Cornwall: Much ado about nothing

The famous Minack theatre in England. Photo / Getty Images

Whatever the weather, the show goes on and guests suffer punishing granite seats at Minack Theatre, writes Kevin Pilley.

Togas billowed. The wind whistled up canvas loincloths and howled under a few gladiatorial greaves. The camp prefect suffered first-degree goosebumps in the southwesterly gale and the rain dripped off his not-very-Roman nose as well as his imperial-era cassis helmet. The legionnaires were soaked and bedraggled by the second act and visibly shivering by the next.

They looked like they wanted to get back to Lombardy. And quickly.

He entered stage left. But briefly. Remembering he had forgotten something he disappeared, soon reappearing with a smile on his face and a spear or period plastic "vine stick" in his hand.

He looked every inch a centurion or a British amateur dramatics enthusiast dressed up as one. He looked the military part. But for one major blooper. He had forgotten to take off his glasses. Varifocals were invented long after Caesar and Cleopatra. Both the real and Shavian versions.

I have been to Cornwall's Minack Theatre many times and sat on its unforgiving granite seats suffering numb bum for the sake of art and culture. I saw The Tempest there. And it poured. Caliban got caught in a heavy squall coming off the Atlantic.

I saw Twelfth Night there too. Malvolio was attacked by a gannet.

I also attended The Pirates of Penzance when the first entrance of Major-General Stanley was greeted by thunder, and his famous comic baritone patter song sung behind a curtain of traditional Cornish mizzle.

But pluckily we stuck it out. We saw it through. Brollies are banned in the unique theatre in west Cornwall. Luckily, soup is not.

The Minack amphitheatre (from the Cornish for "rocky place" or "monk", as the promontory is said to resemble a cowled head) is carved out of the cliffs of Porthcurno, four miles from Land's End. The theatre was the work of one woman.

The daughter of a mill owner, Rowena Cade was born in Derbyshire in 1893. After World War I, she moved to Cornwall and built a house overlooking the sea. She let a local theatre group stage A Midsummer Night's Dream in her back garden in 1929. Six years later, with the help of her gardener and another friend who didn't mind heavy lifting, she had created her own outdoor theatre in the cliff face terrace beneath her heathery, gorse-grown garden.

Wood, washed ashore from a wrecked Spanish freighter, was used for the dressing rooms and the box office was made out of an old anti-aircraft gun post. The earliest productions were lit by car headlights.

The 800-seat theatre — now a charitable trust — stages outdoor concerts and theatrical productions from April to September. This year the season includes The Railway Children, Around the World in Eighty Days, Chicago and Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing, Hamlet and Henry IV (Part 1).

Bored by landfills and toppling over rubbish bins, this time the local herring gull population might strafe the Prince of Denmark, instead.

But the show will always go on. And the prompter will heroically endure a sneezing fit.

And in all likelihood the casts will not be disturbed by too many freak weather systems and the weather will be gorgeous and the sun will blaze and everyone will get a tan. Even the ghost of Innogen. In the early editions.

Maybe once, a show might be interrupted by an uncast "extra" in walking boots and weatherproof anorak taking the wrong turning off the coastal footpath. And ending up in Messina.

CHECKLIST

GETTING THERE
Qatar Airways flies from Auckland to London, via Doha. Economy Class return tickets start from $1632. The Minack Theatre, in Porthcurno, is about a five-hour drive from London.
ONLINE
minack.com