The week that was #6

Blasts from the past

I’ve found a couple of my old diaries – written in longhand on paper¹. I’ve been browsing through 1997 to see if there’s anything worth recounting, but it’s looking more and more like I just wrote down the literal events of the day (including mentioning the obscene number of punctures I was getting from riding my bike all the time, and the names of any vaguely attractive women I met – most of whom I now cannot remember at all) rather than using it as a repository for my philosophy or social commentary

A lot of it is poorly written; to say that my writing has improved since then would be an understatement. I seem to have an unreasonably fondness for the word ‘cool’ – which is kind of sad, considering I was twenty-three and not fourteen...

But, having read through a few entries I was a bit shocked to realise how unhappy I sound. Here’s the entry for Monday, January 6:

'I am starting to realise that I am liking less the people I associate with. I think that when the lease expires on Burdekin St I will go and live by myself and attempt to meet new people, and leave much of my past behind me.'

That’s pretty harsh². My friends at the time – at least some of whom are, technically, still my friends; they just happen to live in other states – were just doing exactly what I was doing at the time, and what most people were doing in that situation: trying to find themselves after finishing university.

My own search wasn’t coming with anything – well, not anything I was glad to have discovered. I’d spent five years (total) at uni and, while I’d finished my degree³, it didn’t provide me with a specific course of action – or an obvious career path. I had no interest in counselling⁴ – which would have meant more uni anyway – so it was a case of trying to find something which could make use of my degree rather than something specific to it.

I’d realised that something wasn’t quite right – but I’d come to the wrong conclusion about what the problem was. However, it wasn’t too long after this that I put my feet on the path to leaving Townsville – and the path that led me to Adelaide and a much more contented existence.

But it wasn’t all bad, and some of it was at least pop-culture commentary – as illustrated on Saturday January 25:

'During the ad’s⁵ I flicked to Rage to look at (hideous) old Countdown episodes. Ewww! How the hell did anyone get conceived in the late 70’s/early 80’s? Everyone was so ugly! I won’t even start on the music – that’s just a nightmare.'

Good times.

¹My hand hurts just thinking about it. How did I live before I owned a PC?
²And not just because of the poor sentence structure. Gah.
³Bachelor of Psychology. It took me five years because I failed a subject in second semester of third year and they didn’t let you overload to do fourth year. I had to go part time and spread it out over two years instead.
⁴That shouldn’t come as a shock for those who know me even slightly.
⁵It appears that at that point in my life I didn’t know what an apostrophe was for.

Arsenic & Old Lace

As many of you will know, I’m currently involved in a production of a play called Arsenic & Old Lace. We’ve just finished the first week of shows and I now have four nights off before having to get back up on stage and do it all again.

Without giving too much away – because there’s a certain element of mystery involved in the plot – it’s a black comedy/farce about the Brewsters, a family of eccentrics living in Brooklyn, New York in 1941. There are two aunts – Abby and Martha – who are elderly spinsters; and their nephew Teddy, who believes he is another Teddy – Teddy Roosevelt⁶. There’s also their other nephew, Mortimer, a theatre critic who lives in New York and drops by occasionally; Elaine Harper, the girl next door who is also Mortimer’s fiancee, and her father, Reverend Harper; then there’s a handful of less-than-gifted members of the Brooklyn police department who are also regular visitors.

After Mortimer discovers his aunts’ terrible secret he’s forced to try and work out a way to keep anyone from finding out what they’ve done – but before he can, his long-lost brother Jonathan returns after a twenty-year absence, bringing with him not only a new face (eerily similar to that of actor Boris Karloff) but the plastic surgeon who gave it to him.

The result is an hilarious black comedy with some wacky characters and laugh-out-loud funny scenes.

Anyway, I play the creepy brother, Jonathan – and I’m having an absolute ball doing it; it’s so unlike anything else I’ve ever done on stage before. The significant parts I’ve played include a Shakespearean cross-dressing nitwit (Francis Flute in A Midsummer Night’s Dream); a shy nitwit (Cornelius Hackl in The Matchmaker); a well-to-do love-rat with a secret (Frank Churchill in Emma); an angry film producer (Karl Brezner in Popcorn); a vindictive and opportunistic Puritan landowner (Thomas Putnam in The Crucible); a clueless, hotheaded romantic (Claudio in Much Ado About Nothing); a nerdy, bespectacled wizard (Ponder Stibbons in Lords & Ladies) and a very snooty butler (Charles in Me & My Girl).

Most of these are comic roles; I tend to stay away from serious roles since I don’t feel I’m very good as a serious actor. There are several reasons for this - one being that I have what can politely be termed a good face for comedy⁷; another being that, while I have no problem with the intellectual grasp of the nuance and emotion required for a serious role, I don’t seem to cope well with translating that to my body - and that's a huge aspect of acting; the dialogue is only one part of it.

I’m really much more at home with comedy. That’s not to say I won’t ever take a serious role, but I’d hate to have the success of a show depending on my ability as a dramatic actor.

Jonathan in A&OL isn’t exactly a dramatic role since – despite its darkness – it is still a comedy. But Jonathan is very much a ‘straight’ role in the sense that most of the comedy is done by those around him. He is a (very stark) contrast to the wackiness of the other characters, particularly his plastic surgeon sidekick and the two dotty aunts.

Playing straight is actually a huge challenge for me because one of the things that makes me a good comic actor is my instinct for seeking out laughs. In my comedy roles I’ve always worked with the director to find as many things as possible – above and beyond what’s in the script – that’ll get more laughs. In order to the play the straight role I’m forced to fight against the almost instinctive tendency to attempt to maximise the humour in my performance.

But it’s working. I’m playing Jonathan in such a way that people are genuinely being creeped out by him, and that’s a great feeling – as weird as that might sound. But, think of it this way: for me, making people laugh is easy. This was a challenge, and one I’ve risen to meet.

⁶Theodore ‘Teddy’ Roosevelt, October 27, 1858 – January 6, 1919; 26th President of the United States and man for whom the Teddy Bear is named. He was also the uncle of Franklin Roosevelt, the 32nd President.
⁷By which I mean I’m funny-looking.