Two Actors.
One touched by genius.
The other touched for the very first time
It's Queen Elizabeth II's Platinum Jubilee year, and we at Living Spit had a long think about what would be best way for us to celebrate this momentous, historic occasion. We were all set to make a brand new show, a celebration of this extraordinary life with Howard taking on the role of our diminutive monarch and Stu playing all the other characters that he has something in common with. Prince Charles (ears), Princess Anne (love of horses) and Prince Philip (off colour jokes).
Such is the power of Living Spit these days that word quickly reached the Palace and the inevitable cease and desist letter arrived from Her Majesty's lawyers as well as thinly-veiled threats of violence from
Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie.
Worried that our knighthoods might be on the line, we quickly decided to shelve our original plan and to instead have a look in Howard's loft and see which of our old shows we still had the stuff for. And there nestling among Winston Churchill's speedos and a rather smelly cow balaclava was a shrivelled potato, a crucial prop in our 2105 meisterwerk about our esteemed monarch's ancestor, "Elizabeth I - Virgin On the Ridiculous"
Losing Our Virginity
We first performed ‘Elizabeth’ back in 2014. It was our third show (for reference, we’re now writing the eighteenth).
Our first show, ‘The 6 Wives of Henry VIII’ had come about sort of by accident, and our second, ‘Adolf and Winston’ was written in a fury of inspiration, born out of the frustration of being in another acting company in a non Living Spit show, which was about as fun as Leprosy.
So this was the first script we actually had to sit and work at.
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Skimming through the history books, we discovered that Elizabeth’s story was much more complicated than her fathers. Full of political intrigue and complex conspiracies and not particularly conducive to turning into a light hearted, two-man knockabout comedy.
Nevertheless, we dutiful attempted to fill the script with every event in our ginger protagonists life, which caused a few problems once rehearsals began.
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By day three we were knee deep in crumpled balls of cheap A4 paper and the accumulation of crap, joke shop style props we’d bought and then mercilessly cut from the show.
We got it right(ish) in the end, but the show was still what we in the business call “a bit long”.
All that’s behind us now, as is most of the 2014 script. Incredibly, we managed to cut an hour and a half from the show, while still managing to salvage all the songs and most of the jokes.
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So here it is, 8 years and a global pandemic later: “Elizabeth: Rebooted”. Or “Elizabeth I: The Directors Cut” if you prefer. Or how about “Elizabeth I: Just the Good Bits”? Actually, let’s stick with the original title: “Elizabeth I: Virgin on the Ridiculous”.
Or is that “a bit long”…?
Living Spit
Living Spit started out as a bit of a joke. We had an idea for a show, “The Six Wives of Henry VIII”, based purely on the notion that Howard looks a bit like Henry VIII (He really does!). After cobbling together a script, we were told we had to form a company or we wouldn’t get paid. Never ones to allow small details to stand between us and cold, hard cash, Living Spit was born. We bought the costumes from charity shops, spending less than a tenner. We made the props from various bits we had lying around our respective houses, we drove up and down the country, touring the show to anywhere that would have us. In short, we did everything (And we mean EVERYTHING) ourselves.
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Then we went through a time when we sometimes employed other people to do things for us, but they wanted paying, so we went back to doing everything (and we mean EVERYTHING ourselves)
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Thanks
Theatre Shop, Clevedon for rehearsal space,
The amazing gang at the Bristol Old Vic.
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Chris, Mike, Lee, Daniel, Mark, Chas & Suggs
The Hallett Family
Tom Knott and his amazing horn.
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John Dee (and sorry for cutting you twice)
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Craig would like to dedicate this show to the memory of his Dad, Joe Edwards 1930-2021
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Credits​
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written by
Stu Mcloughlin & Howard Coggins
Queen Elizabeth I
Stu Mcloughlin
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Mary Tudor
Howard Coggins
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William Cecil, Baron Burghley
Howard Coggins
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Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester
Howard Coggins
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Francis Walsingham
Howard Coggins
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Walter Raleigh
Howard Coggins
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Hercule Francois, Duke of Anjou
Howard Coggins
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Lettice Knollys
Herself
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Robert Dudley Jr
Betty Coggins
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William Shakespeare
Howard Coggins
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All other parts played by members of the cast
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Director
Craig Edwards
Stage Manager
Fiona Trim
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Producer
Ali Robertson
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Wardrobe Mistress
Kirstyn Coggins
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