Across London to Stokey. Jack and I have so much history now. We met in Yorkshire maybe fifteen years ago on a lawn outside a semi derelict farmhouse that had a drained swimming pool full of frogspawn out front. I brought the bed bugs from my huge and comfortable bed all the way back to London when the job was over. I had been oblivious to them but that’s surely the source of the infestation that convinced me I had eczema and finally made me have everything fumigated and throw away my bed when I woke suddenly from deep sleep to find them at their horrible work.
Richard put a plank in the pool so the frogs could escape. The aga was still working and was on. There was a faucet in the room next door to my head that I eventually learnt to silence but which interrupted my post show dreams more often than the bugs. We launched Twelfth Night from that house, down at Ripley Castle. He was Feste, I was Malvolio. Brilliant campaigner Lucy directed us.We had a right fleabag as Viola. Jo was Olivia and … a big and lovely cast… We were all dear friends together making something we cared about and living in Bohemian Arcadia. A truly joyful summer. My first of many with Jack at Sprite.
“What are you most proud of,” I was asked at my school reunion the other month, and I referenced those happy years of Yorkshire Shakespeare. I made deep long friendships and we tried to make things well. Every time I went I occasionally experienced that strange vast endorphin release of fulfillment and true joy that you only get when you are in the right place doing the right thing. It was summer, we loved each other, we were all doing what we love doing. We all came back with about what we started with in terms of money. Jack and I found a friendship that followed us though. That year I was trying hard not to go to the pub after every show for financial reasons. I had just given up smoking as it was too expensive a vice. I was happier to buy a case of beer and go to our eccentric digs. Jack was the same. We hung out in the living room many nights guitar noodling while everyone else was blowing their wages at The Boar’s Head, before they all rolled in and the night got longer.
Post Sprite we ended up doing a spot of filming, things here and there by coincidence until eventually he auditioned to replace John as Marley one year and got the part. That became our Christmas Carol, where we deepened a well formed creative partnership over many more years. We are very different, but we fly well together. There’s a shared mischief. He eventually signed with my wonderful agent, and this weekend he had a self tape and then a mutual friend’s birthday party near his gaff. So that was my day.
He’s done plenty of telly so the tape came easy. It’ll be great if he gets it, but it did feel that he was too young for it. These tapes cast a wider net, but they cost in hope what they make up in opportunity. Hope can hurt, but maybe it’s better to have the chance at nice work than to feel like the world has passed you by. I love it when my friends are working, as the weird little gap in them fills up and suddenly they are just imperceptibly more confident and robust – ironically the skills that help in the auditions…
We then were in a bar full of actors. Some I’ve known for 20 years and more. Others I met today. Nice lot. Enough partners there that the conversation wasn’t entirely about the trade, but there was plenty of reminiscing even so. We all trained roughly the same time. We’ve been running mates. Everything we do is so unpredictable and sporadic, but all of us have learnt to know joy when we have it available, and clutch tight hold of it. The collective memories of the people in that room will have been filled with strange colour given to us by this vocation we all pursue, often in gorgeous places doing strange things. “What are you up to right now?” “I’m collaborating with an artist in a 200 acre rewilding project down in Croydon. Here’s a video. I’m in a panda head.”
Fun. Joy. And thick skins on vulnerable people.
AlBarclay 