Mustang Ali! Showbusiness Correspondent Alistair Foster made it onto the West End stage with a walk-on part in hit rock musical The Commitments
With only a handful of school plays to my name, I was more than a little surprised that a smash-hit show was willing to gamble on me as an extra.
Yet here I was, backstage at the Palace Theatre with more than 1,000 people waiting out front - and a set of darts in my hand.
I had been invited to appear in a pub scene in The Commitments, Roddy Doyle’s tale of the rise and fall of a working-class Irish soul band, to mark St Patrick’s Day.
With hits including Mustang Sally and In The Midnight Hour, the musical has been a smash-hit since it opened in 2013. It recently announced its run has been extended until September.
As its newest recruit, I arrived at the Palace Theatre at 5.45pm, an hour and a half before curtain-up. The backstage area was surprisingly calm, with cast members joking around.
But any idea I had of getting away with this without making a complete fool of myself quickly evaporated when I was shown the outfit I had to wear - half-mast grey Farah slacks, a garish jumper, original Eighties brown moccasins and a leather flat cap.
My instructions were alarmingly vague - 20 minutes in I was to be a punter in the pub where the band have just met and hear trumpeter Joey play for the first time. More alarming still was the fact I was to be playing darts.
My directions came from resident choreographer Natalie Hope, who also plays backing singer Natalie. As well as the encouraging, “Don’t mess this up!”, she offered: “Just act like you’re in the pub on a Tuesday afternoon. You’ll have a healthy nervousness. You also have that trepidation - but it’s nothing you can’t deal with!”
Even as the cast warm up, there’s still no nerves - but I’m sure they’re in the post at this point. There was time for a pep talk from Brian Gilligan, who plays the band’s lead singer Deco. He said: “Just have fun! The audiences are amazing - insanely amazing. It’s like nothing I’ve ever experienced before.”
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As curtain-up approaches, I’m waiting for my cue - and the nerves finally kick in. As I follow fellow pub punter Mark onto the stage, I daren’t look at the audience. We begin our game of darts, which goes well as the story unfolds only feet behind us.
But then calamity strikes! A dart hurled by my colleague bounces off the wiring and hits The Commitments’ drummer Billy “The Animal” Mooney on the ankle. He shoots a scowl as he lurches towards us threateningly - I managed to convince myself it was some fantastic ad-libbing rather than the real prospect of being pasted live on stage.
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As I become engrossed in our match - in which we both threw some respectable arrows - suddenly the four-minute scene is over. As the stage is cleared, I concentrate as much as I can on not bumping into the other cast.
Having avoided disaster, it’s a triumph in my eyes, although I’m not sure they’ll be asking me to join The Commitments just yet.
