Measure for Measure

So, it’s that time again, the end of one of those cycle of weeks in which the washing doesn’t get done and the flat gently declines into squalor and trousers get torn and you find yourself with more LX and gaffer tape stuck to your clothes than you realise you had clothes to stick to and…

… in short… it’s the end of another production week.  As per tradition, I’ve been Production Electrician on a play at RADA – this time, Measure for Measure by Mr Shakespeare the Dude.  And oh my goodness it’s been different from the last show.  The last play I was Prod LX on  – Company, by Stephen Sondheim – was an all singing, all dancing, hoola-hooping spectacular featuring more snazzy equipment in the rig than the retinas can comfortably conceive, as well as a range of American accents, jazz-club atmosphere and recurring themes on the value of knowing lost of people and getting married.  This time round, the set is quite literally made from a scrap yard, and all things are shades of black, white and steel grey, with interval music torn from the operas of Vienna and costumes cut to the early 1900s, complete with spectacles and a collection of spectacular moustaches.  And it’s really, really good.  I mean, obviously, I’m a bit biased, because I did a lot of the cabling for this show and thus have a certain sentimental attachment to it, but honestly, it’s really, really good.  If you knew what the set was made of you wouldn’t believe the things that it can become; the lighting is both dramatic and subtleplaying tricks on the eyes that again, you wouldn’t spot unless you’d been actively involved in rigging it, but which manages to make everything sort of glow and suggests times and feelings without ever screaming ‘this is so’.  The acting is absolutely brilliant – and as a techie it is my job to be automatically sniffy about any acting, but I kid you not, it’s grand – and all things considered, I am dead proud to have been a part of this play.

Measure for Measure is one of Shakespeare’s ‘problem plays’.  It’s not a tragedy because no one snuffs it, and it’s not a comedy because, while in places it’s very funny, there’s not one set of identical twins to be found in it.  But yes, for those of you who are wondering, it does have a nun in it, and a Duke who pretends not to be a duke and a great deal of lusting and a riff about being hanged and a number of rather dubious cases of mistaken identity and a lot of chit chat about prostitution.  I mean, I’ve always been of the ‘come on guys, have a man with a gun come in’ school of narrative craft (as immortalized by Raymond Chandler!) but I gotta say, without any weapons of any kind getting flourished at any point, I was still sat in the front row being gripped through the dress rehearsals.  (Which isn’t bad for a dress rehearsal!)  You can sense intelligence dripping out of every word – my god, but the director is a bit clever!  It’s reached the point now where every time he speaks, my Assistant Lighting Designer grabs me by the arm and tells me to write it down because when he does speak, there’s such a great deal of casual intellect casually being brilliant that you can fairly much guarantee there’ll be something worth writing down as it happens.  I have never yet heard any other man inform his cast that actors must develop photo-tropism (in order to find their light!) or to request a lighting designer to make their cues less bi-phasic.  This is, for that matter, the first show I’ve ever worked on where the production desk, as well as having ridiculous amounts of chocolate on it, has a book on biological morphology lounging around between the toffee wrappers.

All in all… a fantastic experience!