Chit Chat - What a farce

Published Friday 22 August 2008 at 17:35 by Tabard

Speaking of excuses, which one is Liverpool going to magic up for the latest shambles engulfing its year as Capital of Culture?

Director Phil Wilmot has recently been writing about his experiences up on Merseyside at thehospitalclub.com.

His new musical Once Upon a Time at the Adelphi has actually been one of the success stories of the year-long event, but, according to Wilmott, all did not go swimmingly.

Tabard will leave him to explain what happened when some members of his cast were invited to perform at a special talent-show style event at the new Echo Arena.

“For a start, some genius thought it would be a good idea to determine the talent show competition winner by the audience texting their choice of favourite act from their seats.

“Alas, the arena is a mobile phone blackspot and this key moment in the evening was marred by the crowd noticing in frustration that they had no mobile phone signal or becoming very confused by their texts bouncing back.

“However, some texts must have got through because a huge stage school troop of dancing clowns, who’d bussed in easily the most supporters to vote, won - of course - reducing most of the other young contestants to tears of frustration.

“Next it was time for our big finish and our host [Les Dennis] couldn’t remember the name of my show to introduce it…There followed an embarrassed silence whilst the sound guys appeared to scrabble around looking for our backing track. Unfortunately, the lighting chap had also forgotten to take the lights down from the voting so, thinking the show was over, huge swathes of people started to leave.

“They finally brought our music up but about ten seconds into the recording, so the singers who’d been standing on stage waiting with embarrassed, fixed grins didn’t know where they were in the song and despite their best attempts, couldn’t make the lyrics fit. Perhaps it was a blessing that the sound operators had also forgotten to turn their mikes on.

“My singers, now joined as directed by the tearful, unsuccessful contestant and the triumphant clowns, battled dutifully to win back the attention of the baffled audience, who were now half way out of the door and, if anything, rather scared at the fireworks going off behind them around the vast, quickly emptying auditorium. The next day, I set off back to London, thoroughly pissed off that I’d wasted two days of travel and rehearsals on the shambles.”

The words brewery and piss-up seem to come to mind. Although - to be fair, Tabard is confident they’d do a better job of that.