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(ear) (ear)
Portrait paints a funny old picture
Kim Carnock (left) and Lorna Meehan painting their own portrait of being an actress Portrait of an actress as RoguePlay Theatre Company, The Other RSC Station Pub Sutton Coldfield
ACTING is a
profession where reality is always at arms length, gushing smiles
of welcome can quickly
be replaced by grimaces and insults after parting. So a play which starts with two actresses
bitching behind a screen, changing costumes and characters through a
hail of insults and put downs is pretty well par for the course. Then each argues about what scene to do next
followed by attempts to upstage each other at every opportunity. That is world created by Kim Charnock and Lorna
Meehan of RoguePlay Theatre in a play they have written themselves. There is the job centre bureaucrat who likes
forms and moronic questionnaires filled in to a formulae that cannot
bend one iota from the straight and narrow confines of
box ticking. Her system just cannot grasp the concept of the
transitory work of actresses. Then there is the community
workshop leader who has to deal with a woman who turns up with her child
“I had to bring him, stop doing that you little mongrel”
complaining about a play scheme that costs £1. For titivation we have the
lusty Shakespeare lecturer who gets excited at all the sexy bits hidden
in within the plays of the Bard – and, believe me, there are a lot.
There is the RADA interview where concept
is all or might not be or could be and we have the two old soaks
of actors, living on past glories – still bitching of course – and a
wife with a reputation who even tried to seduce Noel Coward.. Then we had the critics, not that they were
talking about me – I couldn't understood a word they said. If I can't
spell it I don't use it which leaves me with the vocabulary of
reasonably talkative parrot. But anyone who reads some of the gushing in the
heavies and specialist mags, or Pseuds Corner in Private Eye,
might recognise some of the pretentious piffle spouted about
(make pretend quotation marks in the air) the arts from time to time –
post modernistically speaking of course. A couple of episodes were perhaps not based on
experience, such as Hamlet as a somewhat inconsiderate friend after
knocking off his girlfriend's father. All in all though this is a funny show, well
observed and with laugh out loud moments. They even managed to cope when
a total lighting failure left the room in blackness carrying on manfully
in darkness then by the house lights until the spots were restored. “We
should put that in the act.” said Lorna. No one had the heart to tell
her it was there already. The duo produce dozens of characters, all well
defined, in scenes which anyone who has ever been
involved with acting will find, at times, very close
to home. Roger Clarke
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