Kids Week, our annual campaign that offers one free children’s ticket for every adult ticket purchased, is now in full swing and the jam packed schedule of exclusive events and activities running alongside the ticket campaign kicked off last week in swinging 1960s style at the Theatre Royal Haymarket with an after show Q&A.
Understudy Francis Henshall Matthew Woodyatt finished a raucous matinee and returned to the gathered Kids Week audience ready to answer questions about what it’s like to improvise live on stage and was joined by fellow farce company members Daniel Ings, who plays the melodramatic over acting Alan, Martin Barass, the gravity defying waiter and Company Manager Andrew Speed.
We were there to listen in and give you just a taste of some of the probing questions Kids Week ticket holders threw at the One Man, Two Guvnors team.
The show has been running for a while now [it started at the National Theatre in 2011 before transferring into the West End], has it changed over time?
Ings: You’ll come up one night and do something a bit different and it’ll get a bigger laugh, but it’s really tricky to put your finger on why one thing works and one doesn’t, why one audience likes a certain thing and another audience doesn’t seem to like it as much. My girlfriend saw it at the start and came back further in and there was loads of stuff that I’d put in that I hadn’t realised.
Barass: I think what happens is if you get a bigger reaction sometimes you think ‘right, let’s just get a bit clinical and work out why that happened’.
Woodyatt: It changes a bit more for Francis I suppose from show to show because he deals directly with whoever is out there [in the audience], and obviously the audience are different every night so there’s a bigger shift in the show for Francis in that respect. When the trunk people come up [for one of the scenes involving members of the audience], we don’t know who they are until they get up. So those improvs are improvised but they are very strongly structured. You’ve got options and you just have to pick your option depending on who your audience is. Something that looks chaotic is one of the most clockwork and mechanical – in a good way – scenes.
Is it risky getting the audience involved?
Woodyatt: It’s very risky. Like I said we never know who we’re going to get. Sometimes you have to go through asking three people to get up for the trunk because you haven’t spotted the wooden leg or the walking stick. There are some hairy moments; people have been sent back to their seats!
Have you ever been caught completely by surprise by a member of the audience?
Woodyatt: Yes, especially with that scene, it happens all too often.
Ings: Someone shouted at me once during my speech at the start of act two. Because they’d had the dinner scene, which creates the illusion of chaos, I come up at the start of act two and I think sometimes people feel that they want that to carry on, they want the rest of the play to be stuff falling down – I know I did when I saw it – so I came out and started to do my speech and sometimes started to shout about buses to me! He [Woodyatt] knows how to deal with this stuff happily because you have to learn how to do that but for me, I’m not used to it so I was just thrown.
Speed: Two complete strangers who were sitting separately in the theatre came up [for one of the audience participation scenes] and when they [the cast] do the gag ‘It’s not that kind of pub’, they looked at each other, they took each other’s hands, kissed each other and walked off hand in hand! Everyone was laughing.
Do people try to get involved in some of the parts that look improvised but actually are planned?
Woodyatt: Sometimes the audience do get there first. I was on a couple of months ago and somebody threw something from the Circle so you do get real people and you have to deal with it and it becomes a little more improvised. But you hope that people feel they want to, if I ask a genuine question, have some fun.
Is it hard to deal with when the audience interact in ways you’re not expected?
Woodyatt: It is hard because you’re standing in front of all these people and you know what’s meant to happen and you have to not dismiss somebody because they’ve been brave enough to shout out because that’s not your job, you’re the warm, friendly one. You’ve got some things that you’ve got stocked up to say, but there is a moment of genuine fear!
Did the humour have to be changed a lot for the Broadway version?
Speed: Not really the humour, the references yes; Hershey Bars get a mention, Danielle Steel gets mentioned. There are cultural references that changed, the humour not, and I think that’s why they loved it for being English. It’s quintessentially a British piece of humour and therefore no, the humour stayed, the references were the things that were tinkered with. Not always successfully, I think some of them actually got put back to the Anglicised version.
[To Barass] Does acting the part of the waiter keep you fit as it’s such a physical role?
Barass: Yes. I showed off the other day because my Mum was in and I headbutted the door extra hard and I forgot that the order of hitting the door is hand first then head, I got it the other way round! The blood just started to trickle… It’s just so much fun doing it though. It’s great going down that staircase; it’s better than Alton Towers.
For your chance to put your questions to the stars, search for the Holy Grail with Spamalot, explore the magical world of Narnia or learn the art of movement with Ragtime, visit www.kidsweek.co.uk to book tickets for a host of top West End shows today.