An audience of one - the sequel to the sequel

When I first played the Edinburgh fringe in 1978, the first night I played to an audience of one. He wrote to me afterwards to say how much the show had affected him and that he'd taken up acting and performed at Edinburgh himself.

In these days of google and instantaneous information, you forget how it used to be. I knew he was a solicitor in a small English town, but how to get ahold of him? I had a job for the BBC on Crimewatch, recreating interesting and gruesome crimes for the viewing public. We had police advisors on the show and one of them came from the same small English town. So in the pub after a long day looking shifty and suspicious, I asked him to bring in the phonebook the next day so I could look him up.

‘Who are you looking for?’, he asked.

‘It’s such a common name, I won’t even bother to tell you’, I said.

‘Go on, try me.’

I told him.

There was a silence. Bloody silly question, how many people can there be in the world with that name? Hundreds, thousands even.

‘The solicitor?’

‘Er, yes.’

‘He’s my son-in-law.’

A reviewer writes (in French)

Emily Eells also came to last year's production of More Lives than One and wrote a review of it in French. If you can't read French, she says that's a jolly good show and you should come and see it. Actually, she was very pleased about the French extracts, saying:

Le texte, rédigé en anglais, est ponctué de touches françaises, notamment lors d’une longue scène extraite de Salomé, jouée entièrement en français par Les Clack. Sa pièce va jusqu’à surenchérir sur la façon dont Wilde parsème son texte de mots français, car il emploie un anglicisme anachronique pour désigner le succès du jeune Wilde, qui est reçu ­ et adulé - à Paris comme 'un people'. Cet audacieux néologisme, qui consiste à mettre au singulier le mot collectif 'people’, est une autre façon d’illustrer le titre de la pièce, en disant que Wilde possédait plusieurs visages, et qu’il a vécu plus qu’une seule vie. Espérons que cette pièce aura ‘more lives than one’, et que le projet de la rejouer à Paris au printemps se concrétisera. A ne pas manquer.

An audience of one - the sequel

Two years after I last played the fringe, I received a letter, via my director in Paris. The letter said Dear Mr Clack, in 1978 I was the only spectator at the world premiere of your play Cuddles at the Edinburgh Festival. It is still the funniest play I have ever seen, and since I saw you I have taken up acting and this year performed at the Edinburgh Festival…

This was a great lesson for me. Often when audiences are small, you really don’t feel like going on. But you never know who’s out there and the effect you might have on them.

A reviewer writes

A review! Maria Kesia Greenwood came to an earlier run of the show and reviewed it for http://www.oscholars.com/, an "Electronic Journal for the Exchange of Information on Current Research, Publications and Productions Concerning Oscar Wilde and His Worlds." Goodness. She has some nice things to say :

When Les Clack gives us a scene from The Importance of Being Earnest, Lady Bracknell comes over as far more sinister than Dame Edith Evans ever played her (in A. Asquith's film classic), a kind of sussurating serpent who assesses the man who wants to marry her daughter with a stupidity so crass that its cruelty is masked by laughter.

Here's that scene from the film:



Now of course, you need to come to the production in Edinburgh to see our version.

Life and death on the fringe

In 1978, the first time I played the fringe, I totalled 18 people in my first week of my run. I was the only show at the venue (The French Institute) not to have had a reviewer from The Scotsman. Well…unknown actor, unknown author, play, director…who’s interested? So in desperation on the Tuesday of the second week I went to the phone box on the camp site where we were staying, and putting on my best Scottish accent, phoned The Scotsman.

I asked for the editor and incredibly, they put me through. In character as an irate Scotsman I told him that I’d seen the best show so far in the Festival (mine) and that the poor actor performing (me) was dying the death from lack of audiences, due to lack of review etc. etc. and it was scandalous that he hadn’t sent a reviewer along. Damn me if he didn’t apologise and promise to send a reviewer asap. Which he did. It was Robin (or Robbie) Dinwoodie, who gave me a good reviw, and I got great audiences…for the last three nights.

An audience of one

It was thirty years ago that I last played the fringe. Difficult, not to say hell. I was a complete novice.

I had translated a French monologue Un Gros Câlin after the novel by Emile Ajar, and driven all the way from the south of France with wife, two small children and director. The only accommodation we could find was a caravan on the site at Port Seton, alongside Cockenzie power station. Opening night produced one man on stage and one in the audience.

As I had never even done a run through, we decided to go ahead. The man was great: did everything right - laughed in the right places, gave the right sort of silence when moved, applauded all on his own at the end. We chatted then that was that. Off he went.

The Stone Phallus

Did I tell the story of my early days trying to make a mark in the South of France, and performing in an empty swimming pool for the great and the good of St Tropez and the Cannes Film festival? We were also accompanied by 24 rutting peacocks (and hens), sundry hungry feral cats, the biggest moths this side of a horror film, and the star of the film 'The Virgin of St Tropez'.

At the pre-show dinner I couldn't get a word out of her, or into her. Portuguese! Pity though. She was a cracker. The height of the evening (for the audience) was when the erotic gargoyle sitting at the end of the pool, gigantic phallus baying at the moon, started peeing all over me and my partner as we soldiered bravely on through the text: someone had found the tap. We finished the play, wet but paid.