Tony Harrison's "Trackers of Oxyrhyncus"
I was just refining the composition of my BIOGRAPHY when I remembered a story from the tour of the Trackers with the RNT.
Tony Harrison (we christened him T' Bard) wrote the play which, at it's heart, contained a fragment of an old Greek play about Apollo and Dyonisus and the Satyrs who found Apollo's bulls. He also translated some ancient greek for a champagne producer. The fee for the work consisted of an unlimited supply of champagne. Thus, before each performance of the play the cast stood in a circle and passed round a shallow dish of champagne to cries of, "Yamass (spelling?) ya bastard," etc. The dish was a genuine greek 'vase' produced in the year that the Greek fragment was written. You should have seen the looks on the faces of the actors in the canteen when they heard over the tannoy system, "Will the cast of Trackers of Oxyrhyncus please assemble on stage. This is your champagne call." I digress.
This ritual was followed assiduously in every venue in every country we visited. The final performance took place in Denmark, in a theatre which had been created inside a disused gas storage cylinder, I forget what they're called; it'll come to me later. The foyer contained a steam railway locomotive, which had obviously been used for the transport of coal to and from the gas production facility (gas works to you and me). Funnily enough, the train had been built in Leeds - from whence came T' Bard, Jack Shepherd (Apollo) and Me (a clogdancing Tracker). Now then, we did the ritual before the last performance. When the show was over, as we were leaving the building T' Bard gave the ancient vase to the Wardrobe Mistress to carry out in one of her bags. She was passing through a swing door when it closed, quite wilfully, on the bag, smashing the ancient artefact into smithereens. There was an enormous intake of breath from all present. The WM didn't know what to do with herself. The horror! The embarassment! T' Bard seemed pleased. ''Don't worry, love,'' he said, ''It's the gods telling us that it's the last performance. '' My neighbour at the time was an antique dealer. He told me that those vases were ten a penny, well, about £14 actually. Still, it's a good tale and, it wasn't the only time the gods put in an appearance. But that's another story.
