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IT BEGINS
Posted Monday, September 10, 2007
Hi chaps
Sorry I've been out of touch ,but things have been a bit crazy
recently- let me enumerate the ways.
As you know we got to the end of Lenny's Britain that went out , all very good , thank you very much, quite like to do something else like that in the future ,but not right now, thank you very much. Then we did Lennyhenry.tv which was the internet piss take show. It's basically a clips show -very good fun to make with some fine people writing on it and some funny clips-although very time consuming to make.
Since then I've been writing; I've actually been commissioned by BBC films to write a screenplay -yeah, I know, I'm excited too - calm down or you'll spill your coffee. So I've been working on that, I'm also working on things with the delightful Peter Jukes (In Deep) , Sanjeev Bhaskar (Kumars), Carmel Morgan (Shameless) and various others. So it's been murderous.
Plus, the grumpy 15 year old has become a grumpy 16 year old! This happened on holiday in Greece with much flouncing , pouting ,shouting , doubting,and demands for make up and a half glass of wine. I see boys on the horizon...where's my kalashnikov?
DawnFrenchoffthetelly is off filming something called Lark Rise to Candleford. I think it's one of those period drama things a bit like Middlemarch crossed with Darlingbudsofperfick. She tells me it's going to be good. Don't forget to check out 'A bucket of French and Saunders'
by the way , it's on Friday nights at 9 I think on BBC 1- it's a retrospective of the girls last 20 years of sketch work and it's a pretty amazing body of work , if you've never seen Dawn and Jen , you should have a look at this show , you'll be impressed.
I've been working on the re-write of 'Where you From' since before I went away on holiday. The show was a weird one because it was put together to service Lenny's Britain , so the material was a hodge podge of things I'd done before ,mixed with material about making the documentary. Although it went reasonably well, I was never comfortable performing it ,because the show wasn't really created for me , it was mainly created to service the tv show-make sense ? No? Try and stay awake , Perkins..
Anyroad up , when that first batch of dates ended , I was keen to do more dates , (having enjoyed the tour immensely despite it's bastardised origins) but only if we could re shape the material. So I first had to go and re write the characters :Lister , Rachel,Wolfman , Daniel the soldier and Reverend Carmichael with Kim Fuller -which was fraught because he was in the middle of working on That mockumentary with Victoria Beckham. So I only had a couple of days. I also had to work on a public speaking performance that I was about to give with the lovely John Irwin script editing. As well as that , I had to find someone to help me tighten the material and help me to re write stuff for the show , so I asked Jon Canter to come in and help.
So it's been a couple of months of shuttling backwards and forwards from London like a blue arsed fly , writing , tightening , chopping , changing, yadda yadda yadda, you don't wanna know.
We've also dropped all the joke booth stuff from the show , as it was deemed surplus to requirements by Jon Canter and my Director Hamish McColl. I was secretly pleased. But we had to create a new opening for the show and a new ending. Jack Canter wrote a funny 'Video Diary' of Len on Tour which now sits very nicely at the front of the show before I walk on , and we decided to have a song plus video effects at the end.
Rehearsals were tense because I had to rehearse and relearn all the new material , plus with John Irwin sitting in as script editor in residence the first two days , it was an oppertunity to tweak all
everything as we went along.
On the Wednesday , Dominic O Brien the memory man showed up to help me memorise the new show...but I'd forgotten he was coming , so I had to send him away til the next day! Hamish and I did good work on the Wednesday, running the show a couple of times and tightening anything that didnt' feel right. The Arctic Monkeys /Bjork parodies went right out the window...it always seems viable on paper , but really -come on
- I must've been on some form of crack. (Only the medicinal,good for you kind though...) On the Thursday Dominic O Brien and I make a massive associative journey by walking round London and assigning chunks of scripts to Boots and Hamleys and the London Palladium and so on -by the end of the day - I know most of the script. It's unbelievable -why doesn't every one learn complicated scripts like this?
Thursday night ,we travel up to Manchester and stay over in one of those boutique hotels that has it's own CD of chill out music.
Friday morning is spent working on the script some more with Jon Canter ...and then its a very fraught technical rehearsal at the Stockport Plaza -which is an 30's built , deco cinema come concert platform . A lovely building that's seen better days. Fantastic staff though, who welcomed me and put nice lighting in the dressing room and all sorts.
We ran the show and had lots of problems with the audio visual aspects of things...at one point I said 'I used to just have hats on a table...'
it was stress city.
Then the performance and I have to say -Stockport rocked,like Rocky Marciano rock climbing in Rockville USA. It was a fab show, and considering I knackered my throat in the meantime - I thought the reaction was wonderful .
We've done major cuts since then - Stevenage was a different kettle of fish because -a) it's a leisure centre ( I kept expecting a game of basketball to break out during the show) and b) it's really wide looking out at the audience , not like a theatre ..difficult to play and c) my throat was getting worse.
Managed to get through the show - we'd changed bits and pieces so I was a bit shaky text wise (it messes with the 'journey' when the director moves one bit of material to another place in the show...agggggh) but managed to get through.Got a good response ,but not as good as the night before - I think adrenaline plays a major part on first nights...
Last night was Wellingborough ,not quite Birmingham , not quite London, somewhere in the Middle -help them please.
This was a great show, I thought, despite the fact that I could barely speak ; I was drinking lots of water and doing lots of steam and had an aromatherapy session and every thing bar throat surgery -the fact of the matter was - I was making Tom Waits sound like Charlotte Church.
This was bad. I did my vocal warm up pre-show ,and I thought it was going to be fine -but oh dear...within seconds of being on it settled into a raspy croak. The show was great though , which means that the material is working whether I'm sick , well, happy or sad. and that's what you want , I think. I remember reading about Letterman working on his Tonight Show debut -he just ran the material as many times on as many stages in as many moods and states as he could until the jokes just popped whatever state he was in. Then he was ready.
I think I'm ready for Ireland now. We fly out tomorrow - I've just been to see the Doc r: my throat -apparently it's stress related.
(Never! Really? Wow?) I've got some kind of throat bug too , so they've given me drugs -hoorah!!!! I can sell them to some yout's on the street!
So - Ireland next...'You alrigh' there big man?'
Speak soon (hopefully)
Len
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