Is a Moment of Brilliance Worth It?

Episode 44: Is a Moment of Brilliance Worth It?

This podcast starts a series of talks between Lindsay and Craig on the plays they saw during their trip to England. The first show was “Being Tommy Cooper” and the question of the podcast is this: Is a moment of brilliance worth an otherwise mediocre show?

Show Notes

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Trailer for the show we saw

The glass/bottle routine

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Episode Transcript

Welcome to TFP, The Theatrefolk Podcast. I am Lindsay Price, resident playwright for Theatrefolk.

Hello! I hope you’re well. Thanks for listening.

Today is the first in a series of the podcasts Craig and I recorded while in England. But first, let’s do some THEATREFOLK NEWS.

Do you ever get together with other drama teachers in your district or your area? Hold a mini-conference? Do a professional development day? Would you love to have some materials to distribute to your other teachers for your meeting? Well, we would love to send you some materials! We have catalogues, electronic catalogues on CD-ROMs that have a slew of free teacher resources on them, we have sample plays we can send out, interactive educational demo DVDs – all you have to do is go to our website, click on the Free Stuff banner, and you’ll find the contact page. Tell us when your meeting is, how many people are attending, whether it’s high school, middle school, or both and we’ll send you out something lovely.

Lastly, where, oh, where can you find this podcast? We post new episodes every Wednesday at theatrefolk.com and our Facebook page and Twitter. You can find us on the Stitcher app AND you can subscribe to TFP on iTunes. All you have to do is search on the word “Theatrefolk.”

Episode Forty-Four: Is A Moment Of Brilliance Worth It?

So, Craig and I recently had an amazing vacation in England, and a little bit of Paris, and because it’s the thing we love – it’s our life, our job, our everything – we took in a lot of theatre and our theatrical experiences ranged from awestruck amazing to sneaking out at intermission. These shows resulted in a number of great conversations and a number of questions and we just happened to, you know, record them. So, of course, one of our questions is the one for today’s podcast. Does a moment of brilliance – you know, where you get the goosebumps going and you’re, like, just awestruck, you’re enthralled – in a play that is, for the most part, pretty mediocre, is that worth it? When you have one moment of brilliance and the rest, really, not so much. Well, let’s find out.

Lindsay: Hello. So, Craig and I are currently sitting at a lovely little kitchen table in our holiday letting in the United Kingdom in England. We are taking a vacation, isn’t that right?

Craig: Yes.

Lindsay: Yes.

Craig: And you’re happy and you’re not writing.

Lindsay: I’m happy. I’m not writing.

Craig: I’ve seen you happy.

Lindsay: Yes.

Craig: And I’ve seen you writing. But I’ve never seen you happy and not writing.

Lindsay: Hmm. Well, that’s because, in England, they do tea properly. So, we went to a coffee shop yesterday and I got a pot of tea and, in our little place that we have here, there is a kettle, and see? You can tell in my voice. I just started smiling. But that is not what we’re here to talk about – whether or not I can be happy and not write. We’re here to talk about theatre. So, one of the things that we’re doing on our holiday is we’re going to see a lot of theatre and I guess it’s not a true vacation since we’re actually trying to do a podcast about the shows that we go see, but we can’t not talk about it, right?

Craig: Yeah, I think you have to talk. If we see theatre, we have to talk about it.

Lindsay: Right, because we have to still, that’s kind of, the point of theatre, I think, is that it has to carry on.

Craig: And why not share what we learn while we’re here?

Lindsay: And why not share what we learn? So, our very first night, as in, we got off the plane, Craig did some driving which was, how was that?

Craig: It was harrowing and it was more theatrically dangerous than anything you’ll ever see on stage. You know, you know, you know about driving on the left-hand side of the road and, academically, you can say in your head, “Well, you just kind of flip everything over. It’ll probably take some adjusting.” But it takes a lot. Actually, it’s a real mess in your mind, just even conceiving of turning around the corners. I was terrified that I would have to make a right-hand turn because I just couldn’t picture making the turn from the left lane to another left lane. It was just, oh! My brain hurt the whole time.

Lindsay: At this exact moment, Craig literally is reliving the moment and has his face in his hands. And then, the roundabouts are a whole other story.

Craig: I think, by the time we got here, I felt like I was a roundabout champion.

Lindsay: They warn you about the roundabouts but they don’t really warn you about the roundabouts. That was one of the last conversations I had with someone. It was like, “Beware of the roundabouts.”

Okay. So, we drove and we went to our first stop is a grocery store. This is how we vacation. We go to local grocery stores. And then, I had my pot of tea. And then, we ended up, we were staying in Saint Leonard’s by Sea which is next-door to Hastings, and in Hastings, we went to the White Rock Theatre and we saw a play called Being Tommy Cooper.

Craig: Tommy Cooper was, we didn’t know of him, but he was a very well-known comedian here in England.

Lindsay: I think you probably say iconic in the seventies – sixties and seventies.

Craig: There’s a lot of videos on YouTube but we’ll link to some of them in the show notes.

Lindsay: And I think we should link to that spoon bottle trick.

Craig: Yes.

Lindsay: Yeah. So, he was on TV and he was iconic. He was known for wearing a fez. He was known for being a magician who screws everything up.

Craig: Yeah. He was a magician and yeah, he was a magician and everything messed up and the tricks kind of got exposed as he went along. So, think of, like, a kind of blend of a musical performer and sort of a Penn & Teller type where you see they expose the underlying trick behind it and it becomes just as magical even though you know what’s happening behind the scenes.

Lindsay: So, the reason we want to talk about the show, and kind of the reason we went and saw the show aside that it was theatre and it was, like, it was literally a 20-minute walk along the ocean – we’re on the ocean, there’s an ocean right outside our door right now! And, it’s that going to see a show that is about a real person that we don’t know – we’re not familiar with. And, further to that, we’re not familiar to the culture that he embodies, I think – a comedic kite-type of culture that he embodies. And he died on stage. He had a heart attack on stage in the middle of a trick.

Craig: And people thought it was part of the show.

Lindsay: In 1984. So, it’s even another layer of not knowing because there’s a whole generation in Britain who don’t know who he is.

Craig: We even had a chat with the lady who sold us the tickets and she was saying that a lot of people didn’t even know who he was anymore so we didn’t feel alone.

Lindsay: And I think that was reflected in the audience because it was not a full house by any way or stretch of the imagination. We were all in the lower stalls and that wasn’t full.

Craig: No.

Lindsay: So, we want to talk about how do you put on a play about a real person who your audience may or may not know? And I think that was the first mistake of this play – calling it Being Tommy Cooper. I think that it could have been that I think they chose that title because they thought it would be a draw and I don’t think it was a draw. It certainly wasn’t a draw here.

Craig: It wasn’t a draw here, yeah. I don’t think… Yeah, you’re right. That’s probably… You know what? I hadn’t even thought of that but that’s probably the best point – it didn’t need to try and tell his story because I don’t think, necessarily, a lot of people knew it anyway. So, the name itself wasn’t necessarily a draw.

Lindsay: And what they’re trying to sell in the play, I’ll just read you exactly what it says on the leaflet. We didn’t get a programme because it was £3.00.

Craig: And we’re cheapskates.

Lindsay: And we’re cheapskates. But what it says on the little leaflet is that it’s in Las Vegas, 1954, which was very interesting. We had a gentleman attempt a, he said it was a Boston accent…

Craig: It was like a Long Island…

Lindsay: It was somewhere America accent. 1954, Tommy Cooper faces the prospect of his first big failure. “As personal and professional problems collide, he faces stark choices about the future. Packed with classic lines and hilarious routines, Being Tommy Cooper…” – that’s also supposed to sell us, I think – “…is a celebration of Britain’s favourite comedian,” – again, how do we know? We don’t know. “…an exploration of his darker side.”

Now, that is the key term because this fellow had a dark side, I think, like no other. Like, we have dark comedians. I think this guy was really, really dark.

Craig: I don’t know. I don’t know if that’s necessarily true. See, I think a lot of…

Lindsay: I did a little reading.

Craig: I think a lot of show business people, especially the really happy ones, are really dark behind.

Lindsay: Well, I wish there had been more dark, I think.

Craig: Really? I thought it was mostly dark.

Lindsay: Really?

Craig: Yeah.

Lindsay: No, well, isn’t that funny?

Craig: I felt that the only light scenes were the scenes where he was on stage. That was the only time he ever seemed happy.

Lindsay: Well, I guess – and here’s another point – so, when trying to tell this story, there was Tommy, there was the character of Tommy Cooper who I thought was the best of, and then, there was a guy who was an American who was supposed to represent another type of failure – I didn’t need him. And then, there was his agent who was very important in the life of Tommy Cooper, but I don’t know if I needed him. And then, he had a wife who we never saw and a girlfriend and we saw a little bit of her. I wish this had been a one-man show with just Tommy Cooper showing me the light and the dark of his life by doing the on-stage and the off-stage. That’s what I wish this show had been.

Craig: Or him and the agent. See, I didn’t understand… There was a character who was a… There was the American character, I think was probably part of a fictionalized narrative.

Lindsay: Yes.

Craig: And he as a past vaudeville performer and had amassed a collection of basically every joke ever told on vaudeville and was selling these encyclopaedias of jokes to comedians and so he was trying to sell this encyclopaedia to Tommy Cooper. I think the point of it was that it was showing Tommy what his life could become when this type of comedy dies, but I didn’t feel that was necessary because it didn’t foreshadow anything because that’s not how his life ended and that’s not how he died.

Lindsay: So, this is a really good example of a show trying to find, because how do you, because when you’re telling someone’s real life, real life can be stranger than fiction and there are some elements that can be so ripe for the stage. But then there’s a lot of our real lives which are really kind of boring, and how do we marry that on stage? And how do we find a theatrical overlay for this? So, I think you’re right. I think that they tried this theatrical overlay of mirroring, perhaps, another comedian’s downfall. But I don’t think it worked. I don’t think it was necessary.

Craig: Well, I feel, the problem I think with doing biographical theatre is that, unless you’re purposefully fictionalizing something, you’re stuck to the reality of what that person’s life was. So, if all we really know of Tommy Cooper is that he was a brilliant performer and much loved, but then off-stage had a drinking problem and had some domestic issues, there wasn’t anything particular dramatic about that apart from telling us those two facts. And that’s where I feel like you’re really trapped, I think, as a writer, when you’re trying to do something that’s biographically based. You’re more stuck to the truth of what really happened and, like you say, most of our lives are actually just quite boring. There’s mundane day-to-day things… Heck, you don’t see Hamlet going down to the market to pick up apples.

Lindsay: No.

Craig: It’s not interesting.

Lindsay: And this is what I come across time and time again when I’m working with student writers – that’s what they want to write because that’s their lives, right? They want to write the full-on conversation where we get all of the small talk with no context or subtext. If we go to a restaurant, they have to start with ordering and I’m like, “No, no, no. Let’s get to the bit. Let’s get to the point.” Which leads us to a great disagreement that Craig and I have about this show which I like because, in this sho, which I found 95 percent boring – I did and I’m going to put some of that on some travel jetlag and it had been a long day, but I just didn’t, I wasn’t connecting to what the stories were telling me except for the last scene before Act One. And in the last scene before Act One, we have Tommy Cooper come on and he’s addressed the audience before – not that successfully.

Craig: Where we’ve seen bits of his routines.

Lindsay: And we’ve seen bits of his routines and he comes out and he’s sort of, he starts – and I know this because I’ve seen it on YouTube – he has a very specific routine involving a spoon and a bottle and it’s spoon, bottle, bottle, spoon, spoon, bottle, bottle, spoon – it’s about a floating spoon and it’s revealed as a sham. And he comes out and he say, “Glass, bottle, bottle, glass,” and he’s holding on a bottle, or a half-empty bottle of whisky, and a half-empty glass. And right there, with two words, we know he has a terrible drinking problem and we know it’s bad. And then, he says, “I have three confessions,” and we’re riveted. Like, you know, I was falling asleep two seconds before. I’m riveted and he comes right out and he says the words, “I hit my wife.” And someone in the audience visibly gasped.

Craig: Audibly gasped.

Lindsay: Sorry, audibly gasped. I have little goosebumps right now! It was a brilliant moment and I wish that’s where the play had started. You say…

Craig: Well, that’s vital. Let me say it for myself. I say – this is what I say. I say that the only time that Tommy Cooper directly addressed the audience – all the other characters had monologues where they talk to the audience.

Lindsay: Yeah.

Craig: The only time Tommy Cooper addressed the audience was when he was doing…

Lindsay: His bits.

Craig: …his bits, his routines. And, if you notice, there were lots of times where it looked like he was going to speak to us but he never did. There was an opening montage where you met various characters, and every time the lights would come on him, he was silent.

Lindsay: I liked that, too.

Craig: And then, the lights would go down and another little thing he had would happen somewhere else. So, we kept seeing these routines and then, all praise to Danny Williams who was the actor…

Lindsay: Damien, Damien.

Craig: Damien Williams who played Tommy Cooper, he was brilliant and certainly, in my mind, evoked everything that I remembered about the YouTube videos that we watched last week.

Lindsay: I agree, I agree.

Craig: So, he was brilliant, and so, when he came out with that particular piece, he interrupted a pattern in our brains that we had established. He interrupted the pattern that, “Oh, he’s going to come out. He’s going to do something funny. The trick is probably going to fail. We’re going to laugh and he’s going to make a lot of jokes.” And so, I think, when he comes out with the line about hitting his wife, it hits us like a Mack truck for a lot of reasons, not just that he hits his wife. I think, if someone just walked out and said, “I hit my wife,” I’m not sure, unless you really knew him, you wouldn’t even trust what that person was saying was true. But I think we trust that statement because it comes out of such a place of safety for us at that point because we’re expecting something funny and there’s no way he’s going to say something that’s not funny. And, for half a second you think, “How is this going to turn into a punch-line?” and it doesn’t. It’s the only time he actually really addresses us, the audience, and we really do get that glimpse of what it is to be Tommy Cooper.

Lindsay: And I wish that that had, and then, when we were so excited because it’s like, “Oh! And then what’s going to happen in the second act?” and then, nothing happens in the second act.

Craig: Not really, no.

Lindsay: Ugh. And then, our next question was: If you get a moment of brilliance in a play, is that play worth it?

Craig: Well, I felt it was. I just wish I knew that the second act wasn’t necessary so I didn’t have to stay. But I was compelled to go back after the…

Lindsay: Yes.

Craig: …after the intermission.

Lindsay: Yeah.

Craig: And we’re not shy about leaving shows at intermission.

Lindsay: No, we’re not shy at all.

Yeah, I think you’re right. I think that, well, I’m still thinking about that moment. So, that means that the play, at some point, at some level, is successful because it made me still remember something about it. It left an impression on me, you know, 24, not 24 hours but 12 hours later.

Craig: So, I think the problem, dramatically, was that, see, I don’t know too much about his life but I do know that he was successful and much beloved and died on stage performing in front of millions of people. .It was live on television.

Lindsay: Yeah.

Craig: And so, that’s really hard to dramatize because there isn’t too much conflict, apart from to say that he drank and he had a mistress, but he still died on top. And, I think, that’s why they set the play in…

Lindsay: In his moment of failure, because this was a moment of failure for him.

Craig: Yeah, it was a failed venture. I guess, Vera Lynn was on the same bill with him in this Vegas show and, I guess, Americans hated Vera Lynn – they find her really boring. But he was a success and he was going on Broadway or something. So, you know, maybe the wife stayed with him in real life, too, because I felt like that was the only thing – the wife could have shown up or something and that could have been…

Lindsay: Something.

Craig: …that could have been some conflict. But I didn’t feel there was any conflict.

Lindsay: No.

Craig: No.

Lindsay: No, a lot of talking.

Craig: Yeah, but when I read on Wikipedia too was there were promoters who were upset because he would show up drunk and not do his whole show. See, they didn’t really go into the actual repercussions of his alcoholism.

Lindsay: No. No, no. That’s why I say that there wasn’t enough dark. Even though what, when we sort of circled the same dark. We did see where that… Because dark has tentacles, right? And dark goes out into everything. And, because the wife wasn’t there, we didn’t see anything in that regard and we spiralled and we circled. It didn’t ooze and seep into everything. And I think that they thought it did because, I think, the way particularly that that agent acted, he was acting in response to a behaviour that we weren’t fully seeing, I think. Anyway…

Craig: The other thing I would say, too…

Lindsay: Oh, yes, please!

Craig: …is that Cooper’s trademark was this red fez. Like, all fezzes are red. He would wear a fez on stage and that was his iconic look. You’ll never see a picture of him without that fez on. And, when they were setting up the play, we were meeting the encyclopaedia salesman, we were meeting the…

Lindsay: Agent.

Craig: …the agent, we were meeting Tommy Cooper, there was a moment where Cooper was sitting on a bed in his hotel room in Las Vegas and he was fiddling with stuff and unpacking and, at one moment, he pulled his fez out of his suitcase. But that was actually in half-light when another character was speaking and I felt that that is his persona and his character is wrapped up into this fez, right? Like, you see this guy – a normal guy – sitting on a bed. When he has the fez on, he’s Tommy Cooper on stage. And I felt like that moment should have been highlighted because that’s the moment where he becomes…

Lindsay: Being Tommy Cooper.

Craig: …the character, yeah, Being Tommy Cooper. And I’ll say one more thing before we go.

Lindsay: Oh, you go.

Craig: The other moment I had when I watched the show had nothing to do with the show at all. Just as the show began, actually, we just sat down and I saw somebody walk on stage and put something on stage and I turned to Lindsay and I said, “That better be a cast member,” because I thought, “Oh, this is lousy.”

Lindsay: Setup.

Craig: “This is a lousy theatre if some stage guy has to put something on stage, like, two seconds before the show starts.” And it turned out, actually, it was a character in the play just kind of eased right in. It was really… It started quite nicely.

Lindsay: And then, you turned to me and said…

Craig: And then, I had this little moment where I thought, “Wow. This is the first time I’m actually seeing a play on the actual land where the English theatre began.” And it was really, really cool. It was magical.

Lindsay: Yeah, it really, really hits you. And, well, and then, later on we’re going to actually see, which I think is the quintessential British experience, we’re going to see Hamlet at the RSC and I’m giddy about that, too.

Craig: Okay.

Lindsay: I think we like theatre, Craig.

Craig: Yeah.

Lindsay: I think that’s why we get pissed off when theatre goes awry because I think we know its importance and it’s important and it’s powerful. And, when people fluff it off, or when people – actors, performances, productions – treat it…

Craig: Frivolously.

Lindsay: …frivolously or callously or jadedly, that hurts out little souls.

Craig: So, yes, that moment was worth it…

Lindsay: Yeah.

Craig: …to summarize.

Lindsay: Yes, and Craig turned to me and said, “I love the theatre,” because it really was a magical moment. We just sort of eased into a play.

Awesome. Thank you, Craig.

Lindsay: Thank you.

Music credit: “Ave” by Alex (feat. Morusque) is licensed under a Creative Commons license.