Tales of Horses' Tales...

[byslantedlight]

Ooh, where to start... Went to see MS in Horses' Tales last night, which was a charity-do type performance in aid of The Horse Refuge and featured Nichola McAuliffe, Jenny Seagrove, Martin Shaw and Simon James (to be all official about it... *g*) And it was fab!

angel_ci5 used her magic to get seats that were in the third row, right at centre stage, so we had a brilliant view of everything. The theatre felt very intimate from there too, which surprised me - it was the Theatre Royal in Haymarket, London, so I thought it would feel bigger, somehow... Actually it was a bit maze-y and warren-like, and rugby-scrum-ish to get down the stairs to the stalls in the first place... *g* But we did!


I'm not sure what I was expecting really, since it wasn't a play we were going to see, but it turned out to be more like "an audience with..." than anything else, and more than that we were actually surrounded by celebrities of various shapes and sizes! I'm rubbish at recognising people, but one of the first things Nichola McAuliffe said from stage was "I recognise that laugh, that's Christopher Biggins" who turned out to be a few rows behind us, and Pam Ayres was apparently in the audience, and that little bald comedian guy was just in front and over from us (Matt Lucas? or am I mixing him up with someone else?) and various people that Angel recognised and I had no clue... Oh, and Marlene from Only Fools and Horses - Sue Holderson - was apparently there (I might have recognised her actually, but I missed her!) Various people were overheard saying they'd come along because they were friends of Jenny's etc, which was nice, and probably helped it all feel very friendly and intimate and so on, as if it was as much a friendly get-together as anything else!

So anyway - then it literally was the three of them, with musical interludes from Simon James on his guitar, reading poems and extracts of stories about horses and occasionally other beasties, on the stage! I've not brought the programme with me or I could be more precise, but off the top of my generally fairly sieve-like memory, Nichola read a couple of Pam Ayres poems, Jenny read John Betjeman's Hunter Trials (which I remembered from school, where I'd loved it: It's awf'lly bad luck on Diana, Her ponies have swallowed their bits... *g*), MS read Tennyson's Charge of the Light Brigade, and Betjeman's Diary of a Church Mouse, and The Legend of the First Cam-u-el, which I'd never heard before but was fun! Aaand - oh, lots more... There were sad ones and funny ones, and extracts from The Horse Whisperer and Black Beauty (that took me back!), and a couple of interspersed jokes which Nichola and Jenny aimed at Martin who was sitting in the middle... Oh, and Jenny read a really sad poem about the dog who didn't win a prize at the dog show - oh, it was Pam Ayres again, I thought it sounded like her, The Dog Who Didn't Win A Prize...

Jenny kept catching her heels in apparently perfectly heel-sized cracks on the stage floor, which was also apparently really slippery - eep! Mind you, she was wearing high-heeled backless shoes, so... double eep! *g* MS looked smart in black suit and white shirt - with grey stripey socks! I'm thinking that he may not pay much attention to his socks... *g* Jenny and Nichola were both wearing cream - Jenny a sort of suit-y thing, and Nichola a dress which I rather liked... erm... What else?!

Nicola McAuliffe was brilliant! The others were good, all bias aside, but I thought she was fabulous. Mind you, I was also staring at her to try and figure out where I've seen her, cos although Surgical Spirit is apparently her thing, I've never seen it, and yet she was soooo familiar. I kept thinking it was something to do with the government, and when I got home I googled, and it turned out to be...


...(sorry, only pic I could find) the journalist in Doctor Who: Sound of Drums who tried to reveal Saxon's treachery to his wife - and was not rewarded for it! Saxon, of course (played by John Simm, who was also at a theatre I passed on the way back, playing in Speaking in Tongues - I could get quite into this London-theatre-trip thing, you know... *g*), was Prime Minister at the time - so I was right, she was involved with government! Which of course has nothing to do with Horses' Tales, but was fun for me to realise... *g*

Oh, and she did a mad-crazy recital from Seabiscuit, which made me want to stand up and clap and clap - she's good! I wonder if she does lots of stage work - I'd quite like to go and see her in something else, actually...

They all looked like they were really enjoying themselves too, and they kept laughing at and with each other, and MS a few times caught JS or NM's eye with a sort of special wink or nod or smile or something, as if to say that was really nicely done, I enjoyed that, and smiled and laughed away at the various jokes - which made me wonder how much they'd rehearsed together (they mostly read from folders too), and how much they all sort of knew their own parts, and were hearing the others almost for the first time themselves? They all fumbled words occasionally, but it just made it all more natural and - I keep saying it - friendly.

Just after the interval, Jenny introduced her husband Bill Kenwright (I say "introduced", she did it as if everyone in the audience probably already knew him very well indeed!) who'd organised the logistics etc, who she'd cajoled into saying a few words - and he actually went on to be one of the best things in the show too (oh, they were all best things!) For someone who's not an actor (though I think he has acted, hasn't he? Many moons ago? Did he start out as an actor?) he was so natural up there, and very funny - he said he wasn't going to recite a couple of poems - by reciting them - and then he actually sang up there on stage, unaccompanied, un-anything, and he was very good! Anyway, I was well-impressed! He'd been sitting out in the audience before the interval too...

As we were leaving, I opened a door just before someone coming the other way got there - and it turned out to be Bill Kenwright! As I was working out the logistics of getting through, and then him getting through, Angel very brilliantly managed to say thank you to him for a wonderful night, so well done her, because it really, really was...

Turned out there was a champagne reception afterwards too, which is annoying cos I'd phoned up and been told that no, actually they didn't have tickets for that, and they had no information about it at all - so we didn't even have the option of deciding it was too expensive/intimidating whatever - but we walked through it on the way out of the theatre, and I didn't see MS or any of the other actors there yet (shame!) I gather people from the TV Lounge went though, and thought MS was a very nice bloke indeed, so that's nice to know!

Oh, and what else... I'm still rather a-buzz from it this morning! Got home very late and knackered, but in a happy way... It was so nice to see people enjoying what they were doing, and who they were, and knowing that they were doing a good thing too - there's a lovely energy with that sort of thing, isn't there, and it's stayed with me a bit... *g*

Anyway - had better shut up now, though I'm sure I've missed out tons of wonderful things - if anyone's got this far, let me know if I have! *g*