Also splendid in the cast are: Rob Donohoe, Cliff Burgess and Angie Radosh, playing respectively: the ambitious headmaster, the new teacher on the block, and the lady who’s seen it all. They are pictured here in their agreeable daytime personas, but trust me, these are fine actors capable of startling transformations as anyone who saw them as the profoundly disturbed and disturbing characters from Dramawork’s last season’s production of Buried Child can tell you.
I find generally that there is a welcome appreciation of British theatrical product in the USA. Enhanced these days by what could be called the Downton Abbey Effect. So perhaps it’s worth mentioning that the last time I was in a play by Alan Bennett was half a lifetime ago in 1993.
It was The Madness of George III, a National Theatre production out of London, UK and we toured for 13 weeks along East Coast USA, completing the tour at BAM in NYC.
Nigel Hawthorne and Helen Mirren as King George III and Queen Charlotte
The film version was (at Nigel Hawthorne’s suggestion) renamed The Madness of King Georgelest anyone expect sequels. I played the small (but crucial) role of Sir Boothby Skrymshir, and my performance in the film survives in the director’s cut only, but that was the show that gave me a first real look at America.
The amazing Dame Helen has of course lately appeared on Broadway in The Audience giving a stunning performance as the current British monarch. One feature of that show was the impossibly fast costume changes she achieved. Our costume designer is the profoundly talented Erin Amico with whom I had the pleasure to work ten years ago. Though I say it myself, I think this is a terrific production in all its elements, and it’s no spoiler to tell you that although I’m not playing royalty, my costumes in The History Boys include seven bow ties in quick succession.
Astrology is a new study with me. In my reading so far I have not found the planet, the sign or the house which deals with the incidence of actors with or without beards getting cast in screen vignettes. But now I know there must be one.
As Ian Fleming wrote in James Bond: “Once is chance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action.”
Less than 48 hours ago, I was sitting with my younger son in an agreeable hostelry talking about life, art and truth, when a text came in. It was from my agent, Letitia Sideways.
“See attached. Send self taping by first thing tomorrow morning.”
An urgent tone is a given in all potential casting notices, and as a seasoned professional I took it in my stride whilst sipping a libation and looking over the attached script, thinking “I can do this.” So far so good.
But then I saw “NB: Must currently have a BEARD”
My capital letters.
I called Letitia immediately.
“The tragedy is, Letitia, I shaved my beard off yesterday. The other tragedy is, I was born to play this part.”
“Huh.”
“But you know what, I’ll tape it anyway. I’ll do it in the morning.”
“Get it to me by FIRST THING tomorrow morning!” She said briskly, raising the urgency level from national to global, and she rang off.
In three and a half decades it would be absurd not to admit that one has performed heroic feats of drinking in the social side of theatre, but never once have I gone onstage with alcohol inside me — well actually once — when I was in my 20s (way back in the last millennium) a sponsor hosted a dinner before the show (terrible timing), and I drank half a glass of dry white wine.
Never again. The effect was hallucinogenic, the stage seemed to pitch and roll like a ship adrift in heavy seas, and the other actors seemed to speak GROTESQUELY SLOOOOOWLY, their faces gargoyled under the lights. It was horrifying.
There are some actors, some good ones too, with the constitution to work under the influence but I am not one of them, so, as I say, ever since then, stone cold sober whenever performing in any way.
So there I was in the hostelry taking in a leisurely beer, chafing under the irony of the ill-timed shave but spurred by an urgency that was growing in my imagination to interstellar. What was I to do? Well the answer was obvious: continue on to a second beer as though nothing had occurred, but rise early the following morning and do the taping then. Simple, right?
With the turning of the planet 6 a.m. rolled around — and let me note here that Mercury, the planet that rules communication is just coming to the end of one his three annual retrograde periods, you know, one of those times when checks (cheques) get lost in the mail (post) and people say things they don’t mean. Nick and I performed morning ablutions, drank coffee and deployed an iPhone over several takes. The script was a piece of Scottish sketch comedy for, wait for it … Stephen Colbert’s show.
The taping accomplished before the start of the business day and emailed to Letitia, mid morning I retired to bed for a restorative power nap.
Only to be woken by the land line ringing on endless loop, my iphone buzzing and vibrating, and then to see an email from Letitia – ‘They want to book you!”
I answered the land line. It was my wife. “Call Letitia immediately.” She shrilled. Her usual poise quite undone by the, yes you guessed it, urgency.
I called.
“Er,” said Letitia, “Just after I got off the phone with your wife, they called and said that it’s not an offer, they just want to hold you till tomorrow morning.”
This word “hold” is the American equivalent of the British “definite heavy pencil”. What it means is that you the actor should prepare to do the job on the understanding that the job itself can evaporate at any moment.
“Oh,” I said, “So it was an offer, but now it’s not?.”
“Right.” said Letitia.
“Er …?” I said.
But she had rung off.
I maintained an iron control on my imagination as the hours passed.
You’ll notice that I say nothing of the nervous hyper-stimulation and exhaustion that actors undergo whilst in the words of the late great Spalding Gray, “Waiting for the profession to make up it’s so called mind.”
I do not reference the flights of imaginative fancy along the lines of: “Wow, and no beard! What if I had had a beard – they probably would have given me a series.”
I am mute on the forlorn hope that a sensitive, perceptive television executive would interpret the audition as an homage to Jonathan Winters and send a car for me on the spot with a large contract.
I say nothing of this. What I do say is: is it any wonder that actors drink?
Long story short; late in the afternoon the news came through that the whole bit had been cancelled. My services were no longer required. So … the beer, the 6 a.m. rise, the taping, the definite heavy pencil aka the hold, the waiting … it was now as though none of this had ever happened.
The copyright situation will not allow me to share what, in some other strand of the multiverse you might actually have seen on The Late Show. Instead, I offer the brief video below, my own personal masterclass on how to do a Scottish accent. With acknowledgement and apology to that fine long running British TV show, Dr. Finlay’s Casebook.
Whenever I attend an award ceremony, and let me tell you the frequency is running at once a year since this time last year, I think of the following poem:
It works best if you can image a rich, insistent Welsh baritone. Richard Burton maybe, Sir Harry Secombe perhaps …
In my craft or sullen art
Exercised in the still night
When only the moon rages
And the lovers lie abed
With all their griefs in their arms
I labour by singing light
Not for ambition or bread
Or the strut and trade of charms
On the ivory stages
But for the common wages
Of their most secret heart.
Not for the proud man apart
From the raging moon I write
On these spindrift pages
Nor for the towering dead
With their nightingales and psalms
But for the lovers, their arms
Round the griefs of the ages,
Who pay no praise or wages
Nor heed my craft or art
Or maybe the author himself, Dylan Thomas.
And he would have known all about it, having finally moved off the mortal coil aged 39 after taking in an immoderate number of whiskeys down at The White Horse Tavern in New York City.
Sort of thing Rylance might recite when called to the podium … maybe?
Years ago, when my two sons were somewhere in the middle of a long boyhood, inspired by their demands for bedtime stories, I came up with a character called The Bandido.
The Bandido in his blue period
He was derived from Alan Howard.
The Bandido was a charming, elusive baddie. To begin with he had equal baddie status with Dr. Dreadful, and Elfis (a fusion of Elvis Presley and an elf). Sometimes these three bad guys would work together creating havoc around the place, and sometimes they worked alone. The Sherrif always fixed it by the time sleep came. The Sherrif was assisted by two plucky boys, who were the lead characters in the stories, called Tom and Nate. Tom and Nate lived in a cottage that was kitted out with magical weaponry. They were pretty outstandingly good at saving the day these two boys, Tom and Nate, and their real-life counterparts, unknown to themselves, gave joy to all the grown ups who loved them.
The story was an open-ended serial, and over the years progressed to adventures in space with a galactic baddie called The Blob; to a heist with a Chinaman on a Junk who sold fish ‘n chips in the middle of the Pacific Ocean; to the The Sultan of Ombo-Gombo who was the richest man in the universe. Supporting parts were played by bit-part actors in roles like: Plooki, Power Pig, Awesome Ostrich, and Copper who was a flying horse.
As with most soaps, the plots were fairly standard. Baddies doing some bad stuff—global hazard—Sherrif-outfoxed calls on plucky lads—lads deploy cunning strategies—exhibit courage, strength and speed—world saved from catastrophe.
The Bandido first made his appearance as a solo, but then teamed up with Dr. Dreadful and Elfis whom he met while in gaol. For a while they were a dastardly trio, but over time The Bandido emerged as lead villain.
If you’ve ever told a bedtime story to children made from whole cloth (aka making it up as you go), you’ll know that even if you you’ve sketched out the outline there will come moments when you have absolutely no idea of what happens next. It was in one of these moments that The Bandido made his debut.
Working on the idea that when you don’t know what you’re doing, about the only thing to do is to act as if you do, I took a deep breath and heard myself say:
‘Oh no! You don’t catch The Bandido as easily as all thaaaaaat!’
It was a voice I knew well.
I was in a play with Alan Howard at the time. I played an eccentric Russian Orthodox Archbishop, and I had one scene with Alan, who was playing a maniacal Russian General. This was a play called Flight, adapted from the Bulgakov novel, at The National Theatre in London. Part of my job was also to understudy Alan Howard.
Alan Howard
Understudying, also known by the more tasteful term of ‘Standing by for …’ or the more elavated one of ‘Cover’ as in ‘I’m covering … so and so’ has it’s challenges but if you can navigate the esoteric ins and outs of it, it can be incredibly useful to the jobbing actor. One feature of the gig, especially at a place like the National, is that as a young actor, you get paid to watch distinctive older actors and learn from them. Alan Howard was distinctive in spades.
You may not know of him, because aside from a few choice film and TV roles, most of his career was on stage. Over decades at the Royal Shakespeare Company, he played many Shakespearean leads, including all the kings (Richard 11 to Richard 111, plus all the Henrys) sometimes two, three, or four simultaneously. You don’t do that year after year without it leaving an indelible imprint on your voice.
He was an actor of charisma and authority. In rehearsal endlessly inventive and in the moment. In performance known for his trademark stances — first of which was, as I’ve said, his voice. When you’ve done Shakespeare in quanitity in big theatres, there’s iron in the voice. A modest man offstage, on stage his vocal flashes were a rollercoaster illumined with random mad swarms of giant fireflies.
Flight was playing in the largest of the National’s three auditoria, the Olivier Theatre, an arena thrust stage modelled after the great Greek amphitheatres. At Delphi and Epidavros theatres were faced with marble, a material which conducts sound and, even outdoors, creates the finest acoustic environment for the human voice in the world.
The Olivier’s steps were cast in concrete, a material which absorbs sound, thus creating a very different kind of acoustic, one which has been frequently worked on with architectural add-ons, and even, to the outrage of classically trained actors, the ocassional use of microphones.
The great 19th century actor McCready wrote of Drury Lane that it was a theatre more suited to semaphore than to subtlety. Alan’s technique was more or less unmatched in living theatre, as a younger man he had given us a specially virile Coriolanus, and his Theseus/Oberon was part of history making, both those performances in the more intimate Aldwych Theatre. But even his unique vocal ability found reaching the back and side walls of the Olivier a challenge.
Alan Howard as Coriolanus
So he used a favoured technique and delivered one long battle speech standing on a table. He cut a compelling profile, and I as his understudy did the same when we rehearsed. In one rehearsal I said to the assistant director, who was presiding, ‘Surely I get off this table now?’ (I’d been up there quite a while).
‘No,’ he said, ‘You stay there for a bit.’
So I said, doing my best Alan Howard impersonation, ”It’s the only way to play the Olivier! Standing on a taaaaable, in a cerise follooooooow!!!’.
Unknown to me, the show relay was switched on, so my words were broadcast through the whole backstage.
That night waiting in the darkness of the wings to go on and play my scene with Alan, I felt a familiar presence in an unfamiliar place — usually we entered from opposite sides of the stage. ‘Heard you havin’ a go at me this afternoon,’ whispered the voice that could only belong to one man.
I spun around in the darkness, ‘Oh, Alan! Sincerest form of flattery is imitation!’
‘And yes!’ said Alan, spinning me back, his voice rising in volume as the scene change music came up, ‘it is a long time to stand on a taaaaaable!!!’ With a hearty shove he pushed me onstage, and we played the scene.
Gentleman that he was, he bore no grudge, allowed me to buy him a respectful glass of red wine after the show, and even generously negotiated with the director to give my character, the Archbishop, a few more lines in our scene.
I was grateful for the chance to work with him. He will be remembered throughout the profession as a most accomplished classicist and for other theatrical strengths, but I will always be most grateful for the Bandido, who was a favourite with my kids.
The Bandido with a rare smile
Technically Bandido should be rendered as Bandito, but somehow he never was. The Bandido was a thin, very thin shape-shifter which meant that no gaol could hold him because he could always ooze between the bars. He dressed entirely in black or dark blue and wore a large kind of sombrero. But his most distinctive feature was his voice.
The Great Stage Manager in the sky has called Beginners (UK), Places (USA) for Alan. Wherever he is now he’ll still have a voice to thunder and command.
