Pride of Bonobos
There’s a nice work/life balance to this particular tour on the whole. Performances always begin on a Tuesday in a new venue to allow everyone to have a proper day (or two) off, as well as travel to the next city. We have five ‘holiday weeks’ peppered through this year’s schedule as well, with the second of those falling in May. I took the opportunity to visit my sister, brother-in-law & niece to see their home in France for the first time. They have been doing it up for the past few years and is in the middle of nowhere in the centre of the country - so peaceful! A perfect retreat from it all. I even had my own little caravan on-site to call my own while they continue to decorate rooms in the main building.
We finished our run in Leeds in early May, enjoying everything that city has to offer (craft beer, mainly, it would seem) and have just completed performances at Birmingham’s Hippodrome - always a great venue to visit: a huge stage, great facilities and brilliant audiences. I took the opportunity to sit in with the follow spots during one of my show watches - a fascinating insight into how intensive it is on such a fast-paced show as Come From Away!
Our visit to Birmingham timed perfectly with its annual Pride celebrations, so much so I went one further than last time (when I just watched the parade) and bought tickets to the whole event. It was a brilliant festival atmosphere across the whole weekend: the bars flung open their doors and the Smithfield Live site was a great addition with its stages, outlets and funfair. It would be a shame if they build flats on that ground (which is what the council really want to do, apparently) as this central space would really be best converted into a fully fledged live site for all sorts of events.
L-R Rosie (Bonnie), Lloyd (Zookeeper), Martin (Company Manager), Amanda (Beulah), Michael (Head of Lighting), and Me!
We also had the added bonus of being visited by a local zookeeper, who then invited us a few days later to meet the bonobos at Twycross Zoo (he has looked after them for the past few years, and if you don’t know the story of Come From Away features Unga, a bonobo that was grounded at Gander). Keeper Lloyd was so welcoming and informative, and even took us to meet the gorillas and orangutans! I love how this tour keeps throwing up all these different adventures. Also, look out for some filming we did involving a Birmingham pub, a certain Newfoundland cod and a bottle of bad Jamaican rum…!
We have been looking forward to June since the tour started. We move to Hull next, and then we are taking the show back to Dublin, where it first played nearly 10 years ago. We are in the much bigger Bord Gais Energy Theatre, where we can squeeze almost 2,000 bawdy Dubliners in for a rollocking night’s entertainment! If that wasn’t enough, Belfast are getting their first look at the show later in the month, where the show has had such a good advance sale that extra performances have been added. This is going to be a lot of fun!