Minack in the rain
The Minack theatre is one of the holy trinity of Cornish experiences alongside the Eden Centre and the Lost Gardens of Heligan. It’s an outdoor arena on a clifftop near Lands End. We’d never been, but when Debbi from Leeds said she’d be at the Minack to work backstage on the Ilkley Players performance of Terry Pratchett’s Wyrd Sisters I decided to book tickets for myself and Doug.
Unfortunately it’s been wet this week. Whilst there is something magical about summer rain when you are indoors after a hot day, the thought of sitting outside in it for a few hours is not so appealing. By Thursday evening the bulk of the rain had shifted through to Wales, but there was still enough of it around for me to be using the windscreen wipers most of the way from Helston to Penzance and intermittently on the twisty road out to Porthcurno. We’d dutifully exchanged mobile numbers with Debbi, but when Doug tried his phone there was no signal (it’s the edge of Cornwall, of course there’s no signal. What had we been thinking?) Luckily Debbi was up at the entrance selling programmes, so it didn’t matter. We stopped to chat and admire the theatre. The setting was breathtaking even on a dull grey evening. The auditorium sloped steeply down to a tiny round stage at the bottom. All around it were sea and cliffs. The players were going to have to work hard to distract the audience from the scenery!
We went off to be seated. We hadn’t booked early enough to get one of the seats in the arena down by the stage, but were up on the picturesque grassy terraces where expert guides, packed people in according to size of party. “This row seats 8 people,” they firmly told a party of six older women who were faffing around with cushions and coats. The women looked so annoyed at this, that we decided to take our chances on a lower row, even though it had already been annexed as leg room and picnic basket storage space by the party in the row above. Either the guy behind me had very big feet or our terrace was particularly narrow, but there barely seemed enough space for the collapsible seats you could hire from the theatre, and my cushions, wrapped up in black plastic bin liners as recommended by Minack veterans, was hanging out over the edge of the terrace. The recommended advice for the Minack is to arrive early and bring a picnic. This had sounded nice in theory, but when you are squashed up on a hard patch of grass with little room to put anything down, and it’s just starting to drizzle, it’s not quite the experience I had imagined. I envied the couple in splendid isolation on their own stone bench with room to put down wine glasses and spread out their food. Next time we’d have to take the afternoon off and get there early!
The drizzle was still intermittent when the play finally got started. But at least it wasn’t raining so hard as the night before, when, so Debbi informed us, you could barely see the sea from the auditorium. In fact the players were in danger of being upstaged by some fishermen on the rocks below the theatre - at least from our level, where the actors looked very small, and had to work quite hard to compete with the panorama around them. The sound was good though, and despite the distance we could hear most of the lines without too much difficulty. But any time the action got a bit slow, I did find myself distracted by the advance of the tide onto the granite cliffs and the long view of sea stretching out to the horizon
Pratchett’s material makes good comedy. I don’t think I’ve ever read Wyrd Sisters, but maybe I’d seen parts on TV. I certainly knew the characters and some of the jokes, though not the plot. The debunking of Shakespeare was fun. The actors mostly did a good job, though occasionally the pace was a bit slow, or perhaps it was just hard to make some of it work on the scale you need to keep an audience engaged when their bums are very sore from sitting on hard ground. I was certainly pleased to get up and move around at the interval, though it was less my bum that was suffering than my back from not having much support, despite the collapsible chair. By the second half it had finally stopped drizzling. As it began to get dark, the atmosphere in the theatre became more intense and magical. I started to think that I should come back and see something big and spectacular with lots of music in it!
After the play we went along to the local pub to meet Debbi and her new guy Kev. It was also the end-of-run party, and soon Debbi was pointing out all the cast. The wicked Queen looked disappointingly blonde without her wig and the evil king seemed a nice chap when he came and sat at our table. There was masses of food, but I still hadn’t recovered from the pre-theatre picnic, and I didn’t dare drink in case I failed to navigate some of the big bends in the road. But it was good to sit in a remote village pub feeling part of the post-play experience.
Yes, I’d do it again, but it’d be nice to have some sun next time.
Unfortunately it’s been wet this week. Whilst there is something magical about summer rain when you are indoors after a hot day, the thought of sitting outside in it for a few hours is not so appealing. By Thursday evening the bulk of the rain had shifted through to Wales, but there was still enough of it around for me to be using the windscreen wipers most of the way from Helston to Penzance and intermittently on the twisty road out to Porthcurno. We’d dutifully exchanged mobile numbers with Debbi, but when Doug tried his phone there was no signal (it’s the edge of Cornwall, of course there’s no signal. What had we been thinking?) Luckily Debbi was up at the entrance selling programmes, so it didn’t matter. We stopped to chat and admire the theatre. The setting was breathtaking even on a dull grey evening. The auditorium sloped steeply down to a tiny round stage at the bottom. All around it were sea and cliffs. The players were going to have to work hard to distract the audience from the scenery!
We went off to be seated. We hadn’t booked early enough to get one of the seats in the arena down by the stage, but were up on the picturesque grassy terraces where expert guides, packed people in according to size of party. “This row seats 8 people,” they firmly told a party of six older women who were faffing around with cushions and coats. The women looked so annoyed at this, that we decided to take our chances on a lower row, even though it had already been annexed as leg room and picnic basket storage space by the party in the row above. Either the guy behind me had very big feet or our terrace was particularly narrow, but there barely seemed enough space for the collapsible seats you could hire from the theatre, and my cushions, wrapped up in black plastic bin liners as recommended by Minack veterans, was hanging out over the edge of the terrace. The recommended advice for the Minack is to arrive early and bring a picnic. This had sounded nice in theory, but when you are squashed up on a hard patch of grass with little room to put anything down, and it’s just starting to drizzle, it’s not quite the experience I had imagined. I envied the couple in splendid isolation on their own stone bench with room to put down wine glasses and spread out their food. Next time we’d have to take the afternoon off and get there early!
The drizzle was still intermittent when the play finally got started. But at least it wasn’t raining so hard as the night before, when, so Debbi informed us, you could barely see the sea from the auditorium. In fact the players were in danger of being upstaged by some fishermen on the rocks below the theatre - at least from our level, where the actors looked very small, and had to work quite hard to compete with the panorama around them. The sound was good though, and despite the distance we could hear most of the lines without too much difficulty. But any time the action got a bit slow, I did find myself distracted by the advance of the tide onto the granite cliffs and the long view of sea stretching out to the horizon
Pratchett’s material makes good comedy. I don’t think I’ve ever read Wyrd Sisters, but maybe I’d seen parts on TV. I certainly knew the characters and some of the jokes, though not the plot. The debunking of Shakespeare was fun. The actors mostly did a good job, though occasionally the pace was a bit slow, or perhaps it was just hard to make some of it work on the scale you need to keep an audience engaged when their bums are very sore from sitting on hard ground. I was certainly pleased to get up and move around at the interval, though it was less my bum that was suffering than my back from not having much support, despite the collapsible chair. By the second half it had finally stopped drizzling. As it began to get dark, the atmosphere in the theatre became more intense and magical. I started to think that I should come back and see something big and spectacular with lots of music in it!
After the play we went along to the local pub to meet Debbi and her new guy Kev. It was also the end-of-run party, and soon Debbi was pointing out all the cast. The wicked Queen looked disappointingly blonde without her wig and the evil king seemed a nice chap when he came and sat at our table. There was masses of food, but I still hadn’t recovered from the pre-theatre picnic, and I didn’t dare drink in case I failed to navigate some of the big bends in the road. But it was good to sit in a remote village pub feeling part of the post-play experience.
Yes, I’d do it again, but it’d be nice to have some sun next time.