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8. Shoemakers' Holiday
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1. A Respectable Family

There are some more photos of 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. »

The Shoemakers' Holiday by Thomas Dekker - Hodge

- BOVTS at the Theatre Royal, Bristol. Directed by Nat Brenner.

Hmmm. Bit of an odd choice, this, for a final year drama school show, I thought at the time, and I still do. Sometimes when a play hasn't been performed for a couple of hundred years there's a reason. The Shoemaker's Holiday, written in 1599, doesn't have much of a plot, no really gripping characters, and nothing much really happens. Imagine all those 'odds sowter and a fox's bodkin' comedy moments in Shakespeare, hilarious to an Elizabethan audience but pretty much meaningless to anyone but an academic today, all strung together into two and half hours of turgid boredom - that's The Shoemaker's Holiday, pretty much.

Still, there was lots of leaping about, morris dancing, some excellent comedy beards, and King Henry VIII made a cameo appearance, so at least the evening wasn't completely wasted.

I played Hodge, the 'foreman' of the shoemakers, in one cast and a nameless apprentice in the other and, frankly, my tits were bored right off.

Luckily, this show was the last BOVTS production of my three years, and in a matter of weeks I would be cast out into the world to make my way (or not) as a professional actor. There was just the small matter of getting that first job and that all-important (in those days) Equity card. Multiple auditions later, I got an offer from the Royal Exchange and in 1978 I became, officially, a professional actor...