A Year On: Mrs Puntilla
Just over a year ago, the production period for Mrs Puntila and Her Man Matti began. This felt like a hugely important production to me: when I first moved up to Edinburgh from London I said more than once that I would be ‘officially’ at home as part of the Scottish theatre scene when I lit a show at the Lyceum. I had first done so the previous Autumn, when I lit the fabulous Love Song To Lavender Menace, which is one of my favourite shows since arriving here. So Mrs Puntila was my second. It would also be transferring across to the Tramway in Glasgow as part of a co-production with the Citizens Theatre, and it felt like a very important followup to Love Song for me.
It was lovely to be working on a large scale again. I’d not been in a big rehearsal room with a large cast of actors and musician’s since Morna Young’s fantastic Lost at Sea the year before, and whilst Brecht’s words didn’t speak to my heart the same way, the politics and the protest at the heart of the piece brought a new world alive.
It was a relatively difficult birthing process in terms of lighting design, however. An event cascade meant that we never did a run of the show in rehearsal, and despite being in the room a great deal we moved into production week with me (and other creatives) having seen about a third of the show… and then, just as the severity of Coronavirus was beginning to become clear to us all, I came down with norovirus on the second or third day of tech and was absent for a day and a half. I’ve never known a lighting designer, me or anyone else, just disappear from technical rehearsal. And yet, there it was. There was no way for me to be in that theatre. Not a chance.
Suffice to say that this was relatively disastrous, and of course it was on a show for which I didn't have an assistant! So many people rallied round, and I have much to be grateful for. We got through it in the end, and I remember clearly the moment in previews where the lighting no longer looked as disastrous as the process had been! I remember the relief of that moment, and the change in my muscles. The feeling of hope. The knowledge that all would be well.
The show did its Edinburgh run, and it was shortly before the transfer of Mrs Puntila across to Glasgow that lockdown finally happened. I’ve missed the Tramway since I first worked there back in 2005. It won’t be with Puntila, but I’m looking forward to finally making a show there again… some day soon.