A Play About Amateurs
Another show which has fallen victim to the current health crisis is the first-ever UK tour of Ian Hislop & Nick Newman’s comedy, A Bunch of Amateurs. Sardines sat down with the pair at Ian Hislop’s Private Eye HQ just as the Coronavirus was gathering pace. Two weeks later, the tour may be postponed until later in the year but the following conversation is well worth reading, and is a real tale of life imitating art…
Nick N:
“Of all the things we’ve done it’s been the most surprising; it just keeps going on and on and on. We suddenly became aware that so many amateur groups were doing it – and it’s been done all over the world, as far as Alaska and New Zealand…”
Ian H:
“…And I think the professional company that’s putting this on had a good look at the fact that it was on all the time and filling up local theatres and thought, ‘Hello, perhaps it’s time to do it professionally.’ I think it’s now out of licence for the duration of this tour, but it’ll definitely be back.”
Nick N:
“The thing that’s really impressed me is how imaginative all of the groups are, I mean much more imaginative than professional theatre. One group sent us a programme where they had their own version of The Stratford Players’ programme including biographies of all the leading characters. That’s far more than we’ve ever gone.”
Ian H:
“We’ve seen lots of posters and promotional material from amateur productions and have often said to each other, ‘Bloody hell, this is really good!’ Ha ha!”
2008’s film, A Bunch of Amateurs
SARDINES:
Trial by Laughter and The Wipers Times are based on historical events, while A Bunch of Amateurs is a very different kettle of fish. What gave you the idea?
Nick N:
“It was actually bought to us as a project way back in the early 2000s. It was being developed as a film by our friend, David Parfitt, but the script had stalled and wasn’t getting anywhere. So David asked us to come and have a look at it, which we did, suggesting a few things. Anyway, we ended up rewriting it from scratch. And then it got made. It was a bit out of our comfort zone I suppose.”
Ian H:
“At the age of 17 or 18 I was part of an amateur theatre company, in a barn, in Sussex. So I know ‘those’ characters; they were people with whom I did some very strange plays with. Lots of Dickens and plays about the Saints. But anyway, I’ve been there. And Nick and I both acted at school – not terribly well – but in a very similar setup. We’ve become ‘very serious’ people in later life but to get the chance to go into all this again was a real treat.”
Nick N:
“Also, we had already written a thing for Dawn French called He Died a Death – in the Murder Most Horrid series – which was about a version of The Mousetrap, where an actual murder takes place on stage and a couple of policeman have to crack the case in half an hour. So we were already quite obsessed with actors and that world, and we just thought why should it be any different for an amateur company – such as the egos – compared with a professional one? We have many many actor friends, who are all lovely, and they are such brilliant raconteurs with so many anecdotes, but you never quite know where the actor ends and the person begins. We tried to do that in the Murder Most Horrid episode and it seemed very natural to bring it into this play. That was really the starting point wasn’t it?”
Ian H:
“And I think as we’ve got older we know more and more famous people…”
Nick N:
“… Well, you do!”
2008’s film, A Bunch of Amateurs
Ian H:
“Yes, Nick will say he knows one famous person, but he’s mad. I.e. me! But we felt we had both ends of the story, just watching how bonkers being famous is and how peculiar it makes people. And then we did the film with Burt Reynolds… which was just a complete eye-opener. You’ve no idea just how mad he was. We then rewrote the whole thing really to incorporate just what we’d found out about Burt and put it back into the play. The version of the play that exists now is full of things about Burt Reynolds… (laughs)”
Nick N:
“… Stuff that he did, and his lack of self-awareness… nothing prepared us for. The British cast were consummately professional, very funny, knew the script and could turn it around at the drop of a hat. But Burt arrived and we sort of joked to him at the meet and greet that ‘we hope you’re going to behave very badly’, to which he said, ‘Oh yes, I’ll keep them on their toes.’ And he proceeded to behave very, very badly. We thought, ‘You’re portraying a kind of washed-up actor who comes over from the States and starts behaving very badly’ – this really is life imitating art!
“But then to get the detail, because we couldn’t have imagined it in the screenplay, for instance, he said to the make-up lady: ‘Give my hair a pull! The stuff keeping it on is what holds the space shuttle together.’ You cannot write lines like that.”
Ian H:
“It’s now all in the play. Ha ha!”
Nick N:
“We flew out to the Isle of Man prior to three or four days of filming to find some enormous cue cards. We questioned, ‘Are these for the play within the film?’ No, they were for Burt, and for the most basic lines of dialogue. The other character from America in the film was the guy who played Burt’s Hollywood agent. He was actually older than Burt and could remember fewer lines than him. The is a scene where they are acting together and the director, Andy Cadiff, had so much trouble getting an angle where there wasn’t a cue card in shot; they were literally all over the set.”
Ian H:
“Derek Jacobi actually came up with the funniest line, which we’ve put back in the play. He said that Burt shouldn’t be playing King Lear, he should be playing Yorick – because he was so old and decrepit. Incredibly funny, so we stole it and put it in the play. I’m sure Derek would pretend he didn’t say that, but it’s definitely his line.”
2008’s film, A Bunch of Amateurs
Nick N:
“The funniest story I heard, after Burt passed away, was in filming a scene – which sadly we can’t recreate in the play – where he goes to a phone box to call his agent because there is no satellite signal in the village. He’s screaming down the line while, outside the phone box, there’s the entire village listening in on the conversation. Of course he couldn’t remember his lines, so they fed them to him down the phone line. However, that’s not the funny part. When it came to the end of his rant and Andy Cadiff said down the line, ‘Put the phone down, Burt,’ of course he shouts out, ‘PUT THE PHONE DOWN, BURT!’ …Somewhere there is a clip of that.
“He was immensely good value, quite by accident. And we mourned his passing. Along with our producer, David Parfitt, we do hanker after making My Week with Burt because it was such an experience.”
IAN H:
“That is one of the things that’s really special about the play, going forward; it’s riddled with real life. We knew quite a lot about it before, but after a film shoot with Burt, I think the character of Jefferson Steele is pretty accurate.”
Nick N:
“I think it’s quite good for amateur groups because it doesn’t patronise them, as really they are the stars of the show. It’s really about how the amateurs are better at it than the great professional.”
IAN H:
“The fact that the word ‘amateur’ actually means ‘lover of’ is really interesting because the play is riddled with love letters from us to the amateur stage; trying to save it, people explaining why they do it in the first place, what is the point of it – apart from getting out of the house? But their commitment is above and beyond because they’re doing it for nothing. I think they’re phenomenal.”
SARDINES:
As well as eventually being “reconciled with his estranged daughter,” Jefferson Steele ultimately “realises that he is no better, in terms of talent and intelligence, than his amateur colleagues.” A telling appraisal of the murky grey area between amateur and professional?
IAN H:
“I think if you look at Student Review, which is where we started, people who had done nothing much more than making people laugh when they were undergraduates, manage to go straight onstage, and then do it again. I saw David Mitchell’s performance in Upstart Crow and he commanded the stage for two and a half hours in the West End stage adaptation. What is his theatre experience? He doesn’t have any, but he can do it. I’m sure some people are very snotty and would think that ‘it’s all rather amateur’… but it isn’t.”
Nick N:
“There’s also a requirement of the stage for a certain level of professionalism which I do think eludes some film stars now. Burt is used to doing ten takes, in which somewhere there will be something which is usable. But – and I think this is what he found when he was onstage performing with Derek Jacobi, Samantha Bond and Imelda Staunton, who were all so on top of their lines – they were getting it right all the time and he wasn’t… which is no doubt why he felt insecure and threw some wobblies and tantrums.”
IAN H:
“The more we talk about it the more Burt sounds like Jefferson Steele. It’s great and we were so lucky to have him in the cast; it really fell into our laps. Its further life on stage is just one more level of fun, because we’ve now done life imitating art, and the life again, then art, back to life and so on… but it’s much richer because of it.”
Nick N:
“For us, we did about eight weeks at the Watermill Theatre with it initially, before Wipers [Times] or Trial by Laughter, so that was the start of our relationship with the Watermill. Heather Davies, who was in charge at the time knew it was being made into a film and, once it had come out in 2008, came to us and asked if we’d ever thought of doing it as a play. So we adapted it as a play. Then they had the noble idea of including local amateur groups to make up bodies onstage, shifting scenery etc. So that was great as it allowed us to do a pared down version of the film – I think we’ve ended up with seven characters – but other people are on the stage to give you the sense that there are many more people involved.
“So we did that as a run and had a fantastic cast, plus it was great fun. It was also our first go at writing for the stage, and when the Watermill asked us if we had any other ideas, because we’d had such a great time, that’s when we said, ‘well actually, we’ve written this thing called The Wipers Times. Then came Trial by Laughter, and here we are today. It’s been a fantastic run with The Watermill, and the good thing is we know A Bunch of Amateurs works. I haven’t yet seen an amateur production of it – and I know I’ll need to get around to seeing it sometime, but purely as a piece of theatre, thankfully we can be assured we’re on pretty safe ground.”
SARDINES:
So are you excited about seeing amateurs performing your work, or worried at what we might do to it?
IAN H:
“Ha, ha! I hope it inspires them, as I think it often does with amateur companies. Even if they come to see it and think, ‘Well that’s not hard, we could do that!’ So I hope we’ll get lots of people doing it again afterwards. It’s such a pleasure knowing that it has such legs.”
SARDINES:
How long have you both been collaborating now?
IAN H:
“About forty-five! We were at school together. Have I Got News for You will be thirty years old this year. It’s older than most of its viewers! Ha, ha! Somehow Nick and I got locked into the long-term project; arguably your whole life. Nick’s been at The Sunday Times for thirty years.”
Nick N:
“…A fantastic feat of survival.”
IAN H:
“Yes, you should have been sacked years ago.”
Nick N:
“Professionally we’ve been fantastically lucky; Ian edits the magazine and its structure is such that we have one week on and one week off. At the moment, this is our week off, so we’ve got time to do a bit of writing or whatever. In the time that we devote to writing projects it never feels oppressive, in terms of being with each other all the time.”
IAN H:
“It was the founders of this place [Private Eye] who came up with the idea of a fortnightly – they say because they were ‘very lazy’ – but actually it means that everybody who works here, every other week, goes off and does something else. So we’ve all got time. Plus we’ve only really got back to the stage in the last ten years. We’ve done an awful lot of telly. But we love it; I used to perform live, and so did Nick. We’ve probably rediscovered a lot of that early energy. Live performance is just fantastic.”
The Wipers Times UK Tour (2017)
Nick N:
“When it works well, it’s the most exciting thing. And nothing prepared me for how exciting doing A Bunch of Amateurs was the first time round. We’d done lots of radio and lots of successful TV shows, but you’re completely unaware of anybody laughing or finding it remotely amusing. When you’re in a hall where the whole place is ringing to the rafters, you not only see it for the first time again and again, you also see it change. You never see the same performance and it gets better – otherwise you fix something if it’s not working. In film, it’s all done and dusted and your writers are very much kept at arm’s length. Radio is better as the writers are an integral part and you can change things on the hoof…”
IAN H:
“…A lot of telly, written telly, doesn’t have an audience; it’s just shot. You see it at home when it goes out and you hope it’s going to be well-received. Then I remember turning up in Chichester and thinking, ‘God, there’s a thousand people here!’ Then the laughter belts across from the back, and you realise, ‘There’s nothing like this.’ And there really isn’t.”
Trial by Laughter UK Tour (2018)
NICK N:
“It’s also work in progress. Take Michael Frayn and his plate of sardines. He worked on Noises Off continually for over twenty years, changing bits and rewriting the ending while it got better and better, polishing other bits. He’s my idol really. When we were doing both Wipers and Trial by Laughter some of the actors were pretty smart writers too, so they would suggest a line or two and, if it worked, we would go for it.”
IAN H:
“We cut things and we changed things during the tour; it just give you the chance to do it again, rather than once, and that’s it. Have I Got News for You is recorded over about an hour and forty-five minutes. There’s a studio audience there, and I love that, as Nick will tell you – I’m ‘very vain’. Ha, ha! Paul Merton did a panto in Wimbledon and he suddenly sounded like us. He said, ‘It’s absolutely brilliant, panto. It’s fantastic. I want to do theatre!’ And now he’s doing theatre – Hairspray, when it eventually gets the all-clear. I think he’s also decided that ‘live’ is great.”
NICK N:
“In 2017 we did a special charity production of The Wipers Times on Armistice Day. It was a very special night and performed after the ceremony at the cenotaph, so we had veterans in the audience. Aled Jones came in and sang Stille Nacht [Silent Night] which really made the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. Just fabulous. But, the star of the show was… Ian. It had been mooted that the writers might like to take part in some way. Ian had to be restrained, the speed at which he rushed up there, whereas I prefer to watch from the audience. Ian came on as the vicar and got a big laugh, not I think because you delivered the lines in a particularly comprehensible way, but he’s such a luvee and desperate to be back on the stage.
“When we’re completely washed up we’ll no doubt put on our own amateur production…”
IAN H:
“…Definitely! I shall buy a small barn in a village and put on our own plays, endlessly.”
As the UK tour has been postponed, please check the show’s website for all the latest news and updated details:
www.bunchofamateursplay.co.uk
