It is not, overall, a great time to be an actor. Or a director, or a musician, or a writer for the stage or indeed almost anyone involved in the creative arts. The practical effects of the pandemic – and its gross mismanagement – on planned productions (postponed indefinitely), theatre finances (which depend on packed, not socially distanced, houses) and freedom to gather, rehearse, collaborate and generate ideas are already being felt, but their ramifications have hardly begun.
Individual actors have found ways to continue to provide entertainment and add to the cultural conversation (Samuel West, for example, began a series of beautiful and restorative poetry readings requested by followers on his Twitter account, to which more and more actors have added their voices as the weeks have passed), but the brightest chink of light in the darkness so far, and reaching the widest audience, has been offered by the small screen.
Documentaries have been produced by giving people cameras or having them film themselves on smartphones. Charity events have been hosted by presenters isolated in audience-free studios with contributions filmed from scattered talent. Dramas have emerged from scripts that work around and with the restrictions caused by lockdown. They are directed remotely, lit in their own homes by actors themselves (following the instructions of the people far away who actually know what they are doing) and edited in home studios, on laptops, doubtless with a fair bit of wailing and gnashing of teeth at every stage. But they have made it on to our screens and into our ever more desperate and welcoming homes
Obviously they have their limitations, but there is at the same time an appeal and an intimacy that is all their own. It’s impossible not to watch and know that you are witnessing the results of goodwill, Heath Robinsonesque ingenuity and artistic endeavours. There’s an odd purity to it. Creators gonna create. Actors gonna act. And they’re always gonna find their way to an audience.
All of this is present in particular abundance with the latest lockdown offering – Staged (BBC One), a comedy based on an original idea by Simon Evans (who also writes and directs) and Phin Glynn, and starring Michael Sheen and David Tennant. Or, David Tennant and Michael Sheen. Arguments over billing form a running gag (“You were first in Good Omens!”), eventually leading to second and birth-not-Equity names being pressed into service to muddy the alphabetical waters. The episodes’ credits change accordingly – just one of the many things to gladden the heart during the six quarter-hour episodes that comprise the series.
It’s all a bit meta, but that’s the joy of it. It depends on you knowing that Tennant and Sheen are friends in real life, so that you can fully enjoy the (one presumes) unscripted banter between them, particularly before and after the credits but also dotted through the “real” story of director Simon attempting to persuade them to rehearse a play for the West End despite being furloughed.
Towards the end of the first episode they riff (and if this too is scripted by Evans, my deepest apologies and unending admiration for so perfectly evoking the artlessness of old, witty friends’ conversation) on Sheen going out to scream in the garden. “That’s how we summon the haggis,” says Tennant thoughtfully. “Is that still happening in contemporary Scotland?” asks Sheen politely. “The haggis don’t come if you don’t do it right,” Tennant informs him. “We train for years.” “Well, if the haggis don’t come, nobody’s happy,” says Sheen. “That’s the Scottish Tourism Board slogan right there.” Think Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon in The Trip, just without the vicious, gnawing ego and marauding emotional needs barely kept in check.
The story itself is slight. Sheen doesn’t really want to do the play – Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author, chosen I presume for its resonant absurdism and metafictional premise – while another actor champs at the bit offscreen to take part (occasioning a lovely turn from Nina Sosanya as an agent whom pandemic conditions have done nothing to unweary).
It’s a light, charming offering. Only two episodes were available for review, but all six are to be released en masse through iPlayer. I shall try and ration them – 15 minutes every now and again when I feel the bleakness start to encroach too much. And on we’ll go. Art, eh? Useful stuff.
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