All Growed Up

by Tony Macaulay

  ‘Remember I showed you that proper Belfast entry with the bins and all this morning?’

  ‘Aye, behind all the wee two-up, two-down houses,’ answered Lesley correctly.

  ‘Well, you’re not a proper girlfriend and boyfriend where I come from unless you’ve had a snog up an entry on the Shankill Road.’

  ‘No way!’ Lesley answered coquettishly. ‘Do you really want to kiss me up a boggin’ entry?’

  ‘Yes, you promised you’d do it if I brought you to Belfast!’

  The frisson of young love was in the air of the Simca as Lesley nodded and I turned on the ignition.

  ‘I’m going to take you boldly where no wee girl from Bellaghy has gone before,’ I said in my best James T Kirk accent.

  ‘Well, we’d better hurry up. I’m meetin’ Mummy in Ballymena at three o’clock for the big sale in Go Gay.’

  We parked the car near the Chinese take-away that had been closed down for rats and I led my lover to an entry opposite the Shankill graveyard. With my back to the bins and her lovely hair brushing against the red bricks I kissed Lesley gently on the neck. We were briefly interrupted by some familiar-looking mods who passed by whistling ‘The Sash’ and smelling of glue.

  ‘Yeeeeooo!’ they jeered suggestively.

  Alone once more, we kissed and maintained a passionate embrace for ten perfect minutes. Just as the entry was beginning to steam up slightly, a woman in a housecoat and hair rollers appeared through her back door. She had a droopy feg hanging from one side of her mouth and her hands on her hips. After briefly surveying our activities she began shaking her fist and shouting at us.

  ‘Away a that with ye, ye dirty bastes, youse!’ she yelled.

  We were a proper couple now, so we were.

  13

  TO BE OR NOT TO BE

  To be or not to be – that was the question, so it was. I was well aware that the role of Hamlet would be a far cry from the role of Riff, the leader of the Jets in West Side Story but every great actor had to prove his versatility. Mr Hudson had proved this when he retired from being a butler in Upstairs, Downstairs to become the head of CI5 in The Professionals. Peter Davidson had made the interstellar leap from a vet from the Yorkshire dales in All Creatures Great and Small to a Time Lord from the Planet Gallifrey and there was no better acting role in the whole universe. The only problem I anticipated was learning all my lines. I had studied Hamlet for my English A level and there was no doubt that Hamlet had an awful lot of words to say. Remembering all of these lines would be a major challenge, but with my experience of previous productions of Shakespeare at BRA and learning the answers to the questions in the Presbyterian catechism I was certain I was up to the task. Of course, I wasn’t so presumptuous as to be certain I would land the part of Hamlet himself, but there were lots of other good parts in the play – such as Hamlet’s best mate, Horatio, as well as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. When I arrived for the auditions in the drama studio I looked around the unlit room and didn’t recognise a single one of the faces in the shadows. I sat down beside a tall student in training shoes who introduced himself in an English accent as Mark Broder. He liked football and Kate Bush but he was dead on. One by one, all the aspiring Hamlets and Ophelias were invited forward to read a short extract from the play. The director was a suitably eccentric-looking English lecturer with an English accent, long hair, a beard and the compulsory corduroy trousers. He called out the names of each hopeful actor in turn and we all had to come forward and read a few lines on the darkened stage. I was feeling slightly nervous, but I was determined to draw on my newfound confidence and take the audition in my stride. However, as the aspiring thespians got up in front of me to audition, I noticed to my dismay that nearly all of them had posh English accents. Most of the students auditioning were from England and spoke proper all the time, but even the students who were from Northern Ireland invented posh English accents to read their lines. Everyone was trying to sound like Lord Olivier and Sir Ralph Thingummy. The only exception was a short, thin and prematurely bald student called Alex who dispensed with the script and just performed the gist of it in an American accent.

  ‘He’s a method actor,’ explained Mark.

  I had no idea what a method actor was. I did know a few Methody actors who had performed in the school play in Methodist College in Belfast, but this was very different and I was intrigued.

  ‘Is Roger Moore a method actor?’ I asked Mark.

  ‘No, Tone. Roger Moore is not a method actor.’

  I was amazed at how quickly English people transformed me into ‘Tone’.

  ‘Jack Nicholson is a method actor. They imagine themselves completely into the role and stay in character even off stage.’

  I knew instantly that I wanted to become a method actor, but as my turn approached I wondered whether or not I should put on an English accent for the audition. I was quite capable of doing a good English accent. Everyone said I could do wonderful impersonations of Frank Spencer, Roger Moore and Orville the Duck. But as a committed socialist from Northern Ireland, I decided that if I were to be Hamlet I would bring an authentic, working-class Belfast accent to the part. After all, Hamlet was the Prince of Denmark; if anything he would have spoken English with a Scandinavian accent, like Agnetha from ABBA but not quite so sexy. Hamlet wasn’t from the south of England any more than he was from West Belfast. So I decided to make a statement by auditioning in my normal Norn Iron accent, resisting the temptation to turn my ‘eights’ into ‘ates’ and my ‘nows’ into ‘naows’.

  ‘Good luck!’ Mark Broder said as I got up on the stage. I was wearing my New Romantic suede ankle boots and knitted leg warmers. I hoped I looked arty enough and that this would assist me in getting the part – or any part for that matter. I took a deep breath.

  ‘“To be, or not to be, that is the question:

  Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer

  The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,

  Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,

  And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep –”’

  ‘Okay, that’s enough, thank you.’ The director stopped me before I had even begun to emote.

  I couldn’t tell whether I had impressed him so much that he didn’t need to hear any more or whether he had quickly decided that I was wick. His long hair covered his eyes, so I couldn’t tell what he was thinking. He scribbled down a few notes about my performance and invited Mark forward to audition next. I sat down and listened as Mark read the same lines, only more confidently and in a proper English accent, and I immediately began to feel inferior. Maybe it was because the news headlines on the BBC were always read in this accent, or perhaps it was because the queen and Mrs Thatcher talked this way and they represented authority and always being right. I realised then that I was not destined to play Hamlet with a Belfast accent. What was I doing there, anyway? Why was a wee lad from up the Shankill auditioning for Shakespeare? Maybe I just needed to catch myself on a bit. If my big brother had been there to see me I knew he would say ‘Wise a bap, ya big fruit!’ My only real experience of Hamlet was the cigars my father used to chain smoke. However, my hopes were kept alive by the fact that it was a very long play with lots of speaking parts and it would probably be okay for some of the less-important words to be spoken in a Northern Ireland accent. Maybe I would be awarded a lesser role and I could use it to experiment with method acting.

  At the same time the following week, the aspiring cast members gathered once more to hear the cast list. I hadn’t given the audition a great deal of thought during the seven-day wait as I was distracted by an essay on sexuality and the femme fatale in film noir and an argument in the Christian Union over whether it was okay to fundraise for the Third World on a Sunday. I had been in this nerve-wracking position many times before, but, as famous actors always told Terry Wogan on BBC1, ‘It’s all just a part of the industry.’ During my schooldays I had been given the devastating news that I had not been cast as ei
ther Tom or Huck in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and I still recalled the occasion when the part of Tony in West Side Story was not given to me, despite my name and talent. I had experienced disappointment before, so I had learned to lower my expectations. I clearly wasn’t English enough to play Hamlet, but perhaps, in this groundbreaking new production, Horatio at least could hail from West Belfast? As Hamlet and Ophelia and Gertrude and Claudius were announced I could feel my heart pounding with excitement, but once we got past Rosencrantz and Guildenstern I realised that there was little need for excitement. When it was announced that Mark Broder had been given the part of Horatio I was disappointed, but I had to admit that Mark was more confident and English than me and would probably do a better job. I began to fear the ultimate humiliation of a non-speaking apart. Was I destined to become an extra in Hamlet? I hadn’t been given a lowly non-speaking part since I was a sheep in the nativity play at Springhill Primary School. I could never become a proper method actor if I had no words to say! This was going to be embarrassing; everyone would assume I lacked talent rather than an English accent, my big brother would slag me desperately and say I should play a tree because my acting was wooden, and Lesley would be left wondering if my previous triumph in West Side Story had been nothing short of miscasting.

  ‘Don’t worry, Tone, you’ll get a part. You weren’t that bad,’ said Mark.

  ‘Now the sentries,’ said the director, flicking his unkempt hair and pausing dramatically, as if anyone cared at this stage. ‘Marcellus – Tom Macaulay.’

  I looked around the room for a Tom before raising my hand shyly. ‘Do you mean Tony?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, you!’ the director replied, as if I should be ecstatic.

  Not only was I a mere sentry, nobody even knew my bloody name!

  As soon as the last parts had been handed out I fled to the library with my copy of Hamlet and I looked up the part of Marcellus to discover how many – if any – lines I had to speak.

  To my delight I discovered that I had quite a lot to say in act 1 scene 1. I may have been a lowly sentry, but I actually got to spot King Hamlet’s ghost and offer to ‘strike at it with my partisan’. This was similar to Luke Skywalker striking at Darth Vader with a lightsaber. Over the page and there I was again – albeit to a much lesser extent – in scene 2, helping Horatio to tell Hamlet about the ghost. Was I really going to appear in every single scene of the play? I was absent from scene 3, but there I was again in scene 4 and I got to say one of the most famous lines of the whole play! I had even quoted this line in my English A level exam.

  ‘“Something is rotten in the state of Denmark”,’ I practised, being careful not to pronounce ‘rotten’ as ‘ratten’ in my Belfast accent.

  It may have been just one line but this was as crucial to Hamlet as a honk from Chewbacca in Star Wars. The role of Marcellus definitely had potential for method acting – I could imagine I was a real sentry for weeks and really get into the part. I would have to imagine that, rather than being a Protestant pacifist from West Belfast, I was a weapon-carrying soldier from Denmark. I turned the pages excitedly. There I was again in scene 5! In act 2 it seemed that Shakespeare was giving me a wee rest. However, when I got to act 3 I was devastated to discover that Marcellus did not make another appearance for the rest of the play. The sentry’s job was done, and my final line was to be spoken in act 1 scene 5, ‘We have sworn, my lord, already.’ My heart sank like a badly skimmed stone in Lough Neagh. I wanted to swear already, my lord! If I had been Shakespeare I would have brought Marcellus back to say, ‘There’s still something rotten in the state of Denmark’ at least once later on in the play just to remind the audience of the importance of these words for A level English exams. Just because William Shakespeare was the greatest writer ever didn’t mean he wasn’t capable of the odd mistake. The writers of Dallas used this technique all the time to remind you that Lucy Ewing was still out there somewhere plotting against JR, even though she hadn’t been in an episode for ages. As it turned out, our wonderful director decided that, contrary to the script, the sentries should return to the stage to emote at all the blood and guts and wonderful acting by Hamlet and Co. in act 5. Although this directorial innovation brought me back on stage for an extra twenty minutes at the end, it also meant I had to hang around for nearly two hours between my on-stage appearances and this was far too long for a method-acting novice to stay in character. The result was that I couldn’t just go home for a fish supper after delivering ‘something is rotten in the state of Denmark’ in act 1! The director pointed out that, ‘if people like Tom do a good job this year, they will get a better part next year.’ So I decided I would just have to persevere, and if I learned all my lines and performed well and the director learned my name at some stage, there was still hope for a leading part in next year’s production of Shakespeare.

  The director explained his vision for reinventing Hamlet for the 1980s with a great deal of passion and hair-flicking. Our new, visionary production would introduce Shakespeare to the Dynasty generation. The stage would be specially built in the design of a chessboard, and this modern set design would contrast with plush, traditional costumes with good shoulder pads. As it turned out, ‘plush’ didn’t stretch to the attire of the sentries. I wore wellington boots and a helmet so you couldn’t see my face and carried a pike made from a broom handle.

  ‘Something is rotten in the state of my costume!’ I said to Mark Broder at the first dress rehearsal, as he entered stage left in tights and velvet finery.

  The rehearsals continued for weeks. Poor Hamlet had so many lines to learn I’m sure he had to give up studying for his degree, and our director displayed all the pain and anguish of a tortured artist as he strove to draw finely-honed performances from his young troupe. Only the elfin beauty of sweet Ophelia and an exchange of sarcastic jokes between Horatio and myself lightened the most tragic scenes and the most difficult rehearsals. I found some of my fellow actors to be rather self-satisfied, and this always sounded worse in an English accent. The banter between Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in-between scenes was almost Shakespearian in its ribald cleverness. This gave me the opportunity to introduce Mark Broder to some Northern Ireland terminology when I had to explain to him what the term ‘a pair of bokes’ meant. He laughed so hard his plastic sword rattled in its scabbard.

  Finally we were ready for our first performance. Lesley, Aaron and several Heathers from Portadown came to watch the premiere in the Riverside Theatre, which was beautifully situated overlooking the River Bann – albeit on the east. I was able to change out of my costume to talk to the audience during the interval, as it would be several hours before I was required back on stage for the bloodbath. The critical analysis of the performance provided by my friends was enlightening.

  ‘Not quite West Side Story, is it?’ smirked Aaron.

  ‘It’s a wee bit boring, Tony, so it is,’ commented a Heather from Portadown.

  ‘You don’t suit them there welly boots and I can’t see your face,’ complained Lesley.

  Some of the other comments I overheard during the interval were less encouraging, including one man who made it clear that he would not be staying for the second half.

  ‘The most pretentious crap I have ever seen in my whole life,’ he remarked as he ran for the door.

  I was strangely reassured by this insult. If only the director had been brave enough to cast an Upper Shankill Shakespearian method actor in the role of Hamlet, this could have been a much more successful and gritty production. There was nothing pretentious about a Hamlet with a Belfast accent! I tried to convince Mark Broder that a socialist interpretation of Shakespeare would have made a West Belfast Hamlet a real possibility. In fact, I argued, there was no reason why Hamlet had to be white or male either for that matter! Cagney and Lacey had already proved that women could be heroes too.

  ‘Yeah, so in socialist Shakespeare, the prince of Denmark would be a Chinese lesbian in a wheelchair!’ mocked Mark.

&nb
sp; After the initial run at the New University of Ulster I assumed that Hamlet was over, but to my surprise we began to receive invitations to perform internationally. The drama society was asked to visit universities in La Roche-sur-Yon in France and then in Erlangen in Germany. This was even more impressive than when the Westy Disco choir had been invited to sing in a church in Edinburgh. And so off we went as travelling artistes, performing all around Europe with our chessboard stage and my wellington boots and helmet. Our success overseas was stunning. It seemed that the fewer words of English an audience could speak the more they appreciated our performances. And I knew they weren’t just feeling sorry for us because we were from war-torn Northern Ireland, because most of the cast were actually from England!

  I got to tell people in France and Germany that something was rotten in the state of Denmark. If this trend continued, I would soon be telling people in the state of Denmark itself that something was rotten in it. The travelling was tiring, though, and our schedule was gruelling. It wasn’t easy being an actor on the road for a world tour. I finally understood what life was like for Roger Moore when a new Bond movie came out. But I held my pike erect through every performance and bowed graciously at the multilingual plaudits.

  Unfortunately Mark Broder decided not to go on the overseas tours, and they replaced him with a different English Horatio who wouldn’t speak to me. Few of the other principal actors deigned to speak to me either, even when travelling and living together for weeks at a time, so I understood the loneliness of the travelling artiste. This was so different from my trips abroad with the Westy Disco where you knew everyone and the craic was ninety. It was true that none of my fellow actors ever got sent home for drinking too much and starting a fight in the street or assaulting a foreign police officer, but at least the Westy Disco crowd was warm and friendly.

  I did eventually get to know some of the other supporting actors a little better on the boats and buses we took and in the hostels we stayed in. I learned things on this tour that a thousand Christian Union trips to the Greystones Conference Centre down south couldn’t have taught me. I learned from one actor that it probably wasn’t a good idea to go with a prostitute in Paris after you’d had too much to drink, as you would feel completely minging for the next week and possibly even longer. Benny and Björn had been writing an exciting new musical about playing chess and the first song they released said that ‘one night in Bangkok makes a hard man humble’. It was clear that one night in Paris could have a similar effect. Another fellow thespian who was very happy and relaxed all the time explained to me that the odd-smelling cigarettes he liked to smoke so much were not, in fact, regular Benson & Hedges. I decided to have a serious conversation with Byron Drake about him smoking marijuana in the toilet of my flat and telling me that he was smoking menthol cigarettes to help with his sinuses.