Port

The last couple of weeks have been quite busy and so I thought a quick update would be timely on this wet and windy Saturday afternoon.

I've just completed work on a hugely enjoyable Big Finish story with a fabulous company of actors; we really did have great fun and our time together flashed by all too quickly. Over the next two weeks, I'm looking forward to being back in the recording studio to work on other stories, each quite different from the other and offering unique challenges. For the time being, all must remain teasingly secret but of course, I'll be posting updates just as soon as details are made available.

In addition to having a very festive time in the recording studio, this last week has also been deeply pleasing because of some other work which has come my way. On Monday, I auditioned for a production of Port, a play written by Simon Stephens and directed by Marianne Elliott. Having convinced myself that I hadn't got it, to my great surprise, the job was offered on Thursday and the read-through is on Monday. The play opens at the Lyttleton Theatre (image below) in late January and runs until late March with the possibility of a short extension into April.

It's amazing how quickly things can happen sometimes. In this instance, from audition to read-through in eight days! Equally amazing is that rehearsals and prior BF commitments fit together perfectly. Anyway, the National Theatre have published the following details:

Port

Stockport, 1988. It’s midnight. Rachel, eleven, and Billy, six, wait in the car in agitated excitement. Their mother is at her wits’ end with all their chatter and fighting and dreams of Disneyland. She is about to leave them for good. Their father, drunk in the flat above, has locked the door. It’s a pivotal moment, the beginning of a thirteen-year odyssey for two kids, largely abandoned and growing up in the deprived suburban shadows of Manchester, a city that felt itself to be the most exciting in the world.

I see you in the morning, on the first morning I stayed over at your house. Waking up. Watching you lying asleep next to me. You looked, you looked. It was like. I think about that more than you probably think I do.

A richly colourful portrait of a town with the everyday writ large, Simon Stephens’ Port is a celebration of the human spirit as Rachel, through sheer courage and despite an economic and political climate that pushes her into the very margins, looks to the future and opts for love and life and for something better.

He don’t do drugs. Nowt like that. He just. He really tries. I hope… This is a very big chance for him. I hope he doesn’t fuck things up this time. I hope he’ll be alright.

             There are some long anticipated audio releases next month and much more to come...