ON WITH A FOOT AND A PRAYER
Crisis in the countryside could not stop Illyria's latest touring ventures. KEVIN BERRY meets its dedicated artistic director. (First published in THE STAGE, 10 May 2001)
There were moments, just a few short weeks ago, when the Illyria Theatre Company's summer tours of outdoor venues were close to being cancelled. The countryside was in turmoil, the future looked bleak. "There was so much uncertainty at many of our venues," says artistic director Oliver Gray. "I felt like a sitting duck, waiting for foot-and-mouth to come and get me. But you carry on. Since then the Army has been brought in, buffer zones have been dropped from 100 to 10 metres and the Government has issued clear guidelines - go to the countryside, but stay away from farms with livestock. So, we are touring. It will be a bumpy ride but it should be fun."
Many of the venues Illyria will be using, such as National Trust and historic sites, have now reopened and, thankfully, they are reporting record business. Gray is making excellent use of his company's website (www.illyria.uk.com). His leaflets and posters will encourage theatregoers to check the site regularly, especially just before they set off for a performance. The information can be changed within five minutes. He has been busy investigating alternative spaces at many of his venues in case of sudden emergency.
Illyria will be touring three shows, as usual, in the coming months. They are A Midsummer Night's Dream, Alice in Wonderland and The Importance of Being Earnest and most of the performances will be outdoors. Gray is plainly relieved to be talking about the plays. "Wilde is such fun," he says. "We did Earnest last year and people just went crazy. The approach that I took was to swap the sexes, as we often do in Shakespeare, and that gimmick grabbed Oscar Wilde's intentions by the throat and yanked them off the page. The repercussions were extraordinary. Fortunately I had a wonderful team who were completely on the same wavelength and they just went for it.
"I discovered things I never knew. I never realised what Wilde was up to. It shocked me and it shocked audiences, they were audibly gasping and then laughing at their own shock. Nobody thought Wilde used such crude language. Of course there was the closet gay lingo, but quite apart from that I'd never realised the number of Anglo Saxon words that he tarts up, spells differently, hides in sentences. And it's just in Earnest and not in any other Wilde. Far too many to be a coincidence."
Illyria was formed ten years ago because Gray was plainly bored stiff with acting, he wanted some excitement and what he calls "a little insanity" in his life. "I was in Regents Park, watching Macbeth actually," Gray recalls. "There was a line - 'the crow makes wing to th' rooky wood' - and at that moment a pigeon swooped through the gloom. It meant nothing and it meant everything. I thought, this open-air theatre thing really works. That started me off.
"Then there was curiosity. I wanted to create a laboratory to explore how an Elizabethan theatre troupe might have used the same material to achieve the same end - to entertain. I feel that one of the maladies that theatre is suffering from is that it ignores that function, to its detriment.
"The bottom line is that theatre is a business," Gray insists. "Great art throughout the ages has happened because it was what people wanted. We need to put bums on seats and what the audience wants is quality. I don't like the attitude of 'it's popular, so it can't be that good'."
Illyria is living proof that people will pay for quality. The company gets no grant or Lottery funding and its only sponsor is Orchard House Foods. Notable highlights in Illyria's ten years have been a Pick of the Fringe awards at the Vancouver Fringe Festival, two Fringe Best Bets at the Orlando International Fringe Festival and Critics' Choice awards for two shows in the same year at Edinburgh.
Gray talks of having sleepless nights and sometimes kicking the office door in frustration but ten years of experience ensures that his three shows have largely untroubled runs. He knows that the unexpected will happen and he has the sublime optimism to sort it out. He remembers arriving at one venue to find that the man who had booked them had left the area and had forgotten to tell anyone that Illyria would be performing. Takings were rather low that night.
One actor in each cast is charged with being the business manager, which involves representing Gray at the venues, looking after the programmes and keeping the accounts. More than 70 per cent of the actors used by Gray this year will have worked for Illyria before. He repeatedly warns his new actors just how hard touring can be. There is cross-dressing in his productions because he likes to see actors really acting and not just saying the lines. His last Richard III was played by a woman.
"I tell them that the job is gruelling, it's the hardest job they will ever do," he says, cheerily. "And at the end of the season they will always say, 'I heard your warning but even that didn't give an idea of how tough and challenging it is'. Then they come back for more."
Thankfully Illyria's three shows will be out on the road in the coming months, but it has been a close run thing.
KEVIN BERRY, 2001