mostly david ephgrave

Twelve years ago, I toured the UK with a show called ‘Rock and Roll Heaven’. One week, we found ourselves stranded at Grimsby Auditorium. There are a few downsides to touring. One of them is having Grimsby on your itinerary. The town has very little to speak of, except for the Auditorium which isn’t ; it’s a sports hall, caught adrift in the midst of a deserted residential area. You could put together a strong case suing the venue for Trade Descriptions; a theatre, it’s not. Another problem with touring is finding somewhere to eat. You can spend hours wandering a city, trying to find a decent meal before you need to be at the theatre. The only options in Grimsby were chips, chips or chips (with optional fish). One day, we visited the neighbouring town of Cleethorpes. The streets literally smelt of gravy. It was as ominous as it was savoury. Whilst sitting in a café tucking into a round of fried breakfasts (which wasn’t much different from eating chips), we looked out o...

I’m a little bit obsessive-compulsive. It’s not debilitating – I haven’t washed my hands once since starting this sentence - but it definitely plays a part in my everyday life. Incidentally, OCD would scan a lot better alphabetically. Part of it probably comes with being an actor. It’s quite common to go through a series of little rituals before a performance; partly out of superstition, partly out of the necessity to warm up. I definitely do this - though sometimes it’s hard to tell whether my little pre-show routines fall more into the former or the latter category.   Sometimes it’s just about clearing your mind. When you’re onstage in a play, it’s very easy for your personal thoughts to intrude; the last thing you want when you’re trying to concentrate on what your character should be thinking. This is particularly common if you’ve been doing the same show night after night; I remember Hugh Laurie once describing this in an inter...