When they came up with the idea of adapting the classic sci-fi horror film Alien for the stage, a troupe of amateur actors from deepest Dorset intended it to be faithful to the terrifying original.
It did not quite work out as as planned. The sets were shaky, the monsters not very scary and the acting not up to Hollywood standards – only one of the cast went with an American accent, the rest stuck with English west country. Nobody was frightened.
Alien on Stage, put on by a group of bus drivers and their friends, would have sunk without a trace had it not been noticed by a couple of London-based artistic types who had the madcap idea of transferring it to the West End of London.
The weird and wonderful tale of how Alien on Stage came to be performed in the West End is being told in a documentary to be premiered on Saturday at FrightFest in London.
John Elliot, a bus driver who played the engineering technician Brett, said the film, Alien on Stage: The Documentary, brought back happy memories of an incredible rollercoaster ride.
“Before Alien, we’d done a pantomime and it had gone well,” said Elliot. “When the idea of doing Alien came up, we thought we’d give it a go. I suppose curiosity got the better of us. How would we do the facehugger and the chestburster?”
Their company, Paranoid Dramatics, meant to play for gasps of horror rather than for shrieks of laughter, rehearsing hard and putting huge effort into making the sets, costume and aliens as close to Ridley Scott’s original as possible.
The backstage crew came up with ingenious make-and-mend solutions to the challenges they faced. A cycling helmet was the basis for one of the alien costumes. Fishing rods and lines were used to animate the chestburster. An awful lot of green paint was splashed about as the alien eggs were brought vividly to life.
But when it opened in February 2013 in Dorset, it flopped. “It was a mainly elderly audience and they didn’t get it,” said Elliot. Only 20 people came to the opening night at the Allendale community centre.
The production would have sunk without trace had their intriguing poster – which read: “Alien the stage adaptation – an amateur production” – not been picked up by two Alien fans, Danielle Kummer, a videographer, and Lucy Harvey, a stylist and lecturer. They went to see the play in Dorset and saw what they describe as a “spark of madness and genius”.
The 430-seat Leicester Square theatre was booked for an afternoon in June 2013 and word was put out. As the cast were driven to the theatre, they heard the show had sold out. “We thought: ‘Bloody hell, what have we let ourselves in for,’” said Elliot.
The company was still planning to play it seriously but the show began to go down a different route when the actor playing the voice of the spaceship’s computer accidentally swore at curtain-up. There was applause, laughter and whoops when key moments such as the chestbursting scene approached. “We were blown away by the reception,” said Elliot.
Jason Hill, also a bus driver, who played Captain Dallas, said they had not meant to make a comedy. “But we were all amateurs. We were making mistakes and coming up with ad-libs.” When the laughter began rolling in, the cast went with it. “We turned it into a spoof.”
The theatre was so impressed it asked them back in 2014 and 2015. The film – tagline: In Dorset no one can hear you scream! – is warm and full of laughs.
Sadly there has thus far been no follow-up to the stage version of Alien, but Elliot and Hill said if the right script came up, they could be tempted back. But was it any good? “I think for a bunch of bus drivers it was really good,” said Hill.
