Author: catherinedoveyroche

I’ve been Zooming with MA students on their acting course at East 15 through most of June. This was their final show, Auden and Isherwood’s The Dog Beneath the Skin. I’d worked on the play before, and written a score for it. We used the score again, with some adaptations.  To produce it involved each student rehearsing in, and filming themselves from, lockdown.

The MD-ing and song-teaching was a challenge; I needed to send both practice tracks and backing tracks to the cast, and it took some time to assemble what were mainly ensemble songs. Andrea Brooks and Louise Amos directed. We all found it a technical rites of passage experience…

I did 50 minutes online and on screen for Tackroom Theatre on Tuesday 19^th May, a reduced version of my Clueless at the Keys show. I chatted about and sang comedy songs, mine and others’, and also went into ‘Clue’-related anecdotes. All performed in my front room, and all very unnerving with no audience to let me know how I was doing. It was a fundraiser for the Covid-19 emergency appeal, and to date (22^nd May) it’s raised over £1500. Tackroom is run by an ex-student of mine from East 15, Abbey Wright, who set up the whole live streaming expertly. The show’s now on YouTube at https://youtu.be/XanLNfZ9W68

…this time without a cardboard box on my head. Yes, it’ll be live, in-your-face, 21st century comedy.

Abbey Wright – ex-East 15 student of mine and now running Tackroom Theatre  – has invited me to do an hour of my Clueless at the Keys show online next Tuesday 19^th at 7pm GMT. I’ll be talking about my interest in comedy in song and about I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue: my involvement in the radio show, and the spin-offs I’ve had from it. Plus I’ll be performing a number of comedy songs, some mine and some from the likes of Flanders and Swann, Noel Coward and Jerome Kern. And there’s an interactive finale, inviting viewers to participate in a virtual ‘One Song to the Tune of Another’.

The link is www.facebook.com/tackroomtheatre

Obviously, times are quiet.

Barry and I are scheduled to play at the reconfigured Bath Comedy Festival in September, all being well. Italia Conti’s acting course has asked me to provide and MD my score for a production of Charles Way’s Hard Times, to be rehearsed and performed either on line or, if we’re lucky, at the college.

The sudden death of Tim Brooke-Taylor from the corona virus has left me greatly saddened, and I still can’t believe it’s happened. I worked with him on I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue for 45 years; it was a privilege and a pleasure, and we always got on well. Nervous as he was about singing, he always gave it his best shot, and he always indicated me afterwards to share in the applause. Graeme Garden is presenting a tribute to him on Radio 4 on 4^th May. To see Tim, the also-late-lamented Humph and Jeremy Hardy, along with Barry Cryer, Graeme Garden, producer Jon Naismith and myself in the videoed live stage show from The Lowry, Salford, go to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ohQt_P_wpU.  Everyone was on sparkling form. It was recorded in 2008.