…but not just yet. It’s like the hiatus between Timothy Dalton and Pierce Brosnan. Except not as long or high budget.
Yes, Buerk! The Newsical has been on hold whilst our director and my co-writer Tom Bailey made a baby and reared it. I’m sure he won’t mind me mentioning that. It’s all “above board”.
Since then we have been putting plans afoot to remount the show in London so that the capital can enjoy our take on the BBC career of newsreader Michael Buerk and his saucy love triangle with Moira Stuart and Ian McCaskill.
We should have gone on last month at The Courtyard Theatre in Hoxton, but unfortunately they are a bunch of incompetent idiots. Considering they asked for a four-figure sum to hire their venue, it didn’t augur well that at our initial meeting I was invited into the main office which looked more like a teenager’s bedroom, with absolutely nowhere to sit and piles of crap all over the floor and furniture. The idiot in charge of making bookings had no idea how to calculate VAT, and when I gently told him, trying not to make him sound too retarded, he said, “No, that’s definitely not right.” I then sat and waited another five minutes whilst he sucked his pen before eventually giving up. All I went away with was a few notes he’d scribbled on paper. He couldn’t find the emails I’d sent him the previous day!
In short: any potential theatre-makers and producers I would heartily advise you to learn from my mistake and steer well clear from The Courtyard. They are way too unprofessional to risk ever working with, and utterly clueless in every department. If you want to drop me a line I’m happy to tell you more horror stories about them and go into gory details!
It was a lesson that theatres don’t close down every week through lack of funding or investment; they shut through gross mismanagement.
After running a mile from The Courtyard we’ve settled on another venue, and are in the stages of sorting out the technical side before we sign contracts. Hopefully Buerk! The Newsical will make its London debut in spring 2013. Watch this space, and we’re hopeful of more news soon.