Introduction

History

History - Part 2

Gallery

Links

The stage play: From 1990 to 1998, Armstrong was working, primarily, as an independent producer with Allen Stone, an American he had met in Paris. Stone had originally trained as a clown with The Ringling and Barnum & Bailey Circus in America before moving to Paris and studying under Jacques Lecoq and Philippe Gaulier. He had subsequently moved to London to enrol in Armstrong’s newly created Structured Acting Course.

Initially working through Drumbeat Productions, during which they produced Gates’s thriller, The Kidnap Game with Hayley Mills and Richard Todd, he and Armstrong went on to resurrect the production company, Armstrong Arts.

Stone had originally heard the demo tape of The Curse Of Tittikhamon screenplay while in Paris and loved it, but it wasn’t until their company was producing a pilot for an intended series of dramatised audio tapes, that the idea of turning the screenplay into a stage production occurred to him.

“An idea flashed into my mind,” recalls Stone, “The Curse of Tittikhamon adapted from film to stage, in the form of a live radio broadcast. It seemed so obvious I couldn’t believe that someone hadn’t thought of it before. I told Michael of my concept and he was sold on it immediately.”

In adapting the text, Armstrong updated some of the references and cut the majority of musical numbers: a police soft-shoe shuffle, an Esther Williams water ballet in a public swimming baths (later re-instated for the 2001 revival), a blue movie jazz ballet, a dance routine parodying over a dozen of the cinema’s most famous death scenes, a Born In A Trunk send-up from the Cukor version of A Star Is Born, and a burlesque song & dance performed by the tabloid press.

As Armstrong explained: “On screen they were to open out the movie and provide visual breaks from the dialogue scenes but in a predominantly audio rendering on stage they lost most of their comedic value and slowed down the narrative flow.”

Other changes included the loss of a rapid cartoon-style montage of the Mummy murdering various celebrities and replacement scenes for a send-up of the Osmonds together with a Mary Whitehouse style love scene set in a phoney wonderland of television commercials.

With Stone directing and Armstrong making a rare appearance on stage after an absence of over twenty years, the play went into rehearsal and almost immediately hit problems. Stone’s inexperience as a director and the fact that he was using his own and family money to fund the production placed him under enormous stress - which from the first day of rehearsal communicated itself to his cast. To make matters worse, one member set about stirring up trouble internally within the company. Resultant dissention amongst the cast nearly closed down the production until the instigator was identified and replaced. Although this immediately meant tensions and conflicts within the company ceased, none of this had helped the creative work needed for the show.

The play opened for a limited season on 7th July 1998 at the New End Theatre in Hampstead.

Critical reactions to the show were split. Several of the critics, apparently not knowing the films being parodied, took the spoof dialogues and satirical swipes at face value and damned it accordingly.

As Armstrong recalls, “While I was on stage, I could actually see the Time Out critic scribbling away in horror at what she was hearing. She took just about everything at face value. She was very young and had, obviously, never seen Hammer’s The Mummy or any of the other movies, stars and genres being parodied. She didn’t even know Bette Davis in Whatever Happened To Baby Jane? I know my impersonation wasn’t exactly the greatest but nobody else in the audience took it as a cynical attack on the disabled. Worse, she completely missed all the satire as well and took it literally, so I was accused of being racist, homophobic, sexist and God-knows-what-else. I dread to think what she would have made of Alf Garnett. The fact that everyone around her was falling about laughing only seemed to increase her sense of indignation - although I did spot her laughing with the rest of the audience at my tap dancing number, which, no doubt, is what forced her to give me a begrudging acknowledgment for my acting. Another well-known critic was so drunk he fell over trying to find his seat after the interval, so goodness knows what show he thought he’d seen by the time he got down to writing but it certainly didn’t bear much relation to anything we’d been doing on stage. As for the local critic, he was so shocked and offended by what he saw that his review just became a single vitriolic and highly personal attack - so much so that, for the first and only time in my life, I actually wrote a response to the paper.”

Armstrong also mused on whether or not his satirical damning of the press - and in particular the gutter press - might have added insult to their sense of injury.

“It was as if everything they had ever held sacred had suddenly come under attack,” he continues. “Having been a critic, myself, they hold no mystery for me and, coming from the movie exploitation scene, I’d quickly grown used to being called every name under the sun...but this was extraordinary. One critic, who, unfortunately, wasn’t reviewing it, privately confided that he too was bewildered by how they could have so completely missed the point of the show. I mean, it’s hardly a subtle work. One reviewer, as he was leaving the theatre, stopped me and said it was one of the funniest things he’d ever seen and loved it - and then slagged it off in print. Another used a brief exchange: “Call me Richard.” - “I prefer Dick.” - “Don’t we all?” - which used to get a huge laugh every performance - to remonstrate about resorting to double-entendres to get a laugh and then a few weeks later proceeded to quote the same double-entendre in some fringe production as an example of sparkling wit!”

Contrary to the overall press reaction, however, audiences found it extremely funny and original, as did a couple of West End managements: one of whom felt that, with different direction, it had all the cult potential of another Rocky Horror Show. Certainly sufficient audience members returned to see it a second and, in some cases, third time to give credence to that belief.

Disillusioned with his experiences of the industry, Stone quit show business immediately after the production, in pursuit of a less stressful life, leaving Armstrong with the production company, which he eventually re-formed with former student and fellow performer in the show, Krisztina Vasko; later, to be joined by the show’s musical director, Mark Hartley.

The Curse Of Tittikhamon remained as a production idea which they planned to remount, especially once Armstrong had re-conceived its staging. It was, further, intended to place it in repertory with the equally outrageous if more ambitious musical of Robin Hood, which Armstrong had also adapted for the stage.

In 2001, the two plays were included as part of a repertory tour. This time, with a new cast (including Armstrong again), the reinstatement of the water ballet number and directed by Armstrong. The Curse Of Tittikhamon opened the tour at the Theatre Royal, Margate - the week immediately following the Bin Laden attack on the World Trade Centre in New York.

“Not the best time to open a show full of jokes about a murderous Egyptian mummy being identified by the police as a ‘kinky costumed terrorist poof’,” Armstrong points out, “Audiences were so thin as to be almost non-existent. The few who came certainly laughed and applauded loudly enough for us to know there was somebody out there but - alas - a tiny handful of enthusiasts, however much they may love a show, aren’t enough to combat the harsh reality of economics. I gather everywhere was badly effected at the box-office - hardly surprising - but it really didn’t offer any consolation.”

Audiences and advance booking proved so disastrous that the tour folded.

“At some point, I’d love to see it revived and running in repertory with Robin Hood as originally intended under the joint heading of Movies That Never Got Made.” Armstrong says, “They’re very funny shows and there’s certainly a big audience out there for them. They’re not expensive to mount but they need enough backing to nurse them through the opening weeks in order to allow sufficient time for word of mouth to develop. One day...”

Copyright © 2006 Michael Armstrong