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EATING ON STAGE
Ray Smith makes a meal of it
Eating meals on stage is invariably a hazard as anyone who has taken part in Alan Ayckbourn's "How the other half loves" will testify, particularly the character who plays 'Bob', who finishes up with the contents one of the dishes all over him. In one production I was involved in this was a kind of soup (or casserole?), while in another it was a form of spaghetti. Of the two I prefer spaghetti, it's not so fluid and it looks particularly effective when draped over Bob's face! In the course of the scene two meals are served and the remaining characters have to ensure that they are not caught with their mouths full.
Bryan Forbes in his book "A Divided Life" (again a reference to that book and I can thoroughly recommend it, especially if you're interested in writing, the theatre or films) quotes a reference to the 'egg scene' in the play "September Tide" which he says was particularly irksome and accident prone.
After "September Tide" finished its run at the Aldwych and Gertie Lawrence went home, the play was toured with an entirely new cast. Gertie and Michael Gough original roles were played by a couple of somewhat advanced years. The gentleman in particular needed some help from Max Factor and also wore a toupee to aid credibility.
The moment came when the infamous omelette had to be cooked on stage. The actess went off stage to bring the wine, leaving her cohort to cook the concoction over a primus stove. As he bent over his task his toupee became loose and dropped into the omelette pan. Traumatised, he stirred it into the mass of eggs.
The lady returned, gay and expectant with the Nuits St Georges, prepared to play a tender scene with her young lover, and found herself confronted with a demented, bald-headed old man cooking a pan of hairy eggs which eventually they both had to eat and enjoy.
It was achingly funny to watch, for at the end of the long scene they had to embrace, sharing not only passion, but strands of toupee.
It's the director's job to ensure that scenes that contain eating on stage do not end in this kind of shambles and this means continuous repetition until all the moves and the eating occur smoothly and in the right order. It is difficult if a character has to hold up a piece of meat on a fork and say, "Do you call this steak?", when the offending meat has not yet been served.
There's a tricky scene in "The Grass is Greener" when the Earl and his wife, her friend and the American, plus the butler are all on stage and taking afternoon tea and there is much passing of teacups and plates and cakes, or whatever. I was directing the play and the cast never seemed able to synchronise speech and movement. The result was that they had to go through the scene in mime until the sequence of the moves became automatic and then the words could be blended in.
There is no easy solution to these eating problems, each scene has to be taken on its merits, if the many pitfalls to such scenes are to be avoided. The actors playing the characters involved cannot afford to lose their concentration for one minute. I know this to my cost. I was in one play with one such scene where most of the cast were on stage and the hostess handed out some delicious sandwiches. Now we had not had sandwiches on the plates at any rehearsal and on the first night when I received my sandwiches I started to eat them (having only mimed in rehearsal) and I was thinking to myself 'these sandwiches are delicious' and thoroughly enjoying them, when I realised that the rest of the cast were looking at me and I had missed a cue.
To sum up. Meals on stage can prove a high hurdle for the director as Alan Wykes so aptly puts it in his book "Amateur Dramatics" and on top of everything else the director must keep an eye on the cast to ensure that speed of speech and movement is not slackened and that the finished scene feels right to the audience. Telescoping a meal which in real life might take an hour into ten minutes or more and carrying the audience along with you is an art in itself.
The photograph of Byan Forbes was taken from the book jacket of his novel A Song at Twilight one of a series of his novels of suspense.
The photograph of the meal is from the Angel Players' production of HOW THE OTHER HALF LOVES. Seated at the table are Nick Panton, Joan Higgins, Ron Kite and Sue Panton; standing at the back are Elaine Kennedy-Day and Richard Harries-Jones.
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