I have an agenda.
This agenda is flawless. It is perfect down to the tiniest detail. Nothing can stop me from achieving my plan. This is a guaranteed fast-track to the perfect Temple Studios experience.
And as soon as I step out of the lift into the trailer park it’s scattered from my brain like dust into the wind.
Great.
- Sarah Sweeney’s Romola was fantastic. The perfect mixture of caution and childishness (the scene where she prepares her office was so sweet and sad at the same time.) From her office, she walks out into the corridor but stops dead in her tracks when she hears Oliver Sawyer as the Doctor behind her. “That’s a nice dress you got there.” He starts to walk towards her, and she runs away, but he catches up to her easily. They speak by the shrine, but I can’t hear.
- Romola leaving, I follow her with a small gaggle of white masks - who are all really small - one of whom is clutching an iPhone in her hands. I try my best to avoid her, sticking to the back. Here, my height truly is an advantage. From down the stairs we her maniacal laughter. “I’m Frankie Gardner! Remember my name!” Slowing down and visibly nervous, Romola peers around the handrail. Seeing Conor Doyle’s Frankie, she goes to leave but he’s already seen her. “Hey, get over here!” Romola steps down. “You, you tell Mr Stanford my name. Frankie. Frankie Gardner. Tell ‘im to remember Frankie Gardner!” And then, giggling at a joke only he knows, he saunters off.
- Romola, confused and nervous, continues her voyage, attempting to open locked doors. Soon, she turns into a plush, crimson room where Sam Booth’s Stanford is kneeling, deep in prayer. “Uh, Mr Stanford? I got a package for you.” He is silent, but his hands stretch out, beckoning Romola to place the package in his hands. Suddenly, he stands up and looks at her. They talk to each other, her confused yet excited, him ever omniscient. They begin to dance, getting closer and closer. He stops her and twirls her around viciously. It’s a tender scene, but becomes more and more strange as it continues, and Stanford knows something that she doesn’t. He lays a hand on her cheek: “Put them to shame, Romola. You put all humanity to shame.”
- Stanford departed, Romola leaves and heads up to the Domestic Set, where she is attended to by Chihiro Kawasaki as a young, quiet Seamstress. Leaving Miss Martin, I follow the Seamstress where she has a white mask apply bruising and blood to a diagram of a face. She then heads back into the set.
- Adam Burton’s Conrad stands, exhausted. “Conrad, please come to Studio 8.” Oh, shit.
- I’m not sure why, but the lighting is perfect. Everything just looks so cinematic and wonderful. The image of Conrad, shielding his eyes from the blinding golden light, treading his way towards the dilapidated shack is permanently etched into my brain. Taking the hand of another mask, he shines a torch across the dusty window, and taking a deep breath and a last look at the outside world, opens the door and vanishes.
- Jesse Kovarsky’s young, eager Grocer. I pick him up at the end of his loop and follow him to the birthday tent from there.
- The birthday tent is my new favourite scene. Is it the music, or the setting, or the characters and the harsh undercurrent to it? The party over and Marshall alone, Pascale Burgess’ Alice slithers into the tent. Her manipulation of Eugene is horrible. He’s like putty in her hands, and is delighted when he gives him the script. He runs back, and puts on his apron and bow, and leads a mask into a 1:1.
- We’re into the second loop by now, so I head to the bar and catch the tail-end of Conrad and Andrea’s (Lily Ockwell) magic act. Sonya Cullingford is my favourite Exec, so it was nice to see her Telephone Man one last time. Then, she vanished backstage, leaving Studio 3 strangely Execless. I buy a Diet Coke, because hey, why now, it’s my last show and financially I’m now in the position to not only spend £48 on a ticket, but also £1.50 on a can of Coke. It was damn good.
- Carl Harrison’s Tuttle. He’s quiet and reserved, but there’s an intelligence behind his eyes. Filling in the outline of a crescent moon with crimson paint, he looks up. “Store’s closing. Everyone out.” He picks a white mask for a 1:1 and I wait outside. The store looks so sinister in the dark. Slowly, the lights come on and around the corner comes Tuttle, but he’s stopped in his tracks by Simon Palmer’s Vaudevillian Harry. “Gee, what’s that on your hand?” Tuttle looks around nervously. “Uh, paint. I was…painting.” “Ah! Well, it sure was nice seein’ ya!” Harry strides off, and Tuttle watches on. Back in the shop, we hear Stanford’s announcement regarding Romola’s death. Tuttle takes out his notebook and next to Romola’s name writes “COULDN’T SAVE”.
- He looks up again. “Store’s closing.” Again, I wait. Because a) Carl Harrison’s great and b) I’m persistent. I was rejected again until the third time, when he announced the store’s closure and, as I stood outside, clutched my wrist tightly.
- The 1:1 was intense and terrifying and mysterious and tender and caring. At the end, when he pushed me out into the bar, he said: “Now you be safe, you’ll do that, won’tcha?” I nod. “Good.” The door slowly shuts, Tuttle smiling at me.
- In the bar Miranda Mac Letten’s Faye sings the Shangri-Las. It’s sad and desperate and it seems as if in those two minutes she can see her whole life and dreams crumbling in front of her.
- Dazed and emotionally shocked, I stumble upstairs to the desert, where I manage to find a room in which moonshine was being brewed illegally and later the Dust Witch presiding over a strange ceremony to an audience of scarecrows.
- Luke Murphy’s Dwayne arrives and does a desperate dance full of hatred and self-loathing. As I watch, I turn to my left. The Dust Witch is inches from my face, staring at me.
- I follow her and Dwayne down the the church. She’s so desperate to calm Dwayne down that she holds his head underwater until he’s screaming for breath. And then, he falls, flipping himself back and causing a tsunami to flood the cramped room, soaking me and most of the other masks. They leave, we follow.
- I know that my time is nearly over. And I slowly walk towards the stairs, taking one last look at my favourite floor in the show. I walk down, slowly walking through the snow room, past the dressing tables, and down into the noise of the finale. The Gatekeeper dances on the stairs, looking like Vincent Vega in Pulp Fiction.
- I love the finale. It’s so surreal. There’s this upbeat party set against backdrop of deceit, murder and hatred.
- When the lights cut to black, the applause is vicious. It was one performers last show, and from one corner of the set comes the laddish chanting of a name. It was brilliant.
- As the Masquerade Is Over plays, it hits me that the masquerade really is over. I can never come back to Temple Studios again, and that fills me with a sadness that just makes my happiness all the more happy and poignant.
- The Drowned Man was wonderful. It was dark and sad and twisted and ruthless, but it was also happy and hopeful and funny and rude and lively. It was exciting and fun and interesting, just like any good theatre piece should be. But The Drowned Man was so much more than that, wasn’t it?
Temple Studios
