.
When people see each other week after week for ten weeks, you do really feel attached to these people and feel like you know them. It gave me a great opportunity to meet some very interesting people, and the closer we got the show, that was the time I felt like I could put my barriers down and feel comfortable around my fellow cast members. Like take Nico for example who played Captain Hook, I didn't speak a word to him until we did the show, and he was a very nice person as were all the other cast members, none of them were intentionally nasty or vicious people, they were just a bit rude sometimes, immature and ignorant.
But I liked Nico, I liked Daisy who played Peter Pan she turned out to be a very nice person who seemed more mature than the others because she was the second eldest in the group being sixteen. I can remember her socialising with me a little and making an effort.
In preparation leading up to the show, I was lucky enough to get a slot of the Radio Verulam Out and About Show on Fridays 12pm - 2pm to promote the show and talk about it. That's always fun to do, just to come in and have a bit of a chinwag for half an hour promoting your show and trying to convince people to come along and watch it.
Me on Radio Verulam, Friday 11th November 2016 (12:30pm - 1pm)
When it came to the show, the Radlett centre is tiny. There is minimal space to do anything on that stage. And the set suffered from that. It all looked very lack lustre. I know that this is amateur theatre and that you're not to expect too much, but the design of the set wasn't all that great. The nursery scene was simply just one bed and a window, a table and a chair. That was it. We also had this massive thing which on one side was a sort of woodland area, when you turned it around it was the pirate ship. I was involved as being one of the people who was responsible for turning the set along with five other people, including a member of the Rare crew. We had to turn the set three times during act two of the show, as well as that, there was a song in Act one where Peter takes Wendy, Michael and John to never land, and Peter and Wendy are up on this platform where you harness them up and press a button on a switch and they would slowly rise up to make it look as if they were flying. This became simple yet a problematic job, where I had to harness Wendy up, quickly. Press the button for her to go up, and then on a black out as soon as the song finished I was to press the button which would let her down and I had to unhook her harness in the dark, which is not so easy to, especially when you're under pressure to do it, as safely and quickly as possible. It became quite a struggle for me. But I got through it.
The Pan Clan all together, before the Friday evening show.
All in all, I felt that the whole show as just a big let down, to be honest. It wasn't as good as I could have ever hoped it could be. I think that was due to this feeling of constant disappointment in myself in not getting the part I wanted and feeling guilty for thinking that our Captain Hook wasn't very good. No offence to Nico, because he's a very nice guy but I found that he lacked characterisation in his part, he was wooden, he didn't have as great a stage presence as myself. He's wig was in his face a lot, he had his back to the audience a lot and the whole thing just felt a bit boring, to be honest. Pan and Wendy were strong, some of the supporting cast were good. But I felt quite under valued and cheated in a part which I felt didn't do justice to me as an actor. I had fun with it and took much inspiration from characters such as Basil Fawlty and Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie they were a big inspiration to how I approached my role. I don't think any other cast member, took that much thought or preparation towards their role in this show as I did. I also showed passionate and dedicated commitment to this, which I felt was ignored by everyone.
Having said that, I do think that this all added to the experience of working in theatre which overall is my overall goal. I have now performed in two musicals with Rare Productions and the experience that you get from that is very rewarding indeed. It was a show which I felt everyone worked hard on and we should all be very proud of ourselves. It wasn't all bad, there are parts of that show that I look back on and think "That was very good" on the part of the mains and supporting cast because when you're putting on a show which has big numbers of people in it, especially with younger children, it is never easy because it is the responsibility of the people running the show to accommodate them as well as the mains and supporting roles. So I think the achievement of doing it and getting through it was good. Oliver was better, but this was something different, it allowed me to do a show which escaped into fantasy and was a lot more challenging as a result. I found working on this one quite difficult and like other shows I've worked on like "Twelfth Night" it wasn't one of the best shows I have worked on.
By the time we got to the Saturday, where we had to do two shows a matinee and an evening performance, that was hard work. To do it twice in the same day was hard work, and I just couldn't wait for it end. It was sad because Nico came up to me at one point and said to me "I don't want this to end" and I could tell how much he has loved this whole experience and I could see where he was coming from when he said that. I also felt like I should just enjoy this for what it is, as for me my time is running short with these rare shows, I can only do them until I'm twenty-one, when I reach the age of twenty-two, I would become too old to do them as the age limit is from six - twenty-one-year-olds. So I thought maybe I should just enjoy this for what it is, if this is to be the last rare show that I do, don't waste away the experience by wishing for it to be over and done with and I did get very emotional on the final show when Daisy started to sing that final song "There's always tomorrow" which she sings beautifully. The reality sunk in that it was over and that this was something that we could look back on feeling proud for what have achieved. So it's a part and parcal thing, where you want it to end so that you can move on but at the same time, you want to stay in the moment for a bit longer and cherish it just incase it never happens again.
Ending on a positive note, this was just an example of how you can come into something and making the most of the opportunities given to you, as you are the only person that is responsible for how well you use the opportunities given to you, and I always set out to do my best and I think I did that very well.
