by John Cleese
During this early rehearsal period Word Baker would drop in now and then to watch and make suggestions. I learned that he had directed a long-running musical called The Fantasticks which had already lasted for five years Off-Broadway. (It continued playing until 2002, by which time it had set the world-theatrical-long-running record of forty-two years.) It was a very charming, sweet and tuneful production and the producers obviously believed that this flavour was just right for Half a Sixpence.
The other person we saw regularly was our star, and leader, Tommy Steele. He had made his reputation as Britain’s answer to Elvis Presley, and he proved a tremendously pleasant chap to work with, exuding an easy cheerfulness, cockney elan, unfailing energy and total informality that made running through scenes with him actually fun. It was OK to make a mistake, provided you learned from it. But his relaxed demeanour hid an unwavering commitment to making the show as good as it could be, and when he felt anyone was slacking, or not fully concentrating, he could hand out a good ticking-off, never losing his temper, but telling people firmly and forcefully what they had done wrong. It was interesting to me, with my lower-middle-class embarrassment about showing anger, that anyone who received a scolding from Tommy always felt it was fair: they never felt resentful, because it never became ‘nasty’. This aspect of Tommy’s character was thoroughly helpful for the production.
Provided one worked hard and remained focused, then, a light-hearted approach was acceptable. This extended, incidentally, to the actual performances themselves. There was a moment quite early in the show when my character was first introduced to Tommy’s Kipps, and we shook hands. Now this scene took place downstage of the front curtain (while stagehands behind it were arranging the set for the next scene), so there wasn’t much room, and, as I shook Tommy’s hand, I had been directed to cross downstage of him. A couple of weeks into the show proper, as I was shaking his hand, he locked my wrist and gently propelled me towards the orchestra pit. This was only about four feet away. Of course, he didn’t try very hard, but I found it particularly funny because he carried out his dastardly plan with that famous cockney grin of his plastered across his face. Such innocent glee at the prospect of damaging several musicians tickled me pink, and so this dicing-with-death routine became a regular part of the show. The audience had no idea what we were up to; if they ever had, it would have disappeared from the show forthwith.
All in all, then, the first two weeks of rehearsal went smoothly. But when we arrived on the Monday of the third week, we were told there had been a coup d’état. Word Baker was gone, never to be seen again. In his place was Gene Saks, an actor-turned-director, who told us that so far as he was concerned there was still a lot of work to be done, and that we had better be getting on with it, since we were opening in Boston in two weeks. We dispersed to the rehearsal rooms in a state of mild shock. At this point I suddenly discovered that I had a new mother. The first Mrs Walsingham had been played (or, rather, rehearsed) by Charlotte Rae, a jolly, outgoing musical-comedy trouper; but she had now been replaced by Ann Shoemaker, a formidably grave figure, who reminded me of a less feminine version of William Gladstone. Joining Charlotte and Word Baker in outer darkness was the producer who’d wanted me to have a shot at rewriting some of the scenes. So that was the end of that idea. As someone remarked of this theatrical purge, ‘In the beginning was Word, but only for a fortnight.’
Rehearsal now took on a slightly sombre tone, partly because of a general anxiety that we didn’t really know what was going on, partly because we all suspected that if we did make a joke we would have to send Ann Shoemaker a written explanation for our misconduct. I learned she had been a Hollywood film actress for the last thirty years, so perhaps she regarded this musical-comedy lark as a bit of a come-down. As the actress playing her daughter (and my sister) Carrie Nye remarked, ‘Apparently, when you break the ice with Ann, there’s a lot of cold water underneath.’ I liked Carrie enormously. She was a true Southern belle in real life with an astonishingly languid manner and a wicked dry sense of humour; she also happened to be married to Dick Cavett, who at the time had his own talk show, the wittiest and most intelligent one I ever watched.
I couldn’t really understand what changes Gene Saks was making to the show, because when big musicals are being rehearsed the key elements are kept separate until the final stages: we had the dancers in one room, the singers in another, the actors out of earshot in the third, and Tommy Steele in all of them; out of eleven song-and-dance routines, he was in ten. Mind you, the show had been written specifically as a vehicle for his talents, so he only had himself to blame (in the original London production there were several numbers without him, none of which were as good as the ones he was in, so they were cut out of the Broadway show). Consequently he was hardly ever off stage, for which, again, he only had himself to blame. How he found the energy I shall never know. But he clearly loved what he was doing.
So, anyway . . . in this rather serious and uncertain atmosphere we all travelled up to Boston where we were opening at the Colonial Theatre in just five days, and this was when Saks started putting the show together for the first time. We all gathered in a proper theatre at last and started to run the show from the top, very haltingly, as mistakes were made and corrected and unforeseen problems identified and discussed, and transitions between scenes practised, and I was able to sit in the stalls and watch the songs and the dance numbers and picture in my mind how it was all going to look.
And, of course, I was watching Gene Saks like a hawk, seeing as how he had the power of life and death over me. Up until now he had been a rather remote figure; when he watched the dialogue scenes, he had made few comments, though I had the feeling that he was rather put out that he had inherited me from my previous owner, when he would never have cast me in the first place. But he hadn’t made any critical remarks so I was not sure where I stood. Certainly he seemed a rather formidable figure: tallish, strongly built, decisive, and not overburdened by any sense of fun. It never occurred to me that Half a Sixpence was only the third Broadway show he’d directed, that when he took it over it was an impending train wreck, that he had been given a paltry fifteen days to sort it out, and that, like any other human being in his position, he must have been pretty fucking nervous.
And I realised that I was getting nervous, as my first scene was steadily approaching, when I would have to walk out on stage and deliver a few lines towards Gene, and some producers and cast, who were scattered around the stalls. I was to make my entrance right after a big rambunctious song-and-dance called ‘A Proper Gentleman’, involving Tommy, all the apprentices and all of the singers and dancers. The scene comprised a conversation with Mr Shalford, the owner of the milliner’s shop where Kipps worked as an apprentice. He was a tyrannical boss, played by Mercer McLeod, an extraordinarily sweet and kind old actor who had been in show business for fifty years, but who had obviously undergone a dozen or so facelifts, so that he resembled a very, very tall baby. He and I met in the wings and got ready for our entrance immediately after the ‘Knees Up Mother Brown’ routine ended.
And it does. And we walk out together and I say my first line.
‘Ah, Shalford, I wonder if I might have a word with you. This business—’
‘Stop!’
It’s Gene.
‘Louder, John!’
‘Oh, sorry! OK . . .’
We leave the stage; the singers and dancers have gone out front to watch Mercer and me re-enter, and I say, loudly:
‘Ah, Shalford, I wonder if I might have a word—’
‘Louder!’
‘Louder?’
‘Yes, much louder!’
‘Much louder?’
‘Yes! Again, please . . .’
I leave the stage, bewildered. Last time was pretty loud and now he wants it much louder than that? I am getting a bit embarrassed, too. Enter Shalford and Walsingham, who says, very loudly, as though he is a fairground barker:
‘Ah, Shalford! I wo
nder if I might have a word with you!’
Wow! That’s the loudest I’ve ever spoken in my life! If I ever spoke like this in a restaurant, people would run for cover! Town criers would cower in submission! So I continue . . .
‘This business about—’
‘LOUDER!!!!’
What? Louder than that? Suddenly I begin to see red mist. Is this man insane? Why is he putting me through this ridiculous humiliation? Did the British hang his mother? So, calmly and with just a hint of mockery:
‘. . . Louder than that, Mr Saks?’
‘Yes!’
All right! My dander has been approaching the vertical for the last few seconds and now it is right up. He wants it ‘loud’? Fine! He shall have ‘loud’, then. I will try to create a sound wave that will damage him for the rest of his life. To frighten him to death will not be enough. I want BLOOD to come out of his ears!
I walk calmly off stage, I take a couple of deep breaths, mutter to Shalford:
‘Turn away . . .’
And I walk back on stage and (with the sole intent of making Mr Bloody Gene Saks say, with a deprecating laugh, ‘Oh, I didn’t mean as loud as that!’) I scream:
‘AAAAAARHHH!!!! SHAL!!!! FFFFORD!!!! I!!!! WONDER!!!! IF!!!! I!!!! MIGHT!!!! HAVE!!!! A!!!! WORD!!!! WITH!!!! YOU!!!!’
Take that, you bastard, and die! I’m glad we burnt the White House down, you power-crazed Yankee schmuck!
I stand there, breathing heavily, and triumphant.
And Gene calls out:
‘That’s it!’
Well! You could have knocked me down with one of those huge balls that are swung backwards and forwards from cranes to demolish buildings! I am so stunned I forget the next line.
‘Once more, please . . .’
And the awful thing was: he was right. What Gene taught me in about sixty seconds was the vital importance of brute energy. The dance number Mercer and I had to follow was so noisy and exuberant and boisterous that had I spoken in a normal loud voice my presence would have scarcely been detected by the audience. I had to find the same level of energy or all the life would have drained from the scene. Years later, when I was directing one of the Amnesty Secret Policeman shows, I had the same problem with any sketch that followed a stand-up comic. I had to put Ben Elton on at the end of the first half, because he delivered his very funny routine into a hand mike at a half-shout and with such ‘attack’ that any comedy performers coming on right after him to do normal sketch material didn’t stand a chance, not even Peter Cook. Only another stand-up could have survived, and then we would have had the same problem with the act after that. If I’d been smart enough to have enlisted more musical turns I could have used them to drop the level of energy for the benefit of the next sketch, because music can accomplish this without feeling anticlimactic.
So after this right-angled learning curve, my life on stage became pleasantly straightforward. I had only to turn up half an hour before the show, deliver my infrequent lines, make sure I stayed out of the orchestra pit, avoid becoming too conspicuous during the polka (a feat I managed by the time we opened on Broadway), and retire to my dressing room to read Damon Runyon and Scott Fitzgerald and James Thurber.
Chapter 10
AFTER OUR FIRST few days in Boston (when Gene tweaked our scenes a bit, and I put in some hard work on twirling around, Polish-fashion) I had plenty of time to look round the city, and to socialise with the cast. Boston appealed to me, with its comparatively historic buildings and constant associations with 1776. And earlier, too: in one cemetery I strayed into (I enjoy a nice graveyard now and then) I found the 1660 tombstone of a Quaker who had been hanged for heresy by the Puritans. I’d always thought that the Mayflower crowd had invaded New England to establish religious tolerance, but I suppose they must have decided that you can have too much of a good thing. After all, you’ve got to draw the line somewhere. God knows what would have happened if these God-fearing people had caught a Catholic. All they would have then needed was a couple of witches and an agnostic and they would have had enough entertainment for an entire weekend.
The parts of Boston round the universities were very pretty, with coffee shops and bookstores and little theatres; such sights never failed to remind me how happy I always believed I could have been in academia, if only I could have discovered something academic that I was halfway good at. I pictured myself studying a subject that fascinated me, and slowly building a real understanding of it; teaching it to bright, enthusiastic young people; being surrounded by brilliant colleagues who would happily condescend to discuss interesting topics; endless good coffee, and thoughtful walks in dappled sunlight (so not in England); all of this uninterrupted by the need to turn up and say exactly the same thing every night to the same people in the same way, while pretending to be someone else. I soon began to experience the whole theatrical process as mildly insulting to my intelligence, ungrateful wretch that I was, but at least I kept these feelings to myself, not least because the pleasant and friendly people around me were joyfully expressing their raisons d’être.
I know now, fifty years later, that though I have developed some of the skills of an actor, I have never possessed an actor’s temperament. Even back then I realised that when I felt I was not learning anything from my work, my spirits began to droop, so that it then required an act of will to try to make sure I did not let the audience down. I suspect that several of the Cambridge Circus crowd felt something similar, and that it was for this reason that we often fooled around on stage, changing the words and trying to make each other corpse: when we broke up it immediately became fun, which injected a fresh, frisky energy into the performance and seemed to have a positive effect for the audience, too. It certainly cheered me immensely whenever Tommy Steele tried to introduce me to the orchestra pit.
However, although I was getting bored on stage, I didn’t appreciate how much I was learning off stage. This was, after all, the first time in my entire public-schoolboy life that I had spent a lot of leisure time around girls and gays. Since leaving Cambridge, I had, in my own exquisitely poised and asexual way, dated a small number of girls, culminating with the Main Event itself at the Station Hotel, Auckland, and by now I had met Connie. But I had still not lost the ingrained belief that most forms of affectionate physical contact were likely to be interpreted as sexual. Consequently, to find myself suddenly embedded in a group of young American dancers and singers who had no inhibitions at all about touching each other, hugging, kissing, and generally displaying spontaneous physical affection of the kind that someone from Weston-super-Mare would have designated ‘brazen’, was definitely startling. Then, after about ninety minutes, it became strangely reassuring and appealing. Moreover, to my surprise, they accepted me as one of them, even after they had seen me dance. My sense of freakhood was diminishing.
Along with this behavioural reconditioning, there was another major shift taking place in my social attitude system. From the first day of rehearsal, back in the days of Word Baker, I had begun to notice something else that was unfamiliar in the streets of Weston-super-Mare. A number of males in the cast seemed to be on particularly friendly terms with each other – more so than, say, the Scottish rugby team would have considered the norm. And their interaction was distinctly more playful than would have been expected from their Gaelic counterparts. So much so that it gradually began to dawn on me that it was not beyond the bounds of possibility that one or two of them might, to be blunt, occasionally bat for the other team. A discreet enquiry and much giggling later, my lovely friends-who-were-girls explained that, contrary to Broadway custom, the dancers were straight (except for one), while the singers were very largely of a different persuasion. Whatever traces still persisted in me of Clifton College’s steadfast belief that homosexuality ranked somewhere between regicide and treason were now eroded rapidly by my observation of their good nature and sense of fun; and today it is rather horrifying to think that in England at the time their behaviour could have lande
d them in jail – a state of affairs that continued for two more years, until 1967.
The everyday camaraderie of these girls and gays did a lot to advance my emotional age. I was also coming to realise that I was more adaptable to circumstances than I (or my friends) had thought; my failing was a lack of boldness and initiative in stepping outside my comfort zone, both emotionally and physically. (Especially the latter: I do not understand why anyone should want to seek out experiences that involve any kind of discomfort. I find mountaineers and polar explorers and cage-fighters deeply mysterious. Why should people voluntarily take part in these slow-motion suicide attempts? If they want to end it all, why don’t they just get it over with, quickly? When I was young Dad told me about a man who used to bang his head against a wall because it was so nice when he stopped. Even at that age I was puzzled by why he had started it in the first place. Terry Gilliam has spoken scathingly about my preference for physical comfort. I have come to the conclusion that this is very much his problem.)