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1. Nottingham Playhouse

There are more photos from this production below. Selecting any of the small thumbnail images will show a larger version of the picture in the main part of the page. »

Hands Across the Sea by Noel Coward - Peter Gilpin

- Metro Theatre, Bath. Directed by Chris James.

The 'Tonight at 8:30' sequence of plays was conceived by Noel Coward in 1935 as a vehicle for himself and the actress Gertrude Lawrence. Three of the original nine plays, Hands Across the Sea, Still Life (later filmed as the classic 'Brief Encounter'), and We Were Dancing, have perhaps best stood the test of time. Hands Across The Sea, a drawing-room comedy about two jaded Londoners' attempts to entertain guests they once stayed with but whose names they cannot remember, was produced at the tiny Metro Theatre in Bath, as a collaboration between several friends from the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School and the drama department at Bristol University.

I'm not entirely sure why I'm orange in the photo below, nor why I have such strangely bottle-blonde hair - possibly I thought that, being a seafaring man, Peter Gilpin would have a nautical tan and sun-bleached hair! It was a fun play to work on, especially with the terrific Lyn Sagovsky as 'Piggie' Gilpin, and I enjoyed the brittle wit of Coward's dialogue - the secret to playing Coward being, as any fule kno, to talk terribly terribly fast and rrrrrrrrrroll your 'r's like anything... ;)

I also 'designed' the makeshift set with a budget of (as I recall) £12.00. We managed to cadge a whole bunch of period furniture from somewhere, and with black drapes, gold and black deco-painted hardboard and a couple of Beardsley prints, managed to create a reasonably convincing 1930's drawing room!