Odd Mid-Run Glue?

Live performance is always throwing your curve-balls and last night was no exception for the Glue crew.

As we were getting ready, we were pleasantly surprised to hear that we'd done 30 pre-sales, more than we usually do.

When it came to the show however there were problems despite the larger than usual crowd mainly down to the venue.

It's a cavernous room were in which is completely unsuited to what were going.

You can absolutely belt it out in some rooms and feel it coming back off the walls at you - In those places it's easy to get an atmosphere going because you feel the energy in the room as you're performing.

In the room we're in, anything you put out there just dissipates and you feel isolated from the audience - and they feel that to.

The biggest problem last night though was something we had a bit of the previous week. People talking during the sketches.

Throughout the first act we had a guy who I'm informed was completely off his tree and didn't really know where he was just yammering away while we were trying to perform. Some of the audience repeatedly tried to shush him, and I eventually had a word after being heckled but by that time the atmosphere had gone.

We were spooked and, sensing that, the audience were spooked as well.

This I put down to the room as well. As Tom pointed out, we wouldn't have had this trouble in a theatre but as were booked in a pretty divey pub the guys who were causing the problem acted, quite understandably, as they normally would in a divey pub.

Not their fault, the fault of the guy who booked us into a completely unsuitable room.

Realising they had been spoiling the show, the guys who'd been talking left at half time and the second half went off pretty much without a hitch with a lot more laughs and no interruptions.

It's a shame and typical of life that someone from the BBC was there last night to see us. If she'd come the previous week she'd have seen a performance that went down well with no major hitches.

This week she saw us scrape a come from behind draw which can't have done anything to help us convince producers who have been humming and hawing about us for a while anyway.

But onto next week I suppose. There are weak spots we can fix and try and make sure its a tighter show.

Oh yeah, and if you can figure out how to tell people not to fecking talk during the sketches without sounding like an up-yourself wank, leave a comment.

Just as a postscript...

I've watched the show back on tape and to be honest, there was no appreciable difference in audience response from the previous week. They still largely went for it.

Obviously, we all know that our emotions and reactions can have an effect on our judgement of a situation, but it's weird looking back on a show that you have convinced yourself went badly and see no massive difference between that and a show you feel went well.

Anyway, onto the 23rd...