September 21, 2010
I've been here two weeks
and two days and for some bizarre reason I'm not yet working on the
West End in a marvellously witty comedy opposite Judi Dench and a
tray of small cakes. I'm as shocked as you. I've done two hours of
accent classes to improve my English Standard in case I need to be
posh and own people and I've travelled on the Underground loads
and eavesdropped on the lesser
dialects should I need to be servile. I've even been
into the shops to remind myself of the local servant behaviour, that
of serving whilst seeming to be quite dead. I just
don't understand.
Hey ho.
But back to getting
back.
I was determined to keep
myself nice on my first night here and so after dropping my bags at
my friend Steven's, here in Borough, I dutifully woke up in Clapham.
It was some multi-storied house my friend Michael and his partner Anna
were house-minding. They fed me dinner and made me drink wine and
then Michael and I went around the corner to some lovely bar and then
I woke up in some strange child's bedroom on the 43rd floor of this enormous house which would have been
awfully impolite and awkward for everyone had the child still been there. A judge might go
further than 'awkward'. Nonetheless, Tin Tin and his faithful dog
Snowy smiled upon me from all angles in that keen manner only those
who've narrowly avoided death by avalanche whilst rescuing a sacred
diamond can. I felt I had been hit by the avalanche and the diamond
was mislaid. And it was early.
Eight am. My jet-lagged, time-skewed form allowed no excuses of
travel and as one it recoiled from the English morning light. This
body knows 'early' when it feels it and bugger the international
date-line.
Michael gives me a towel, points at things I might need and returns to bed. Anna has already left. A shower, a cup of instant and I was a changed man and out the door.
Just not the one it should have been...
Flash forward another
two weeks...
October
7, 2010
I
must have been distracted. Oh yes, that's right I was. By encroaching
penury. An old mate I've not seen for some time. But time itself and
perhaps the odd wave of beer have managed to erode my finances
like wind upon a sandstone cliff, until the bones of yesteryear are
exposed and revisited. The upside is that I do not go out and I do
not consume liquid calories and I do not smoke at all at all and
people tell me I look well. Apparently I look well. Isn't that great?
The
one time I did go out I generously gave my number to Juan who then
rang me every day for a week and a half. In sobriety, I realised I
did not wish to pursue an acquaintance with Juan. I did not even want
to have a Juan night stand. I even composed a very polite text
admitting to my flirtatious but perhaps overly enthusiastic
behaviour, a text brimming with mea culpa, which I showed to
my flatmate who confirmed that its subtext of Please fuck off now
was nonetheless conspicuous. The calls ceased only two days ago. But
I shall never leave the house again.
The
other time I went out I decided not to imbibe. My acting school
alumna, Rebecca, invited me to a friend's birthday drinks in town.
Sticking to my plan, I duly drank water. Pints of the stuff. Until
11.00pm when I had a small glass of red. At 12.30am I led a party of
ten people to The Phoenix Artist Club, and there became the funniest
man in all of London. It was a fun evening and the bar staff made my
friend and I a Hot Shot for free. It was a shot and it was hot. I
awoke in my own bed, the journey home a mystery to all. I've not
drunk since.
The
good news is I've found employment. A four month engagement at The
Menier Chocolate Factory where I've worked before. In 2006 to be
precise, on a rumbunctious piece called Breakfast With Jonny
Wilkinson. This time around it's
The Invisible Man, a rumbunctious adaptation of the H.G. Wells novel. In the style of music
hall, it has many moments of illusion to convey the idea of
invisibility, and we're not talking floating books on fishing lines.
Indeed, we must all sign an agreement to keep secret the arcane and
occult methods employed to bamboozle and stun our audience. I think
forward to technical rehearsals and tremble. The production will be
either (a) a jolly night out full of comedy and magic, or (b) a load
of old bollocks. Let us trust in the former. I shall be playing no
less than four characters with as many accents. My performance shall
be a small tour of the home counties. Assuming all goes well. The
other side of the coin is engraved with a picture of me never working
in this town again.
London
continues to be its inevitably interesting self. I went out for a
coffee one day and bumped into the Thames End Of Summer Festival, and
arrived home four hours later, full of food and visual delights. My
friend Gerry took me as her plus-one to a party - “no no, jeans and
a shirt, darling” - where we were met at the door by staff, fed by
caterers, entertained by roulette and blackjack tables complete with
croupiers, all brought in for the evening, and surrounded by black
ties and long silk gloves. Gerry is in The Invisible Man by
sheer bloody coincidence and I shall be warning the rest of the cast
about the accuracy of her general day-to-day conversation.
Trivia
note: the actress Kate O'Mara auditioned for The Invisible Man
just before me. I hope she was successful. You see, Ms O'Mara played
'Caress Morrell' in Dynasty. She was the sister of 'Alexis
Carrington-Colby-Dexter-Rowan', played by Joan Collins. The fact that
I know all four of Alexis' husbands' surnames hints at my affection
for the afore-mentioned series. Clappy clappy hands if Kate is there
on day one of rehearsals. Is it too much to hope that Steven
Carrington (the second one who came back after “dying” in
Indonesia and having plastic surgery) might pop in to see an old mate
on press night? Ah. London. You keep my dreams alive...
