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THE GRASS IS BROWN ON BOTH SIDES OF THE FENCE
MELBOURNE THEATRE COMPANY (continued)
On the Albatross tour, I shared accommodation with Simon Chilvers and John Ewart. Simon these days is teetotal but back then, along with John, he would hit it. As I was already 28 years old and a late starter in this business, I decided that it was in my interests to look after myself. To burn oneself out doing one line in a play seemed pointless and, considering the company I was keeping, a self-imposed healthy regime seemed the sensible thing to do. So there I was, on a health kick, getting up late in the morning, to see that John, who was already through a third of a bottle of brandy, was running up and down the beach to keep fit.
Booze didn’t kill John, it was throat cancer from the Peter Stuyvesant cigarettes that were always sitting beside his brandy and dry. Booze had had a go at him though. While visiting him when he was critically ill in hospital with alcohol poisoning, his Agent thought that John was lying under some sort of hoop to keep the weight of the sheets off him. It was only later, when his elbow touched the sheet, that he realised it was not a hoop but was actually John’s enlarged liver. John later told me what pulled him through at this critical time. He was all but unconscious when he heard two doctors at the end of the bed talking about his condition, and one of them said, ‘He won’t make it through the night.’ John said that statement made him laugh and it was that laughter that got him going again. After being told that another drink would kill him, he abstained for a long time. Then one day, he poured himself a drink and downed it. He said, ‘I waited, thinking that I was going to drop dead, but I didn’t, so I had another one.’
I worked with John a lot over the years in television and films. Lunchtime meant the pub. On one of those occasions he opened up to me about why he drank. He had, with actor and comedian Willie Fennell (1920 1992), opened a nightclub in Pitt Street, Sydney. It was a restaurant with a live show featuring comedy skits and singers. It didn’t work out, and John and Willie lost everything they had. John vowed that he was never going to get hassled again and drank to dull the memory of it. I never saw him ruffled. He was easy-going and always delivered the goods, despite being pissed to beat the band. Only once did I see him out of sorts. We were in a pub when he said, ‘I just can’t seem to place it today.’ I knew that by ‘IT’ he meant the alcohol. But I never knew there was a slot that it had to fit into. In the play Cat On a Hot Tin Roof, the alcoholic character Brick says that he is waiting for Click. I didn’t know about alcohol filling a slot or Click then. I do now.
John was married three times and I met two of his wives. You couldn’t tell them apart - tall blonde Swedes. I’m sure the other wife would have looked exactly the same. I didn’t make John’s funeral as I was working in Melbourne. I regret that because I would have liked to have paid my respects to him. Those old school actors, full of booze and cigarettes, have all but died out. Nowadays the new breed are all off to the gym and drinking carrot juice - and this has seen dressing rooms become as dull as ditchwater.
The next play I was involved in was Danton’s Death. How I would have killed to have no lines in that one. While I could appreciate the skill of the other actors bringing to life the beautiful writing, it was way beyond me. I was appallingly bad as Philippeau, a bespectacled poet who was about to be guillotined. I didn’t get my wig until opening night and when I put it on Frank Thring said to me, ‘You can’t go out there like that. You look like Mary Hardy’ - and I did too. Awful I was. That is except for a couple of nights when I was under a spell.
I had gone to a party after the show. I was depressed because I knew from my performance that I really wasn’t
cutting it as an actor. Someone in the audience, who could no longer contain themselves, actually yelled, ‘Your
acting is dreadful,’ and as I was the only one talking at the time, I took it personally.
At the party, a dark-eyed woman approached me, and said that I was the unhappiest person she had ever seen. While
I stared at her she said, ‘Come on. Let’s get out of here.’
She took me back to her place and during the evening, said a couple of things that I don’t remember, but they must have hit the nail right on the head, because I just broke down and sobbed my heart out - something I had never done before and haven’t done since. It wasn’t done sympathetically either. Taken to the cleaners best describes it. She ran a hot bath that I had a long soak in, and then she made a bed up for me on the lounge. I woke up the next morning feeling marvellous. I was alone, she had gone to work leaving me a note that said, ‘Have a nice day.’ The note seemed to imply that was what I was going to have and she was right. It was truly fantastic. I couldn’t stop smiling at trees, birds and bus drivers. It was as if this was the way life was meant to be. I wasn’t even worried about that night’s performance in Danton’s Death. I felt great, as if I could do no wrong and I simply went out and did it. When I came off the stage the actors who were usually in the dressing rooms were all in the wings. They had heard my performance over the dressing room speakers and they were gob smacked. One of them asked, ‘Where the hell did that come from?’ - I wasn’t rude, but I felt no compulsion to answer. Although I had to work a little to retain that feeling of wellbeing, I still felt good the next day. The day after that I had to work even harder at it, and the next day harder still. The feeling slowly subsided, taking my performance with it. It wasn’t long before I was back to my morose self and dreading the thought of having to go onstage. No one said anything to me about the deterioration in my performance, but you would think, having proved to myself that I could deliver the goods, that belief would have sustained me for the rest of the run.
The dressing rooms for Danton’s Death were so jam packed with actors, that the fire regulations of today would have closed the theatre. The only actor who had any room to move was Frank Thring and he needed it. He resided up the end where he had his own personal space. The rest of us ate takeaways, while he would unpack his wicker hamper, take out a wine glass and spoil himself rotten. I once asked him what he was having for dinner. His reply, ‘Chicken in aspic, dry toast and goose liver pate and a chilled white wine.’ A class act was Frank.
I was seated next to an actor who had in front of him a framed photo of some Indian mystic. This actor said, ‘Did I see you leave that party the other week with he named the girl with the dark eyes’ before I could answer he said, ‘You be very careful there.’ Years later in analysis, I talked about this woman and the effect she had had on my Danton’s Death performance and me. The psychiatrist didn’t seem surprised, referring to her as a psychic as if they are a dime a dozen. If they are, I haven’t met one since. But the lesson from my meeting with one, was about what we are capable of if we can just tap into our potential.
The parts I was offered at MTC improved. Three decades later I found out why. I was in a production playing Francis Greenway, an early Australian Architect, in ‘Macquarie’ a play by Australian playwright Alex Buzo (1944 2006). Googie Withers (1917 2011), who was about to start rehearsals for an MTC production of The Cherry Orchard, was in the audience with John Sumner and another MTC director Malcolm Robertson (1933 - 2016). Apparently when I came on stage she leaned over to John and said, ‘That’s a somebody.’ Her words not mine, but she obviously had not seen Danton’s Death. Then again maybe she had. As I had already been cast as servants various in The Cherry Orchard, maybe her ‘thats a somebody’ remark had been a ploy to remove a problem she could see heading towards Cherry Orchard. I didn’t know of Googie’s remark until Malcolm Robertson told me thirty years later. However, it does explain why I was suddenly plucked out of actors various.
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