One member of the All In London team was given the chance to take the cameo role of Sir Not Appearing in Spamalot at The Playhouse Theatre. Here is what happened.
When All In London was given the chance to feature on stage in the West End show Spamalot, day-to-day office life took on a strange – and looking back, twisted – Britain’s Got Talent type energy. Shower singers began dropping scales in toilet cubicles in the hope that decision makers would hear them. Minor missed deadlines became an opportunity to ham up the shock and outrage to Kenneth Branagh proportions. And a walk to the office kitchen meant a mix of fashion runway versus Starlight Express movement – all angles, poses and thrusts. However, for most it was all for naught because thanks to my own training – chorus boy in a secondary school production of Sweet Charity – I was comfortably the most qualified person for the part.
Tuesday 4th February. Remember it. That was the date that All In London took its West End bow. Arriving at stage door at The Playhouse Theatre, I was led down into the basement dressing rooms where I would soon join my fellow top billers, ahem, Joe Pasquale and Carley Stenson of Hollyoaks and Legally Blonde: The Musical fame. This, down here, was the engine room, the heaving heartbeat of Spamalot.
Having watched a fair amount of Monty Python in my time and been born with some of the best acting skills in my family, I was ready for my role, the role of Sir Not Appearing. A minor 4-second role it may have been, but with the likes of Keith Lemon in the long line of actors to have built a career from it, I knew I was in heady company.
Having rehearsed the part – walk on, wait to be told I wouldn’t be appearing tonight, say sorry to the audience, walk off – it was time to wait. Waiting, the unseen burden, the actor’s lot; they don’t tell you about this side of the business. But sat dressed in the full splendor of an Arthurian knight, wait I did. Memorising my line over and over. ‘Sorry… Sorry… Sorry…’ I whispered to myself. Nerves were rising, my legs jellified like a Knorr Stock Pot. When I was finally called to stage the tension was excruciating. ‘So this is how Danny Dyer must have felt walking out onto Albert Square for the first time.’ I thought.
Waiting in the wings to stride forth and say ‘Sorry’, thoughts of the familiar faces in the audience stuck in my head – immovable like the bloodspots on the hands of Lady Macbeth, nay, Lady ‘The Scottish Play’ as we say in theatre. My friends, my wife and the man who selected me for the gig. The heat was on and at this point I was regretting having ever revealed my talents for stagecraft, I was no more at home here than I was in that Sweet Charity chorus line a decade ago.
Dry mouth and rattling boots from all that quaking I was doing in them. I waited some more. But when the prompt came - “and the aptly named” - out I strode, buoyed by the support and camaraderie of my fellow knights.
“Sorry…” I said.
And that was it. Over as quickly as it had begun. I had just starred in Spamalot on the West End stage. Was I nervous? Sure. Was I grateful for my chance? Of course. And would I do it all over again? Definitely. Just give me the time and the date and I’ll be there because I will always be… Sir Not Appearing.
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