The Body Of An American @ The Gate Theatre

As with most of these stories, our journey began on an early morning train. I journeyed to London to meet up with three lovely ladies to see the body of an american. We arrived at the prince Albert pub which is located directly below the gate theatre in Notting hill and took our seats at what appeared to be the star table (people looked rather jealous).

We ate and then left to go up to the theatre around 20 minutes before the show was due to start in hopes of being at the front of the queue to have our choice of seats. Unfortunately as soon as we opened the door it became apparent that this was not going to happen, the queue was already half way down the stairs! We pushed our way through the crowd as we needed to pick up our tickets and were provided with plastic shoe covers which we needed to put on before entering the room. We were also told that we might want to hang up our coats as there wasn’t a lot of room within the theatre…..

When the doors opened and we started filtering through, I realised how true that statement was. We entered into a very small rectangular space which to me looked a bit like an attic room. There were foam bench seats along either side of the room with 2 rows on each side. We took our seats on the side opposite the door. The floor was covered in snow and images were projected on the walls on either end of the room. There were just 2 chairs in the middle of the floor sat facing each other and where we were sitting the chair was almost directly in front of us.

The play itself was amazing. There is an incredible amount of dialog with so many characters portrayed only by the 2 actors, Damien Molony and William Gaminara. Despite the fast pace of the play and the switches between environments and scenes being really quick I found is easy to follow. The story starts with how the image of the body of an american was captured and progresses to portray the meeting of photographer Paul Watson and writer Dan O’Brien and how their relationship develops. I particularly enjoyed the portrayal of their email exchanges. For the first part of the play, William Gaminara stole the show, the intense dialog and constant eye contact made it difficult to look anywhere else! After a while though Damien Molony came into his own. He had some incredible speeches and the story of Dan’s family was intense and emotional to listen to. Being in such a small space was quite intimidating at first and I am amazed at how easily both Damien and William looked into people’s eyes while delivering their lines. Once I relaxed and began listening intently to the story the intensity of the setting only made it even better.

On a less serious note (and a rather shallow one) at one point Damien was lay practically at my feet, and looked me full in the eye after a comment about skype…..it was amazing.

Once the show had finished we made our way down the stairs to the exit of the theatre but found that people were stopped as it was absolutely hammering it down with rain outside. We were hoping to see Damien and get our programmes signed and so we waited in the stairway until the rain had calmed and then made our way outside. William Gaminara made his way past us on the stairs and left pretty quickly which was a shame as we would have loved to have had a little chat with him. Damien came down and said hello, I said we were hoping to get our programmes signed but it was raining and so he suggested we go back up to the theatre in the dry. We spoke briefly about the play and how tiring it must be. He also had a piece of snow stuck to his eye which I pointed out but he said that it was literally everywhere and he was past the point of caring lol! I asked if i could have a picture and said that i was gonna go for the selfie as i thought we could do something different for a change, we stood next to each other and he put his arm around me as i took the pictures. After the pictures Damien said he looked like a crazy professor or something but i told him he looked lovely (which he did obviously) although his hair was so thick and id never seen hair so thick in my life! Sometimes, i wish my mouth would wait and consider what was coming out before it was said….oops…..

 

Anyway, after Becca, Helen and Laura had their pictures and had little chats with Damien he left and we made our way for a cuppa in a nearby coffee shop. After Helen departed for a trip to Essex (which eventually didn’t happen) Becca, Laura and I went for a romantic meal in an Italian restaurant near paddington station and chatted about our day before parting ways. It was a brief trip, but utterly enjoyable as these being human field trips always are!

Apologies that the final 2 photos are the wrong way around, i don’t appear to be able to change them for some reason! Thanks for reading 🙂 xx