Diary: Health and Safety

Beasts and Beauties raised more potential health and safety risks than many more conventional performances. The stage floor was frequently wet with spilt 'beer' and 'cream' in the story of the Husband, and therefore potentially slippery. In 'Beauty and the Beast', when the Beast transforms into a man at the end of the story, the actors open a trap door revealing a water-filled pool. Jack Tarlton (Beast) stands semi-naked in the water whilst two of his colleagues wash him clean of the Beast's body make-up. It makes a wonderful image, with echoes of a baptism into new life of a creature made man through Beauty's love, but it also causes problems as the water splashes onto the kite, making it slippery.

Thanks to the patience and skill of the stage manager, Pip Horobin, who was present on stage throughout the entire technical rehearsal, all the work went on without any physical risk to actor or crew. The splashes were quickly mopped up, and the actors made aware of any other potential hazards. However, there was one outstanding technical issue that did take particular care to ensure that it was done safely: the discharging of the pyrotechnics. Using any kind of naked flame on a stage is only done in strictly controlled situations. At the Old Vic, because the whole of the eighteenth-century auditorium is made of wood, the fire hazard is greater than in most theatres. It means that all effects involving flame, explosion, or smoke, must occur on the stage side of the "iron": the metal safety curtain designed to protect the audience from any fire that might start on the stage and that must, by law, fall and rise at the interval. There were protracted and slightly nervous discussions involving the director and the production manager (Garry Ferguson) about the placing of the 'pyros' (in 'The Juniper Tree') until the issue was resolved to the mutual satisfaction of both. Even so, when the first 'pyro' went off in a short bust of flame from a small hole in the kite floor, producing a fountain of heavy greenish smoke, it came as a shock to the actors.