Rhi Axtell – Writer

Saturday night was the last night of musical Sunset Boulevard, which my wife was performing in with the local theatre group.

I’ve been in a lot of performances over the years, and I’ve always thought there was something special about that time just after the last performance. I didn’t get to be in Sunset Boulevard because my night classes conflicted with it, but I was there watching my wife, Julie, at the last performance.

The final show is followed by three inevitabilities:

The Get Out

The get out is the rapid deconstruction of the set – as opposed to the ‘get in’ which is the construction of it at the start of the run. Everything is hastily pulled apart, set pieces, props, lights, microphones, all are carried out to a van or lorry nearby. It’s a flurry of sound and movement, drilling, shouting, and, in my case, more than one splinter from stray wood in my fingers because I wasn’t wearing any gloves.

As Concept Theatre is an amateur theatre group*, a lot of the set is rented. Everything must be accounted for and tracked, put into particular boxes. A lot of the items are colour coded by colourful masking tape: red for rented, blue for things owned by the company. I’m always taken aback by how many boxes seemingly appear from nowhere, ready for things to be tucked neatly (but quickly) away.

*The group who put on Sunset Boulevard.

It’s hard work. It’s fast work. The theatre needs to be emptied as soon as possible. When it’s finished, it is almost like the play never happened.

I spend a lot of this time waiting for someone to bark orders at me. There are always a lot of people who know what they are doing. I am never one of these people. I just do what I am told.

The After Show Party

The second of these inevitabilities is the after show party – if you still have the energy after the get out. Being the husband of a cast member, I managed to sneak my way in with a mixture of pleasant smiles and laughing at bad jokes.

The party usually takes place at a cast or crew member’s house – in this case, a member of the crew – and is similar to the get out in terms of noise. However the structured take down of set is replaced by the very unstructured drinking of alcohol and eating of whatever snacks were bought from the nearby Tesco Express or prepared in advance.

In these parties, I always find there is a feeling of love, and relief, tinged with a little bit of sadness, as the cast and crew gather together to say farewell to something they have been working on for so long. I often hear the sentence “I was just getting the hang of the show, and now it’s over! I want to do another week!”

There is a lot of hugging. There is a lot of laughter. There is more hugging. I even got a few hugs this time and I wasn’t even part of it.

The day after

And then there is the day after. A hangover. The adrenaline that has been carrying actors though the performances leaves the system. It is a time to relax. In the case of Julie, she completely lost her voice and slept in until almost 11 (which is incredibly rare for her).

For me, it’s always day of melancholy. There is a relief that the show is over, but also a sadness that it is over. Not just the performances, but in many cases the friendships and bonds formed over the months of rehearsals. People meet to make this great artistic piece, and then return to their lives, drifting together and drifting apart, like the sea and the shoreline. I’ve made many friends on shows, but outside of rehearsals and performances, there just isn’t time to sustain the friendship. There isn’t time to see them again.

And then you return to life. If it’s a musical, you might be singing the songs for the next few weeks. In the case of the musical Betty Blue Eyes, which I performed in just before the pandemic, the songs stayed in my head for a lot of lockdown.

But the songs are just whispers , fading memories of a moment – a moment when you all came together and made something magical. And as is the case with theatre, it is done now. It’s on to the next one. Life continues.

See you next time.