Slushy machines and garish carpets: bringing the spirit of the bingo hall to the stage

"We should go, all of us. Let's get it organised!" Starting a project with your director offering you an
opportunity to win £10,000 isn’t the norm in my line of work. However, when Jemima Levick asked
myself and my co-designer, Becky Minto, to go on a research trip with the Stellar Quines and Grid Iron
teams to the local bingo hall, I knew it was going to be a supremely fun project to work on.

Our initial visit to the bingo in Edinburgh sadly didn’t lead to any of us dramatically increasing our
pay cheques, but it was a brilliant opportunity to observe and start to really get into the psyche of our
script and therefore begin to construct the bingo hall world our six protagonists would inhabit until
the end of their Scottish tour later in April. We created our own research book with a lot of photos
of the walls, the loos, the bar, the podium, sketched some costume designs straight from some of
the ladies there and were guided through our first bingo experience by a lady in the booth in front of
us who could tell from a glance we had no idea how fast and intense bingo is when it gets going.

When Jemima approached Becky and myself to design Bingo, it was with the knowledge that whilst
you can be abstract with pieces, scripts sometimes make very specific demands of their designers.
Johnny McKnight and Anita Vetesse’s Bingo! is one such show. From slot (puggy) machines to toilet
cubicles, a working bar (with a slushy machine!) a callers podium and various fire safety items. All of
which were very much required elements to allow key plot points play out (in ways the audience
very rarely see coming).

Whilst we wanted our set to embody the slightly faded interiors of the bingo halls we visited as
research we also needed to add a good dollop of theatricality to our world, where our cast
frequently burst into song, and dream of their visit to the casinos of Las Vegas. Therefore our straight
from the 1990s pale wood and royal blue dado rail finishes were joined to the Vegas-esque world
with bright magenta glitter and blue and red moiré effect rowlux walls. The kite shape of these walls
allowed us to squeeze all the necessary elements into our world whilst still being versatile enough to
tour into a wide variety of different sized venues.

There was a bit of a competition to find the most garish carpet

Designing as part of a team was a brilliant experience as we bounced ideas around on how to fit all
these elements into a seven metre stage width and put our stamp on a heightened reality set. Some of my
favourite times were sitting with Becky making our brightly coloured model box late into the
evenings; putting the world to rights and frequently saying exactly the same thing at the same time. It
also led to a bit of a competition to find the most garish carpet still produced. Sadly the brightly
coloured patterned carpets of the 1990s youth clubs and pool halls are no longer widely available –
2018 carpet buying clientele very rarely straying from a neutral tone. However, Becky eventually
lucked out and found our bright purple striped carpet at a very reasonable price.

We put a box set musical into a venue that isn’t always a theatre for our first run at Assembly Hall on the mound in Edinburgh, which could have been a total nightmare. However, setting up venues isn’t anything new to the brilliant Grid Iron production, tech and SM teams, so our wee bingo hall came into being with very little trouble. Our set arrived in Edinburgh from the wonderful set building team Pretty Scenic, just as the Beast from the East started to emerge. It heralded one of the most memorable tech periods of my career as well as a flutter in the stomach which reminded me that theatre is truly magic and sod the snow, the show must go on.

Bingo! runs at Tron Theatre Glasgow from 12 to 14 April and at Eden Court in Inverness from 19 to 21 April.