Diary of a Gossip:

Week One - February 2012 Perth, Australia

A blog by Propeller company member Tony Bell

Of course it’s not week one, it’s week nine, or even nineteen if you count rehearsals, but for me it’s ground zero. Truth is, this whole tour has hurtled along without a moment to catch breath. Yes, I’ve lost more possessions, and more valuable ones, than I did this time last year, though it’s close.  A computer, two bikes, six months contact lenses, and two pairs of gloves, as opposed to an ipod, an iphone and two pairs of glasses. And yes, I’ve finally done my tax for the last two years, having incurred three separate fines and two “grow-up your nearly fifty” warnings from the revenue, and, unnecessarily, my accountant, but as for the plays, the comaraderie, the trips to new bohemias like Brighton, I’ve had no time to really absorb any of it, let alone write about it.

Or maybe its just laziness. I mean, it’s not as if we work hard, at least the actor’s don’t. everyone else does. We start at six, and finish at eleven, and don’t work Mondays. Or maybe, my energy levels are dropping. I’ve not smelled a sweaty gym for six months, or even a bleached one. Since my mentor Richard Clothier left, I have shriveled and bloated in equal measure and the once “sinewy” Fluellen (October) has imperceptibly regressed to “fat, portly evangelist” (last February) and is now an “aging rocker in over-tight leather trousers” (this February).

But don’t’ feel sorry for me, (I can feel the pity across the bandwidth), because right now, after eighteen hours and nine in-flight movies, jet-lagged on the other side of the world, I’m ready to write again. Are you up for some wisdom, some insight, a window into the creative process of an international theatre company?  Then I suggest you read Nick Asbury’s blog.  You know what you’ll get from this one. Narcissism, waffle, and mid-life panic.

I was a bit disappointed with all the films, actually: “Iron Lady” expected you to feel sorry for a woman responsible for privatizing the railways; “Bridesmaids” was really funny for about half an hour; and “Moneyball” was mainly interesting as an example of how a forty-nine year old Brad Pitt can look younger than his twenty year old co-star (sorry, I don’t know the youngster’s name, he’s not famous enough). I fell asleep watching the others, but I did stay awake for a film about how Shakepeare’s plays were not written by Shakespeare, because he was the estuary-accented son of Timothy Spall.  Rafe Spall, as the illiterate non-playwright slurred his words to signify this illiteracy, which, of course, is the basis of my performance as Autolyclus.

It hasn’t really changed since 2005, when Propeller first performed The Winter’s Tale. I’m the only person playing the same part this time, although Chris Myles, who is now Camillo, (a part originally played by Bob Barrett, who is now in Holby), was originally the  Old Shepherd, who is now John Dougall, who wasn’t in our original but has played the part before,  in a different production. Confused, you should be, it’s a unique play with two completely different moods in each half, and two utterly different locations. I know this because in Sicilia I have to press my hair very tightly against my head and secure it with brill cream and a side parting, and in Bohemia I have to back-comb it into a Michael Ball meets Gary Glitter bouffant and then grease it up with “funk mouse.”  You can’t get more extreme than that, in one evening, can you?

Actually, I love The Winter’s Tale and all its quirks. It’s brave. I always feel really nervous in the first half. I have yet to work out whether it’s because Robert Hands’ Leontes keeps saying he’s going to commit his baby to the fire and “dash its brains out” or whether it’s because I have only three words to say and I find listening in a way that is real and unselfconscious much harder than standing centre-stage talking to the audience. I feel nervous before the second half too, but that’s because I’m still not sure whether Shakespearean audiences can stomach a part being played half-naked, with Alice Cooper eye make-up, and a coat that is a “massacre of rabbits.” But hey, that’s the idea we’ve come up with, and if you can have Dr Pinch as a naked preacher with a sparkler up his bum, you can have a bit of eye make-up, surely? I’m still not sure whose idea it was to play Autolyclus as an ageing rocker, because the idea was formed in 2005, even before the idea to make Bohemia a mini rock festival, which is a new idea.  I suspect it was Ed, and Michael’s, though I did find the fur coat last time, in a skip in Brixton. It was filthy, and malted, and probably alive. This one is much better. It’s vintage, from Ebay I think, and cost half the costume budget. It’s brilliant, but I keep ripping it because I’m fatter now than at the fitting before Christmas. The leather trousers are also much better this time, but I insisted on a size 32 waist, in my post-Clothier non-carb euphoria, and now I’m muffin-topping over the edges of the waistband. I’ve also ripped them at the knees doing the high kicks I managed on first preview and not since, but he’s supposed to be “a poor fellow” so….

Honestly, I love playing Autolyclus, even more this time, and I prefer the rockier Bohemia.  And I’m only slightly disappointed when friends who’ve seen the original wax lyrical about this one, with it’s more developed Sicilia, and new-minted Bohemia, then finish their pint with “the only thing that’s exactly the same is Autolyclus.” I’m older, I’m wiser, I lose more stuff, I forget more lines, I spend more time in bed recovering from jet lag, but I’m still churning out the same old tricks of the trade - “and therein am I constant to my profession.” I don’t mind, really. It beats working down the mine. Oh, I forgot, they went with the Iron Lady.

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