Recent events

It's been a while since I've posted, mostly because there hasn't been all that much of significance going on – and also because I haven't had a great deal of time on my hands. But I've got a extra-long weekend (Thursday was Anzac Day and I took a day of annual leave Friday to give me four straight days off) so I can at least put pen to paper¹ and mention a few things.

¹Figuratively, I mean; I don't write these things longhand before I type them up.

The Road to Xanadu

After watching Me and Orson Welles a few years ago, I got interested in the life of the mercurial² actor/director, and had a browse online to find some books written about him; when I spotted that there was one written by the great Simon Callow – probably best known for his role as Gareth in Four Weddings and a Funeral, but he's done a lot more than that, including a lot of stage work in the UK³ – so, I told myself I needed to get hold of a copy and read it.

It took me a while to actually get around to it, but a couple of months ago I tracked one down and started reading.

I already knew a bit about his life - he started doing theatre early, moved into radio, did the infamous War of the Worlds radio broadcast (which, BTW, while causing some uproar, didn't actually lead to rioting in the streets) and, a bit later, made Citizen Kane.

After that, I don't really know what he did until providing the voice of the giant, planet-eating robot Unicron in the animated Transformers movie in the 80s.

But there's more. A lot more. He's one of the most fascinating people the entertainment industry has ever produced – and that's saying something. He achieved an astonishing, unprecedented amount at a very early age; not everything, however, went entirely to plan.

One of the best things about Callow's research is his objectivity; at times he's quite critical of Kane's behaviour, particularly when it turns out that there's a great deal of misinformation out there about what actually happened – much of which is as a result of Kane's own dubious relationship with the truth regarding his achievements.

The first book only goes to the point where he makes Citizen Kane; there is a second book, which I've ordered and will (at the current pace I read books and the amount of time I have to read them) probably get to it later this year.

Definitely worth reading.

²That's a pun, by the way; Welles produced theatre and radio plays under the banner of the Mercury Theatre Company.
³He appeared as Pozzo in the same Haymarket production of Waiting for Godot with Sir Ian McKellan that came to Australia; sadly, he didn't come over.

How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying

The main reason I've been as busy and as unable to do as much writing as I probably should be doing is because I've been rehearsing for the upcoming production of this musical, which opens in Adelaide on May 24.

Normally, being in a show wouldn't take up that much of my time (though it does depend on big a role I've got, since line-learning is definitely a factor) but this is a musical, and while I don't have very much dialogue to learn, I do have to sing and dance – and since the latter of those isn't something that comes very easily to me⁴, I have to put a lot of extra work into it at home in front of my computer, since we film the numbers so we can practice in our own time.

For me this is extremely handy, since the biggest problem I have with choreography is translating the steps into concepts I can understand (since almost all of the technical terms mean nothing to me; however, I now know what box steps and grapevines are) and then – because that's only the half of it – trying to actually make my feet (and/or my arms) do those things at the time and in the order they're meant to be done.

So, thanks to technology and a lot of effort, it's all going well. And I'm having a lot of fun, which is the exact reason I decided to do a musical in the first place. I'm getting to work with a bunch of awesome, dedication and talented people on such a great show, and it's going to be great.

If you happen to be in Adelaide at the end of May and want to check it out, details can be found here.

⁴The former doesn't come that easily to me either, but it's not quite as daunting as dancing is.

Richard III

During the Fringe I auditioned for a part in the Adelaide Theatre Guild production of Richard III that goes up in August; a couple of weeks back I found out I got in, and am playing the Archbishop of Canterbury plus a yet-to-be-determined number of other minor characters.

It's the sixth Shakespeare play for me – the others, in the order in which I did them: A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Taming of the Shrew, Much Ado About Nothing, The Tempest and Macbeth – and the chance to perform in my favourite space in Adelaide, the Little Theatre at the Adelaide Uni.

That it's another chance to work with my friend and multi-award-winning director Megan Dansie (who've worked with a bunch of times before, most recently in Don's Party in 2012, and the year before that the hugely successful Guild production of The Pillowman, which I stage-managed) and some great Adelaide actors, like Bart Csorba (who also won an award for his portrayal of Katurian in The Pillowman), Gary George, Peter Davies and Tony Busch; plus a few other friends and a whole bunch of new people.

It's going to mean doing shows back-to-back, which I haven't done for quite a few years; that said, my role(s) in this won't be that big, so it's not going to mean maintaining the same level of intensity as I'm currently at with H2$ – at least not until we start doing full-act runs that include my scenes.

The first read-through is going to be interesting; it's the Sunday of the opening weekend of H2$, and I think I'm probably going to be more than a little hungover...