The story of my West End debut

I wrote in an earlier blog about my early experiences in the West End.

I had an email a couple of days ago from a fellow pianist wanting to know how I got into the West End business in the first place. I'll be copying you in on my response a little later, but in the meanwhile, here's the story of my West End debut.

My very first job was 8 months understudying on The Sneeze, a series of 8 Chekhov plays with a cast headed by Rowan Atkinson and Timothy West. I was covering the performances and doing the understudy rehearsals every week.

I had told the producers very early on that they simply weren't paying me enough money to sit in the theatre every night waiting to see if the pianist turned up. Instead, I would ring the theatre at 6.45 each evening (and 1.45 on matinee days) to see if I was needed.

Well, the eight months came and went, and nothing happened. In the last week of the run, we had our end-of-run party on the thursday night after the show in a posh West End club. It was Russian-themed with vodka and Russian food and was very exciting to someone newly arrived in London.

The next day I was actually in the local sauna, and at 6.45 I thought I'd better get out and ring the theatre. "Yes, you're on tonight, Michael's got food poisoning". At first I thought they were joking (it was April Fool's day after all) but they were deadly serious, so I threw on my clothes and ran to the theatre.

Of course the tubes were crowded and I arrived late, but they had held the curtain for me and made an announcement to the audience. So I ran across the stage, into the box and started playing the show, too frazzled to be nervous. Apparently Timothy West said "Oh, he's rather good isn't he?" After all, he had never heard me play!

All went well until the play The Sneeze, which is a silent play to Russian-style ballet music. I love playing this music, and I did extremely well until the last two pages. Apparently, I took the music rather faster than Michael played it, and everyone on the side of the stage watched as Rowan had to fairly throw himself around the stage to fit in all the business.

I'm glad to say that I got a big ovation at the end. In fact, some of the cast thought it was a set-up between me and Michael to give me a chance to play the show before it ended, but as I pointed out to them, if I'd known I was to play that night, I wouldn't have been in the sauna!


Visit http://www.vocalprocess.co.uk/ for the latest downloads:
the Vocal Process eZINE (free electronic magazine)
86 things you never hear a singer say (free ebook)
The Voicebox Videos DVD website tells you all about the Looking At A Voice endoscopy video series
The Vocal Process website has a series of free articles on vocal technique and style, memorising and different musical genres.