All the world’s a stage

Visiting the Byre Theatre in St Andrews last week brought back a lot of memories.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I was in two school productions at the Byre, The Taming of the Shrew in 1974, and Our Town (by Thornton Wilder) in 1976.

In The Taming of the Shrew I played Lucentio who is ‘struck by love for Bianca at first sight’.

To be honest, I wasn’t a good actor and it didn’t help that I had to share the stage with Ron Porter, who was in Year 6, two years above me.

Ron played Petruchio and according to a review in the local paper:

Ron Porter’s affability shines out like the proverbial beacon ... as the most experienced member of the cast, he has the confidence to be able to establish an immediate rapport with the audience. ... [He] turned in his usual high standard of performance as the enormously arrogant Petruchio.

I didn’t even merit a mention but I console myself with the thought that, 50 years later, Ron is still enjoying a successful acting career under the name Ron Donachie.

We returned to the Byre for Our Town in January 1976. I played George Gibbs, a schoolboy who was falling for Emily, who lived across the street in a small provincial town in America, circa 1910.

As written by Thornton Wilder (in 1938), Our Town requires very few props and one of the props we employed was a step ladder.

For much of the play I sat on the top step which I think was supposed to represent George staring out of his bedroom window at Emily’s house, while George’s younger sister sat on a lower step giving him/me the benefit of her ‘advice’.

Well, that’s how I remember it. Either way, we spent what felt like a great many hours on that ladder in rehearsal prior to our three night run, so I can truly say we suffered for our art.

(Spoiler alert: George marries Emily who dies in childbirth in act 3, so not a happy ending, but it was a very happy production that I remember with great fondness.)

Between Shakespeare and Thornton Wilder I was in Charley’s Aunt, a Victorian farce that became a global success after it was first performed in Bury St Edmunds in 1892. Our production took place in school, in the assembly hall.

The weirdest production by far, though, was a series of short one act plays that we performed after our final exams in 1976.

The one I was in featured a young couple and their ‘dead’ baby and was set in a graveyard.

I played the man and a week before the performance the director took us to rehearse among the gravestones that sit alongside the ruins of St Andrews Cathedral.

At his insistence, the performance also featured my first (and last) on stage snog which might have been unremarkable had it not been for the location (a graveyard) and the ‘dead’ baby. Either way, it prompted several members of the audience to walk out.

Realising my acute limitations as an actor, I steered clear of the drama society at university and took part in just one play, an English Department production of a ‘domestic burletta’ first performed in 1826 that made a virtue of loud, overwrought acting with no need for nuance or subtlety.

Luke the Labourer did however enable me to share a stage, albeit very briefly, with the extremely talented Bill Anderson who went on to enjoy a stellar career as a writer and director in theatre and television.

Apart from an absurd student union pantomime, that was the last time I ‘acted’ on stage and the part I played was a far cry from my stage debut at Winbury School in Maidenhead in 1968.

Winbury was a small independent prep school and, if I remember, the school hall was an old Nissan hut that doubled up as the dining hall where we had lunch.

There was a stage at one end and because it was an all boys’ school someone had to play the girl and that someone was me.

According to my mother, the headmaster complimented me on how attractive I looked, which is probably the best review I ever got.

And the name of the play? Queer Street.

Update: I have found a cutting – a review of Luke the Labourer, no less – from the Aberdeen Press & Journal. Here's a snippet:

Last night, after the interval, the show took on a life and vigour that had been lacking earlier and although the players generally entered into the spirit of the piece, their enthusiasm ran away with them on occasion, when firmer discipline and less inclination to find the situation comic themselves might have paid dividends.

Below: Yours truly playing Farmer Wakefield and taking it very seriously.