WHAT A WAY TO MAKE A LIVING
It all began when Dave worked with the ‘Madhouse Company’. He wanted to take the show’s anarchic cabaret capers to a new level; his plan was to weave them into the fabric of an equally absurd theatrical plot. All the events in his show were to be set in real time so that the audience never felt that they were watching a scripted play. Our first production was called ‘Laugh! I could have died’ and was full of alarming stunts, comedy magic, escapes, explosions and general mayhem.
Lemmings are born
The film opposite shows a fragment of our very first show. Happily the review kept us in work for many years ~
"Ingenious, a pinnacle of inspired silliness. Throughout there are tricks of various sorts, puns, and escapes. Jokes and explosions; the mixture is hilarious but behind the humour there must be an element of real risk. " - Scotsman, Edinburgh Festival Review.
Shortened versions of the show were soon appearing on the new London comedy circuit, at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and as far a feild as the Hong Kong Fringe festival.
"Mixing comedy with magic, often ineptly done On purpose, was the trademark of the great British performed Tommy Cooper. There were moments when they reminded me of Cooper - which is high praise indeed." - South China Morning Post
‘Laugh! I Could have died’ became the most inappropriately named show in theatrical history, as Dave almost died performing a publicity stunt for the opening of the show in 1984. Ironically the escape from a burning stake also took place on Tollpuddle Martyers day in Battersea Park making it also the most astounding example of “life imitating art”. The show eventually opened the following year with Dave wearing specially adapted surgical dressings.
Diary of a Lemming 1984
Lemmings on the street
Back in the 80’s it turned out that even firing Mandy out of a cannon was deemed to be a health and safety risk, but the audiences loved it. Lemmings were soon to be seen on the streets creating ever more mind-boggling shows and it just so happened that Covent Garden was just half a mile from our home. Over the next thirty years we pioneered Outdoor Arts in the UK and beyond.
Our repertoire included cleaver weilding preachers, inept daredevils, Mechanical Morris men, naked escapology and of course a human cannonball.
"Real stunts and clever Illusions interspersed, with feats of daring do, delivers moments of inspired idiocy." - The Economist
First day on the streets of Mumbai at the Kala Ghoda festival, the audience were gathered and ready for our show. Dave opened the props bag and out jumped a big fat cockroach ~ this travelling life-style isn’t always as glamorous as it seems.
Diary of a Lemming 1984
Lemmings get high
Between shows, sitting on the grass at a festival in Hammersmith Mandy and Dave watched yet another stilt-walker go by dressed in long stripped red and white trousers and a top hat to make him look as tall as possible. “There must be a way to make that interesting”, said Dave. The next thing we saw was a pair of community policemen walk past. Bingo! that’s it said Dave and our long legged British Bobbies were born. Within a couple of years they were appearing at British Events across Europe.
In 1988 they appeared at the World Expo in Australia. A small Japanese business man gave us his card and soon the Lemming became regular performers at the Rusutsu Resort in northern Japan.
Keeping work original is difficult, new ideas get copied very quickly. Sitting on the grass in the oasis town of Al Ain Mandy looked looked up to see a camel walk by. Her eyes lit up and soon we started to work out how on earth two stilt walkers could wear the same costume without falling over. After that double stilt costumes became ‘our thing’.
DIARY OF A LEMMING 1992
Lemmings world-wide
It turned out that the language of lemmings is international and within a few years we became a British Export, working at World Expo’s in Spain and Australia that led to many residencies in Japan. The British Council sent us to Italy, Turkey, India and China and the British Tourist Authority to most European Countries from Finland to France. Happily we were perceived to be typically British with our eccentric humour.
"The Lemmings are madly funny. I was stunned, shocked, deeply fascinated and with a pain in the stomach muscles from laughter. An outrageously good show." - Ekstrabladet, Copenhagen.
Standing at the check-in desk ready to fly to Stockholm Dave tried to break the bad news gently. He looked at the assistant behind the counter and asked, “do you need passports for Sweden?”. Mandy screamed, it was our first booking in Sweden. Next thing we were running through the airport with a mountain of luggage trying to get temporary passports, but we made it. The passport photos were priceless images of horrified actors.
DIARY OF A LEMMING 1984
Rural Lemmings
In the early 90’s we were invited to perform an indoor show for a village hall in Yorkshire. It was a perfect audience for the Lemmings and before long we were touring across Rural Britain with a full evening show designed for audiences in the run up to Christmas. It was doing this that we had one of our best compliments ever ~ “my husband died two weeks ago and this is the first time I’ve laughed since”.
Whilst we were touring we were invited to create a multi-media show by the Northern Rural Touring Consortium and took inspiration from old friends ‘Forkbeards Fantasy’ who had spent many years combining film and theatre in with a process called ‘crossing the divide’. Actors could happily move in and out of films built into a plot and ours was called the ‘Descent of Man’ timed to match the anniversary of Charles Darwin. it stand out.
Dave felt uneasy about the show and there were just a handful of days before it was going to be shown to the arts council. He sat down with Mandy and said let’s have a another read through of the script. Afterwards he asked what she thought. There was a long pause and Dave walked off with the script. He wandered the streets in search of inspiration, then returned and said “okay let’s swop parts, you’ll play the smart administrator up for a prestigious award and I’ll play the misguided fool”. It was then a race to learn each others lines, but it worked ~ it had to work, it was of course type-casting.
DIARY OF A LEMMING 1994
Tsunami Lemmings
Following our last Rural Tour in 2006 Mandy and Dave took a Christmas break in Sri Lanka. In true lemmings style they arrived the night before the Tsunami and although unscathed, we became ‘missing persons’ in a very dramatic fashion. We raised money for the disaster fund and went back to help distribute aid before finding themselves at a loose end back in England. At that point we were recruited to set up projects in local schools for Creative Partnerships and at that point we became more rooted in our local region. Within a year or two we were running a large carnival, creating the first Garden of Curiosities and exploring local heritage.