AlBarclay

Slower today and looking at the learning and admin that I kicked down the road for Sir Toby.

I’ve been happy today. Good news for others is making my view on the world a little brighter. I did a fair amount of running around today, seeing about the next phase in the stuff journey – the expelling. The stuff has been removed from where it slept and roughly sorted. Now it needs to go to a bright new future where I’ll be paying monthly for it. I knew this would be a busy patch so I built the cost of storage into my quote. But we are coming close to time to push it all out the other side now for better or for worse. Out out out out. Or it was never worth taking it in in the first place.

Stuff out, words in. This is the next few weeks. I’ve got two fucking AI scripts to learn now. Two of them. It’s madness. It is exceptionally difficult to learn that dross because it has no internal logic, no truth, no feeling. It is entirely dead. But … in absolute truth it is no harder than some of the stuff I used to have to learn in the early days for corporate training videos. Did one of those recently and it was just atrocious. You have to use mnemonics and so forth as there’s no internal logic even if written by a human. So … I’ll learn whatever they’ve sent and I’ll deliver it and it’ll be fine. It’ll take time, but it’s part of my job and I signed up for this a long long time ago.

I buzzed around my borough today, saw a few old friends, looked at some potential work for one of them, grabbed some bits from the workshop. Tomorrow I’ll start a wee project. And life, just… life. I’ll happy it’s still warm out there. And even though there’s two shows at Harrow in a fortnight I’m pretty happy that I can park worrying about Sir Toby now we’re done with the Wanamaker. What a treat that was…

Did it again for a matinee. We still didn’t have the space in time – this is a hire so we can’t warm up. There’s a mezzanine I often use when getting my shit together for corporate stuff. We ended up there and Adam had his lanyard on cus he does education. But there’s a cancer in that building. I don’t know how to shift it. It might be because they rely so much on sl…  on volunteers.

We were (not ostentatiously) warming up as a group a little bit before the space became available, in a circle. We were aware we were in public and weren’t doing anything noisy or requiring focus that takes us from where we are. It’s a barely used mezzanine. There are many toilets.

Some well dressed old guy came by because there’s a loo there, and we all made space for him, and we were lovely to him, and we made him welcome immediately. We stepped forward so he could walk behind. But he still knew there was a circle of actors and he really wanted it to be all about him.

Despite us being very open and easy for him he behaved like we were an obstruction in a way that felt completely artificial and forced, playing to his narrative. “Am I expected to do a cartwheel or something to cross this space?” “No no absolutely not you’re not interrupting anything please don’t feel you need to change your behaviour in any way.”

Who knows, maybe he was creatively involved in the main house show, I hope not cos he seemed like a secretly nasty piece of work and I don’t want that of that space. Whatever, he evidently went and moaned to someone and before we knew it two concerned young women in lanyards came up and told Adam (coz he had his lanyard on) that we were being “too noisy.” For who? We weren’t. They just needed to be seen to respond to whoever that old guy was. It was fine, we didn’t have to stop. But this sort of thing is RIFE in that building and it is to do with departments and possession of space and money. And it is so unnecessary and sad in a building made from passion to celebrate one of the greatest humanitarian world playwrights.

Adam put it very well when he said “It feels like it is an old old space, but actually it’s only young”

So yeah you’ve got three primary departments. Education. Swan. Main Space.

If they could play nicely then it could be one of the most potent art spaces in the country.

But again and again I see the different departments egoing about space rather than collaborating. It is extremely frustrating.

It was better a few decades ago, it might be better again one day. There are still good hearts in the building. Sam was the heart of it and those who carry his torch really would help us all if they didn’t carry it lightly. It’s a building built out of passion for the arts. There’s no room for your shitty ego. It is a lot, to carry the legacy of these people. And I know all too well the sort of nonsense The Swan has to put on to satisfy their clients. There’s an AI script we’ve just been sent which is horrifying.

Corporate, Education, Creative. They could all play nicely. I’m almost tempted to formally propose myself as a liaison. I haven’t worked or auditioned mainspace though. And until the building communication is fixed I’d never identify myself as someone who works for and with The Swan. Because… we are just an obstructive noise on the mezzanine as far as IMPORTANT is concerned.

I know Sam understood Shakespeare’s voice. I think I know what he would have wanted for that building. I think of my old friend Diana Devlin who I would frequently have a drink with after events. She was a historian and also got it. Where are these heads now for this building? I would love to talk to Michelle on this subject.

This weekend I’ve been involved in an outside rental show for this building I work in often. They took a vast amount of money I reckon to let the old school use the space. As it happens some of us are Education Practitioners and some are involved with The Swan. But honestly, hierarchy be damned. Dost think that because thou art virtuous there shall be no more cakes and ale?

We were treated well but at that price of course we were. The staff also were good and thoughtful, working hard to time things well for us, absolutely brilliant all three of the ones we had. But with the mix of us all it got me thinking about how much better that building could be at coming together. Which got me thinking about how I might be able to help.

I normally warm up pretty obsessively. For Othello I was usually first in, gradually getting my shit together with the luxury of time and space. Tonight though the schedule didn’t allow it and there was nowhere to go. There were so many of us, and the Wanamaker is a tiny space front and back.

I warm up fully because I know my own body use in the moment. I need to be in my body when I’m working from the start because in the immediacy I’ll do something big and physical that makes sense at the time but if I’m not warm I’ll go home with a sore neck.

My neck hurts. It’s a gurning injury. And it is entirely because I wasn’t warm. I was out on the South Bank half an hour before the show. Lovely evening but I have to remember that the habits I’ve arrived at come from experience.

We are visitors in the Wanamaker. We do not have the infrastructure of SHOW. We were still rehearsing when I would have been warming up. And then I needed a coffee and a bit of air and to see Lou.

—

With a good pack of audience it felt very intimate there, and they could give a little and make it feel like a lot. Lou was there for the first half, prearranged with her exit back to Brighton. I really felt the lack of her sort of team on our side. I appreciate from her how much laundry happens while everyone else is in the pub. Someone with a bucket at the end of the show would have been a tonic. I came off stage and my shirt was an oil slick. Close packed audience and candles plus unwarmed Al gurning through Toby largely unidentifiable thank fuck as there’s no programme.

I’ve taken the shirt home. It needs to be handled with tongs. I’ve put it in the machine. Now I have to stay up until it is finished. I’ll run a bath to see if my neck stops hurting with warmth. And then a matinee tomorrow and if I hang my shirt by a window before bed hopefully it’ll be a bit less wet than it was when I peeled it off.

A delightful day. All the staff at the Wanamaker were lovely. This is a capitalism hire for them so they don’t necessarily have high hopes for us as people – the fact we’re a booking from poshyposh school likely makes it hard for them to not expect what you’d expect if you were told two dozen old Harrovians were about to happen to you.

I hope and trust we did ok with the venue.  One more show tomorrow. Hopefully my shirt will be dry in time. It couldn’t be any more wet than it was when I put it in the machine.

I got home and looked at the news and that silly algorithm sent me an article by Matt Ridley in the Spectator saying that the glacier fall in Nepal had nothing to do with climate change. So there we have it. Old Etonian Matt Viscount Ridley 68, CEO of Northern Rock in 2007.

I wonder why he still has a platform? I wonder whose interests he might be serving with that platform?

This fucking generation of monsters and all we can do is wait for them to die so we can get the world back because they are so protective of how it has always been for them. In America, in Russia, in Israel. How will history look back on his period?

I can’t get too pissed off, I’ve got to get to sleep. It’s past midnight and I just got home. Had another pizza but this time I ate it in my car while driving home. We’re in the theatre in the morning tomorrow. It’s still sketchy but I’m having fun which makes me realise that I’m pretty much as rarefied and privileged as that lamp-post Ridley. I drive up to Harrow to rehearse in my car. I’m helping provide costumes too. I’ll get a pittance for the boots mayhaps. Doing this is a luxury. But I do genuinely like the people I’m doing it with so that’s alright.

Dom showed up today to be the priest. We did one of these OH Plays when we’d both just left university. It was Much Ado that time. I was Pedro, he was Jon. He’s another one that has gone on to a rich and full career and he is only playing on Sunday in a kind of celebrity cameo, bless him.

We were talking about some wonderful work he recently made for Alex who co-founded The Factory with Tim. He’s bright and positive about it. It was genuinely really lovely to see him, as up until he showed up there’s been nobody in the company who was contemporary with me at school. Five years seems a long time but it’s over in a flash. I didn’t particularly like my contemporaries in my boarding house so my networks for staying in touch have been shunted off track a bit. It was nice to see him tonight. We found ourselves reminiscing about other contemporaries some of which have gone on to extraordinary levels and others who have made and continue to make absolute fools of themselves in public. The two things seem out of balance but with just 150 students every year and all that money I guess extremes are to be expected in many walks of life.

I’m gonna try and go to sleep quickly despite the cheese. It was the right idea to get that pizza and eat it driving but now I’m gonna need to be disciplined and get my head down. Dress rehearsal adrenaline is happening a tiny bit but largely this one is stress free. I’m not really expecting anyone to witness it. I’m just gonna explore the time I was medicating grief with alcohol, AKA my entire thirties. Toby Belch is a lesson. Some directors kill him at the end. ” ‘has hurt me and there’s an end to it” Some directors redeem him: “if sir Toby would leave drinking thou art as witty a piece of Eve’s flesh as any in Illyria”. I’m going towards that version here – he knows there’s a way out but isn’t taking it until he has to. But he does. Let’s be positive about this. No matter how far gone you are there’s always an escape if you let yourself find it. But it has to come from you.

It’s ten o’clock at night. We just finished rehearsal in Harrow up at The Ryan Theatre. I didn’t tell anyone I was doing this but I’ve gone over the road to sit in The Castle. It’s a pub.

I’m sitting in the chair Martin sat in last time I saw him. The dear old fucker went and died on us all. I found myself thinking that that’s why I’ve ended up doing this Old Harrovian Play this time around.

He did very well with me. He had an extraordinary amount of energy to encourage those of us who were interested in performance as a job. He had “the conversation” with me that you have to have when someone realises they’re gonna be an actor no matter what. It’s important to make sure. This life can look shiny but mostly it is a lot of uncertainty with a side order of rejection and a large portion of constant hustle, for which you are paid barely a living wage. Sure it can be a delight when it works. But filling the gaps…

I’m filling some sort of a gap here I guess, coming up and trying to remember Toby Belch for the OH Players. There’s a good heart at the core of this company. We have some very involved music and nobody is certain on their lines let alone their meanings and targets, but they’re willing. We don’t have long at all before we open. We have had no rehearsal process to speak of. No six weeks sitting round a table before anyone even stands up. No workshops with fight directors or intimacy coordinators. We are making it up with good will and as always when I’m not certain I’m trying to style it out with energy and attack. Let’s see how that pans out eh? Hopefully I’ll get away with it.

Meanwhile I’m sitting here this evening with the ghost of an old friend old teacher old mentor in The Castle. I can’t drink as I’m driving home. But I can sit here a moment and open up my energetic filters and have a flash in the elsewhere place thanking the ghost of a man who really didn’t mince his words. There’s an imprint before we start again. I’m gonna stop writing and tune into that energetic memory thing.

—

Last time we were here he called me a puritan. I think he was cutting into my unwillingness to shift my primary focus. A lot of people would have thrown in the towel a long time ago. I’m never gonna. He knew that. I will miss knowing he’s in the world. And his wry support. I could have made things a lot easier for myself.

He leaves behind two sons. I will likely keep loosely in touch with Louis as we have already crossed paths a fair few times and he knows Esta very well. It was Esta (my beloved agent) who informed me of Martin’s passing. We learnt that we both knew and loved Martin very early on in our professional relationship and I’m sure it is part of why we’ve understood each other so well since I signed with her. Apparently he described me as “A young Michael Hordern but completely mad”.

I guess since my parents shuffled off I’ve been splintering the questions of youth into many people who are older than me and in some way involved with or judgemental of my life choices. It was helpful to sit with Martin here and have him affectionately tell me I’m a puritan as it gives me something to contemplate. I might have been on the non alcoholic beers at the time, it might have been as simple as that, but it’s somehow helpful still to have people who are older than us, somehow invested in us, and absolutely clueless about the nitty gritty of our lives to make sweeping unwelcome subjective judgements about our life choices. That’s a parent’s job primarily, that big fat unwelcome hand.

We have to find people to do that crap once the parents are gone. Because we need the perspective. All of us. You get better at perspective the longer you do this stupid life thing, although not necessarily at context. Look to your elders though. That’s been the last few days for me.

I’ll miss him. A wonderful mad angry delicious bastard.

I’ve stopped at Perfect Pizza which is the halal place we used to order from on weekends on the hill. They are making me my schoolboy pizza. I’ll drive it home and munch it.

Tonight is the only night I’ll be able to see Peter do Krapp’s last tape. I dearly want to see it. But it’s sold out so I’m at The Cockpit awaiting a return.

Peter is 86 now. About five years ago he started coming to The Factory. I remember very clearly one night after a session with him in a pub in Borough Market. Pretty much every one of his running mates had gone forward, he told me. He was coming to The Factory to keep in trim and find a new community. Still going. I hope to God I’m the same if I last that long. I remember the wry grief in him, and the twinkle twinkling still.

He first did Krapp’s Last Tape maybe a decade ago. It’s one of Beckett’s best known plays. It’s about memory and aging. Peter was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s a couple of years ago. He’s going back to this, working with tapes made for his original performance. He’s acting with his younger self.

The Beckett estate did a thing where you aren’t allowed to put his plays on with alternative staging. So you’ll never see Godot set on the Titanic or whatever. Which is probably for the best but it does mean that they are artifacts. But in this context it’s a good thing. Peter will be on familiar ground but also with the potential open barrier of that condition that every stage actor dreads. It’s why Gambon quit. You can only get away with reading your lines off the back of props for so long.

I’m happy the BBC got hold of the story and wrote an article about it. I want it to be sold out for him. But I also want to see it so hopefully there’ll be a return… I’ve got number 1 on the return queue so I’m sure it’ll work out…

—

I just saw him in the foyer. Had a hug. He stores things in his phone so he knows who is who and he now has a ridiculous photo of me captioned “Al Barclays” because I didn’t have it heart to correct him while he’s trying to remember this show. “I first played this part in … … I think it was 1958 in the west of Ireland.” I still don’t have a ticket. Lots of familiar faces in the foyer though. Nobody I know well enough to come and greet but Peter and he’s pre-show and 86. Nice to see The Cockpit as a destination theatre.

—

I HAVE NEVER SEEN THE COCKPIT SO CROWDED. Talking to the people who bought tickets, lots of them just bought it because of the BBC article. Great work the PR department. It IS a story. Wonderful actor with Alzheimer’s plays against tapes of his younger self in a play about memory.

—

That was really beautiful and strange and sad. Peter was dignified and brilliant. It was deeply telling to see him like that in that show. I think I sat next to Gemma, an actress who was part of the reason I went to Guildhall.

How can we make Beckett relevant when it is enshrined and ossified like it is? Maybe there’s something about context. Good on them trying it. And God love Peter and his support network and everyone who made this happen for us all.

So yesterday we recorded a few pages each for a theatre tape. It was surprisingly fun and having the Freston costume place proved useful once more. I didn’t really want to get too swept up in Carnival after but it was good to plug into the energy of it all. Rowdy and messy though, with street evangelists shouting into microphones near us all about some nonsense they’ve made up and attached to the language of the Bible.

Today a quiet day but sad news at the beginning of it. My agent rang me. Martin Tyrrell was my English teacher at Harrow and directed me in a number of school plays. He died last night.

He would set a table up and curl onto a chair in the drama studio with a mug overflowing with ash and cigarette butts, always a fag in his hand. He was bald in his notes and didn’t pull his punches which I liked and benefited from. The better he knew you the ruder he could be, but it was usually done with affection. Sometimes he’d get astonishingly drunk and then he might say things just to be horrid, but most of the time he was insightful and challenging. I loved him. I’m sure I’m not the only actor still working who will be very sad to hear of his passing. Generations of Harrow actors passed through his smokey hands. He gave us confidence and skills and a thick skin. He had been an actor himself but he had shifted to teaching as many do. He was also an inspirational English teacher – he made the texts vital and human. And he wrote very funny no holds barred school reports.

We stayed in touch, occasionally saw each other for a pint. I have been meaning to go see him at home for some time, and said as much to Ricky just two days ago. We need to act on these impulses.

I’m doubly pleased I’ve come back to the old place for Toby Belch, but sad I’ll never see him again. I owe him a great deal. 

We’re at the Wanamaker on the weekend!! I need to make sure my lines are all in the right order… … I’ll dedicate this one to “Melvyn” as we used to affectionately call him. He was a true character. Absolute bastard in the best possible way.

What a treat, to be making things in Freston during carnival. I had to drive through a temporary barrier. Tristan gave up. “Just tell them you’re helping an artist,” I suggested. I can give them my RBKC Council Tax info. He got through with my coaching.

We are up for a spot of fun. Jeeves and Wooster. And Steppings. Tristan asked if I might help him with Bertie and I told him I was up for a stranger part. Obviously I’m Jeeves but maybe they already know their actor for him. I’m happy however. It’s enough to get an audition these days frankly.

I’m gonna edit the tapes later on. There’s enough there to make it clear we know each other and chose each other to help with the audition. Will that help? Who knows. You have to be insane to cast theatre from tape. But we tried to make a good tape anyway.

This evening was very curious. We finished work and went briefly to a local place eaten by Carnival. This is my time of year in London, this has been my manor for ages.

I’m happy to have used my studio. After that there was much noise.

I’m falling asleep. It is glorious to have used the space like I have. I’ve been there so often lately. There’s much to love.

Onwards.

I am curious generally about graffiti, you might know this already about me. It’s an expression, it’s a mischief. People get very exercised about it. It carries meaning beyond its meaning. You can learn huge amounts about the undercurrent of any city you’ve just arrived in by the nature of the tags.

Helch was another of the “anonymous” taggers, like Banksy despite the fact that a few people missed the point of that a few months ago. He wasn’t as acerbic or as clever as Banksy but that’s not what he was setting out to do. Nobody has been able to do commentary and mischief as effectively as Banksy through that medium, which is how he got to shred his own picture at Sotheby’s.

Helch was a different creature in the same world. London’s own, and he was big contentious and colourful. He pissed off loads of people by tagging over “Give Peas a Chance” on the way into London, making it “Give HELCH a Chance”. He apparently pissed off the queen when he tagged something she could see from her window. That’s reach for any artist. I’ve been following his stuff for years – I thought I’d written about it already but I can’t find the blog.

His tags were usually big bright noisy “me” tags. Just his H or his name, often very colourful. And he got them in really tricky places. It requires dedication, work and skill to get these things done, it’s against the law and you’ll piss off the small c conservatives no matter where you do it.

I like it for that reason. Some people got so pissed off about Banksy not chiming with their worldview that they decided to try and “unmask” him and then discovered that nobody really wanted to know. It isn’t a big “gotcha” to publish these people’s real names. Largely the people that think it is are the ones without an artistic bone in their body. We saw it again with Count Binface, and people thinking they had some big scoop when he was always open about it and that wasn’t the art. It doesn’t matter that it’s David Prowse and James Earl Jones, we are happy to say Darth Vader. Binface was performance art and found a perfect moment. He annoyed a lot of people too which is as it should be.

A great joy of art is that it’s subjective. One person might love it, ten others might hate it. That doesn’t make it any more or less art. The art world intersects with the mischief world even more completely than the acting world does now. It hasn’t been coopted by people trying to make everything safe and predictable.

To my sensibilities, HELCH belonged to the art world much more than anyone whose placement, contacts and money got them the leg up they needed to have their stuff accepted by the gatekeepers. The art itself wasn’t the art, it was the timing and the placement and the spirit. Also he clearly wasn’t doing it for the money. There should be grants for that sort of thing, or community whip rounds to buy the paint…

I’m very sad that he’s gone. Whatever you think of the medium, a prolific artist who changed the London landscape and went quite a long way, dead by suicide it seems. A loss. His tags, of course, will remain. Some of them probably for decades.

I don’t know who he was, I just know he was a Londoner. And … he pissed me off when I first became aware of him, so I examined myself. He gave a response. Helped me learn about myself a little bit. That’s art. My mum loved “Give Peas a Chance”. “How dare he trample on that institution,” was my kneejerk. Good work. Good work and thank you.

I’m sad he’s gone cos he brought us some colour and a bright mischief from a dark place. It’s hard to shine in the cracks. He managed it for decades. Fare forward.

A couple of long days in a row, just because even the business of barely rehearsing a Shakespeare play requires logistical thinking and practice, particularly with complicated songs and a jig at the end. I suspect part of my love for Shakespeare started when I was at school here, and actually the OH shows were often inspiring in some way. James Callis came and played Lear’s fool one time just after he left drama school. John D Collins was a regular for some time. Alistair Boag… Richard Curtis did a turn once… These were all important people to me growing up, a connection between my school and this industry I knew I was going to embrace, spikes and all.

I’ve made friends through the OH Players, and my inability to say no to things. It’s a reminder that some people do acting for fun. Most of them are lawyers. This is their weekend recreation. I’m enjoying their company but I don’t really want to have to get up tomorrow and rehearse from ten till nine. But it’s a discipline. Even just learning lines and paying attention and finding targets and clear intentions and changes, it all keeps the muscles moving. There’s much to do. Choose your battles though. The pronoun highlighting is off the scale. There’s plenty of side slapping and wandering around and pacing and meaningless gesture. Fuck it. I’m not gonna say anything.

On the way up and down I’ve been listening to the news which is never a good idea. The unbelievable destructive power of that wall of water – looking at those videos has been compulsive. Then the usual gallery of aging ninnies trying to cling onto their relevance and doing increasingly ridiculous stuff. Lake Ontario. Threats to nuke England.

Faced with all that on the radio it is easier to contemplate the fact that every waking hour this weekend is going to be with a love story written 425 years ago. The rain it raineth every day, and today it finally did in London. We have been so parched in the south it was welcome. All day it came down, finally petering out at sunset.

Hopefully this rain will help. There was a fire in Neasden that stopped the trains this morning. The glorious long summer has brought a host of problems. The rate of acceleration globally is becoming really apparent. We must be past the tipping point by now, and still they want more. We are such a destructive species. Nice that we can get together sometimes and just make a weird visual story together as a community loosely bound just by random things like where our parents sent us away to as teenagers.