Sounds Fishy

Comments and observations compiled by Emma Shane

One of the great joys about watching Michael Frayn’s play Noises Off is seeing actors portraying a world they know very well indeed, their own. Sometimes, depending on the cast, certain moments have particular ironies when presented by particular actors, here’s a few light-hearted comments and observations about them.

“But, Dotty, love, you’ve been playing this kind of part for, well, you know what I mean.”

One of the features of Noises Off, is that it seems to be mainly about a group of performers going from back-stage to on-stage chaos night after night, and they keep doing it. About twenty five years ago, on TV there was a comedy programme whose main plot involved a similar theme. That programme was of course The Muppet Show, and it just so happens that Louise Gold got her first big break as a performer in 1977 when she became a professional puppeteer with the Jim Henson Company working on The Muppet Show, where she of course performed some of those idiots rushing from back-stage to on-stage night after night.

The song Tico Tico incidentally was a number once done on The Muppet Show, where, somewhat surprisingly (given that it’s a bit of a fast tempo song) it was sung by Annie Sue Pig.

“We were in weekly rep together in Peebles”

Dotty recollects that she and Selsdon were in weekley rep together. In fact Louise Gold and Sylvester McCoy have appeared together, about twenty years ago, only in their case it was in a West End Show rather than weekly rep. They were both had feature roles in a big revival of The Pirates Of Penzance at Theatre Royal Drury Lane. Miss Gold played Isabel, and Mr McCoy played Samuel.

“But she’s old enough to be...”

As Phyllis in Follies, Louise Gold managed to get tangled up with a young waiter. While as Tanya in Mamma Mia, she herself had to say to Pepper (the young stud she was dancing seductively with during the Act 1 finale) “Down boy, I’m old enough to be your mother.” And promptly serenaded him with ‘Does Your Mother Know’.

“If it wasn’t fixed to my shoulders I’d forget what day it was”

Goodness only knows how anyone would fix a day to their shoulders. (I just like the line - but I can’t think of any reason to include it here).

“Oh, yes, dear, it’s all nice and paranormal.”

In 1989, Louise Gold worked on a children’s music education television series, for Tyne Television, where she performed the character of a crazy ghost Fughetta Faffner, who was haunting her former home Faffner Hall, which Fughetta, when alive, had had built as a monument to music. Much of the series was taken up with Fughetta trying to defeat her great....great nephew Farkas (a music hater)’s philistine plans for the hall.

“Two weeks’ rehearsal that’s all we’ve had”

Ian Marshall-Fisher’s Lost Musicals shows were often done with “not enough rehearsal” . The Royal Festival Hall revival of Follies apparent gave it’s chorus about two weeks rehearsal, although the principal actors (including Louise Gold) got a longer rehearsal time that that. But perhaps one of the gems of too-short rehearsal times occurred in Ziegfeld. A lot of changes were made to Ziegfeld while it was running, and some of those changes were implemented with well extremely little rehearsal.

“I’ve only got one leg”

It is certainly not unknown for actors to adlib to stop an audience laughing. On the opening night of the Regents Park Open Air Theatre’s production of Kiss Me Kate it was raining heavily (in fact that particular opening night was eventually rained off). Leading lady Louise Gold ended up having to change the line “Oh this heat” to an adlib “Oh this rain”.

‘She stops and looks at the phone. It hurriedly starts to ring’

Many many years ago, most likely around the Summer of 1974, at the Sherringham Little Theatre, there was an occasion an actor out on stage had to adlib their way around a young ASM missing her cue to do a door-bell.

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