Playing the King

As usual Shakespeare got there first when in Richard II he said, "For God's sake let us sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of the death of kings..."

Usually I try not to read reviews of shows that I am in until the show has closed, but this one was hard to avoid, and as it is spectacularly positive, I post the link to it here: http://www.floridatheateronstage.com/reviews/performances/mortality-is-funny-as-well-as-terrifying-in-superb-absurdist-exit-the-king-at-dramaworks/

When Bill Hayes, producing artistic director at Palm Beach Dramaworks, called me, I wasn’t surprised that he was planning a production of Eugene Ionesco’s absurdist masterpiece Exit the King. After all Palm Beach Dramaworks has a motto: "theatre to think about". I was somewhat surprised that he offered me the title role. Specially as we talked about how taken he was with the recent Broadway production for which Australian actor Geoffrey Rush won a Tony.

“I am not Geoffrey Rush.” I told Bill.

“I know.” he said.

“Not even a little bit,” I went on, wanting to make the point very clear. “I mean we are both Australian, but that’s as far as it goes. Geoffrey has the physique of a q-tip and the metabolism of a credit card. I am a stout character man whose knee-bends are not what they used to be.”

“I know.” said Bill.

“So it will be a comparatively sedentary approach.”

“No problem.” said Bill.

Talking of Geoffrey Rush and his colleague Neil Armfield, their adaptation has done for Exit the King what Stephen Daldry (who directed Billy Elliott) did for J.B. Priestly’s An Inspector Calls. A fresh eye a generation later, has revealed the play in a new and exciting light.

Exit the King remains a light hearted yet poignant romp through some of the issues which surround the great universal leveler—otherwise known as death. But a heightened style and physical vocabulary in the production makes the play freshly accessible. It also has me very active during the 90 minutes of stage time—hmn...I may not be the actual G. Rush, but maybe we are related?

We have an incredible cast: the wonderful Beth Dimon (she and I were in Copenhagen 2010), the splendid Rob Donohoe (he and I were in The Pitmen Painters 2011), the incomparable Angie Radosh, the magnificent Jim Ballard, and the luminous Claire Brownell. All under the inspired direction of Bill Hayes, assisted with panache by Lynette Barclay, the whole thing supported by the outstanding design, management, and technical expertise at Palm Beach Dramaworks!

Does that sound like I want to keep working at Dramaworks? Yes! But it’s also another way to say that, for an actor, the chance to do interesting work with great people is as good as it gets.

Exit The King

Death: really, what could be funnier? This seems to have been Eugene Ionesco's starting point. 

Whether the play really is all that funny, as always with comedy, can only be known in the moment with a living breathing audience...I’ll get back to you.

Meanwhile, my advice to people who read this blog, and even to those who don’t, is: get yourself down the Gym—pronto. Why? Because you never know when you’ll find yourself playing King Berenger the First. I will go further, you never know when, whatever protestations to the contrary the director makes, you'll find yourself hired as a stunt double for Geoffrey Rush. 

Geoffrey Rush who gave a riveting, award-winning performance on Broadway in Exit The King, is, as we all know, an extraordinarily fine actor with the physical facility of an elastic band. One assumes that with an international film career he can comfortably afford any necessary physio.

Personal physique aside. I have a strong fondness for South Florida. The place has been good to me. This is my eighth show in these parts over the past ten years, and always in the winter months when the daytime temperature hovers agreeably in the 50s, 60s, or even 70s with mellow breezes, and flawless blue skies. 

One amazing feature of the locale is the Kennel Club with its Damon Runyon characters disposed around its thirty or so card tables, any one of whom can give you a fine post-hand analysis in poker dialect:

“With sixteen cards to hit to make my straight and the nut flush draw—hey! I’m not going anywhere.”

“Right! But I gotta push in that situation.”

And the guy who took the long chances that paid off when his off-suited 9-7 hit two pairs on the Turn, and filled up on the River, makes a note to watch out for the guy whose A-4 Spades he annihilated and from whom he lifted an easy hundred bucks. In the Mano-a-Mano etiquette of the card room, the two players grimace as comrades. There is silent agreement on the unfairness of life and the futility of existence.

About the ocean: when the rip tides are low, and when there are no Bluebottle Jellyfish around, it’s pleasant to float in a sea the temperature of a warm bath. 

Florida is a touchstone though, for the effects of a changing climate. A hurricane that hit locally the city of Miami a brief six or seven years ago, now might cover the whole state. The new migration of many thousands of sharks off the Florida coast is reported on the TV news, and some of the condo buildings built on the shores have a bad case of sandy gingivitis. 

Talking of decline, decay and death and how amusing it can be—Not. Theatre is dying too, like it always has been. Four established theater companies in these parts have closed within the last two years. Florida Stage, Promethean, Mosaic, and The Caldwell. Sure, there are plenty of new young theater companies springing up, but few of them have much funding. 

In that context, producing a play about death, whose author was one of the masters of the absurd, a man who was obsessed and scared and struggling, a play which challenges its actors and its audience, is deeply life-affirming.

.

Planet Television

I auditioned for a commercial recently and was asked to sign a non-disclosure agreement as to the advertising copy and the product. Er...excuse me? I didn't get the job.

But I did do a small gig for a forthcoming TV series last month. And just in case, I’m not going to say which one. The role was, as we say in the trade, a “Telling Cameo”. It was that of a British bio-hazard technician, and I had a two-week beard growth when I did the casting.

I got the hoped-for call from my agent's assistant, Letitia Sideways. This is the call that exposes you as an actor. Inevitably you think to yourself, “They want me...?!” And it gives you a warm fuzzy feeling.

“And they asked if you would mind shaving?” said Letitia.

“No problem.”

So, they didn’t like the beard, huh? I purchased a razor and some shaving cream. I filled the sink with warm water, and as I lifted the razor, some instinct made me put it down and call my agent again just to check. “They do want me to shave, right?”

“No!” she said, mildly surprised. “They don’t want you to shave.”

“They don’t want me to shave?”

“Right.”

“They want me not to shave?”

“Exactly! Don’t shave.”

“On no account am I to shave?”

“That’s what I said.” said Letitia, pleased to get the point across.

So I didn’t shave.

A similar episode had happened once, some twenty years past. This was when I was a young father and sleep was at a premium. I went to an audition for a commercial for cough medicine, and having been too tired to shave for a month or more, was beginning to look like a character from a 19th century Russian novel. And having been confident that they had not liked the look at the audition, had returned home and shaved the whole thing off, only for the phone to go half an hour later with the news that I was the lucky actor that had been selected.

“Great!” I said, “I’ve just shaved off the beard.”

“Oh.” said my agent. “Oh dear.”

“They wanted it? The beard?”

“They loved it. They said specially.”

“How long before the shoot?”

“A month.”

So I didn’t shave for the next month, and I did the commercial for cough medicine. Nobody was coy about disclosure back then.

Anyway, this time just past with the TV gig, having had experience with how a beard can get you work (or lose it), I stayed my barber’s hand. And just as well.

In due course I arrived on set and donned the bio-hazard suit, along with the character. I played a British bio-hazard guy, bearded as required. 

If you happen to see it, look out for the pivotal scene where a menacing shape emerges from a quarantined ship wrapped in plastic, and takes a few steps along a quayside to report the findings to the brace of lead actors figuring out the latest screen quandary. The bio-hazard suit this enigmatic figure wears includes a helmet with a visor. It’s betraying no secrets of the trade to say that the visor was held open by the cunning use of ‘Gaffer’s tape’. 

My face is visible between the upper nostril, and the lower eyebrow. 

That’s how you’ll know it’s me.

Marti Caine

Back in England I was on tour one time with Marti Caine, one of the most popular comics of her generation. Alas, now telling gags at the great microphone in the sky. She was tall and slim, gawky and funny. When she spoke it was a gentle northern drawl, smokey velvet.

Her humor was mildly self-deprecating, but behind it was the steel will that folk mostly conceal when they’ve risen entirely by their own efforts, and then seized that precious moment when preparation meets television exposure to millions, and leads on to fortune. 

In Marti’s case it meant a blue Rolls Royce.

She was beautifully generous both on stage and off. Once I saw her hand over about a couple of thousand quids' worth of scarcely worn designer clothing to a single mother with a teenage daughter, who was in our cast. She did it gracefully, insisting they were doing her a favor by freeing up closet space.

I was a twenty-something actor who’d stumbled into a commercial tour of one of Alan Ayckbourn’s funniest plays, ‘Season’s Greetings’ - that’s the one about a family reunion at Christmas where everything goes horribly, horribly wrong.

The late, great Bill Frazer was in the cast too. A magically funny veteran, built like a Walrus, he could bark a line, and it was like a direct command to the audience - “Laugh! Laugh some more ... now give me a round of applause.”

The show toured up and down the length of England, and Marti let me ride in the Roller with her. She told me stories about the "Workies" - the Working Mens’ Clubs where she’d learnt her craft... "Once I told a joke that offended a table at the front. It was pint pots down, folded arms, and I saw the disapproval ripple across the hall. Someone called out, ‘Right lass, I think we’ve had enough.’ But I stayed out there and I told every joke I knew. To complete silence."

“How did that feel?” I asked.

“I felt skinned” she said.

We were coming down the M1 motorway, heading back to London for the week-end after the Saturday night show in Hull. Somewhere after midnight, somewhere between Sheffield and Coventry, we went into a service station. The place was bleakly lit, empty except for a lone night attendant behind the counter, ready to dispense over-crispy bacon and rubberized eggs that had sat too long under warming lamps.

“Now I’ll let you into a secret,” Marti said, as we went in. “I am Queen of the Universe, and I come from the planet Television. Sometimes they recognize me. If they do, there’s only one thing to do. Look them straight in the eye, and say, ‘Do you sell knicker elastic?’”

Sure enough, as we collected some chemical beverage, laughingly called coffee, the lone guy sputtered, “It’s ... it is, isn’t it ... you are ...?”

Marti turned to me, “You see?” her face the picture of what it’s like to be Queen of the Universe, and have to deal with this recognition from time to time. 

“Do you sell knicker elastic?” said the Queen of the Universe.

It seemed to do the trick. The guy stuttered and spluttered, then he saw the funny side of the question and began laughing. The laughing grew and took hold of him, it shook his frame. Finally he managed to say, “...Er ... no.”

The Queen followed it up. “Would you consider selling it in the future?” she asked mildly.

The guy was a mess.

December

It’s three weeks to 12.21.12 or to put it the way we used to say it back in the UK; 21.12.12. If the The Mayan Calendar really does mean some super-transformational event like the planet going pole dancing, or if there’s a humungous magnetic shift, then all our small concerns will fade away.

Meanwhile, I’m unemployed. 

Unemployment has struck in the same month as the school where I trained has been elevated. Henceforth it is to be called:

The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama

The inclusion of the world Royal in the title is significant. Even though our graduates include: Olivier, Dench, Pinter, all the Redgraves, and many other distinguished names, the only British theatre school known in the USA was RADA. Maybe that all changes now.

It’s always been a peculiar irony how well the British aristocracy and royalty plays in America - and I cite here the naughtiness that is Downton Abbey - really, to pass off a soap opera in period as a quality costume drama is a marketing masterpiece, worth watching for that alone. But doesn’t it prove the enduring appeal to The American Republic with its theoretical social mobility, of a simpler world where everyone knew their place and dressed accordingly?

Or is the charm really all based on cream teas, and cricket, and good tailoring?

Years ago Simon Callow wrote a book called Being An Actor which did a certain amount for his career, and in which he announced himself as spokesman for the working conditions of the actors of his generation. The book inspired a hugely successfully parody called I, An Actor! authored by Nicholas Crane (nom de plume of Nigel Planer) and published a few years later, the parody extending as far as a televised master-class in how to be a TV weather anchorperson. 

Again, when Anthony Sher gave us Year of the King, in which he recorded his views, experiences, and insights while preparing for and playing Richard 111, an actor of my acquaintance intended to write a parody called Year of the Spear, about his experiences playing the guy who stands at the back.

Callow’s book defines the usual starting condition for the actor as unemployment. And it’s true. Employment is intermittently continuous in the same way that one who believes in re-incarnation might define life as an out-of-death experience. All actors experience a lull from time to time, even if they’ve been fortunate enough to work a lot - which I have - although this time, the gears really do seem to have stopped.

So, to while away the time, I’ve written a book of my own. 

It’s a slim volume called: An Actor Walks into China, and it should be available in February of 2013. So for that among other reasons, I am hoping that we’ll get beyond 12.21.12. 

October

There was a rush of preparation shopping in the supermarket next door. By the time I got there the eggs were gone and all the bread. Understandable, but who can explain a run on molasses? Only six jars left on the shelves. 

Likewise tomatoes - all gone. Fresh fish - down to a few sad Tilapia. Tins of corn - wiped out. 

But coffee - still plenty. Likewise tea and herbal tea, condiments of all kinds.

Molasses? We buy the strangest things under pressure.

How thin the line between First World convenience and the Stone Age. We filled the tub with water, and pots and pans too, not really believing that we’d have to use it. It was fun to live by candlelight for a night or two, but it was less fun to flush the loo with dwindling bathwater.

Back in the 1970s I lived on a commune for a few months in the North Yorkshire Dales. The property was a hunting lodge, built by Queen Victoria in the style of the Tyrol to make Prince Albert’s cousins feel at home. We lived in a house powered by a fuel stove, and ate soup made from fresh vegetables, grown in the kitchen garden. The house was on a high slope a mile from the nearest village, and in the winter it was cold - bitingly, penetratingly cold. The wind came off the heights whining continually. Wind was the only theme some days.

At that time there was a network of such places up and down Britain. The famous community at Findhorn still flourishes, and a few years later I would visit a community on Iona. Our place was  directly inspired by the work of J. G. Bennet, his compelling life story told in his book ‘Witness’. Bennet foresaw a sequence of urban collapse, privation, and social failure on a massive scale. He encouraged his followers to set up communes and communities to preserve craft knowledge. His vision was inspiring if perhaps a little off in the timing.

Because, what happened? The largest, most enduring commercial and technological expansion since written history began.

Ah ... but that didn’t last long, and as soon as the Internet goes down, and the one-eyed monster in the corner or in plasma on the wall is silent, and when the water in the tub is all used up, and when a tin of molasses is changing hands at dollars on the penny ... what happens then?

Be all that as it may, the biggest news in our lives, bigger for us even than the hurricane, is that Trish has become a grandmother. Baby Jeremy Daniel arrived fully formed and perfectly beautiful.  Emily and Jonathan adopted him as a newborn. No one could wish for better care.

And the story of the hurricane and the story of being new grand-parents converge, because here we are staying with the new baby and his new parents up in Westchester while the power is out in Lower Manhattan. With amazing good luck their house was untouched by falling trees, and they still have electricity.

December

Once the readership of this blog soared into double figures I took a six month sabbatical. Now that I’m returning to it on the last day of 2011 and in the middle of a run of Charley’s Aunt at The Guthrie, I’ve finally managed to break a leg. Actually it was a torn hamstring, but as so few us are reading, you’ll forgive the license. In passing I’ll mention that the editor has told me to make this returned-to-version leaner and meaner at 500 words a pop.

Charley’s Aunt has to be in the forefront of silliest plays ever written, but it’s one of the funnest to perform. Mostly because that great theatre sound, the sound of several hundred people all laughing at once is a great tonic. I mean where else can you get that?

Not in congress! At post play discussions I sometimes say that farce (Charley’s Aunt) is a naturally popular form in England, because for years now we’ve run the whole country on farcical lines. Now I see that trend is catching on with our American cousins. And I say this with all respect due and now that I have become a British American.

It’s a big circle for me to be involved here. Charley’s Aunt was just about the first play I ever saw, it was certainly the first time I was taken backstage. I was about twelve, and Tom Courtenay was giving us his ‘Lord Fancourt-Babberly’ - the one, you’ll remember, who personates Charley’s hitherto unknown Aunt. 

I was utterly charmed by the experience, and it took me back when one of our audience here in Minneapolis told me that seeing our production had made him laugh so much that his stomach hurt - back when I was twelve I laughed so much my face hurt and my cheeks were stuck near my ears. Back then when we went behind the scenes I was introduced to an actor by the name of Wolfe Morris, he was playing Spettigue. Fifteen years later I was in a British production and played one of the lively undergrads, a character called Jack, notoriously tricky by the way because he is the ‘engine of the play’ (the author’s words, not mine), and is mostly the comic feed, the straight man. Now, forty years later, I’m playing the old fart, yes Spettigue. Time passes eh?

But let’s get back to politics.

Taking citizenship I thought I was privy to the finest of The United States ideals - how did that thing go? Give us your poor, your tired, your huddled masses longing to be free ... we were 150 strong in the room where we took the oath, 42 nationalities represented. And in the course of the ceremony, with the New World genius for self-congratulation, we gave ourselves six standing ovations.

Incidentally: 

Do you know the difference between American politics and British politics?

There is no difference, they are the same.

Except that in America you don’t have the two drink minimum.

Happy New Year!

June

There are three standout moments in any theatre gig: the offer, the first night, and... the last night.

The offer validates you as an actor.

The first night tests the work you’ve done in rehearsal.

And the last night...

In the days before a show closes you move from a temporary sense of permanence back to a semi-permanent sense of transition. The group of intimate strangers that assembled around this production and became a family for a while is going to dissolve. Some of us will meet again, maybe all but one or two will have a reunion dinner. But it’s unlikely that we’ll ever again see the whole company as it was when we did the show. In some circumstances this can be a positive of course. But mostly not. Mostly the parting of the ways is at least a little wistful, and often rather poignant. As is the familiar transition to uncertainty. Chances are all of us will work again, but not all of us know it for sure. 

There’s nothing I know of to stop the forward march of time, but the way time passes onstage and over the course of a run, is odd. There’s the repetition. Every performance repeats the words and the moves, it’s both as exactly similar as you can make it, but also as singular as your experience of the present moment  can be - at least it’s better when it is. 

This being in the moment thing is important, specially in comedy. Say you’re playing a scene with another actor and there’s a possible laugh coming up. For the laugh to hit, both of you has to be aware of the comic possibility in the text; the pace, rhythm, and timing of your scene partner; and what the audience collectively can respond to. 

Life of Riley, is a play about three couples, and our seven person cast (including the silent but telling cameo given by Rebecca Gold) was an expert group including, among others: Dana Green, Nisi Sturgis, Ray Chambers, and David Bishens - as varied a group of human shapes, types, and temperament as you could assemble - led by a skilled, deft, and graceful director in Rick Seer. I reckon directing is the most demanding job in theatre, but if you cast a play well and create a place that is fun to work in, where people can experiment freely,  a lot of your work is done.

I played opposite the splendid Henny Russell, as gifted a comedienne as I’ve ever met on a stage. And as consummate a technician with all the awareness mentioned above in spades. I was predisposed to like her for having the good taste to accept this gig, and then delighted as we began rehearsals, and it became clear that we fit well together as a comic partnership. Comic chemistry with a scene partner is fun like no other. The sound of several hundred people all laughing at once is just so great, and for a couple of vocational comic actors what could be better?

Usually a laugh breaks like a wave. You can see it coming, and if the timing is reasonable (and the script is funny - let’s not forget the playwright), then the laugh will arrive, swell, and fade. How the right silence is held for the comic idea to be heard, how the words of the punchline are delivered, how the actors listen (or don’t) to each other, how they focus the moment; all this is technique, which is why comedy demands the most technical accomplishment from its actors.

And there are different kinds of laugh. Titters, ripples, swells, explosions... and occasionally... the comic bullseye, a rolling laugh. A laugh which arrives and peaks, but goes on to another peak, and another, an endless laugh lasting for a long long time in stage time, say as much as 20 or 30 seconds. Henny and I scored a few of these. They don’t happen often. Some laughs are reliable, so built into the show that if they’re not there something is wrong. But the rolling laugh arrives only when everything is right in the scene and when the timing hits the sweet spot. 

And how did Ayckbourn, the quintessentially middle-class English playwright, play in Southern California? Mostly very well. The usual hazards (from the actors point of view) applied of course: oversize patrons with limbs spilling into the aisles where entrances were made, talkative patrons supplying live and loud running commentary on the show as it progressed, and of course those patrons who believe the theatre is the best place to take a refreshing after-dinner sleep sometimes complete with snoring. But mostly English marital dysfunction played well in these parts. And after all, all history tells us that issues in marriage do occur frequently in most times and places.

Ayckbourn specializes in bittersweet; shade with his light; a dark lining in the comic gesture of his plays. But the Checkovian darkness in this play was gently tempered with a subliminal message referenced but unspoken in the final graveside scene when the voice of an unseen vicar tells the story of the woman taken in adultery. The tag line of that fragment of the comedie humaine is: ‘who is without sin let him cast the first stone...’ living in times when public figures fall from grace with drumbeat regularity, because, of all things, sexual peccadillos, this value seems an excellent one to me. 

And that, combined with an exquisite set and costume design, an invigorating sound track, a cohesive group of theatre folk wrangling and delivering a fun show including a series of  comedy duets such as it was my great pleasure to play with Ms. Russell. All that goes to say that it doesn’t get any better than it got in Life of Riley at The Old Globe, in the vivid Jacaranda-blossom springtime 2011.

May

Life of Riley opens tomorrow May 5th, and plays till June 5th at The Old Globe in the middle of Balboa Park, San Diego, California. It is the US premiere of Sir Alan Ayckbourn’s 74th play. I am playing the role of ‘Colin’.

Balboa Park is a rectangular section of 1200 acres (down from its original 1400 when founded in 1868) just north of the downtown section of the city. It’s topography spans two canyons, and it’s flora includes Eucalypts, Pines, and flowers of acrylic intensity. It also houses a zoo with a long ariel ski lift for viewing, a bowling green, 15 museums, an enormous Morton Bay Fig tree 120 feet tall, and ‘the great globe itself’ which now sports three performance spaces. I’m housed at the The Park Manor Hotel on the park’s north west corner and it’s a lucky thing to stroll though a piece of paradise every day to go to work.

Our play treats on George Riley suddenly diagnosed as having only six months to live. And as our director, Rick Seer, dryly observed in his opening remarks: “Really, what could be funnier?” George never appears. He lives (and finally dies - I’m giving nothing away here) offstage, and the play is really about the effect the situation has on his close friends.

As Colin the character, Colin the actor gets to say one of the funniest lines ever written in the English language, viz:

‘I can’t say I’m very taken with this marmalade.’

Hysterical isn’t it?

We open on a fragment from a scene from Alan Ayckbourn’s first commercial success (not his first play, but his first big hit). Relatively Speaking was written in 1965 and produced in London’s West End in 1967. And Act 1 scene 2 of Relatively Speaking opens with Philip uttering the aforementioned marmalade line to his wife Sheila over breakfast.

Act 1 scene 1 of Life of Riley opens with my chap, Colin, running lines with his wife Kathryn prior to their first rehearsal of a local amateur production in which they are playing Philip and Sheila. The action of Life of Riley takes place between May and November of one year, and from first rehearsal of Relatively Speaking to the last of three performances is a mere 4 or 5 months. Sir Alan has sprinkled this part of the storyline with subversive humour to do with both amateur and professional backstage life. The fact that he is referencing one of his own plays written 45 years ago is a witty retrospective.

Ayckbournian text is a delight to play, and there are some scenes in the cannon of his work which  I think are actor-proof - the deck chairs scene in Round and Round the Garden for example when Ruth, driven to exhasperation exclaims: ‘How would it be Tom, if I took all my clothes off and rolled around naked on the grass my spectacles flashing messages of passion and desire at you? How would that be, Tom?’

Tom’s reply: ‘Good Lord ... have to be carefull where you rolled on this grass.’ 

It works.

San Diego is full of Britons. A mile or so from where I’m writing this, there’s an establishment called The Shakespeare Pub. They sell popular British beers and things like Fish n’ Chips, and Sausage Rolls, and Digestive Biscuits. For a Brit far from home, it’s a tonic to go and get an armful of comfort food and proper tea. The establishment has been in business for some 11 years and does brisk trade, but the ocassion of the recent Royal Wedding was their busiest week-end to date. 

British exports have traditionally found lively markets in the States, not least in the large crop of costume dramas which retail the accent. But language and accent is always changing. The cut-glass vowels of the BBC circa 1940, gradually gave way to admit regional variations by the 1980s. And now even Royals use a mottled ‘t’ and the odd ‘estuarine’ vowel. Our vocal coach here at The Old Globe pointed out several corrupted vowels in my speech - the result of living America for more than a decade. 

Accent work has improved with global communications. These days we often see films where Brits or Aussies play American, and Americans play Brits. Kudos here to my fellow cast members doing the best accent work I’ve ever heard in this country. And as a British actor who once played American in the Great State of Kentucky, at The Humana Festival of New American Plays, I’m able to say such an undertaking can be a challenge.

The current season of plays here is loosley connected in themes of familial dysfunction. The smash hit Rafta Rafta about two families of Anglo-Indians living in the north of England and having marital trouble, closed last week. The mighty August: Osage County telling us how things can get out of hand in Oklahoma, opens next week. Even the Shakespeare Festival this season includes The Tempest - another family-gone-wrong story.

But middle class England on the verge of a divorce is ground that Ayckbourn has mapped and chronicled like no other. And this is where the marmalade line and subsequent scene is so brilliant, being a distillation of unexpressed, unheard, relationship-need-in-marriage passed through the filter of English nicety. But where this playwright has previously experimented with sleights of theatrical form such as variation plays like Sisterly Feelings and Intimate Exchanges, time plays like Communicating Doors, multi-space plays like A Small Family Business, stereo plays like House And Garden, to name but a few; here he contents himself with relatively mild theatrical eccentricities like; his title character never appearing, a setting which is multi-functional and overlapping, and variations on the marmalade line (the scene is played more than once), culminating in the equally hillarious and devastating:

‘If you ask me, we’d have been better off with jam!’

April

A delicious sampling of the uptown New York theatre scene. This week; in this order: Anything Goes, War Horse, The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Any More, Lombardi, and Freud’s Last Session. With these daily viewings I know how a Tony voter must feel. I’m here to report that there’s no shortage of talent this season.

First I want to say something about Brian Bedford as Lady Bracknell in The Importance of Being Earnest. On the force of love-letter reviews and consistently delighted audiences, the run of The Importance of Being Earnest has been extended to early July. I left the company (my choice to do so, just in case you were wondering) two weeks ago, and have been at large taking in shows. Brian has had a long, distinguished, and hugely successful career as a man of the theatre. He is a highly accomplished performer in all departments, although his great strength is comedy, and he has some x factor too.

X factor?

There’s a part of his talent which is not easy to imitate or understand. Back in 2001 I worked with Brian in a similar function to the one I’ve just performed in the Earnest company - see my last blog entry - when I understudied him as Sganarelle in The Moliere Comedies in Los Angeles. On the first night at The Mark Taper Forum there was one of those wonderful moments that can only happen in live theatre. A laugh that peaked, fell, rose to another peak, and another beyond that, and finally, after several crescendos erupted into a round of applause.

What happened was this: on the line ‘All this is true no doubt...’ a lady way back in the house spontaneously uttered a sympathetic groan of agreement. Brian was sufficiently in the moment (he always is as an actor) and sufficiently on the back foot (something a comic has to be even in frenetic moments) to respond to the sound, and work what had happened into a laugh that went for more than a minute (a very long time on stage). And all he did was look.

He looked out into the house to see where the sound had come from. Then he stood still and thought about it. Then he turned front and thought some more. Then he turned back to the lady. Each of these movements was simple and minimal, exquisitely timed and therefore punctuated with another wave of laughter. Finally he took two steps in the direction of the lady (she now helpless with mirth), and the house, as the saying goes, fell in.

It may not sound like much as described in a couple of fumbling paragraphs, but, and you’ll have to take my word for it, if you had been there you would have experienced a great comedic actor displaying the prime of his ability.

The reason I’ve tried to describe this moment in detail is this: the skill level in the theatrical community is high, which is as it should be, and not particularly surprising - given that people naturally get good at things they practise. Of course senior actors routinely bemoan the lack of linguistic technique, or the corrupted vowels in the generation coming up. And, of course, mistakes (particularly in casting) do occur, and also (of course) public perception is shaped by the organs of media - in this town, by the mighty New York Times - with sometimes, silly results. But on the whole, people are pretty good at what they do. So too with Brian Bedford. His ability to speak classical text and make even the most opaque of it clear to a contemporary audience... well he has a mastery in that department. Again, not surprising given his many decades of work... but the ability to ride a piece of the present moment  (that which the sages of all traditions tell us is the gateway to eternity), and to shape it, that, that is inimitable. It’s x-factor. 

Talking of which:

Sutton Foster in Anything Goes sheds light that is pure fun. For virtuosity in hoofing and singing this is one to see. I suspect that some parts of New York taste will compare her with the last Broadway production starring Patti LuPone whose virtuosity comes from a very different part of the forest. There’s a simplicity here, and a purity, also reflected in the design, which makes the evening a confection you just want to have.

War Horse transferred from The Royal National Theatre in London, now with an all American cast - well, they make a horse gallop on stage with puppetry. World War One seen through the eyes of a cavalry horse - amazing.

The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore: fascinating. Tennessee Williams in his own last act struggling with mortality, the text moves from the transcendent to the vicious, from the quotidian to the rare. Kudos to The Roundabout (my late employers) for producing this little-known play.

Lombardi: a simple story, simply told - with a lot of heart. The finest ensemble acting I’ve ever seen on Broadway. Led by a star turn in Dan Lauria, and another one in Judith Light, the play is beautifully staged in the round, and the acting is superb and somehow allowed to breathe - a welcome feature in an environment where plays are frequently over-directed.

Freud’s Last Session: starring the splendid Mark Dold of my acquaintance (I was Court Composer to his Emperor in Amadeus) is a piece of thinking person’s theatre. A very verbal play treating on the hypothetical meeting between Freud in his last year of life and the young C.S. Lewis. Astoundingly successful. Originating at the Barrington Stage in Pittsfield Mass., has now played more than 10 months off-Broadway, with several regional productions in development.

But for now I’ve quit the maelstrom of theatrical New York and gone to San Diego, California to appear in the US premiere of Alan Ayckbourn’s 74th play, Life of Riley, at The Old Globe. The character I’m to play is called ‘Colin’ - a tweedy middle-aged Englishman.

Now who do we know like that?

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.