The Parting Glass : parting thoughts.

Well, that was interesting.

The Parting Glass - the play by Dermot Bolger I directed for Madrid Players, was, I think, a pretty fierce success. Certainly, a number of people spoke to me afterwards and told me how it felt like we'd put up a few pieces of their life on the stage, and situation after situation in the play touched them deeply. It's not the only kind of theatre, but it's the kind of theatre I like.

We also, I think, achieved what I was hoping for on Friday evening. We had a relatively small audience, some 45 people in all, and it was clear from the opening lines they were with us - John McClafferty's opening monologue got laughs in places I hadn't suspected. Now, the difference between laughter and tears as a physiological response isn't so great, and so all the laughter was setting up the bite of the play later on ( apart from, of course, the obvious fact that it's nice to make people laugh, and as an actor it always gives you confidence ).

And from there the energy just built, and I think we got what you hope for, but don't often get in a theatre : audience and actors so involved emotionally with the story unfolding that it creates a little community in there, and the energy coming from the audience feeds into the actors' performances.

Saturday wasn't quite the same : a bigger audience, a bit slower, I could see this rattled the actors a little early on. It was still technically a very strong show, but we didn't have that little bit of magic we'd had the night before.

I've no doubt I'll happily continue babbling later in the week.

In the meantime, I'm starting to develop a case of the DTs. More about that anon...