It is thought to be the longest running theatre show outside of London, and the world’s longest improvised story. And while EastEnders marked its 40th anniversary this month, Bristol’s very own soap opera was celebrating its own incredible milestone.
It’s called Closer Each Day, and it is something unique in the world of theatre – an on-stage, regular, continuous theatrical soap opera that is entirely unscripted and improvised on the spot. Its legion of fans religiously come to watch every ‘episode’, which takes place every other Monday evening at the Wardrobe Theatre in the Old Market Assembly.
People who come to one episode to see something a bit different are hooked, and the video of each episode is watched by people all around the world.
And this week, after more than 13 years, it celebrated its 250th episode in grand soap opera style, with a dramatic wedding, the return of some old favourite characters, and a sold-out audience hanging on every word.
Like all soap weddings, there was uncertainty and anticipation about whether the bride would jilt the groom at the altar – or vice versa – but unlike anything you’ll see in EastEnders or Coronation Street, that uncertainty was shared by the actors playing the parts themselves.
Because Lindsey Garwood, who is both the theatre company co-director and the actor who plays Constance Sugar, the bride for this particular wedding, had not actually made her mind up about whether her character would go through with marrying her until she stood on stage and began taking her vows.
The entire soap opera is improvised – and that is something John Lomas, the artistic director, and the actors themselves, stick to with a stubborn passion. The only control anyone has on what happens on stage, apart from the actors themselves making up the scenes as they go along, is in the hands of show editor Rob Kershaw. He controls the lights, so can – and does – drop the stage into darkness to signal when he thinks a scene should end.
Next to him is Jack Drewry, who improvises music on a keyboard to fit the mood on stage and will scramble to find a sound effect or background song if a character suddenly turns on the radio on stage.
But aside from that, the entire thing is not scripted – and the actors make a point of not really getting together to work on any lines, or discuss what should happen next – the only briefing they have before each performance is to remind themselves of what happened in the last episode.
Closer Each Day, which regularly fills the Wardrobe Theatre every fortnight, tells the story of the good folk of Newtown, a fictional coastal town with its fair share of colourful characters. There are family feuds, romances, affairs, dodgy dealings and the kind of long-running sagas that all soaps have.
“About half the audience are regulars, and half the audience have maybe never been before and are coming for a night out to see something different, so we make sure that it is accessible for people who are seeing this world for the first time,” explained Lindsey.
“We might have bigger stories that go on for a number of months or more than a year, but there will also be things that are contained in one episode. We had one long-running storyline which was about an affair and it was more than a year before it all came out. One character got shot during the fall out from that and there were gasps and tears in the audience when it was all revealed,” she explained.
Closer Each Day has a regular cast, and has been something of a training ground for Bristol’s acting talent over the years – many have gone on to the West End and TV work. It’s a soap opera that is essentially a comedy, but with a lot of pathos and drama, and unlike ‘comedy improv nights’ at comedy clubs across the country, it’s very much a theatre play rather than one where the performers break the fourth wall or involve the audience.
“It’s a comedy but we’re not afraid of getting into the pathos,” explained Lindsey. “People get really invested in it – it’s absorbing. We really want the people to commit to it on stage, so it is very much a theatre show.
“We find that you can’t plan anything. We don’t work out what we’re going to say to each other beforehand, we don’t plan the storylines and it just happens. It is quite magic, it feels like we’re all writing it together and everyone just feels what should happen next.
“That’s quite a challenge as an actor, and there’s a lot of actors who can’t do it, who need a script or something to go on,” she explained. The group of actors have a workshop on the Monday evenings in between, where actors who want to get involved are put through their paces, but this is separate to Closer Each Day and the characters and storylines aren’t worked on there.
“It’s very addictive for both performers and the audience. We all know it works better if we just let it unfold, and we’ll have a word with an actor if we think they might have written some lines or prepared something. We actively don’t want any kind of pre-planning,” she explained.
The show was the brainchild of Tom Brennan and began back in 2011 in the old Wardrobe Theatre venue at the White Bear, and after a couple of years moved to the Assembly, where it is a regular fortnightly event for those in the know in Bristol.
Lindsey joined the cast in 2013. “It is a very Bristol thing, it’s unique, very vibrant, very different. I’m told the first show had about as many people on stage as in the audience, but they kept going and now it has a cult following.
“A lot of people ask whether it’s written down but it really is completely improvised. Over the years it’s evolved, and actors come and go but it continues to be really exciting,” she added. “We’re always on the look out for new actors to come on board. The cast has sort of grown up now so we’re probably lacking younger actors and actually older actors, to mix it up a bit,” she said.
The show is now filmed every time – which helps the cast remember what they said or did last month or last year – and those films are available to watch online, which people from across Europe and North America who have caught the Closer bug do every fortnight.
The theatre company has also got into the 2020s by setting up a Patreon which helps support the show and keeps people across the world in touch with the fortnightly drama.
Constance did decide to marry her now husband, wealthy hotelier Reginald Simpkins, in the end but it was touch and go, with lots of drama, a stand-in groom, another character turning up in a white wedding dress, and lots of shenanigans involving blackmail and hotel licences.