Memories... (Part One)

My old computer printer finally went kaput Friday evening, so yesterday I went shopping in PC World and forked out £50 on a combined printer, photocopier and scanner. Ouch. :-(

But what a fabulous toy!

And so I spent most of this afternoon scanning old photographs from old theatre scrapbooks into my Facebook page, and wending my way down memory lane. Theatre is so ephemeral. I regret to say I have little to help me recall much of the first 10 years of my stage career (1976-86) in my sporadic collection of memorabilia. From Goldberg in Theatre Worshop for Youth's (TWY) production of The Birthday Party- my very first part at the age of 16- right the way through all the plays I did at college, up to and including my first TIE tours, and playing the Drum Major and the Fool on a Woyzeck tour with that Aberystwyth company (Theatre West??) which Tony Hopkins and Simon Callow saw me in and they waited around afterwards to tell me how much they'd admired my performance!- oh, and Ariel in The Tempest at the Sherman in Cardiff in 1986 are a blur. This was a period when I played so many characters- everything from a one-man Dr Faustus to the nasty Mr Breaker in Penny the Paddlesteamer- that I've actually now (perhaps mercifully) forgotten what most of them were. I was never one for wallowing in nostalgia, a second-rate emotion at the best of times I always feel. Besides, I know only too well that as an actor you are really only as good as the part you've just done, or the the one you happen to be working on at the moment.

But maybe it's because the last role I played was over 7 months ago- and I am missing the smell of the grease paint- that I felt I needed to cheer myself up with a bit of restropective musing over 'past glories'. It was only when I came to Glasgow in 1987 to do the one-man show, Hess, (playing the 90 year old Rudolf Hess in Spandau) and met Karen and she gently suggested it would be a good idea to keep a record of the plays I performed that I began to collect all this bumph- reviews, articles and photographs , etc.

Rudolf Hess in Hess (1987)

Even then I didn't keep everything. It's because of this I can't remember much at all about the work I did with Theatre Racoon during 1987-88 (Saul in True West, someone or other in Don Juan, another character in Mrozeck's The Prophets, a Salvation Army nutcase in Womberang, Len in Pinter's The Dwarfs as well as a couple of shows I directed- Father Murphy and Mrs Brown, written by my pal Alex, and Pinter's One for the Road) Becket in Murder in the Cathedral (Filboid Studge) , the tours I did with Winged Horse (as Austin in True West) or Annexe (Trevor in The Surrogate), my early experiences of the Edinburgh Fringe (1984, 1985,1989, 1991 and 1992- including The Apple; Courteous Men, Songs of Jericho both directed by successful film director Ed Blum, and Strawberry Fields directed by a wonderful actor, Adam Godley, who since gone onto greater things- including winning Olivier award for a biographical drama about the late Kenneth Williams, as well as starring opposite Johnny Depp in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory), Mozart opposite Ian Aldred's Salieri in Amadeus, the various parts I played in Aida, The Merry Widow, Der Fledermaus and Oedipus Rex for Scottish Opera or Sam in Awake and Sing! at Watford Palace in the late 80s and early 90s, not to mention all those BBC Radio 4 plays I did and those bits and pieces of telly. I did happen to keep a couple of photographs of things though...

Dr Sugar in Suddenly Last Summer (1988)

This one was me playing Dr Sugar at the Edinburgh Fringe in Suddenly Last Summer in 1988 I think. I remember that the only reason I agreed to do it was because my hero at the time happened to be Montgomery Clift who had played the role in the film version...

...Much better than me in turned out!

And then there was a new play in 1990 called The Deal with a company by the name of American Connexion.

With Robert Cavannah in The Deal (1990)

The action was set in the world of dodgy business in Pittsburgh where I was a good fella entrapped into a dodgy deal by an FBI agent provocateur posing as my buddy. This production was very enjoyable experience, and we worked a lot with Meisner repetition and objectives. My colleague from that, a very fine actor by the name of Robert Cavannnah, went on to star in movies opposite Angelina Jolie.

As Jimmy Hunsinger in The Deal (1990)

So much for my early career. My old girlfriend, Pauline Males, says she has an old photo of me in a play when we were at college circa 1979-80 (although neither of us can remember the name of it) in which I played a camp Restoration fop. She says she's going to email it. I'll include it here next time if she remembers. Can't wait to see that.

Of course a great deal is missing here- but if there is anyone out there in cyber space who remembers directing or acting with me during the late 1970s, 80s and early 90s who may have had better sense than me to hang onto old photos of the shows they did please get in touch! I intend to do a few more follow-up instalments taking it up to the present day. As time went on I tended to get better at keeping photographs and reviews, etc.

The Deal (1990)

More to follow...