mostly david ephgrave

Yesterday saw the final performance of the Victorian Melodrama I’ve been doing at The Market Theatre for the past month, Marry Me or Be Evicted. Last shows are always strange. It’s odd to think that everything you do will be the final time you do it. They can also feel pressured; if you have a bad night elsewhere in the run it doesn’t matter so much, as you get the chance to put it right, but you always want to end on a high. Yesterday’s show wasn’t a bad one to close on; not the best of the run, but by no means the worst. We’d had an excellent turnout the previous night who were really up for it, so anything that followed was always going to be a little anticlimactic. Still, they laughed in most of the right places. It was nice to revisit the play after a ten-year hiatus. I shouldn’t think I’ll do it again. I won’t completely write it off though. I might feel differently in 2024. I’ll remember it fondly either way. It’s definitely one of the most fun shows I've be...

Yesterday, I started my second week in ‘Marry Me, or Be Evicted’ , the comedy melodrama I’m performing at The Market Theatre all month. It’s going well, despite the fact I'm still suffering from labyrinthitis. I hoped this might have passed by now, but it hasn't. It certainly adds an extra dimension to proceedings, spending the entire show feeling like I’m on a fairground rotor. It’s not just my head that’s suffering. The audience turnout has been a little low. The theatre only has a capacity of sixty-five. Last night, we had just eight people in: enough to fill the front row, which is exactly what they did. They were pretty responsive for an audience of their size, but it was still hard work. I imagine it must also have been a bit intimidating. A lot of the show is delivered out front – and, while we never pick on anyone, they must have felt like they were constantly under scrutiny. The numbers will hopefully pick up over the next few weeks. The good weather probab...

I’ve just come out from the second rehearsal of the play I’m doing called Marry Me or Be Evicted, which opens in a couple of weeks. I’m sitting in Caffe Nero around the corner from the theatre – and just stopped writing for a moment to talk to my friend Ollie (co-owner of The Croft, where we used to run Mostly Comedy), who I haven’t seen for a good, or bad, few months. “What are you up to?” he asked. “I’m just writing my blog.” “What’s it about today?” His gaze was drawn to my laptop screen, to see a page that was empty except for the first four words: ‘I’ve just come out’. He couldn’t have timed his entrance better. The rehearsal went well. We were directorless today, but still managed to get a lot done. We’re already past the halfway point of the script, with a couple of weeks to go before the opening night. The show is frantic but fun; I only wish I could shift the cold that I’ve had for weeks, so I’d have sufficient voic...

Today, I started rehearsing a play that I first performed ten years ago. It’s official: I’m old. ‘Marry Me or Be Evicted’ holds a lot of happy memories, despite the clunky title. It’s a mash-up between a Victorian melodrama, a farce and a Comedy of Errors. Everything that could go wrong in it does go wrong, with hilarious results. Those aren’t my words; I’m paraphrasing the promotional blurb. (Which I had a hand in writing, so they're actually my words after all.) The show started life in 2004 at The Market Theatre in Hitchin, where it ran all Summer. We revisited it the following Spring for a four-week run at the Hen & Chickens (a pub theatre in Highbury & Islington), before finishing off with a weekend at the Wycombe Swan. Saying that the show ran for four weeks in London is a bit of a white lie. It was supposed to run for a month, but we ended up cancelling most performances. It was the theatre company’s first – and last – venture onto the Lo...