Working Up A Sweat  Rehearsing all the Restoration bits in Our Country’s Good was merely preparation for the real thing! Two and a half hours of 17th Century wit and smut. After sweating profusely into our period military uniforms in that production, it was decided to do this one in modern dress. And we still sweated profusely.

Was I In That One?  Or a Tale Of Three Harcourts. Matti had to drop out early in rehearsal due to work commitments. Another Harcourt (who, since ‘tis past, he shall be nameless) joined but disappeared of the face of the earth with only four weeks to go leaving us in the lurch - an eternal canker seize him for a dog! Steve, who had been playing the part of Mr Dorilant, bravely volunteered to take his place and Mr Dorilant was very quietly excised from the play. Was Janet the cause of all this trouble? Could no-one take the pressure of making fierce love to her the whole play long? Steve still found time to take some atmospheric black and white pictures too. Jennie PJ was the first person to join the group after seeing this website. She was thrown in at the deep end (well, the shallow end) and cast as Clasp.

Cheap Publicity  Ray in his role as publicity officer: "We have done a number of dramas recently so we felt we wanted to do something with a few more laughs this time and there are loads of great characters in the play - from wenches to old dowagers and brain-dead aristocrats - so we knew it would be fun. Even now we are finding new things in the play so it is really keeping it fresh and alive". New things in the play!? Does he mean a different Harcourt at every rehearsal?

Director's Commentary  An unhappy failure. A sprawling mess. I could go on, but you get the picture. I came within an inch of cancelling the whole thing during the  dress rehearsal, it felt that bad. Okay, not entirely.  With Andy, Sharon, Janet or the Rigsby-esque Ray onstage it went swimmingly but at other times it was floating at the top of the bowl. There were a couple of cast members whose attitude and commitment were, shall we say, sorely lacking. If I could have written them out as easily as Mr Dorilant, I would have!
Nor could I give them a much needed kick up the backside - with all my attention focussed on the constant chopping and changing of Harcourts,  the cast were pretty much left to fend for themselves and minor things like pace and timing went out of the window. For every scene that worked there were two of crushing tedium and the whole thing dragged on from one flaccid set piece to another for almost three stultifying hours. My own performance was feeble. The Chameleon's first venture into Restoration comedy and probably the last. A brave experiment that just didn’t work David

Quote, Unquote  I particularly enjoyed getting my teeth into the period language, and Horner is actually a sympathetic character as he seriously believes in his principles of 'free love', i.e. having your cake and eating it. Can't forget the "china" scene – good old-fashioned 17th century filth, Ray's Rigsby impersonation or a certain rather "drunk" quack on the Sunday night, presenting me with the cue: "Fuh fair fuh fair fair fair fuh. Horner". I were flying by the seat of me pants… Andy
Bimbo mode - what an absolute blast. From Bitch Queen From Hell in Our Country's Good to total blonde mode. Ray gave what I think is his best EVER performance as Pinchwife Sharon
Although this was a super play and an astonishingly enjoyable experience to actually perform, this will go down in my mind as THE PLAY IN WHICH I THREW A WOBBLER IN REHEARSALS. One Sunday, I had such a miserable time remembering my lines in a very important scene with Sharon, and was having to be prompted on every line, that I exploded into tears and ran into the loo like a big girl’s blouse. David, bless him, came in and put his arm round me, and, eventually, everything was OK and the world could see my blatant steal from Leonard Rossiter.  Scarier still was Terry’s performance which grew larger and more pissed with every night. If we had done a run that lasted longer than three nights, I fear he would have exploded on stage Ray
One of Ray's best performances as the spiteful Pinchwife Betty
I joined this in a small role, then moved up to a big one at short notice. I wasn't very good but everyone else made an average story much better, particularly Ray and Terry Steve
Most of this went over my head (five foot two soaking wet). Not really my kind of play Jenny