When I arrived at the Sherman Playhouse last night, they set fire to my overcoat.
Well, not my overcoat. I mean, seriously, it was, like eighty-crap degrees and four hundred percent humidity. Even I wasn’t wearing an overcoat. But it’s winter in Lisson Grove, and Alfie needs an overcoat. Poor Alfie. And the selection of overcoats went from lovely to a acceptable. Acceptable is a good deal too nice for Poor Alfie. So they took an acceptable overcoat, threw it in the parking lot, trampled it, tore it, dragged it through the dirt, and (just as I was arriving) stubbed out their cigarettes on it.
Digression: Kids, don’t smoke. Disgusting habit. Hard to kick. But if you are going to take up smoking, smoke cigars, which at least are made with decent tobacco, and aren’t just the sweepings-up from the factory floor soaked in cyanide and piss. And if you are going to take up smoking, for the sake of all that’s good and holy, don’t smoke Swisher Sweets. This has been a public service announcement. End Digression.
Anyway, the overcoat seems to have made a big difference to the way Alfie looks, and the (disgusting) boots (which appear to have been actually painted with pig muck) have made a difference to the way Alfie walks. But the big difference for me to the way Alfie feels are the gloves. We have a lovely pair of old torn-up leather work gloves with the tips of the fingers cut out, and wearing those gloves changes not only the way I use my hands, but the way I feel. Er, no pun intended. I found my voice went lower in pitch. I remembered to walk with shorter steps (although that may have been the boots). I stood with my feet further apart.
And, er, I forgot a big chunk of my lines. But that won’t happen again.
It’s not that I thought Poor Alfie was going badly; I didn’t. It was going pretty well. But the gloves—and the coat, and the boots, and the bandana around my neck—boost it into going very well indeed. At least from my point of view.
Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.