Sir Trevor Nunn is one of the best directors in the world for interpreting musicals because he always gets the relationships right and he pays attention to the nuances of the characters in those relationships. When I worked opposite Betty Buckley in Trevor’s Sunset Boulevard, Trevor wanted my character Joe to be a bit harder, a bit colder and more obviously a lover to Norma Desmond than had been portrayed in the Broadway production. During a preview performance before opening night, I entered on cue for the scene where Joe meets Norma for the first time. As I opened my mouth, I realized I’d not spat out my chewing gum, so I worked it into the character.
‘Great touch, John. It was just what the character needed,’ Trevor told me afterwards.
I admitted it had been an oversight on my part and had nothing to do with my portrayal of Joe.
‘Don’t care. Leave it in.’
In those situations when Trevor appreciated something you’d done, he’d grab you by the head and squeeze you under his armpit while giving a ‘Nunn noogie’. It was a playful and affirming gesture, but by the middle of a show’s rehearsal period, it could be a bit of a whiffy one. Trevor’s superstitious quirk is that he wears the same shirt and the same jeans and doesn’t cut his hair until after his show opens. By the end of the rehearsals for Anything Goes at the National in 2002, his shirt and jeans were hanging off him. When he stripped at night, I’d not have been surprised if they could have stood on their own.
An opening-night tradition in a company is to exchange gifts, with the leads buying presents for each other and sending a bottle of champagne or flowers or food to the dressing rooms of the ensemble players. On the opening night of Anything Goes, the company presented Trevor with a new polo shirt and jeans to replace the ones he’d been wearing for weeks. When the show transferred venues in 2003, and the company went into rehearsal at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane, Trevor wore those same jeans and polo shirt every day until we opened.
Another of Trevor’s quirks on this particular production was that he refused to let either theatre make any kind of announcement about the prohibition of cameras or recording devices. He believed it would break the illusion of the audience being on a cruise ship.
They paid forty pounds for a ticket. They know they’re not on a goddamn boat.
Now, when I go into Marks and Spencer’s, TK Maxx or even Tesco, I do not put bits and bobs into my pocket or shove a few sweeties in my mouth and leave without paying. That, we all know, would be considered stealing. However, there are still folks who attend the theatre who think it’s perfectly acceptable to slip the performing company’s artistic property into their pockets via their cameras or phones. Even in the years before YouTube, pirated versions of performances from Anything Goes were showing up on the Internet.
People weren’t shy about it either, and of course with no announcement from the theatres before each show began, they saw no reason to be. Let me explain. At one performance at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane, Sally Ann Triplett as Reno Sweeney was singing ‘Blow Gabriel Blow’. It was the big number in Act Two, in which a chorus of sequinned dancers tap-danced its way to the front of the stage. In fact, the whole cast was on set, gathered in the nightclub of the SS American. The stage was crowded and every movement precisely timed and choreographed. The slightest change could throw everyone off. One wrong step could sink the ship. Sally Ann was belting out the song in fine Ethel Merman fashion when, all of a sudden, there was a burst of flash photography from the theatre.
I’d like to make an important aside here. When an actor’s on a stage, he or she’s generally well lit,1 whereas the audience, of course, is in the dark. When a flash goes off in said audience, the actor’s eyes are instinctively drawn to the light and, for a few seconds, the flash is blinding. In the case of ‘Blow, Gabriel Blow’, to be blinded was bloody dangerous. The flash goes off and thirty sequinned dancers are coming at you doing kick ball change … and you’re on your back with your feet in the air.
After the second or third flash, cast members were complaining, whispering during the number, ‘John, there’s a camera out there.’ When I was finally able to look without another burst of blinding light, I could not believe what I saw. A huge video camera was resting on some woman’s shoulder in the front stalls. Seriously, this camera was big enough to film the BBC’s evening news. It even had a fucking spotlight and every time she turned the camera from side to side, the light created a strobe effect like a flash in our eyes.
We were moving into the next part of the number when the flash exploded again. In these situations of camera or mobile-phone use, someone from the front-of-house staff should immediately move down the aisle and remove the device, but that was not happening at this performance. Would you like to know the reason why? Trevor had insisted that the house staff stay out in the lobby, so most of them were sitting there playing cards! Years ago, the ushers had to remain at the end of the aisles or at the very least stand near the curtained exits and scan the audience, but not during this run. The curtain went up and they left to have a drink or a smoke.
Needless to say, with the last camera flash, I’d had enough.
The woman with the massive video camera was seated midway up the stalls. I started the extended dance routine in ‘Blow Gabriel Blow’. I knew how many beats I had before the end of the song. One, two, three and I leapt off the stage, sprinted up the aisle and leaned right into the woman’s face.
‘Turn off that camera!’
She turned and directed the camera at me. I couldn’t believe it. She kept filming as if Billy Crocker in her face was part of the show. I must admit, I lost it a wee bit at that point.
‘Turn off the fucking camera!’ I screamed.
She set it down on her lap and looked up at me. ‘Que?’
I felt like I was in a musical episode of Fawlty Towers. The band played on. I grabbed the camera from her lap.
The rest of the audience, meanwhile, were all watching me, smiling happily, as if this was the best moment of the show so far. ‘Oh, this is so wonderful, John Barrowman’s involving the audience. He did say “fuck”, but that’s okay. We’re having a grand time at the theatre.’
With only a few beats left before the song ended, I darted back up on to the stage, camera in hand, and hit my mark on cue. Instead of everyone looking at Sally Ann for the close of the number, they were all looking at me, stunned. After that night’s performance, lots of dancers in the ensemble thanked me for what I’d done. Many of them, if they’d not been in the chorus and therefore at risk of being fired and replaced for taking such action, would have done the same thing.
Wyn Howard Thomas, our company manager, was naturally furious. In my dressing room after the show, he read me the riot act: ‘John, you cannot do that. Never leave the stage during a performance again.’
I didn’t … until two weeks later. On that night, the culprit was a woman up in the balcony with a video camera. Once again, no help was forthcoming from the house. The cast was enraged. This time, there was no easy way for me to leap from the stage to the balcony.
Step, shuffle, step, off stage right.
I sprinted down the wing, darted through a pass door,2 ran along the corridor and burst out into the lobby.
The card game was in full swing. I yelled as I ran past the ushers, ‘What the fuck are you all doing out here? There’s a camera again and—’
They all gawked at me as I flew by. I heard one of them say, ‘He’s off his fucking head,’ as I raced up the stairs to the balcony.
‘Give me the camera!’ I hissed at the woman, moments later. ‘Do you realize this is illegal?’
Like the other woman days before, she had no clue. I snatched the camera away from her, and told her where she could pick it up after the show. The tape of Anything Goes would be erased and a lovely little message from the crew would replace what she’d filmed. I vaulted over the arm rail, took the stairs three at a time, sprinted back through the lobby, passed the card sharks, and made it back up on stag
e on cue to start my next number.
That’s talent.
Sometimes, it’s not only cameras that can throw a performance off. During my West End debut in Anything Goes in 1989, I remember two old women in the front row at one show loudly discussing the merits of cucumber-and-cheese sandwiches, while Elaine and I were on stage early in the first act.
‘You all right, Janice?’ one said to the other.
‘Mmm! A lovely piece of lettuce that, wasn’t it?’
‘Do you want the cucumber or the salmon next?’
Oh, and don’t get me started on sweetie wrappers. I don’t mind eating in the theatre, but don’t do it during the quiet moments, and don’t open the packaging during the love songs. Believe it or not, we can hear you, and the super-slo-mo wrapper opening makes us want to yell, ‘Just eat the fucking sweet!’
As well as directing me in musicals, in 2003 Trevor Nunn also directed me in his final production as Artistic Director of the National, in Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost. I played Dumaine, one of three noblemen to the King of Navarre, who was played by Simon Day. Joseph Fiennes took the part of one of the other noblemen, Berowne. The play is one of Shakespeare’s least known comedies, but according to many critics, it’s probably one of his smartest, with lots of puns, wordplay and odd plot twists.
Trevor really took a chance in casting me in such a show. I did give him the goods, but before we opened, I was nervous about playing this role. I might have come over to the UK sixteen years before in order to study the Bard, but this was my first opportunity to be in one of his plays. Funnily enough, Love’s Labour’s Lost ran in repertory with Trevor’s revival of Anything Goes. There I was playing Billy Crocker again, as I’d done when I first came to England with my USIU class, but now I was also acting Shakespeare, not just studying him. In another of life’s weird coincidences, during an episode in the third season of Doctor Who, ’The Shakespeare Code’, Martha’s first trip in the TARDIS takes her to Elizabethan England, where she and the Doctor cross paths with Shakespeare, who is writing Love’s Labour’s Won.
‘Once you do Shakespeare, John,’ said Trevor, ‘your career will change.’
I’ve always been a good student of the profession and when people like Trevor give me advice, I pay attention. When I explained I was nervous about my performance, he pulled me aside at a rehearsal.
‘You’ll be fine, John, because musical theatre actors know about heightened reality. Shakespeare is a heightened reality and you have to play it that way. Usually, musical theatre folks who act in Shakespeare are very good at it for that reason.’
Later, in 2005, when I was offered a part in A Few Good Men with Rob Lowe at the Theatre Royal Haymarket, I remembered Trevor’s advice. Although the script was not as stylized as Shakespeare, an Aaron Sorkin play can be as linguistically complicated for an actor. Anyone who’s ever watched an episode of The West Wing can tell you Sorkin packs lots of words into every line. I took the role.
Two cool things came from my work with Rob and the company. The first was that he and I found we worked well with each other. When he returned to the States to join the cast of the TV show Brothers and Sisters, and found out the producers were looking for someone to play the part of his brother on the show, he recommended me. They offered me the role, but because of my Torchwood schedule, I was not able to do it. I was flattered at the request, though, and sorry I wasn’t going to be able to work with Rob on that particular project.
The second thing that came out of the play was that I found a surrogate mother for my future children. Ah, so you’re still paying attention!
With many of my shows, along with the professional lessons I’ve learned, I’ve been lucky enough to leave each production with a new friend to join me on the long road. I know this may be starting to remind you of primary school, but it’s the part of this business that I love the most. Actors spend long and intense hours together when working on a show, whether it’s in the theatre or on TV. The friendships forged are, in fact, necessary and important to a show’s success.
From the play A Few Good Men, I gained a good friend in the actress Suranne Jones, or Sarah as she’s known to her mates. Among other things, we shared a fondness for ‘bin chicken’. Sarah and I would dash out between the matinee and the evening performance and buy lots of takeout, shovel it in before our dress call, and then toss what was left into the bin in my dressing room. But when we came off stage at the end of the show, we’d be starving again. We’d dive into the garbage and eat what remained of our earlier meal. After a couple of nights of this, the gastronomical delicacy ‘bin chicken’ was born.
After a performance, Sarah and I could spend hours talking about everything and anything over a drink or two or three. One night, she told me that if Scott and I ever did decide we wanted to have a child of our own, she’d be happy to accommodate us.3 Perhaps one day I might become a dad; we have a lot of love to give and I adore kids.
In the spring of 1997, I couldn’t believe my professional luck when I was cast in Cameron Mackintosh’s production of The Fix, which ran at the Donmar Warehouse in the early summer of the same year, with Sam Mendes at the helm as director. Sam was then the Artistic Director of the Donmar, and his Academy Award for American Beauty was still to come.
Sam was the kind of director who let his actors work through the script on their own first, and then he’d watch for a while before he’d step in to refine and develop the performances. This process allowed many of us in the cast to push ourselves close to the edge with our characters before Sam jumped in and pulled us back.
In The Fix, I played a character named Cal Chandler, a man from fictional political royalty, but not unlike the Kennedys or the Rockefellers in America. Chandler was a man being groomed for the American presidency after the death of his father, who gets caught up in organized crime until his world eventually collapses around him. I was later nominated for the 1998 Olivier Award for Best Actor in a Musical for this role.
One night, the cast and Sam went to dinner after a long day of rehearsal and we all had a few too many cocktails. During the meal, Sam decided that he wanted one more run-through before he released us for the night. Despite our slightly inebriated state, he insisted we go and rehearse. It turned out to be one of our best because we were all relaxed and less inhibited – not that that’s usually an issue for me, but that night I tried some things I’d never done before and Sam kept a few of them in my eventual performance.
Sam, like the rest of us in the theatre world, had his own personal rituals during the production. He loved chocolate and before a day of rehearsals began, he would line up seven or eight chocolate bars to sustain him over the course of the day.
Of all the directors and producers I’ve worked with over the years, Cameron Mackintosh has been my Obi Wan. Cameron has given me lots of opportunities, a great deal of guidance, and has become a close friend. His name is legend in the musical theatre world for producing such hit shows as Miss Saigon, Les Misérables, Cats and Mary Poppins.
Larry Oaks, my mentor and the resident director from Anything Goes in 1989, first introduced me to Cameron and we became immediate friends. In 1990, Cameron cast me as Chris in Miss Saigon. Cameron also had a Scottish upbringing and because he worked his own way up in the business, he has a fondness for others doing the same. That’s not to say that he doesn’t offer support when it’s needed, though. Since I first met him, I’ve lost count over the years of the number of times a friend or colleague has needed help, financial or otherwise, and Cameron has stepped in.
During the run of The Fix, Scott and I were invited to spend a weekend at Cameron’s twelfth-century priory home in Somerset. The stone priory sits on over 600 acres of land, which includes an ancient Norman chapel, a swimming pool and pool house, working farms and acres of gardens: all of it lit as if set for an outdoor theatrical show.
At the time, Cameron’s beloved dog Hugo, a Rhodesian Ridgeback, was still alive, so Scott and I took Penny, then o
ur only dog, along as well. Now, as you may know, when dogs walk into an environment where they can smell another dog, they often feel the need to mark their territory. Scott and I had barely settled into one of Cameron’s beautiful oversized couches when Penny squatted and crapped in the middle of a rug that was probably worth hundreds of thousands of pounds. Michael, Cameron’s partner of many years, freaked out a little bit, but Cameron waved away our embarrassment.
‘Don’t worry about it. A dog’s a dog. We can clean it up.’
That’s Cameron in a nutshell. He’s generous, self-assured, talented, and really, like many of us in the business, he’s the kind of guy you could bring home to meet your mother. In fact, Cameron and I have this long-running joke that he keeps employing me because he’s never had me. He has, though, watched.
Scott and I once spent a weekend in the South of France at Cameron’s vineyard. During our visit, Cameron arranged some wine tasting one afternoon. We sipped the liquid going into the vats and we sipped it coming out. At the end of the session, Scott and I were thoroughly pickled. It was the height of summer, the weather was warm, and the scent of wildflowers and wine filled the air. Scott and I thought we’d lie down by the swimming pool. As can sometimes happen when the wine, the weather and the surroundings conspire, Scott and I felt a bit amorous and – oh, to be this young again – we had sex hanging from one of the huge ancient trees. When Scott and I headed back into the house, we thought our gymnastic performance was our little secret – until we caught up with Cameron, who was standing grinning in front of a picture window that had a clear view of the tree on which Scott and I had been enjoying ourselves. Ever since, I’ve figured that Cameron has always expected more of me as a dancer in his shows because he knows exactly how flexible I can be.
Anything Goes Page 17