Toby trained at Jaques Lecoq School in Paris. Theatre work includes :- Harpo Marx in Animal Crackers ( Royal Exchange, Manchester and Lyric West End ), The Play What I Wrote (national tour), The Master and Margarita, Government Inspector (Chichester Festival Theatre), Help, I'm Alive (Almeida), Out of a House Walked a Man (National Theatre), The Noise of Time (Barbican and Lincoln Centre, NY), Light (Almeida and tour) all for Complicite. As Movement Director work includes The Adventures of Tintin (and Young Vic), The 39 Steps (Tricycle Theatre and Criterion), The Lost and Found Orchestra (STOMP). Films include 28 Days Later (Danny Boyle), Laisser Passer (Bertrand Tavernier), Vacuums (Stomp productions), Shrooms (Paddy Braithnach).
My First Panto
My first and only experience in a traditional pantomime was at the Malvern Festival Theatre when I was about seventeen and still at drama school. I can’t remember what the pantomime was, but two events during the run I will never forget. During one sequence I was playing a monkey and had to swing onto the stage on a rope, and due to my over enthusiasm for the role, swung too far across the stage and ended up with my legs straddling either side of a scenery flat on the other side of the stage. Ouch! I held onto the rope as it swung back again, with the audience in hysterics – seeing a rather stunned monkey being dragged swiftly off stage with the return swing of the rope! The other event concerned my monkey partner, who was a ballet dancer. His dance solo culminated in a series of pirouettes on the spot, and when at full speed spinning, his monkey mask flew off into the audience! He just stopped, looked out at the audience with an amazing expression on his face, as if he was naked, and asked for his face back!
