(Verona, Hungary)

The probable highlight of my acting career has bobbed up to the surface in Hungary, only to be broad-sided and sunk. I almost manage to convince the company to let me make the world’s first theatrical entrance —whilst singing and playing a ukulele— on a pedalo.

To explain: our stage is set not in the quaint cage of Gyula Castle, but on a small man-made island. We’re essentially performing on a moat — across which I had hoped to pedal for the Paris/Juliet wedding. At no point do I imagine this may be slightly unrealistic act of upstaging. O, I am slain.

We have caught a lovely, lazy, soviet-era train over from Bratislava and the golden wheat-fields of Austria soon give way to the scruffy green mountains of Hungary, festooned with hamlets that look like Lego brickwork. After a touchingly hospitable welcome in Austria, I am pleased to note that Hungary is somewhat sterner in its reception. The festival program makes it clear —in no uncertain terms— that our little Verona play is outrageously privileged to have been invited. Such is the prestige of the tiny spa-town we are now patronizing. I mean patron-ing. Sorry.

We are, however, kindly given tickets to see a Transylvanian production of Richard III. When a production begins not with ‘Now is the winter of our discontent…’ but with an oiled-up leather-bikini’d vixen rolling around with the crown between her thighs, you can be pretty sure you’re in the vicinity of Eastern Europe. The production is unarguably innovative. Where there is less reverence for the verse there is more elasticity in the story-telling. Which would Shakespeare —a wildly prolific, imaginative and boundlessly digressive writer— prefer? More to the point, would he have approved of his famous hunchback villain giving an entire speech with his hand firmly up a lady’s skirts? My bet’s on…probably, yes.

Performing for the first time over a body of water, the mosquitoes can be seen getting visibly excited at the prospect of comatose actors strewing the stage. After a briefly glorious lounge in the mineral baths of the town, the heat soon makes bubbles where our brains should be. I believe I’ve already made my stand on temperature and quality of performance being in inverse proportion.

In Hungary they are very big on microphones. Now, I’m as unenthusiastic about vocal nodules as the next stage crier, but come on — this is Shakespeare. Nobody likes to hear themselves —albeit a tinny, annoying version of themselves— enunciating iambic a few seconds after the words tumble out.

But the audience are devout, and afterwards they throw us a champagne reception with a selection of local meats and cheese. Am beginning to feel my arteries clog. These Europeans love their meat and cheese.

This part of the continent gets a lot of thunderstorms — which is one environmental hazard that we’ve not yet performed in.

I think I can safely say that that particular privilege can wait.

–>

In Fair Verona Where We Lay Our Scene

(Verona, Austria: Act 1)

To quote my first and much-flawed play: No man is an island.  But some are more peninsular than others.

In keeping with this sentiment we’ve managed to land the play on the continent, and await with trepidation the artistic judgment of our mainland cousins.

Arriving at the much and deservedly maligned Terminal 5, with the vague suspicion that we’re embarking on an adventure beyond the wildest moments of Coventry, we confront an unnecessary plethora of shops —Ted Baker/Tiffany’s/Harrods— derivatives that no destitute actor would grace their debt with.  I struggle in vain to find a pair of socks for less than £18.  Fine, I think.  Tybalt will go barefoot.  See what you reduce art to, Terminal 5?  A plague on both your House Of Frasers.

We arrive, luggage groaning, at fair Vienna, where Piero, the festival organizer, greets us with an infectious grin — a diminutive, gnome-like gentleman with more than a twinkle of the mad professor about him.  The first captivating Pierotic monologue is the tale of how he produced Tony Harrison’s The Kaisers of Carnuntum in the space we now play in — an ancient Roman gladiatorial arena.  Harrison’s play employed 8 live lions, 2 live tigers and 2 live bears — swilled with an audience of over 500, some might call this a recipe for disaster.  Not Piero.  He bubbles with delight as he tells us the animals were kept beneath the audience, which they dismissed as an overly ambitious Dolby Surround Sound system.  Until, that is, one of the bears escaped.  What Peter Brook might refer to as ‘Deadly Theatre’.

Our first night is awash with fine Austrian lager, pork schnitzel and squid ink noodles.  We cap off the evening sat on the roof of our beloved camper-van and Otto — our surly, drunken hotelier— fetches us complimentary mugs of foaming beer.  He clambers up to join us and we try not to capsize.  A Mafioso-esque gentleman drives by and as we wave (we wave to everyone — we’re in Austria!), he yells from his car:

‘All you need now is a nice bottle of Austrian wine!’

We laugh as he drives away.

And then he returns with two bottles of delicious red wine.  And six glasses.

Fritz, as Otto introduces him, hoists himself on top of the camper-van to join us.  There are now six of us on the roof a V.W. hippy-mobile.  The hotel has been frantically preparing for a wedding and we ask if it’s a local couple.  Fritz hoots like a jackal and explains —as our hotelier silently gurns into his tipple— that the bride is none other than Otto’s ex-girlfriend.  Ouch.  That would explain why he’s sat on a camper-van’s rooftop with a gaggle of British actors when he should be organizing a wedding reception.  We decline the offer of a midnight ‘archaeological tour’ (they can barely find the ladder down) and conclude the night playing grandmother’s footsteps in an opulent and meticulously tended graveyard.

TBC…

(Verona, Austria: Act 2)

It’s funny, the hi-jinks we employ to exacerbate our talent.  Oscar Wilde appeared at curtain calls smoking beneath the proscenium arch and outspokenly pleased that the actors hadn’t spoiled his ‘little play’.  J.M. Barrie made a name for himself flipping stamps off coins and sticking them to the ceiling.  And even back in ancient Rome, the emperor Commodus slaughtered 100 ostriches before a possibly un-rapt audience (“It must have been a firework of blood”, our host Piero says with a giggle).

And here we are performing Romeo & Juliet at the site of Commodus’ ‘triumph’ — an Austrio-Roman amphitheatre.  Sentried over by several stretching pines, the ancient brickwork of the ring encloses our stage — set in front of one of the rocky dens where once upon a time lions were released to swallow Roman slaves.

Our relentlessly inspiring director poses a site-specific idea — what if we play this night’s performance as a tourney between Love and Death?  Who would win?  This isn’t a poxy punch-up between Maximus Decimus and a tiger, but a battle between the two greatest governing factors in our lives.  She is unutterably brilliant, our captain.

And bloody the battle is.  A fist-sized moth flutters it’s way into Juliet’s potion scene and somehow gets trampled by the funeral march, poor thing, de-fluttered by some actor’s wayward gesture.  You may remember I mentioned a few weeks back discovering that my cast had become exercise fanatics in order to streamline their holiday bodies.  Well, the saga continues.  When Paris stumbles across Juliet’s not-entirely-deceased body, he is fatally distracted by the silhouetted form of Balthazar…practising his star-jumps obliviously behind the audience.

This is an incredibly intelligent audience, and it’s a riddle as to whether being European they know the jokes already from the text, or if they are following the physical story better than most and responding to that.  Afterwards we are offered toast spread with pig fat and more devilish red wine from the local vineyards.  Piero says that his daughter has delivered her verdict on the play —’If only people waited a little more in life, than everyone would be happier’— If the lovers waited to get married, if Mercutio waited to duel Tybalt, if Romeo waited before taking his life when he thinks Juliet is dead… Apparently punctuality isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.  Hey presto, an excuse for my tardiness with these European diaries.

The next day, we travel back from ill-informed steak tartare in Bratislava and decide to swim in the Danube.  The monstrous current almost displants a Juliet, a director and an SM, but eventually they emerge un-Ophelia-cized.  We’re treated at The Restaurant That Kitsch Forgot, and slurp suspicious shrimp and cucumber-mint soup.  I chat to Piero about my sub-Roman play in the vain hope he’ll consider putting it on in his fantastic arena.  Except, of course…

Perhaps we’ll leave the tigers, lions and bears off the cast-list this time. –>

(Verona, Manchester)

In no other profession could you spit in a customer’s face and be applauded for your efforts. This is the heartening tale of Lady Capulet’s wayward gob-fillet, caught by the wind and smoothly delivered smack into the face of an audience member. You have to smile. Even through the saliva.

Here we are in Manchester, and the rumours are true. It really doesn’t ever stop raining. The trams don’t work quite like London’s free-buses, the audiences are po-faced, and there are tracksuit-clad townsfolk fishing in the grotty canal by our apartment, provoking some interesting debate on post-modern hunter-gatherer instincts. Our green room is a bizarre joy — a beekeeper’s lodge, and home to our very own observation hive. We’ll be regular apiarists by the end of the week.

Two matinees in the pouring rain, I think, are enough to test any cast’s constitution. At least we’re able to bounce around for warmth; the audience’s faces slowly freeze into a vague marriage of delight and constipation.

This raises interesting questions about the working actor’s physical health and the production’s effect —or defect— on it. I’ve worked with an actor who had his teeth fall out (yes, all of them) before a preview. Yet on he skipped come Beginner’s. The show must go on (or, as he put it, ‘thh thow mutht go awn’). There have certainly been actors who have acted right up until their death, not once betraying any suspicion of ill-health or self-pity. But in equal measure, you wouldn’t expect a brickie to work under repeatedly dangerous conditions. Why ask an actor to risk pneumonia for the sake of an audience of twenty?

Here’s why. There is what I like to call a ‘f!*k-It switch’ deep inside every actor. Whether wanting to be the centre of attention (much like wanting to be a political leader) is a sure sign of lunacy, most actors are happy to risk punishment in order to please.

In last year’s Much Ado, as the token villain, I was comically thrown around by an inspirationally-cast jamboree of boy scouts. They were boundlessly enthusiastic, frighteningly talented, and keen to exert their budding powers of masculinity. This resulted in certain parts of my torso resembling aubergines by the end of the run. Let’s not pretend pride wasn’t at work here: it takes gusto to complain that a beating from a group of nine year-olds is too much for your grown form to take. But I did think it was silly to kick up a fuss. Turns out what’s ’silly’ is giving yourself the knees of a ninety year-old man for a few months.

A word about fan-mail. We’ve had an excitable lady send us a letter praising Romeo and Juliet’s puberty-stricken performances, particularly Romeo’s ‘gonad-fondling youthfulness’. I get a mention for my quote unquote ‘mincing’ Paris and ’snake-like’ Tybalt. This is reassuring, as I was basing Tybalt’s physicality on a bull.

Ah well. All’s fair in love and wildlife. –>

(Verona, Coventry)

Coventry is a much-maligned neck of the woods where actors seem to be concerned. Lord knows why. You picky starlets should give it a chance. There, I’ve said my piece.

Actually, part of the reason why I’m eyeing up Coventry through rose-tinted spectacles is that this is the halfway point of our tour, and after this halfway point we have a week off. Huzzah.

It’s not that I won’t miss the operatic romance and casual psychosis of Shakespeare’s Verona for the week. But a lengthy run of any play begins to corkscrew your imaginative life into some deep reservoir of twilight activity. It begins in that moment before a show, where you scrutinize your machinery step-by-step, much like an airline pilot flicking switches and gauging lights before take-off. Voice warmed up? Check. Body limber? Check. Lines still glued to the back of your eyelids? Check. And at some point your brain manages to make contact with your consciousness and says:

‘Are you nuts?! We’re going through this whole thing again? The flower bouquet joke in Act 1? The embarrassing dance in Act 2? Both deaths in Acts 3 and 5? You’ve got to be kidding!’

It’s perfectly understandable. It’s a Sisyphean task, rolling out the same old plot, regurgitating words and futile actions over and over, no matter how spontaneously. The conclusion is the same. And your brain doesn’t like it. If our minds really do puzzle out day-to-day problems in our sleep, then our brains in this case must be thinking: ‘Why oh why can’t you win this swordfight?! Every single night that Romeo fella pulls the same old move out and BAM, down you go. O, I am slain! And whilst we’re on it, can you please think of a better death-phrase?!’

Yes, a bus driver too experiences the same old route night by night. But he least of anyone knows what the night has in store for him. A character is destined, and, especially in this play, aware of that destiny. It’s the theatre of the absurd, what Camus called the conundrum of man compelled to seek meaning in a meaningless world.

Which, ladles and gentle-spoons, is all a rather long way round to saying that I’m overdue for a holiday.

But then something happens. It’s at times like these, on the brink of absurdity and exhaustion, that you bump into an old couple after the show. And they tell you how much it means to them, seeing a play about reconciliation in a city devoted to forgiving the horrors of the war. And then you notice a monument in the ruined cathedral where your stage is set: a statue of two figures embracing. And you note that there is an identical statue to this set in Hiroshima.

Then the briefest beam of logic illuminates this giddy profession. It’s agonizingly elusive, and comes around once in a green moon. But there it is.

Happy holidays. –>