Portsmouth

In Fair Verona Where We Lay Our Scene…

... or in this case, Portsmouth. We’ve set up our traveling city of Verona today on university grounds, where there is a conspicuous lack of flowers. We’re sort of marooned on a roundabout and the only point of reference is a strange octagonal building behind us that the Navy owns apparently. So it’s off-limits to us and we are green-room-less. There’s probably some sort of alien autopsy going on behind us as we perform.

With no green room, we all squeeze into the costume tent and await the masses. There’s something comforting about lounging and warming-up in view of the audience, and this has come with growing into the play I think; playing and enjoying more. We’re positioned on a semi-slope so the van doors slam shut even when they’re meant to be open, proving for some, ahem, comedy moments.

Whatever can be said for our lacklustre setting, the audiences are fantastic. Every time we spark dialogue with them, they’re glowing and ready to respond. Adults and children alike come around for autographs afterwards and buff up our tarnished egos. The stewards are lovely too – when we realise that the flags that mark the seating boundaries are out-flapping the actors, the assistant director asks them to take them down in the interval. ‘Oh, but we can do that now!’ they said, ‘We’re very discreet!’.

The guiltiest pleasure of touring is the necessity of eating out, and we discover a fine banquet in Rosie’s Vineyard. We eat thick chunks of meat/vegetarian substitute, drink copious amounts of wine and suck helium from Rosie’s balloons. Then a certain collective of the cast head out to a very tame club, which we hear they liven up immensely by their post-show energized presence (photographs available for a small fee...). Later that night one of said dancing collective gets locked out of their B&B bedroom and has to wake up the landlady, still dripping from the shower in only a towel. Ah, the giddy joys of touring.

We spend our final day in Portsmouth sunning on Southsea Pier, most of us be-hatted and whimsical like something out of a Hemingway novel. A moment of drama occurs when we realise that the nearest toilets are actually ‘ironic’ buckets for patrons to do their business in. Only in Portsmouth.

Out in one of the busy, sunny parks, I hear a gaggle of girls whispering:

‘That’s that Shakespeare bloke!’

And then:

‘Oy! Shakespeare!’

I think about explaining that as much as I wish I had, I didn’t in fact write the play. But hey ho.

Perri Snowdon

Have you seen the show? Post your thoughts on the Romeo and Juliet blog.

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