We spoke to the actor Cyril Blake about his show, Bonding, which is making its way to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
STARBURST: Who are you?
Cyril Blake. I’m an actor you’ve never heard of. I got sick of waiting for the phone to ring, so I decided to be proactive and wrote a play called Bonding. It debuted at Camden Fringe last year, and then I brought a revised version to Brighton Fringe in May. So where else to go next but the biggest cultural extravaganza of them all: Edinburgh Fringe!
So, what is Bonding?
Bonding is a one-person show where my character is a major James Bond fan and uses him as inspiration for how to live. But as he gets older and wiser he starts to question if this is a good idea. Ultimately, the show is about ideas of masculinity and how we feel we need to express ourselves because of societal pressures. Sometimes that’s positive, sometimes it’s toxic. The emotional drive of the show is the character’s relationship with his old-school working-class father and coming to terms with the differences between them. Oh, and it’s funny! That’s not just my opinion – people actually laugh when I expect them to!
What made you do a show about James Bond?
A couple of years ago, I saw a play called Yippee-Ki-Yay, which was a retelling of Die Hard as an epic poem. That’s a great concept in itself, and it was really well done, but the writer-performer Richard Marsh also interwove it with an emotional story about the character’s relationship with his wife and how his life had changed after becoming a father. It was a great way of combining a recognisable IP with a more personal story, and it worked extremely well.
That got me thinking that I hadn’t seen anyone do a fandom exploration of James Bond. That was the starting point, and as I thought about the positives and negatives of Bond, the concept of toxic masculinity kept springing up – things that were perfectly normal fifty or sixty years ago, but now we look at them and think differently. I wanted to explore that but in an even-handed way, just as I have had to in my own life.
Why do you think Bond appeals to so many people?
Glamour, action, escapism! It’s everything we want from the good old-fashioned cinema experience. The beauty of James Bond is that it is such a huge cultural phenomenon that everybody knows a little something about it. The films have been a mainstay of popular culture for over sixty years, and even if you haven’t seen them, you will still recognise a lot of the tropes. I mean, everybody can do a Sean Connery impression. I suppose I still had a stereotypical idea of Bond fans in my head because I was expecting a lot of middle-aged men to turn up, but actually, my audiences have been a diverse range of genders and ages. Everyone has given it a great response, so hopefully, I have found the right balance!
Will Bonding work for the true Bond nerds?
Yes. This is, at its heart, a celebration of that fandom and there are some more subtle references that only the hardcore will pick up on. Most of the humour comes from picking apart some of the more ridiculous aspects of the Bond franchise, but an important part of any fan culture is being able to see the silliness in it. Especially when you’re looking back over such a long history. Where would the Doctor Who fans be without a sense of humour?
I did have a bit of a secret weapon here as I am good friends with a super Bond nerd called Calvin Dyson who has a very popular YouTube channel devoted to all things Bond. We used to do a podcast together called Diminishing Returns in which we took apart all the Bond films and forced him to try and defend everything about them. I took my script to him and he gave it his seal of approval as a fan — as well as giving me some great references to drop in where appropriate.
Is anyone else involved in the production other than yourself and Calvin?
I had a director named Betsy Robertson come in and help me out when I was first putting the show together, as I really needed an outside perspective. She was someone I had worked with before so I trusted her and she confessed that she knew next to nothing about James Bond! But that was actually really good to make sure the play worked for everyone. I have also had a lot of friends helping me in one way or another, and I had photographer Ben Wulf get some great promo shots of me. But I have had to learn a lot of new skills to make this happen as I had never been a producer before. I designed the posters, wrote the press release – even had to sort out insurance. It’s been a huge learning curve, and worse than that, I’ve had to pay for everything!
I have tried to keep things as simple as possible. I had originally thought about having certain props or music cues to help bring things to life but then I saw the National Theatre recording of Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s live Fleabag one-person show. It was basically just her on stage holding everyone’s attention just by virtue of the story she’s telling and there was something very powerful about that.
Is there life for Bonding after Edinburgh?
This is a project that has been brewing for 18 months now so I feel like I’ve got the show where I want it to be from a creative point of view. The beauty of Edinburgh Fringe is that you never know who might come along and see the show and want to do more with it. I’m open to offers!
Technically speaking I am in a play called Strange Orbits that is playing at Camden Fringe in August. I say technically because all my bits are pre-recorded voice tracks. It is a sci-fi tragi-romance set in the first human colony on Mars, and I am the voice of the AI computer. In terms of actually being on a stage, my next project is a play called Going for Gold that tells the real-life story of boxer Frankie Lucas. We did it last year and it was a huge success, winning multiple awards, so now we’re bringing it back bigger and better. It’s at Park Theatre in North London throughout November.
And hopefully, I’ll be able to get back to my true love, which is talking about British sitcoms. I do a podcast called British Sitcom History, in which we discuss sitcoms from a wide range of British television networks from the 1950s to the 2020s. We break them down, have a good laugh at the weird fashion choices of the seventies, and try to put them into context of when they were made. It’s great fun and allows me to indulge in watching many hours of sitcoms as legitimate research.
Go on then, what’s the best British sitcom?
My personal favourite is Porridge. Great writing and spot-on performances. Comedy legends at the top of their game.
BONDING runs from August 2nd to the 10th at Pickle Theatre. Tickets are available here.
