Bristol

In Fair Verona Where We Lay Our Scene ... Or: BRISTOL

Repeating my Wimbledon trick, I manage to get lost on Bristol’s Brandon Hill, weaving my way past canoodling lovers and sun-worshipping jugglers to the Old Bowling Green where we are performing. Rewarding myself with an excessively high-rise ice-cream, I survey our stage.

The camper-van rests in a square of grass muddled with soggy earth, sawdust and plastic sheets. Behind our stage is a characterful brick wall, pock-marked with nooks in which the clever festival organizers have placed tea-lights. Planted around our stage and the bowling green are fake white roses which add a lovely touch of romance. I’m pleasantly surprised by the familiar face of the festival’s assistant director, who by chance once directed me in The Merchant of Venice at Middle Temple Gardens. The nutshell that is the profession asserts itself — everyone knows everyone. The crew here are incredibly enthusiastic, youthful and energetic. They have adorned the brick wall with graffiti, including a deep red heart bearing the inscription ‘Rom+Ros=4eva’ (at the beginning of the play Romeo is besotted with a girl called Rosaline. Shakespeare keeps us on our toes from scene 1…). This inscription, perhaps, is not quite as elegant a sentiment as Shakespeare’s verse, but it gets to the point better than he does.

We are shown to our green room at the bottom of a slalom-course of hill. It appears hiking up to the stage each night will prove enough of a warm-up in itself. The green room is an old police interrogation cell, which has now been turned into a Wildlife Trust centre. Warming up in a room with bars on the doors and cardboard badgers in the corner takes our show to new heights of oddity.

Although the bowling green and stage are tucked in by trees, the view from their perimeter takes in Bristol in all it’s rolling glory, a city folding in on itself, it’s little bellies tumbling into one another. We are entrusted with a secret entrance from behind the audience, down yet another skiddy hill and through some tangling brush, which should make for a nice surprise.

The first performance is slightly distracted by a group of chattering foreign students, who leave fairly quickly at the interval. There is rain, but at this point in the tour we are wet weather veterans, and it would take a monsoon to make us lose our iambic. The matinee day brings sunshine, and although the sticky heat as ever makes it difficult to bounce around, the evening performance feels as if it’s our most reverent since Romania. Again —the stars, the light, the attention of the audience— it all combusts in a kind of hallowed performance. There is also the sense that the end is nigh.

The Sunday performance, we realise with surprise, is our last show in England. The rain has returned en force, and the floorboards of the stage —which once bounced with a dry snap— now squirt up tiny geysers of mud with every footstep. This could be a problem. But we soldier on, and the audience, brave souls, sit it out. As we emerge for the party scene there is a feeling of euphoria we’ve not had yet, as the rain whips around us and we bellow to make ourselves heard over the thundering din. Romeo sees Juliet, Tybalt sees Romeo, and during my final speech my line ‘I will withdraw’ seems hilariously apt as the floodgates open and the roar of falling water drenches out our keenest projections. We move into the Capulet dance as Romeo & Juliet meet for the first time, and out of the corner of my eye I notice Fay, one of our stage managers, enter from around the side of the van. This doesn’t normally happen. Then I hear the fateful words: ‘Ladies and gentlemen, I’m afraid we’re going to have to stop the show for safety reasons…’

As we break out of character mid-scene, and look down at the slowly encumbering swamp of mud that’s appeared beneath our feet, the audience hoot and applaud. I think they understand. And will be as glad as us to hit a hot shower. A disappointing farewell to England, but better than taking a cast full of invalids to Poland.

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