There is absolutely no room left on Widgeon. At least, that is what it looks like to me.
The chairs and benches are full, and people are tucked into every available space beneath the canvas. The show is about to begin when a few more people appear.
MJ isn’t concerned.
“Have a drink and listen from outside. At the interval I’ll rearrange things and get you in.”
And you know she will.
Kaleni, MJ’s dog, is keeping a watchful eye on proceedings, the bar is busy and around thirty-five paying customers have chosen to spend their evening aboard Widgeon. A couple of hundred metres away, an enormous free outdoor cinema event is taking place.
And still, here is this theatre inside an old working boat, not just holding its own but playing to a full house.
Making a theatre-boat
Widgeon opened as a theatre-boat over Halloween weekend in October 2017. The following year, MJ took her to Rickmansworth and then into London for the Angel Festival. She also hosted Folk No Frills Afloat at Haggerston.
It snowed for the first Folk No Frills event. Properly snowed. There was something like two feet of snow on the towpath, and MJ could hardly believe anybody would make the journey.
The event sold out.
In 2019, MJ took Widgeon to the Bristol Shakespeare Festival. Writer John Knowles had created a series of plays giving some of Shakespeare’s less prominent characters stories of their own, and MJ staged several of them aboard.
The journey to Bristol provided an early indication of what moving a theatre around by historic working boat might involve.
It rained almost continuously as MJ travelled down the Kennet and Avon. She encountered strong flows, traffic lights she hadn’t known existed and stretches of water that felt more like white-water rapids than canal. She now advises anybody attempting the journey to read the Nicholson guide first.
At one point, she had to get into the water to clear Widgeon’s propeller while people from three nearby boats made sure she didn’t succumb to hypothermia. On the way back, Widgeon became so firmly stuck that the Canal & River Trust arrived with a Land Rover and pulled her into the final lock, so she could leave the Kennet and Avon and get back onto the Thames.
None of this appears to have discouraged her.
Making a show
Working with John on the Shakespeare Festival planted the seed of another idea. MJ wanted to create a musical about the canals: their history, communities and everyday life.
“I wanted it to be a kind of day in the life of a boater,” she told me. “So it opens with a jogger running past the boat. Because, of course, that’s the first thing I hear most mornings.”
(I agreed emphatically. Often, the first indication that the rest of the world is awake is the sound of joggers, dog walkers and cyclists passing the boat.)
Widgeon had carried grit during her working life, so the production became The Grit of Life. John wrote the script and lyrics, while musician Rory McLeod composed the music, combining the different styles MJ wanted, including folk, punk and ska.
Casting took place aboard Widgeon, and the production began to come together.
Then Covid arrived.
The three of them had to continue making a musical without being able to work together in the same room. Words, music and ideas passed backwards and forwards. By late 2020, they managed a test performance near Coventry, at Hawkesbury Junction.
Yes, the treatment and chemotherapy are repeated. I’d tighten it to:
In January 2021, MJ was diagnosed with breast cancer. She continued planning the tour using maps and online information while undergoing treatment. When the full tour opened in Coventry as part of the City of Culture programme, she was having chemotherapy and had to fit the schedule around it.
Four days to move a theatre
The touring arrangements looked fairly straightforward on paper. The cast would perform on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, then help dismantle everything. MJ had Monday to Thursday to move Widgeon to the next destination and rebuild the theatre, ready to begin again.
She readily admits now that the timetable was far too tight.
It assumed Widgeon would move at the speed suggested by the maps. More fundamentally, it assumed the canals would have water in them.
Widgeon is a large historic boat and, at the time, much of her ballast was concentrated towards the stern. She spent much of the tour becoming grounded, wedged or otherwise unable to proceed. Some pounds lost water, vegetation narrowed the channel, and stretches that looked navigable on paper became rather different when approached in a seventy-foot working boat carrying its stage, lights, sound kit, coverings, seating, bar and changing rooms.
Covid compounded the navigation problems. With boats barely moving, weed, silt and other obstructions built up far more than usual.
The first stop of the tour was Coventry Basin, but MJ had forgotten to check the height of the bridge on the way in. By the time she arrived, it was dark. She hadn’t needed to lower the front part of the tent before, so it hadn’t occurred to her. The chimney pot came off. She retrieved it, then had to dismantle the tent structure on her own at night to get under the bridge, and put it all back up again.
“Doh. Should have looked up the height of the bridge,” she says. She describes the setup at the time as “a nuts rig”, but says it made her strong.
Getting stuck is frustrating when the only consequence is arriving late. It is rather different when the boat is also the venue, dressing room, bar, scenery and a crucial part of the production.
Late-night boating became reasonably common as MJ made up lost time to keep Widgeon on schedule.
The tour developed a pattern. Widgeon would get into difficulty and, just as things were becoming desperate, help would appear.
Covid also made it difficult to persuade people to come out for live performances. The show was well promoted and well attended, especially in Coventry, Rugby, Fishery Wharf and Stoke Bruerne. But even where performances were outdoors and the two-metre rule was in place, people were still reluctant to socialise. Many venues and performers were losing significant sums at the time. The Grit of Life was touring in that same climate.
The supporting cast
Somewhere on the way towards Walsall, Widgeon’s propeller collected part of a bed spring.
MJ was travelling with Christine, a friend who had come to help for a few hours and ended up staying for two days. With the propeller fouled and Widgeon going nowhere, they pulled over.
The following morning, a man passed the boat and overheard them discussing the problem. About an hour later, he returned.
He was a local vicar, and he had brought garden shears and an assortment of other garden tools. He had changed into swimming trunks, and his son and daughter had also arrived prepared to get wet.
“I’m here to help,” he said.
He climbed into the canal and used the garden shears to cut the metalwork away from Widgeon’s propeller.
That already makes it one of my favourite stories from the tour, but it didn’t end there. Rory McLeod wrote a song about it. The cast learnt the song, and the vicar and his children were invited to hear the rescue turned into part of the show.
I love that a problem wasn’t simply dealt with and forgotten. It became new material.
Another time, Widgeon became stuck beneath the motorways in Birmingham, sitting on concrete in water too low to float her free. A man passing on a small mobility scooter became involved in the rescue attempt. A rope was tied to the back of the scooter while the Canal & River Trust arrived and ran more water into the pound.
It is difficult to imagine a less likely tow vehicle for a seventy-foot historic working boat.
On yet another difficult stretch, Steve from the Canal & River Trust came out with a team because Widgeon was getting stuck so frequently. He knew how to handle old working boats and took over the steering for a while. He got Widgeon through more easily, although even he commented on the vegetation and acknowledged that it was far from easy.
MJ knows considerably more about moving Widgeon now. She has also removed much of the ballast from the stern. But this wasn’t simply an inexperienced steerer getting things wrong. Even people who knew the canals and historic working boats could see what she was dealing with.
MJ admits there were moments when she felt like crying. She was going through treatment, trying to move an enormous boat to a fixed touring schedule and carrying a production that depended upon her getting to the next location.
This is the part of her story that has stayed with me. The Grit of Life was created by MJ, John and Rory and brought to life by its cast, but moving it around the country required a constantly changing cast of helpers.
Most of them had never auditioned. They simply happened to be standing beside the canal when Widgeon needed them.
The show was named The Grit of Life because Widgeon once carried grit. Yet on tour, it was life along the canal, friends staying longer than intended, strangers getting into the water and people appearing just when they were needed, that supplied the grit and kept the show moving.
Widgeon has hosted music, comedy, theatre, workshops and community events. She has appeared at festivals, been moored beside towpaths and turned up at weddings, becoming, for a while at least, part of neighbourhoods along the waterways.
Meanwhile …
Back aboard Widgeon, it is the interval. Chairs are shifted, people squeeze up and MJ finds room for those who have been listening outside.
The theatre rearranges itself around the people who have turned up, and the show goes on.
Find Widgeon Theatre Boat location and On The Bill listing on Facebook or online at https://widgeontheatreboat.com
