‘I’m here with my twin sister,’ she replied, and then Anita pulled the actress who was due to replace her on to the set behind her. She was dressed in the same outfit as Anita. This was so not in the script.
‘Your sister?’ I sputtered, choking back laughter and turning my back to the audience in an attempt to regain my composure.
We proceeded to play the scene with two Betty Schaefers and probably most of the audience had no idea how wrong the whole scene really was. Anita’s replacement said nothing. She just stood there grinning while I desperately tried to avoid making a fool of myself and wrap up the scene as quickly as possible. After all the jokes I’d played during our long run of Sunset, I was the first to admit that payback was in order, and Anita’s were gems.
Earlier in the week, during another performance, I’d made a mistake during a scene with Betty Buckley and I think Anita had taken her cue to pull a prank or two from my screw-up. In the scene before Joe and Betty Schaefer have their confrontation on the stairs, Norma Desmond rushes to the phone, picks it up and out of pure spite calls Betty to tell her what Joe has really been doing in the mansion for all these months.
Into the phone, Norma says, ‘Miss Schaefer, why don’t you come over and see what Mr Gillis is really doing at my house?’ or something like that.
My character, Joe, then marches into the room, catches Norma on the phone betraying him and, in a two-can-play-at-that-game routine, he’s then supposed to pull the phone from her, give Betty the address of their house on Sunset Boulevard and slam the phone down. My character’s intention is to explain everything when Betty arrives and then both of us will abandon Norma to her pathetic lonely existence.
Instead, I entered from the left, marched over to Betty Buckley as Norma, grabbed the phone from her hand and my mind went blank. Nothing. No lines came into my head and I slammed the phone down without saying anything. No address. No cue.
Betty looked at me as if I was insane and then she covered and said, ‘I have to call her back,’ and began dialling again. She really did have to call her back because if she didn’t, there was no way to explain how Betty Schaefer, the girlfriend, could get to the mansion to confront Joe and Norma, which had to happen in the next scene.
As if I needed to prove I was really insane, I then did it again – in the very same scene. I took the phone and, once again, drew a complete blank, another major brain fart. I slammed it down without the required ‘10,086 Sunset Boulevard’. I don’t know what came over me. By the third try, Betty Buckley couldn’t decide whether to sob or sucker-punch me. To the audience, she and I must have looked like we were wrestling back and forth with the phone. She was yelling, ‘Joe, don’t hang up the phone,’ then whispering under her breath, ‘John, we’re running out of music. Give me the fucking phone.’ Finally, I let her snatch the phone from me before I could get near it for a fourth time. She gave the address and the cue herself.
As Cole Porter wrote, ‘in olden days, a glimpse of stocking’ may have thrown an audience into a swoon, but if you were in the audience of Sunset Boulevard on occasion, if you were really paying careful attention, you may have seen something even more scandalous. Some actors are known for their quirky dressing-room requests, some for their temper tantrums, and some for their weird rehearsal rituals. Me? I’m notorious for flashing my bum or bringing my Willie4 out to play.
On the Torchwood set, my co-star Eve’s breasts are known as ‘the girls’ and my naughty bits are ‘the boys’. Whenever we’ve had too many night shifts in a row or when morale needs a bit of a boost, the boys and girls come out to play. This kind of exposure is often a bit of a shock to non-theatrical folks, but modesty is not something that you can have much time for when you have about thirty-four seconds to change costume in the wings or if you have to pee in a bucket offstage because you’ll never make it back to your dressing room before your cue. There is not a pause button in live theatre.
Well, maybe I’ve used it once. Let me pause here to explain.
Over the years, I’ve developed a shellfish allergy.5 Like turning thirty, the whole thing kind of crept up on me.6 One evening, I’d eaten dinner at a noodle bar in Guildford before a preview performance of The Beautiful and Damned, or The Beautiful and Doomed as the cast not so fondly referred to the F. Scott Fitzgerald story because we knew the production was never going to make it beyond previews. I hadn’t known the bar used fish oils in their cooking. I got dressed for the show, as my stomach started to make rumbling noises and then began to cramp. The stage manager gave the curtain call. My character had to be kneeling on stage as the curtain came up.
‘Everyone in place,’ the stage manager announced.
By this time, the cramps were almost unbearable, so I thought I’d release a bit of the pressure – you know, Rabbie Burns, free wind and all that. Not a good idea. I completely shat myself. For the twenty seconds that I knelt there, in my mind I played out the entire show, every scene and every song, thinking, ‘How far will I have to go through Act One before I can change?’ I knew I couldn’t make it. The curtain had already gone up an inch. I yelled, ‘Stop the curtain!’ By now, the audience could see my feet, but I dared not tell anyone what I’d just done. I’d never have heard the last of it.
I raced off the stage and ran upstairs, with my dresser flying behind me.
‘I’m sorry to have to tell you this,’ I said as I stripped off my costume, ‘but I’ve shit in my suit pants.’
‘Get them off,’ she ordered,7 ‘and I’ll scrub them.’
She cleaned my trousers while I had the fastest shower in theatre history. I was a little damp, but I was back on stage within four minutes.
Now, that’s talent. The dresser’s and mine.
Rewind to Sunset Boulevard. During the ‘Artie’s Party’ scene, before Anita and I moved into the bathroom for the flirtatious section of the scene, I had to play the piano for a few minutes to establish some party ambience. Except on some nights, I’d play the piano perfectly with my penis.8 I kept this up, so to speak, for a number of shows, until I received a letter from Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Really Useful Group insisting I stop. Andrew wrote, ‘Your penis may not upstage my music.’
I went back to playing the piano with my hands. In reality, the audience couldn’t really see what I was doing, but I have to admit I was quite proud that some folks thought my ‘boys’ might be seen from the centre stalls.
That wasn’t the only time I received a wry reprimand from producers. There was another during my run in Miss Saigon in 1993, when I played the character of Chris. Ruthie Henshall, a terrific actor and singer with as wicked a sense of humour as mine, portrayed my American wife. We had a scene together where we were raised above the stage in a double bed, in which Ruthie would sing to me. One day, we were called into the company manager’s office to be informed that we were making too much noise in the bed.9 I blamed it on Ruthie who, every time the bed rose above the set, would try to flick my jockstrap. My retaliation of pinging her bra was clearly the only appropriate response. Ruthie and I have worked together a number of times now, and she and I always seem to pick up where we left off.
In 2000, Ruthie and I both starred in Stephen Sondheim’s Putting It Together, along with Carol Burnett – the queen of physical comedy and a brilliant performer. Carol and I had a ritual before going on stage where we’d hug each other and then say we’d be ‘back in bidness’, using an odd pseudo-southern American accent. Carol would then start the ‘Back in Business’ number. One night, she was looking at me funny through the whole first part of the song. She kept touching her skirt and playing with her waistband. Suddenly, she shouted, ‘Stop!’ and threw her hands into the air. When she did, her skirt dropped right to the floor because the waistband had snapped. I laughed so hard, I actually fell down myself. Hilariously, the entire sequence was caught in the extras of the DVD that was being made of that particular live show.
Later on in Putting It Together, Ruthie and I had to do a complex pas de deux
. Even after all my years of performing, my dancing is still what I worry about most in a show. Nevertheless, while working with the choreographer Bob Avian during this production, I’d asked him to push my dancing abilities, to stretch me into new territory (no pun intended). He did as I asked. During one performance, I gracefully picked Ruthie up … and split my expensive Gucci pants. For the rest of the sequence, everyone could see my white Calvins.
The National Theatre production of Anything Goes in 2002–3 had more than its fair share of mishaps, what with the falling rigging and the crashing cart. In more than one performance, I unwittingly added to the list of calamities when, during the ‘You’re the Top’ dance routine with Sally Ann Triplett, who was playing Reno Sweeney, I’d throw myself into my deckchair – and the chair would shatter beneath me. This happened multiple times. Clearly, they don’t make deckchairs like they used to.
The slapstick chaos didn’t stop when the production transferred to the Theatre Royal Drury Lane later in the year, either. One night, Susan Tracy, who was playing Evangeline Harcourt, Hope Harcourt’s mother, was late for her cue.10 A bit panicked, she came bounding around the set of the liner, carrying her character’s dog Cheeky, a real perky little pup. Susan was moving a little faster than usual to catch up to her mark and she tripped, chucking the poor dog far into the audience and herself into the sixth row of the stalls.
The ensemble was dancing, stalling a little, waiting for her entrance – and then, all of a sudden, Mrs Harcourt wasn’t there anymore. I was backstage waiting for my next number when one of the sailors came running off stage, shouting, ‘Susan’s just thrown herself overboard!’ A quick-thinking sailor on the upper deck grabbed a fake life preserver and actually tossed it into the audience. With great aplomb, Susan carefully climbed back up on to the stage, acting as if she was getting out of the water, which itself was truly hilarious. She was ashen, but ever the professional, she shook herself off. While she was composing herself, a man ran up the aisle from the audience and handed her the dog.
‘Oh, Cheeky!’ she exclaimed, and went right on as if nothing had happened.11
In many ways, it was during the 1989 production of Anything Goes that I was fully initiated into this glorious thespian12 world of pranks, pitfalls and unplanned calamities. My co-stars Elaine Paige and Bernard Cribbins introduced me to the rituals, the rules, the drama, the decorum and the general silliness of theatre life, and for that I’ll be forever grateful. I could not have had a more professional, more talented, or more compassionate pair of mentors. I was young and inexperienced when I got my big break, and although I never felt overwhelmed by any of it, I knew I had a lot to learn.
Elaine has the most expressive eyes in theatre and, sometimes, she’d look at me a certain way and I’d crack up – inside my head, of course. Bernard, meanwhile, is credited with the inspiration that became known as the ‘Dick of the Week’ award. Bernard hired an artist friend to sculpt a trophy in the shape of a very large life-like phallus, which, in a grand ceremony backstage at the end of each week, he’d award to the person who had been the biggest ‘Dick of the Week’. We were all presented with it at some point in the show’s run for some blooper, goof, or generally stupid thing we’d done on stage. Directly after our final performance, Bernard could not find the ‘Dick of the Week’ award anywhere. I’ve absolutely no idea who would have had the, erm, balls to have kept such a revered symbol after the close of the show.
Sometimes before the curtain went up for the second act, Bernard or I would run out to a sweet shop not far from the theatre and buy pounds of chewy toffee, which we’d then shove in our mouths just before the brig scene in Act Two. We’d have contests to see who could keep the toffee in his mouth the longest before our cue. Bernard was the master at masticating toffee into submission. No doubt about it.
During the brig scene in Anything Goes, Billy Crocker and Moonface Martin are locked up together until the ship’s captain can figure out their true identities. Given how much fun Bernard and I used to have playing this scene, it was inevitable that in the 2002–3 National Theatre revival of Anything Goes, the scene would invite some kind of competition again. In the NT production, my good friend Martin Marquez played Moonface Martin, and he and I used to have farting contests during this scene. We’re both pros – at acting and farting – so it was always a fight (or a fart) to the finish. During the scene, when Billy Crocker sings ‘All Through the Night’ and Moonface sings ‘Be Like the Bluebird’, Martin and I would try to get in as many farts as possible during the other’s number. Some nights, we made terrible enemies of the rest of the cast because of the deadly blue cloud that would emanate from the brig.
Enemies and company rifts, I’m proud to say, have never really played a part in my career. I’ve also not thrown many strops – that is, out-and-out tantrums where I could have brought the house down on my own from the upstairs dressing room – but I do remember a vivid one I threw during the run of Matador in 1993.13
In Matador, the kind of dance moves I had to do with a thirty-pound cape had demanded that I fly to a real bullfighting school in Madrid to receive tutoring from the experts before the show opened. During one of the dance numbers, I had to swing this heavy cape around my legs, around my waist, up and down and across my sides for what felt like an eternity, while the six dancers playing the bull dodged, weaved and generally avoided being slapped by the huge cape.
Now, there was a dance assistant on this production who one night took it upon herself to make a few changes to the show. She instructed the dancers to up the tempo on this particular flamenco number. By the end of the number as it stood, I was knackered – and yet she decided to speed up the bloody routine without telling me. Let me repeat, without fucking telling me!
When I left the stage that night, after the bull had quickened its pace, I walked past her and screamed, ‘You! My dressing room. Now!’
John Fahey followed directly behind me as I stormed upstairs. I crashed into my dressing room, absolutely livid, practically snorting, steam coming out of my ears like the bull I’d just been pretending to fight.
‘John, calm down. Take some deep breaths. She’s not here yet.’
‘Why the hell not?’
‘Because she’s waiting till you’re calmer and then you won’t have the upper hand.’
‘What should I do?’
John had been a dresser for years and this was my first time as a company leading man. I went to school on his advice.
‘I’ll go get her right now,’ he said. ‘You need to have one of these tantrums now and again. Otherwise, they’ll pull that shit with you all the time.’
The dance assistant stood sheepishly while I yelled at her, and her only defence was that she’d thought she was helping the show by speeding up the number.
‘Helping the show?’ I roared. ‘How does it help the show to make the leading man look like a stupid twat who can’t spin a fucking cape? This show’s not about the bloody bull. It’s about me!’
The changes she made to the choreography were really very dangerous. I could have broken a nail spinning that cape faster and faster. Or, even worse, I could have torn a testicle, and then I’d never have been able to play the piano again.
‘There’s Nothing Wrong With Us’
On Clare and Turner’s first trip to the UK in 1998, they travelled with my mum and dad from Milwaukee to London. One weekend during that visit, I took all of them on the Eurostar to Paris. When the train went into the tunnel, Turner was glued to the window for the first ten minutes because I’d told him to watch for fish. Don’t tell me you’ve never seen them either?
While we were in Paris, we ate lunch at a cafe on the Boulevard St Germain, a place where Oscar Wilde and Ernest Hemingway1 are said to have enjoyed a patisserie or two. Well, Wilde may have enjoyed one or two, but I’m thinking Hemingway was more about watching the women strolling down the boulevard. Strolling musicians headed our way that day.
‘Turner, five bucks if you
get up and dance.’ He was about eight at the time.
Ten.’
‘Done.’
Turner started out with a few easy bobs of the head, some funny sliding moves and then he broke into a full breakdance routine, much to the delight of the people at surrounding tables. When the musicians finally wandered to the next cafe, Turner had my ten plus a handful of coins from other diners in his pocket. This event established a significant pattern in my relationship with Turner.
‘Turner, twenty bucks if you eat this dog food.’ He was about nine at the time. We were at my parents’ house in Orlando, Florida for Christmas.2 He looked at the bowl. Picked it up. Waved it slowly under his nose.
‘Just a mouthful?’
‘A mouthful, but you can’t spit it out.’
‘A hundred bucks.’
‘Deal.’
He used a fork and ate dog food.
During a different December in Florida, the heater broke down in my parents’ swimming pool. God, life was tough that year. The air temperature was in the sixties.3 The water temp was about the same. I know that seems balmy to us in the UK, but it was frickin frigid for Florida.4
‘Turner, ten bucks if you jump into the pool in your underwear.’ He was about eleven at the time. He eased over to the edge, keeping his back to the pool in case Scott or I tried to shove him in without paying for the pleasure. He stuck his toe into the water.
‘It’s freezing!’
‘Twenty bucks, then.’
He jumped for thirty.
When I think about our deals, Turner wasn’t as daft as the incidents themselves might suggest. For a few seconds of freezing his balls off or barfing up Pedigree Chum, over the years Turner has won a fortune from me. Once, when he had gone about two years without a haircut, he accepted a video camera from me just to get his hair sheared. I even sent him to my salon in London to have it done and he still took the bloody camera. Young people today have no shame. I think I’ve primed Turner for a career in arbitrage or at the very least to be a hell of a grifter.
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