December

Every once in a while there comes a cherry on life’s cup cake. My present job for example.

I’m covering the two butlers in The Importance of Being Earnest in New York, or to put it alliteratively; bystanding for a brace of butlers on Broadway.

It’s an unusual production and my workload in it is unusually (and most agreeably) light.

The celebrated Brian Bedford (Tony winner, five time Drama Desk winner) is playing Lady Bracknell. One assumes that Oscar Wilde was not consciously writing this role for drag, but it has become vogue for male actors to play it. Something about her stentorian dominance, given definitively by Dame Edith Evans in the 1952 film of the play, attracts a man’s idea of what such women are. Indeed, the role has been essayed by Dames Maggie and Judi, who stand alone at the  very peak of English speaking theatre, but neither of whom found an answer to Dame Edith’s reading of ‘In a handbag.’ Noted north American productions where men have played Lady Bracknell include: Edward Hibbert (Longwharf), Bill Hutt (Stratford, Ontario), and Ellis Rabb (Lyceum, Broadway). The production I am currently involved with also originated in Stratford, Ontario, where Brian Bedford has been a featured leading man for many years.

Brian is splendid, as is all the cast, more on that later - but the star of this production is Desmond Heeley for his transcendent sets and costumes. Broadway stages command the best design skills in the country and the biggest budgets. But step back a minute and consider the Broadway environment. It is driven (as is all theatrical production) by money, but on Broadway by much more money than in any other theatrical context in the world. The pressures on all involved are enormous, because a show which fails is just horribly expensive; that, and it should be noted, the baroque taste of the most influential New York theatre critics; and the fact that there is such absurd over-supply of actors, has evolved the Broadway style of performance, that hundred-and-ten-percent look-at-me commitment. An energy that flashes and dazzles, and perhaps satisfies or confounds the paying customer into believing that they actually got something of value for the astonishing price of their tickets. Likewise with design. Adjectives that usually apply are: flashy, stylish, unrelenting.

But this is different: The Importance requires two interiors and a garden. And Desmond Heeley’s design begins with a masterpiece of a front cloth which covers the whole proscenium arch. It is a stunning visual before the show begins. It is a painting of Britannia with the sun rising behind her and the letters V. R. (Victoria Regina) rising above, the rays of sunlight catching the lettering and making it shine like gold leaf. Above the front cloth there is a deep red (the usual colour of theatrical curtains) teaser (also crafted by Desmond Heeley) which supplies a fringe of tassels, curled in secret swirls, referencing the velvet plush of Victorian upholstery.

In Act One we’re in Algernon’s Apartment, the palette is based on a series of silver grays, the same tones echoed in the furniture and the dressing, but variations played with a master’s touch. Three paintings grace the walls, but where a lessor artist would have settled for a painting of the time, Desmond has painted his own. His figures are softique, even the frames at their edges seem to flirt with another dimension that looking at directly you can’t quite define, but when you see peripherally, hint of places where there is more style and meaning than we commonly know.

For the garden scene in act two, he gives us a profusion of roses, but an abundance, not a surplus. The quantities and the colour just so. In Act three we are in a morning room with a glass paneled conservatory upstage, and grounds beyond - but here’s the magic - the glass is painted on a scrim - he doesn’t bother with real glass and all its stage issues of reflection and glare, the result is one of heightened realism.

But the signal feature of each of the three settings is this: on first sight they are stunning - they draw applause as the front cloth rises - but as the playing of the scenes proceeds, the set fades from the spotlight. It’s the same with the costumes. They are bold for sure - Gwendolyn’s act one gown shimmering between light silver and white cream, and her curled jet black hat is a late-Victorian precursor to something by Aubrey Beardsley with his seductive lines or even Jean Cocteau with his gossamer ones.

The summary is this: the design supports the play, the story and the actors, rather than, as can be the case, competing with them. It’s an example of design virtuosity from a master of his craft, whose focus is first on the work, not on himself.

A similar purity of discipline is displayed in the acting. Under Brian’s precise (unusually precise) direction, the comedy moves forward with energy and intent. It is a truism of comic wisdom that one well placed big laugh is better than four or five small ones. The Importance is a challenge of good taste in this way because it’s possible to get a laugh on every line. Brian’s own performance is deliciously understated. Wisely he does not confront Dame Edith’s rendition, but makes memorable emphasis in other parts of the text - I won’t say which, in case you happen to see it - we play till March. He is, like his designer, a master of technique, so Lady Bracknell’s feminine treble flutes and pitches with the best stage dames, but he has certain characteristics as an actor which are beyond price on a stage. Chief among them is his depth of belief in the world which the character inhabits. It is this, much beyond his considerable vocal skills, or adeptness at navigating classical text, that gives him a direct line to the audience.

And where do I come in?

There are certain keys to understudy engagements: if you’re smart, you don’t cover a star. And you don’t cover Hamlet - although Jeremy Northam broke both these rules when he covered Daniel Day Lewis at The National in London, and it doesn’t seem to have hurt his career.

In this job I am required to be well acquainted with thirty four witty lines of dialogue in eight small but crucial entrances. 

So I come in to the theatre at a half hour before curtain, I climb the five flights to my well appointed dressing room, and for three agreeable hours I do my own work under the aegis of an immensely stylish production. 

I’ll call that a cherry.

November

October

Question: when is a play not a play?

Answer: when it’s Hamlet.

It’s always the Tuesday evening after the final Sunday performance that it hits you that it’s over. In the States, that is. In England and Australia other timetables apply.

In American regional theatre when Tuesday showtime comes, the company has dispersed and is many miles away from the stage where they lately were a performing unit. And that’s when the muscle memory kicks in. If you did a vocal warm up (as I did on this one), there’s no reason to do one today. The identity that you checked at the stage door on a daily basis for the past six weeks makes a pale attempt to repossess your psyche, while the identity that you crafted in the work is now as surplus to requirements as the costume you donned.

I’ve been at large in American regional theatre for over seven years now and I’d just like to put it on record that it’s a falsity to think or to say that theatre in this country is not subsidized. On the contrary, it is heavily subsidized by all who work in it. I find it moving that actors driven by vocational passion will travel far from home on the chance of a good production and live their dream for a few brief weeks, knowing that they’ll likely return to selling pizza when it’s over.

A return to Little Rock Arkansas, my second time there but my first ever in Hamlet. If anyone had told me back in college - yes, you will be in a production of Hamlet one day... in Little Rock... well I wouldn’t have thunk it.

And why is Hamlet not a play? Not an ordinary play at least?

Because it is so well known that some audiences could sing along with the text. In Little Rock we performed in more or less ideal conditions for a production of this play in the modern age. Fewer people around here have seen the play than in say New York where film star Jude Law recently played it. What does this mean? It means that the audience actually follows the story (it’s a good one), rather than evaluating the production/acting/design as they go.

Personally I’ve always found Hamlet to be a tough one. Long, confusing, hard to follow. I speak as one who knows the text well. As a young actor I listened to Sir John Gielgud (surely the greatest exponent of Shakespearean verse speaking) on more or less endless loop. I’ve seen a couple of dozen Hamlets, admired actors, but seldom if ever been moved by a production - Anton Lessor in Jonathan Miller’s was an exception.

George Hall, who ran the acting course at Central in London where I trained, said “On the first night of Hamlet, the questions were the same: “Will they get it? Will the fights work? And will the old fool playing the king remember his lines?”

Now that I am that old fool I know what he meant.

George was full of wise saws and modern instances, and in those days I thought he knew just about everything there was to know about acting - still think that, actually.

Of Robert Newton, he said: “His final consonants were a matter of chance, he had a body that was held together by tension, but when he came on as the button moulder in act four of Peer Gynt, he was coming from a place that most of us have never been to.’

We had an actor like that in Little Rock. His name is Harris Berlinsky and the world is a better place because he is in it. Harris played Polonius with easy grace. His portrayal of the character was accessible and fascinating, yet his backstage confusions were legendary. It was never certain which of the four entrances he would use to get on stage. Occasionally he made a guest entrance in a scene in which Polonius does not usually appear, wandering off about half way through. It was a great pleasure and a privilege to work with him.

A theatrical company away from home is a meeting of intimate strangers who become friends. Replicating behaviors together for the public view, binds you as a group. The character of such groups varies hugely. In the larger theatrical centres the group is vulnerable to the follies of status, ambition, and competition. But usually, regionally, those pressures are less. This particular collection of abstracts and brief chronicles was multi-national, multi ethnic, and multi talented. We included a sharpshooter, indie film makers, linguists (portuguese, japanese, mandarin, spanish), fabulous amateur bakers, corporate consultants, and sundry entrepreneurs.

Even to someone familiar with the play, hearing a performance from backstage is an experience full of small and new recognitions of text. “Ah that’s where that comes from.” So much of the text has passed into everyday usuage. To name but a few:

In my mind’s eye

The primrose path of dalliance

Brevity is the soul of wit

Caviar to the general

The lady doth protest too much

Assume a virtue if you have it not

A hit, a very palpable hit

For quotability Hamlet stands alone. From: “... neither a borrower nor a lender be...” through “... there’s a special providence in the fall of a sparrow...” to “... and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.”

And what about titles derived?

The play’s the thing (Molnar & P. G. Wodehouse)

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (Stoppard)

Single Spies (Alan Bennet)

Summer’s Lease (John Mortimer)

And a casual search turned up this amazing anagram:

To be or not to be: that is the question. Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune...

becomes:

In one of the Bard’s best thought of tragedies, our insistent hero, Hamlet, queries on two fronts about how life turns rotten.

Or to quote another Shakespearean epilogue: “The King’s a beggar now the play is done...”

September

The blogger could still be said to be on holiday.

Southern California is southern Florida for grown ups.

The same crowded north/south highways, temperate winters, long beaches. But south Florida allowed rampant development on the sand right next to the water’s edge and now some of the shoreline over there looks like a bad case of gingivitis with the waves lapping at the foundations of the endless condominiums. Sure California has the impending Big One which will turn western Utah into beachfront property.

I like it in San Diego. The place has it all; a year round friendly climate, the Dr. Seuzzical landscape, and of course The Old Globe Theatre, this season including the esteemed Trish Conolly appearing in a play called The Last Romance. And now me - affiliated to the aforementioned actress of note - enjoying a holiday here.

It’s particularly satisfying when a play speaks directly to its audience. The Last Romance is a gentle little piece set in a park. Its three principal characters are all in their senior years. Although in this production its three actors are all more vital than any couch potato half their physical ages. It’s no overstatement to say that Marion Ross is a television icon, she played Mrs. Cunningham in Happy Days and was known for decades in that role throughout the English speaking world. Her partner in life, Paul Michael plays her would be suitor, and Trish plays his sister. There’s a fourth character, an opera singer who plays the younger version of the old man, here played and sung by Joshua Jeremiah in terrific voice. Theatres the world over are tending to attract older patrons. Are they the only ones who can afford the tickets? Or are they the only ones with time? In this case it was a happy meeting of play and audience. I saw the play three times and each time there was the special silence that comes when the audience leans forward not wanting to miss a word. It’s a touching play that surely will reach a wide audience in many future productions.

When The Old Globe was established in the 1930s as a (temporary) Shakespeare Festival - attendance in the first season was equal to twice the then population of San Diego, its native city - back then there were three such festivals in the continental USA. Today there are more than a hundred and fifty three. So the Shakespeare Festival has been immensely successful as a brand.

The Old Globe has, over the past two generations of artistic leadership established itself as one of the major American regional theatrical centers, and now also feeds high end product to Broadway with such hits as The Full Monty, Hairspray, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, and a string of others - this policy, brokered under Jack O’ Brien’s leadership - for which he collected several Tony awards, raised the profile of The Old Globe as an institution and in the process further tamped the path of Broadway supply which many regional theaters now wish to tread.

All that hotbed of theatrical activity aside; the San Diego environment with all its Eucalyptus trees on the improbable hills, the theatre itself sited in the heart of Balboa Park lulls one into a dreamy comfort.

So I’m impressed that I’ve got it together enough to announce a firm commitment to 21st century life by buying a smartphone. Not the very sleekest latest wafer, but one that was the cutting edge way back in the distant past of tech-time - like three months ago, and now heavily discounted to clear the stock as the new generation customers queuing round the block. Just in time to get one of these gadgets it seems, because from San Diego we spent a couple of weeks working the town in Los Angeles, where the phone as accessory is noted.

Los Angeles is industrial strength San Diego.

And then a quick trip to Portland Oregon, where the landscape and the fauna are so different from southern California it’s hard to believe they’re the same country. We came here to see my friend, the extraordinary Joe Graves, perform a one man version of the Iliad.

Yes, that’s right, the epic narrative poem by Homer telling the story of the Trojan war and the struggles of the Gods and Heros for possession of the human soul.

Doesn’t sound like a natural for a theatre piece does it? And yet... here the story was framed by the rather brilliant device of the poet (Homer, apparently is a generic name given to poets and story tellers) being touched by alcoholic divine madness and impelled to tell the story. The verse juxtaposed with modern invention - particularly effective when dealing with the inevitable lists of names you get in epics. And one stunning section where the narrator lists some of the endless wars humanity has engaged in over the centuries and you wonder what the hell we are doing with our lives.

There is something cathartic about stories of large scale slaughter. If well told, they can give you a homeopathic dose of the same emotional journey as the characters you are hearing about, but save you the bother of having to live through those experiences. Result: you feel more peaceable. That's the theory anyway.

I am by nature a lefty liberal type, but there is one issue on which I feel we could employ extreme sanctions. For people who don't switch their smart phones off in theatres. How about a mandatory app that would melt the phone's interior?

August

The blogger was on holiday.

July

At the beginning of the year I told myself I would write 1,000 actorblog words a month just for the hell of it. So this is a missed deadline. Why? Well I closed a show and I made a film, and I did a rough cut and talked with an editor, and I wondered how and why people ever become and stay writers anyway, and I re-read Stephen King’s best book, the one called On Writing. All this within the past few weeks. Feeble excuses I know, and not even close to the real reason why my July copy is being posted in August.

I’ve worked at the New Jersey Shakespeare Festival twice before and each time done the reverse commute to and from New York City for the entire run. This time I stayed out there, living in a house with actors, stage managers, designers, and the odd director. It was a regressive and very fun experience.

In my earlier acting days - like twenty years ago - any time I was on tour, I would find myself undertaking heroic feats of alcoholic consumption. There is something about touring that encourages this. It’s a known fact. Example: at the Europa Hotel in Athens when a group of post show actors gathered to party, Nick Sampson emptied and distributed the contents of the mini bar with the words, “Oh darlings, it’s going to cost a fortune - but somehow I don’t care!” Even these days when I’m on the road, and even though the liver can’t handle what it once could, the alcoholometer registers higher numbers than when I’m home.

But the theatre house at the New Jersey Shakespeare Festival summer 2010 was a special case.

For the months of June and July, the house had two core casts living there. Some dozen to eighteen people, sometimes fewer, sometimes more, though it always felt like more. Finishing work at 11pm, it’s almost impossible to go straight to bed and sleep. A drink, a snack or a meal, a little time...

Most of the time it was hot, too damned hot, so we’d collect our beers or wines, and sit out on the front porch and talk about life, art, and truth. Sometimes we’d go down to Poor Herbie’s where the barman made basil Mohitos - sounds weird, right? - and then, after a few of those we’d sit on the porch... I find there’s a sweet spot in the post show wind down, somewhere around 90 minutes after curtain, when I can say goodbye to the world. It’s easy to miss this window. In five weeks of residence I don’t think I got to bed before 2 or 3 in the morning more than three times.

And I wake early these days. The very early morning is my favorite time anyway, and the sun came into my room when it rose. When I got my keys, the then company manager asked me if the room was okay. “Fine.” I said, “I wonder if I could have some curtains?”

‘What?!” she said.

The astonished tone of her reply was as much to say, “these ceaseless demands have got to stop.”

I explained that there were transparent net curtains in my room. But the idea that a grown man might quite like to have curtains that block the view from the outside world and give him darkness to sleep in until the hour of his choosing was, I’m guessing, a challenging hypothesis. Curtains never materialized. I rigged a table cloth and some fabric loaned by a fellow actor. Even so, I seldom slept passed 7.30 or 8, and sometimes not so long.

If you’re a stage actor at the beginning of the 21st century working regional theatre, they pay you in fun. Not something that any seasoned professional in a sensible job would think of as ‘pay’. But the fun goes a long way. One time at a dinner years ago I went to pour an actor a glass of wine. He stopped me with the words, “No, no. I used to drink for England... And I won a gold... so they retired me.”

The theatre house nestles a Methodist church, a Montessori school and a regular home. Sometimes we would shush each other after midnight when there was a loud song or story on the porch. But if the neighbors didn’t know at night that theatrical folk were living close by, they knew in the morning by the giant plastic tub out the back, full of bottles to be re-cycled.

Staying on campus (the theatre lives inside the Drew University grounds), one was part of the hotbed of theatrical activity that is the NJ Shakes in the summer when Interns and Apprentices come from all over to act, direct, and (new this year) take photographs. In our last week it went like this: Wednesday: cabaret. Thursday: poker night. Friday: directed scenes. Saturday: wrap party & midseason party at the bowling lanes. Sunday: closing night party.

Katherine Mansfield (1888-1923) lived a turbulent life, and may have also been a party animal, but she wrote some exquisite short stories. One of them, a piece called ‘Psychology’ tells of the early stages of a repressed and fumbling courtship between two intellectuals. I’ve wanted to make a short film of it for years. I discussed the idea with a friend also active in the shallows of zero budget indie film and his brilliant suggestion was to set it backstage, thus avoiding the (expensive) necessity for period authenticity.

I wrote a behind the scenes scenario which initially I thought could frame the adaptation, and generously, the Artistic Director allowed me to use the Festival Theatre as a location. The story was set in and around The Dialogue Theatre waaay downtown in New York City. As more actors became involved with the shoot, the party activity transferred from the porch after midnight to the backstage story which became sillier and took over. Fine with me.

Edit deadline: December 31st.

June

The Servant of two Masters at the New Jersey Shakespeare Festival took the stage in the manner of a melting parfait during last week’s mini heat wave.

Miserly fathers called Pantalone, pompous latin-spouting medics, a quartet of lovers - one silly pair and one romantic - the inn-keeper Brighella, the crafty servant Trufaldino and his female counterpart Smeraldina, lots of Lazzis, sequences of bits, takes, asides, and one-two-three gags, and there you have the crazy zany world of Commedia Dell’Arte.

Commedia took its rise from the Italian street theatre of the late 16th and early 17th century, by the time Carlo Goldini was writing in the mid 18th century the form had got a lot more, well, formal. Which is perhaps why in this show, I’m wearing a wig which is first cousin to a dead sheep. Or maybe it’s because whenever they need a rotund character man with dead-sheep-wearing abilities McPhillamy’s name rises first in the rolodex, second time round in garb like this here at the New Jersey Shakespeare Festival (first time was two years ago in Amadeus). It’s wigs like these that give us the phrase: pull the wool over one’s eyes.

But my first time ever on an out door stage. We are playing at the Greek amphitheatre in the grounds of the Convent of St. Elizabeth. I’m delighted to report that it’s been a hugely pleasant experience. And I can say that in spite of the sun, the heat, the bugs which safely graze, and the aeroplanes which fly over from the nearby flying school about every ten minutes.

How so pleasant in spite of the inconveniences listed above? The theatre sits on the side of a high slope looking across a wide wooded valley. During production week when endless technical rehearsals involving sets and props, lights and sound, intersperse with director’s minutiae regarding staging, text, and timing, I bought an inflatable kiddie pool and filled it with water. Pink faced cast members would appear and dunk head or whole body. That helped in the heat management. The possibility of summer rain adds excitement. Don’t get me wrong I still enjoy the job, but there’s nothing as interesting as free money, as in, in this case getting paid for not acting if the show gets rained off.

This amphitheatre was built in the 1930s. The risers on the three aisle stairways are concrete. And the steps where the audience sits are turf with a concrete lip (not all that comfortable). The semi-circular shape of the auditorium and the rise in it means that if you stand upstage centre, you can whisper and be heard. A happy acoustic rarely found in indoor performing spaces outside the classic Victorian horseshoe shapes that still grace most of London’s West End.

My guy, Il Dottore to give him his traditional Commedia name, is a pompous spouter of ersatz classical language, usually getting the latin wrong and never knowing what he’s talking about. As a sometime dabbler in Sanskrit and a current student of contemporary Chinese, and traveling that road from the total knowledge one had in youth to the growing uncertainty of middle age, I feel I can relate to this archetype. Il Dottore has also stayed too long at fair like Sir Toby Belch, but his faux classical erudition also makes him a close relation to the latin scholar Holofernes in Loves Labour’s Lost.

To say to a company of contemporary actors: ‘right, Commedia Dell’Arte. Begin now, go.’ would be on a par with requiring them to emulate a troupe of Kabuki or Noh players. Folk study for years to reproduce the traditional comic physicalities of these characters, and there is a strong box of traditional gags and tricks some of which require equally long and diligent study. We spent a morning’s rehearsal adjusting our pelvic tilt, turning feet in and out, looking left while walking right, and playing strong simple intentions based on universal human needs: food, money, sex.

Fascinating though this exploration was, we were never going to achieve anything more than a received reproduction of forms that none of us had ever experienced first hand, nor understood from the inside. The first weeks of our production went in the direction of say Saturday Night Live and sketch comedy. But right in the middle of the rehearsal process, the production took a turn toward the style comedies of the Restoration.

One of my early theatre going experiences was when I saw She Stoops to Conquer at the Young Vic Theatre in London. A young Nicky Henson in his virile prime played Marlowe and it was a revelation to me that an actor could be so juicy while spouting formal text. It was one of the performances that made me want to become an actor - another was Tom Courteney in Brandon Thomas’s stand alone late 19th century smash hit, Charley’s Aunt. Congreve’s masterpiece, and say Sheridan’s, The Rivals, and many other plays of the late 18th century live at a higher level of verbal dexterity than Goldoni’s plays - at least as far as scholars can tell. Goldoni wrote in 18th century Venetian dialect and what certain lines mean is a subject of academic treatise.

So our production is a hybrid. But the story works, and if the weather doesn’t deliver wilting heat, and if there are sufficient numbers (audiences need the confidence of other people’s amusement) then it’s a very enjoyable evening under the stars.

Il Dottore is the alter-ego of Pantalone, played brilliantly in our production by Bill Metzo. During rehearsals our double act argument scenes were referred to as: the ‘old men’, I remonstrated with our young director over this title, and we settled on a comprise where these scenes and the actors playing went by the name ‘Living National Treasure’. However, I still wonder in Commedia fashion, whether enough diet and exercise could recapture the vigour of my earlier youth and change the casting to some other archetype... watch this space.

May 2010

The first time I went to the Chinese embassy in New York to apply for a visa, I gave my profession as ‘writer’. A hopeful move on my part probably influenced by some pop metaphysician – one of the ones that tell you to announce your intentions to the universe and then watch happily as the stars line up – the lady behind the glass paused.

'What kind writer? Politcal?’

It crossed my mind to quip as follows: ‘Political!? No way. I don’t even vote.’

This was another one on the long list of witty things I could have said but didn’t. Perhaps it was for the best this time as a protest non vote cuts little ice with someone from a country where voting is not widely practised.

So far so good, but immersed as I am in a fascinating volume called ‘When China Rules The World’, and noting a well-observed article in the New York Times commenting on the increasing compliance of anyone with any profile when pronouncing publically on China, I will use more restraint than I’d like but less than is prudent when talking about the man at the end of this month’s entry here.

What has caught my interest this May is the complex question of presence onstage. I began rehearsal three days ago for a play called Servant of two Masters by Goldini. When I tell people this, sometimes they say ‘Ah Commedia dell’arte isn’t it.’

And I say, ‘yes.’

And usually in the above exchange there is a tacit agreement that we actually know what that means.

My fellow cast members on this one are a delightful, gifted, and above all comically talented group. There is as much humourous ability per square inch of actor in this cast than in any I’ve shared a stage with these thirty years – with the possible exception of British actor Martin Chamberlain who could draw a laugh from a dead man – digression here; on the second preview of The Constant Wife in the last season at the old Guthrie in Minneapolis, one of the audience members did actually pass on in about the middle of the performance. His family graciously assured the theatre that for this gentleman, a life-long theatre going enthusiast, there could not have been a better way to go, and as that play was a comedy, one hopes that he died laughing.

So I’m delighted that the cast is made up of funny people. Our director is an enthusiast and has studied Commedia formally. But do any of us actually know what the form demands? Not so much. Stock characters abound everywhere in life of course. I happen to play a doctor in the piece, and given the current vogue in television advertising for male enhancement or readiness or whatever they call the hard-on drugs they peddle these days, I guess my best move is to prepare a list of asides based on making the crucial phone call at 4 hours of tumnescence precisely. Not 3.59 because should one subside in the final crucial minute, and call out the medics unnecessarily surely (and even after healthcare reform) you could be letting yourself in for a lot of deductible. Not 4.01 neither, because then a clever lawyer could litigate on the basis on irresponsible delay. No, 4 hours is the decreed exact threshold. With Servant of two Masters if comic ability meets viable comic mode, we’ll have a show, but if the forms are too esoteric, not the funniest people in the world will raise laughter.

I took in a performance of the little-known-here French farce (ish) play, Dr. Knock, produced off-Braodway at The Mint. Written 7 or 8 decades ago, still a perennial in France and a money maker when managements are looking to pack them in, this too, surely a play for our times. If I was a psychologist (which I’m not), I might say that in the closing days of Western Patriality, folk cling like ivy to oak, to the idea that the animus authority figures of the professions can show the way. Madison Avenue understands this thoroughly and three words are uttered in paid-for public airspace more frequently than any others: doctor, your, ask. Not necessarily in that order.

The Mint theatre in Manhattan N.Y. has the most fabulous policy of producing the lessor known works of the cannon, and there is often some undiscovered gem on offer there. Jenny Harmon gave a quintessential concierge in act three, the star of act one was the motor car, and fine ensemble comedy throughout.

Favourable review for Dr. Knock in the kingmaker New York Times, but a love letter of a review for Gabriel at the Atlantic – a production I have watched from the sidelines because of my affiliation with the actress playing Mrs Lake - result: instant sellout. I have seen excellent productions closed or clobbered by poor adverse, so it’s nice to witness a positive effect. But is it really sensible that the fate of many months’ work from skilled professionals, and multiple six or seven figure investment, hangs in the balance and is subject to the mood of one man? Maybe it would work if that man were the Dalai Lama, who played to a packed house at Radio City Music Hall this month.

His Holiness pottered on to the stage and did a few details of outrageous schtick; pretending to be surprised the audience was there, pretending to forget his homage to the Buddha, and at the lunchtime break waving a dismissing hand at the crowd. He got laughs each time. I’ve been a fan for 40 years and this was the first time I had seen him. The body of the show was a technical discourse on an ancient text. Challenging for some of us to follow(I admit to dropping off for a few minutes).

The 14th Dalai Lama is a living testament to grace under pressure. To forbearance under abuse. To patience in adversity and strength in loss. And the healing power of laughter. If I ever get into some challenge that seems overwhelming I try to remember him. But apart from everything else that is incredible about him, the man knows the human Commedia and he knows what he is doing on a stage.

April 2010

For the past several years I’ve been on the road one way another, and finally the penny has dropped. By which I mean I know now why the majority of New York based theatre people like to stay in New York. I knew it before of course, in theory, but now I know it in my bones. Not only can you earn a lot more money in New York (and a lot less if you work below 14th Street, say), but in a country with no national theatre, it remains the nation’s theatrical centre. There’s more theatre on offer in New York than in the rest of the State capitals put together.

New York is a special case.

The Encore series gets ever more ambitious and ever starrier as the years go by. This year’s production of ‘Anyone Can Whistle’, starring Donna Murphy and Sutton Foster, and directed by Casey Nicolau was a triumph of energy and skill over an incomprehensible book. Everyone said so, and as a late coming enthusiast in musical theatre and one with very little knowledge on the subject (except that I know what I like), I agreed. I certainly enjoyed the perf. Ms. Murphy took command from the first hip twist of the first number. There’s a thing that happens when a supremely accomplished performer hits the marks – you relax, and you relish each moment. Equally accomplished, though completely different in quality and style, Sutton Foster slinked around the stage in a form fitting red cocktail dress and red wig with matching feather boa (expertly deployed at all times), and a form fitting French accent to match, a revealing couterpoint to her plain-jane act – the one she usually gets cast in.

They rehearsed for a week, maybe ten days, certainly no more than that. The result was the usual accomplished high energy inventiveness that you just take for granted in the New York scene. This is the stuff where the chorus gives 120% and the featured players, in this case including some razor-sharp definition from Edward Hibbert, are like stilletos stealthing steadily – alright too much alliteration – what I’m getting at is that this level of finish and professionalism is not technicallly possible to achieve in a week or so. But they do, of course they do. Why? Because New York is the big time, but its theatrical community is also a village too. While the people who know and love you will see your work in this venue, it’s also just possible that some life-changing thing will happen and you will be plucked from the back or the middle of the stage and elevated. And that is one explanation why the sheer commitment in the dancing and the singing, and the elan in the style is just the best in the world.

Another great feature of the new York theatrical scene is the Anglophilia that obtains on Broadway. Every season Broadway’s theatres fill up with transfers from London’s West End, sometimes direct from The Royal National Theatre. It’s hard to imagine that the drive behind these imports is not a commercial one. It’s all subtly reinforced by the baroque taste and style of the principle New York Times reviewers and their enormous influence. It’s not that I don’t enjoy British theatre (except when they try to do American accents), I do. It’s not that I don’t think British actors are among the finest in the world – they are. What dismays me is that the commerically driven Anglophilia on the Great White Way, and the conditioning of the audience to come and see plays from another culture, must have retarded new American playwriting for about half a century (and counting).

But one British play which has zero chance of being produced on Broadway since it’s last outing there in 1969, is T.S. Elliots verse homage to J.B. Priestly’s ‘An Inspector Calls’, ‘The Cocktail Party’. And an astonishly fine production was offered by TACT – a company which specializes in lesser known works. Led by Simon Jones, the cast gave a textured ensemble performance, with some of the best accent work I’ve seen in this country. Americans doing Brits and vice versa presents special challenges to do with rhythm, culture, and expectation – as in an audience hears what it expects to hear – too frequently you get a sub-masterpiece-theatre version of the accent minus any bass notes. But the work here was fine, detailed, and accurate.

Yet another British transfer is ‘Gabriel’ by British playwright Moira Buffini. She, currently with another production at the National Theatre in London, and a film on the way, has found a producer in The Atlantic Theatre (off-Broadway) here. The play treats on the German occupation of Guernsey (one of the Channel Islands) during the Second World War. It’s not a story often told in Britain, although there was an excellent (if incomplete) television series called ‘Island at Wat’ from the BBC some years back. Another verse play, and excellently well spoken by the cast of six, including the incomparable Ms Patricia Conolly of my acquaintance; this piece falls somewhere between Tolstoy’s short story ‘What Men Live By’ and ‘Inglorious Basterds’.
So yes the Brits are all over Broadway still. I even had a chance to join in myself, being part of a reading for the Acting Company of George Bernard Shaw’s ‘You Never Can Tell’ – Another very enjoyable evening on offer in the salon series the company fields every year.

Meanwhile, the city remains highly convenient. The compact geography of midtown Manhattan and the subway mean that you can get anywhere in ten minutes (twenty at the outside). New York, though not, to quote that great American author John Steinbeck, a model of neatness is a miracle of supply.

And in a city which contains something like 165 ethnicities and nationalities – from a possible 182, in a place where literally everyone is here, surely too in the cultural smorgassbord that is the city that never sleeps, there is something for everyone.

March 2010

Consider our electronic communicative potential. I mean yours and mine. If you wish to commicate inexpensively with a large number of people there has never been a better time to be alive. Speaking for myself; I blog, I experiment with the odd video, I don’t tweet although I might, and next month I will publish the second edition of my book, The Tree House and other Stories. In doing so I will join a long list of distinguished names that published and promoted their own work – among them; Mark Twain, Edgar Allen Poe, Louisa May Alcott.

Of course, I will also join a much longer list of names that none of us have ever heard of.

Self – publishing used to mean a certain financial risk. Not so much these days. It will cost me a few hundred dollars to make this book available. There will be no inventory because of the miracles of print on demand and drop shipping. The outfit that made all this possible can be found at: www.createspace.com their operation offers a masterpiece of convenience for the emerging author. Now if only someone would come up with the self-writing book…

But here’s a problem I have when listening to impassioned mass communication: I find that my ideological boundaries are more pourous than ideally I would care to admit in public. I am susceptible to a well turned message, no it goes further than that, if I watch some of the louder, less plausible infotainment channels on cable, I find myself (usually in full awarenss of how absurd it is) conceeding validity in their argument. And then shortly after I turn off or switch to another channel, I find it ridiculous to have been so influenced.

The best of this feature is (I think) that an actor should be able to inhabit any viewpoint, and have some professional ability to understand something about why people do what they do or say what they say; the worst of it is that my opinion is bidable and subject to persuasive argument; or persistent argument, or loud, or pervasive noise that calls itself ‘news’.

What I’m grappling with is the whole question of how the little guy empowered by technology fits in among the booming voices of the 24/7 media jungle.

I recently started learning Chinese Mandarin formally – this after a year or so struggling informally. I found an excellent teacher here in New York and I go to a weekly class. The material is well presented and leads the student at a fast pace. There is a lot to absorb though and it was soon clear that I would need to practice if I was going to keep up. Just this last week I came across a website: www.conversationexchange.com here you can find native speakers of almost any language who wish to improve their English. I posted a profile and within a few days had more responses than I can get to. Communication technologies like Skype, also means that the conversations can happen intercontinentally.

And then there’s the phone question. I have a steam-age cell phone, which I am now embarrased to use in public. I feel deeply under-accessorized when I’m with people who own one of those sleek rectangles that can make movies and translate and calculate and play music. Rumour says that in the summer here in the USA the company with the biggest network is going to team up with the company with the best phone design. A couple of corporations getting together… hmn, if this continues will we move to a time when ‘all the world is one speech.’?

The National Geographic reported that the recent earthquake in Chile was powerful enough to shake the Earth into a new rotational speed, thereby decreasing the amount of time in a day by something like 1.26 millionths of a second. It doesn’t sound like much I know, but I think it’s something to keep an eye on when you think of how our personal days are always getting shorter than they used to be. Not only that the forward march of time means that as each day passes, a day becomes a smaller fraction of the total number of days lived. But also that there was a time when nobody could text, email, or call you while you were out and about – not to mention that no one in those wildly distant days knew where you were unless you told them. And wasn’t there a time before that when we all had to rely on our answering machines? And in the even more distant past a time when the question: does the phone still ring if there’s no one to hear it? Simply could not be answered.

And what about silence? I heard once of a man who went around the world recording what was left of silence. It’s in short supply apparantly. Apparantly there are so few places beyond the reach of the noisy world that we’d better bottle what remains before it disappears. And does more talk mean more listening? And in amongst it all do we really need one more book? Except that print on demand means less waste. And could we imagine a world without physical books? - Sure, when now a single Kindle can hold an entire library. And maybe the day will come when the contents of a book are just streamed to some cyber device planted internally and then everyone will have read everything.

Meanwhile what does it mean to live in a time when anybody can attempt to commicate anything to anybody anywhere in the world anytime? And what about me with my mind that can be influenced, will I change my point of view more frequently as more communication comes my way? And talking of media will I be able to distinguish between the messages of the corporate and or governmental oligargies that control what has come to be called ‘the narative’ or ‘the national conversation’, from the quality works of self-published authors such as, for example, Gertrude Stein, Deepak Chopra, D.H. Lawrence? These and other questions…

February 2010

I'm back in New York City this month to find that the global-warming-induced severe snows are being hotly bruited about in the infotainment venues of cable television that you can’t always access when on the road. Will there be theatre when the ice caps have gone? It’s a question that no one seems to be asking; meanwhile I’ve enjoyed three very different plays, thinking it a good idea to take in some culture while there’s still time.

‘You Can’t Take It With You’ was part of the Salon series of readings put up and hosted by The Acting Company. The Acting Company is something (as all theatrical ventures are) of a triumph of the improbable over the impossible – by which I mean the fact that it exists at all, let alone that it has flourished since 1972. Their website www.theactingcompany.org gives full background and current details.

‘You Can’t Take It With You’ was written in 1936 George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart, and filmed by Frank Capra in 1938. It is gem from the golden age of the well-made play. The reading was given by a cast of New York theatre stars and veterans including Ms. Patricia Conolly of my acquaintance, at Playwrights Horizons. Trish (Conolly) played Gaye Wellington early on in her American career for the legendry APA Phoenix Repertory Company under the direction of the equally legendary Ellis Rabb. Later Trish played Penny, job-sharing the role with Rosemary Harris. In this reading she graduated to play the Countess Olga, and got a round of applause on her line ‘The Czar said to me: never stint on your blintzes.’

The APA was the only independent theatrical company which managed to offer a repertoire on Broadway in the last fifty years. Charles Isherwood in his recent New York Times article seemed unaware of the fact in his article calling for another permanent theatre space in Manhattan.

Well made is a 19th century term which generally means a tightly constructed plot leading to a final climax late in the play. A British equivalent might be J.B. Priestly’s comedies. The well made comedies of Kaufman and Hart have a joke rate-per-page to rival any sitcom, and this crack cast gave expert delivery.

A different kind of laughter went with a performance of ‘Thunderstorm’ which I saw at a high school in New England. ‘Thunderstorm' was written in 1933 by Cao Yu and was the beginning of modern Chinese drama. The play deals with a prosperous family with Ibsenesque skeletons and secrets in its closet. There is something amazing about watching a teenage company dealing with challenging themes. The cast showed a sophisticated understanding and compassion, and my younger son Nick who happened to be in the cast turned in a truly excellent performance.

The audience was touched by the delicacy of some moments, but found itself hooting with laughter as the plot built with ever greater speed to the more shocking revelations. In our family discussion afterwards we wondered if this is a function of a post-Jerry-Springer world. There is no question that when first performed this play would have devastated its audience. To date it remains China’s most famous play.

In the early 1970s I saw a production of Romeo and Juliet that I saw in London at The Young Vic. I was about 14 or 15 and it was a life changer. The Young Vic is a small studio theatre with a thust stage. It was the first time I saw actors up close and personal, the first time I saw that play, another time when I thought ‘that’s what I want to do.’

So it was a pleasure to see another fine production of that exquisite tragedy, The Acting Company again, this time a full production. Set in an Italian summer, with all the heat, and light, and style that suggests. Praise for a clear telling of the story, well spoken in terms of sense, though one could have wished for a little more vocal variety all around. It was a production with a strong ensemble, but also featuring lovely work from the principals. Juliet nearly floated off the stage in her first blush of love for Romeo. Romeo was love-struck to a point beyond dizziness. The balcony scenes had their usual problems because Juliet is looking at the stage from above and Romeo is looking up into the lighting grid, but an enchantment of chemistry between them. There were feisty contributions from Mercutio and all the young men, bursting with testosterone, calling each other to fight. And the family dynamic in the Capulet household beautifully clear, a lovely performance from the nurse too. The play sure does work. This was a production fine for its straightforwardness. It trusted the story and told it well. Consequently the story was allowed to work simply. The best way.

One time backstage in Beijing during the tech of King Lear, I was having a whispered conversation about philosophy with one of the students at Beida University. This kid was a specially bright guy (in an environment populated by specially bright people. Beida is known as the Harvard of the east) his knowledge of 19th century European philosophers out distanced mine within a few sentences. Changing the subject, I asked him if he thought that theatre could make a social contribution and bring about political change. His answer was immediate and confident, ‘No.’ he said.

Then I agreed despondantly when I thought of say, David Hare’s ‘Stuff Happens’ written after the fact of the recent illegal wars. That play played to capacity in London, New York, Los Angeles, and Sydney but it never had the slightest chance of changing policy because few of the executive ever goes to the theatre.

But today I remember that when you’ve spent an evening laughing as I did at ‘You Can’t Take It With You’ you feel better, don’t you?

January 2010

There was a saying in the British army in the days of national service when every young man between the ages of 18 and 20 was called up for two years.

‘If you couldn’t take a joke you shouldn’t have joined.’

Copenhagen is a demanding play on its actors and audiences alike. The story deals with a forever obscured corner of detail in the history of the development of the atomic bomb. The text though, glances at Quantum Mechanics, Heisenberg’s Uncertaintly Principle, Bohr’s Complimentarity, and takes in plenty of philosophical implication along the way, examining also among many things, patriotism, friendship, loyalty, ambiguity, irony, and danger.

One effect of performing this densely worded text eight times a week is hyper stimulation of the jaw, because none of the three of us ever shut up. Stage time is elastic too. Sometimes the play connects with eternity, and one wishes that Michael Frayn had alowed a stringent editor to overhaul his text. He’s a man who enjoys complexity, intricacy, and extrapolation, and where there is an opportunity for a subjunctive clause, he’ll likely write two or three. Respect though, and praise for undertaking this fascinating examination and giving it dignity on a stage, but skillful cutting of 10% of the text would (in my opinion) turn this very good play into a great one.

A small theatre like Palm Beach Drama Works can be a pleasure to play because if the audience is attentive, performances can achieve that special intensity which only occurs in live theatre and seldom occurs in theatres that seat more than a few hundred. PBDW seats 84, and even though the stage being wider than deep means that the first 4 rows (of five) are watching tennis when there is dialogue from both stage right and left, we have frequently heard the special silence that comes when a group of people don’t want to miss a word. The converse is true too. And when audience members arrive with a few martinis on board, or simply because they have lived for many decades, sometimes they slumber, all visible from the stage.

All in all though, the run here has been a big success. So much so that the theatre added extra performances at every opportunity to cope with demand for tickets and all perfs sold out completely.

For an actor the experience of doing good work in a good production which is popular is about as good as it gets. Sometimes you get one, but to get all three, as has happened here, is a perfect storm. Even so, and even with a good national review in (of all things) The Wall Street Journal, it’s a bit of a desert flower blooming unseen. There was talk of extending the run, of touring the production, and/or reviving it, none of which is logistically viable. So we the actors, the management, and our audiences will just have to let it go on our last night Sunday 31st of Jan, about the time I post this - the ephemeral nature of live theatre.

At one of our talk-backs – a strange event which has become more prevalent in recent years – where as many of the audience who are interested, stay on after the performance to ask questions of the actors and offer their own comments. I say strange, because my feeling as an actor is, I’ve just told you everything I know about this play – as well as which, do you really want to deconstruct something as elusive as a performance? Having said all that, the talk-backs held here have been notably intelligent – at one of them an unusually young man (in his 20s – unusually young for this theatre in particular, but for theatres everywhere), asked if we ever got bored repeating the roles.

I gave the theatrically correct answer which is ‘No, because the play is endlessly fascinating, there’s always more to discover, every audience it different… blah, blah, blah’. All of which is true by the way, and I could have gone on to say, that none of us has such perfect technique that we can be sure of delivering the moments as planned in rehearsal every time, so that there is always something to improve, and repetiton is the mother of skill. All of which is also true.

But another truth(which I didn’t say) is yes, sometimes. When between a quarter and a half of the audience is actually sleeping, or when several people in the front row yawn loudly, or when someone checks her nails at a particularly delicate moment, or when a married couple carry on an audible commentary, or when a cell phone goes off, or when after two and a half hours of intense concentration and effort to communicate things not easily communicated, several audience members head as quickly as their age allows, for the exit, not even waiting for the lights to go down on the final lines… Real quality in live theatre is a rarity. There is a scale between the deadly quite good and the acceptable very good, and most shows except the out and out turkeys fall somewhere along it.

I’ve always, mistakenly maybe, regarded being an actor as a vocational calling. And I am profoundly grateful that I was lucky enough to be a professional for, so far, about 30 years. The experience of the job has changed so much over the years. The consuming ambition – which I now regard as a necessary affliction of youth – is all gone. But the silence where people hold their breath because something on the stage has illumined some detail of life in a way that could not have happened elsewhere, where people lean forward in interest and appreciation of the work they see unfolding before them, and in compliment the actors are in the zone, performing at their best level of skill within their limits, that moment, those moments, that is the gold, that’s why we do it, why we joined.