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THE GRASS IS BROWN ON BOTH SIDES OF THE FENCE

Before we get to the Homicide section. I would like to start with Jugglers Three.
The reason being is that it will help clarify who and where I was before finding myself caught up in the whirlwind of being in a TV series.

JUGGLERS THREE

Whatever the reason, I was out of The Cherry Orchard and into Jugglers Three, a play written by a promising new young playwright called David Williamson.
Malcolm Robertson (1933 - 2016) was the director and the other actors were Peter Adams (1938 - 1999), Edwin Hodgeman, Sean Scully, Sandy Gore, Kirsty Child and Lloyd Cunnington (1921 - 2011).
It turned out to be a huge success, and helped set David Williamson on a course that was to make him the richest and most famous playwright in Australian history.

For me, it was the first time that I had scored a part that fitted me like a glove, and it certainly upped my status within the company.

However, there was one night when Jugglers Three could have gone belly up. I was having a coffee with Sean Scully at Pellegrini’s Bourke Street Bistro before the performance. We were slurping away when an acquaintance of Sean’s joined us. He lived in a flat above the bistro, and mentioned that there was something up there that he thought would interest us. Curious, up the stairs we traipsed. At one end of the lounge room was a huge 35mm cinema projector. The lights were killed and a lever was turned, and Paul Newman in Cool Hand Luke filled the entire surface of the painted white wall at the other end of the lounge room. Amazed that anyone could have access to such equipment, we allotted our spare half an hour to watching part of the film. Time was nearly up when our host lit a joint and passed it to Sean. Not wanting to appear rude, Sean took one puff before handing it on to me, who felt obliged to do the same. Knowing that we had a performance ahead of us, one puff was all it was and having done so, we excused ourselves.

Walking to the theatre, I felt a little strange. I didn’t remark on it because I didn’t think that a single toke on a joint could have been responsible. Passing a hotel, we literally bumped into Terrence Donovan and Ted Hamilton – two of the stars of the Crawford’s 1969 – 1976 cop show Division 4. I had never met these actors but I certainly knew of them - enough to know that when Sean introduced us, he got their names mixed. Terry became Ted and Ted became Terry. Realising that he had made a mistake, Sean started over again only to repeat the same mistake. Terry and Ted and Ted and Terry must have suspected something, and laughed as they walked away. I was left looking at Sean, who - although I knew him reasonably well - looked like someone that I had never seen before in my life. He, I guessed, was thinking the same about me. ‘I’m so stoned,’ he said. I couldn’t even put the words together to agree with him. ‘We’ll be alright,’ he said, as he headed off towards the theatre with me in tow.

I felt as if I was doing and seeing everything for the first time – including walking up the alley that led to the Stage Door entrance, the stairs that led to the dressing room, the dressing room itself, and the presence of actors Teddy Hodgeman and Lloyd Cunnington. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Ted as usual, reading a book. His concentration on his favourite author’s prose and his ‘good evening’ was a sign that all was normal and that I was in the right place. But it was a brief respite, as the words Nabokov’s Lolita on the cover made the sequence of letters look as if they had been plucked out of a hat. Even more disconcerting, when I sat down in front of my dressing room mirror, I saw someone who I sort of recognised but didn’t like much. I looked over at Sean, and he, guessing where I was at, shook his head warning me not to let on that anything was out of the ordinary.

Again, I took refuge in a toilet cubicle – the same sort of refuge I had found a year earlier while attending NIDA. As I wasn’t needed on stage until half an hour into the play, I decided to remain seated until Sean and Teddy had left the dressing room. Over the dressing room speaker, I could hear the stage manager call the lighting cues at the beginning of the play. The opening scene is a long dialogue where Sean and Teddy discuss the pluses and minuses of their shared girlfriend’s mercurial disposition - a long, difficult scene further complicated by the fact that they are also playing table tennis. This meant that it was not only the dialogue that had to be bounced back and forth. Playing ping-pong had meant that the actor’s choreography was never going to be the same twice. So it was a difficult scene at the best of times. But to be doing it stoned? Oh my God. Sean?

Every night, as I waited for my cue, I would hear the dialogue and the ping ponging through the dressing room speaker – tonight was like hearing it for the first time. I told myself not to panic. After all, Sean was out there apparently coping and if he was managing then so would I. I had almost convinced myself of this when I realised that I was putting on a garment that was not what I wore in the play. Not wanting to frighten Teddy by appearing on stage in the shirt that he had worn to the theatre, I changed into the correct one. If this was a sign of me coping, I was in big trouble. What the hell was in that joint?? In my correct attire, I stood waiting in the wings for my entrance cue – a small, blinking green light that soon let me know the moment I had been dreading had arrived. Like a deer caught in headlights, I hit the stage looking straight at Sean. He, expecting my terror, was looking at me. His eyes were saying,‘You’ll be okay. I’ve been out here for twenty minutes and look at me.’ In that instant, I could see that Sean was more than just OK - he was a glowing beacon that was telling me that I was going to be likewise. And I was. I just picked up on where Sean was and away I went. Sean, who initially must have been terrified, was fantastic. The flow of energy was then picked up by all the other actors and in the dressing room after the show, the consensus of opinion from everybody, including stage management, was that what had unfolded on stage that night had been our show of shows.
There was no way that Sean and I were really in a position to judge, so it was pleasing to know that the others, who were in agreement, had not been under the influence of an illicit substance. That one puff had taught me a huge lesson though. Never ever again would I go on stage under the influence of anything. Good God. What in heaven was in that joint?

I was supposed to be part of a National Tour of Jugglers Three, however a part that I had earlier auditioned for was now on offer, so I opted to play a detective in the Television series HOMICIDE instead.

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