If you so happened to pass the Old Vic at 11am last Thursday, you might have been temporarily distracted by the assorted group of people gathered on the pavement outside. Wearing wellies, carrying sleeping bags and armed with practical but stylish waterproofs, you might have been curious as to what this crowd was up to. The chance of you witnessing this is quite unlikely; however, if you did pass by at that fated time, you officially spotted the honorary members of Bush Camp in the first leg of their journey to the one and only Latitude Festival.
Latitude is a recent and innovative addition to the UK Festival scene: it takes the basic principle of other festivals (spending three nights in a decorated field enjoying a generously sized portion of quality music) and throws in a heap of other art forms. From dance to comedy, theatre to spoken word, the entertainment is wide ranging and a bit of a cultural feast. It's also a relatively small, chilled out festival placed in the beautiful surroundings of Henham Park. Not forgetting the coloured sheep...
The Bush Theatre have taken productions to the festival for the past three years and this time it was the turn of a new musical comedy, The Great British Country Fete by Russell Kane and Michael Bruce (Music). The cast and crew and creative team had two performances at the festival and a cluster of Bush staff accompanied them for the weekend to come and cheer them on.
After arriving at the festival grounds and picking up our wrist bands that were needed to wander the site, we headed to the performer's area to set up our temporary homes. Bush Camp was soon made distinguishable by the addition of Lucy Osborne's vintage tent, a wonderfully orange, lime green and brown creation, accessorised with a pretend plastic window and curtains to make it feel like a retro home away from home. Her dad had bought this beauty from a neighbour in 1987. So it was on Lucy's tent where the honorary Bush Camp Bunting was strung, marking our territory for the weekend. The Soho Theatre's self branded t-shirt was hung from the nearest tree.
Tents now in shape, (thanks to the handy work of the Bush Technical Masterminds Sam and Aaron) the weekend's festivities could begin. I caught the first performance of The 13 Midnight Challenges of Angelus Diablo, an absurd and enjoyable production which took the audience's preconceptions of the RSC and turned them on their head. Selected audience members seemingly forced to contend in sniggering-ly gruesome challenges (such as kissing an ancient mummy with the knowledge she would be awakened by one of the contestants) and a memorable performance by Sandy Grierson as the larger than life protagonist, adorned with dangerously high platform boots.
The first performance of The Great British Country Fete took place at 11am on Saturday morning in the theatre arena. Incredibly by the time the show was due to begin, the arena, which has a capacity of 600 people, was rammed full of excited punters buzzing with what can only be described an unnatural energy considering the partying mood there had been the previous night. It was at this point raining, and about four minutes into the performance, during Farmer Joe's first song, the lights started to flicker, the projection disappeared and the stage plummeted into darkness. A power cut. Bush Staff in the audience all looked at one and other in a state of shock and despair- slots were tightly timed- what if the problem wasn't solved in time? Was the roaring support of the 600-strong crowd going to dwindle as the minutes ticked by?
Our doubts were instantly soothed by the crew who sprung into action to find a solution and also by the wonderful cast who kept the crowd in high spirits throughout the wait. I'm quite sure didn't see one person leave during this time. The original lighting designs had to be scrapped in a make do set up of floods, but at this point everyone was simply glad the show would be able to be seen. Despite the unexpected happening, the show went on. Phew. The crowd were particularly revved up as the show re-started, offering great reactions (especially one man in the front row who laughed so loudly that the actors paused, causing a ripple of laughter in audience). Job well done, I say. A celebratory group visit to the comedy tent to enjoy Guilty Pleasures, a night filled with absolutely cheesy music, was most certainly in order. It was here we danced the night away to classic tunes like Kiss, Don't Stop Believing; and Living on a Prayer. Bliss.
The rest of the weekend quickly spun into a bundle of theatre visits, thumping bands, sunny hours, dreaded toilet stops, lots of glitter and the incomparable excitement of nabbing a golf buggy ride (the performer's source of transport to and from the theatre tent). Before we knew it, our shower-free days were coming close to an end. After jumping up and down like a over excited puppy for the entirety of Vampire Weekend's set on Sunday Evening, I gathered with a small group of Bushites to be seduced by the storytelling antics of Daniel Kitson during his duet with Gavin Osborne entitled: Stories Under the Starlit Sky. The sky, unlike many a night in London, was sufficiently star filled and, surrounded by the fir trees lit up in jewel shades of green, red and blue, close to the beautiful lake at the centre of the grounds, I felt positively Latitude.
