Tête à claques V

I’ve never met my previous Têtes à claques, but I knew Rupert Everett when he was a young boy. These photos were taken in Stratford-upon-Avon, in 1977: Rupert was 18.

He was tall and thin as a beanpole (an asperge in French – we’re a little more refined in our choice of vegetables). He was gangly, not quite coordinated; he could be bitchy and waspish, but also very very cute.

I first saw him in Stratford in 1976; he used to hang around the theatre day and night and , as I was on holiday, I used to hang around the theatre day and night. That year the RSC had decided to transform the theatre into a replica of Shakespeare's Globe and there were seats at the back of the stage. This young man was annoying me a lot by pacing up and down at the back of the seating area; I kept wondering why he was allowed to disturb the paying public in that way. Then, one morning I saw him with Ian McKellen outside my B&B. They looked very ‘friendly’ with each other. That was ten years before Sir Ian came out of the closet; he was a matinee idol rather than a gay icon and female fans used to mob him at the Stage Door (one of them even threw herself into the Avon to attract his attention). Anyway, who was courting whom, I couldn’t possibly say.

The following year I bumped into Rupert again in London: he was working as an usher at the Warehouse (the RSC’s studio theatre) and already charming his way to fame. He recognized me and we started chatting. We met up a couple of weeks later in Stratford: we were both attending the Shakespeare Summer School and we had great fun together. He was always on the lookout for mischief and together we behaved outrageously (one night we were even thrown out of a very respectable Chinese restaurant). He returned to London at the end of the week and we didn’t see each other again for another year.

Then, one afternoon, in Paris, I got a phone call from him, “Please come and bail me out. I’ve crossed the Channel without a passport. I’m at the Hôtel Meurice, on the Rue de Rivoli. I'm hungry. I've got no money. I'm going back tonight. I don't know what's going to happen.” By chance another actor friend was staying with me. He knew Rupert too, by sight. He was extremely amused and agreed to go with me to rescue him. We found him lounging on a sofa in the beautiful lobby of that most luxurious of hotels, writing a letter with a pen and a pad lent to him by one of the commissioners. He stood up languidly to greet us and, on the way out, offered to return the writing implements, but the commissioner told him to keep them with a huge smile – totally under his spell. We took Rupert to Angelina (a very posh tearoom) next door and plied him with tea and cakes. We had a whale of a time. Later, he borrowed money from us (“Rupert, you still owe it!”) to pay for the fare to Gare du Nord, and he left as nonchalantly as he had appeared. No doubt he charmed passport control too, later that evening.

In 1981 I went to see him in Another Country, at the Greenwich Theatre (before the show transferred to the West End). He was the same old Rupert. He entertained me with stories of the other actors in the play (one of whom was Kenneth Branagh). That was the beginning of his rise and rise to stardom.

I’ve seen him a couple of times since then, but not recently and if I had I probably wouldn’t have recognized him. He’s had plastic surgery: a brow and eye lift, and cheek implants, they say. He doesn’t look like himself any longer.

Rupert, I’m slapping you for spoiling your good looks – even more than a few wrinkles would have.

First a secret, then a lie

Secrets and Lies by Mike Leigh is one of my favourite films: one of those I can watch every single time it’s shown on TV (there are a few others that never cease to delight me). It’s wonderful: funny, profound, heartbreaking, delicate. The acting is superb. You care deeply for the characters: they are real people with real emotions.

It’s the way Mike Leigh develops his projects: he chooses a subject; selects a handful of actors and tells them to go out there and work out their characters. The scripts evolve through research and improvisation. Very often the actors don’t know what the others are actually playing. In Vera Drake, for instance, only Imelda Staunton, who plays the title role, knew that her character was an abortionist, so when the police come to arrest her the look of utter horror on the faces of the other characters is absolutely genuine.

So, considering what gems Mike Leigh can create (there were also Abigail’s Party and Nuts in May, among others), what was it my partner and I saw last night at the National Theatre? What was that lightweight, banal, lazy, superficial, cliché-ridden play? We bought our tickets ages ago; at the time, of course, no one knew what the play was about – not even Mike Leigh himself. It was announced as “A New Play by Mike Leigh” and it sold out within minutes because… well, because of what I said above. We all trusted him to produce something exhilarating.

It now has a title – it’s called Two Thousand Years – but it’s not worth seeing. It was fascinating while it was a mystery. Now it’s as interesting as listening to a trivial conversation at a party.

Some critics are already saying it deserves to transfer to the West End, after its run at the NT (btw, if you hate E M Forster and love this play I can't be your best friend; don't bother) : it makes me wonder whether we saw the same play. But, then, I didn’t like David Hare’s Amy’s View and Alan Bennett’s The History Boys either (to name but two), and they were hailed as masterpieces.

A slap to Mike Leigh for disappointing us!

Puzzle of the Day

I’ve just spent nearly two hours trying to book theatre tickets for the forthcoming Royal Shakespeare Company London season. The National Theatre priority booking forms are always a bit tricky and counter-intuitive, but you need a degree in something (but what?) to fill in the RSC ones.

There was no proper schedule of performances – a calendar with plays clearly marked, just separate blocks of dates for each play (and there were seven of those I wanted to see) so you couldn’t see the “big picture” and there was a risk of booking two plays for the same date.

Then there was the odd weird instruction and you had to rack your brain to try and fathom what on earth they might mean.

Why do they think anyone has the time for this? I suppose the subscription and seats are so expensive that they reckon only wealthy retired people can afford to book anyway. I adore the RSC – they are the reason why I moved to the UK (long story), but when the mailing from them lands on my mat my heart sinks and I get panicky.

And don’t get me started on the fact that they lied to me – and to Dame Judi Dench, which is much worse – when they promised to find a home in London that wouldn’t be a West-End type theatre. So what do they choose as their London base: the Strand Theatre (they can't fool us by renaming it the Novello Theatre? Ha!). Liar, liar, pants on fire!

Slap!

That's it! We're outta here!

I’m dying to slap someone, but I can’t, so, I’m afraid, a lot of other people are going to get slapped in her place.

Three hundred thousand people have been affected by wildcat strikes at the height of the summer holiday rush. British Airways staff have come out in support of sacked in-flight catering staff, egged on by the unions, of course.

Now, the unions have their uses and I remember defending them to my father (who, as a small employer, had had a brush with them), years ago, when I was an idealistic teenager, but they can also be incredibly pig-headed and devoid of common sense. I’ve had experience of it.

In February 1986, I was on tour in Paris. I was working as a technical interpreter on a National Theatre show at the Théâtre de l’Odéon. I was interpreting for the French and British lighting crews and things were not going very well. The main NT man was a woman hater (you should have seen his face when he realized he’d be working with me) and the French guy was an impatient boor. I was caught in the middle and had to resist translating the curses that those two men (who couldn’t have been more different and had taken an instant dislike to each other) were uttering under their breath while I was speaking. Still, the set was being built and the play wouldn’t be played in the dark.

And then, late one night, the day before the technical rehearsal, it all came to a head: a few minutes before midnight the French oaf said something; I translated it; the NT chauvinist pig then answered and I’d just started to translate when the French union representative stepped forward and ordered me to stop. Stunned, I uttered one more word…. and the French lighting crew walked out. Nothing anyone said could make them resume work: it was past midnight; they wanted to be paid overtime, but had been told earlier that they wouldn’t be. I hadn’t been warned – I would have told the British crew and advised them not to go beyond midnight – and they used me as an excuse to strike. I’d never been in that position. It was horrible.

Time was of the essence, as always on such tours – there’s never enough time to do everything and one has to work all hours (we worked 40 hours non-stop once) – and the union rep used it to blackmail the theatre administration. The way he did it was shameful.

The following day, they had a meeting, which lasted most of the morning and afternoon thereby reducing the possibility of getting things right even more, and they resumed work grudgingly in the evening. By some miracle the lighting was fine on the night and, as far as the critics and audience were concerned, the tour was a success.

By the way, the actors, one of whom was Ian McKellen, remained totally unaware of what had happened.

A slap to the unions and their flagrant disregard of common sense and of people’s needs, except those of their members.

We know what you're doing

Ok, where were we before we were so rudely interrupted (btw, the perpetrators of those atrocities have not only been slapped by millions but cursed to the 12th generation)?

Oh, yes! Once upon a time, back in the early 80s, if you were a member of the mailing list of the National Theatre (thank goodness it’s dropped Royal from its name: what’s the RNT when it’s at home?) you paid your £4 for the year and you were entitled to priority booking, i.e. you got the booklet listing all the forthcoming productions earlier than the hoi polloi, and could book for plays in advance of them. Yes, it was elitist, but if you were a theatre freak like me you couldn’t do without it, and anyway it worked very well. In those days, £4 was quite a lot of money for the service, but not beyond the means of you or me. Over the years the price went up steadily but moderately: it was £10 in 2000, for instance, until we (my partner and I) realized that fifty percent of the time we weren’t getting the seats we wanted any longer, or even getting any seats for our chosen dates. Somehow, the priority system wasn’t working any more. The National Theatre must have realized that as well because, lo and behold!, they soon started a 3-tier system: a priority-priority-priority thing, which entitles you to priority-priority-priority booking – in advance of everybody else and which costs £350 per annum; a priority-priority thing, which entitles you to priority-priority booking – after the moneyed people have made their choices; that costs £60 per annum; and finally a priority booking thing, which costs £10 and which entitles you to, as I said above, not much at all.

We pay £60 (because we’re made of money, LOL!) and these days we do get what we want most of the time, although forget about getting tickets for every press night, as one used to: entire auditoria are now block-booked for those performances, you know, for “personalities”. However, I expect we will have to join the upper tier in the future because no doubt we will start not to get what we want at some point.

Also, there are different prices for different performances. That’s always been the case: previews have cost less than later shows. But, in the past, press nights, which come at the end of a run of previews, used to count as previews. Then they decided that one should pay more for the privilege of sitting next to a critic scribbling all through the play or fiddling with his programme when he can’t remember who plays what. Fine, ok, I don’t mind paying a bit more to be able to spot the odd celebrity. But the latest booking form (which, btw, arrived one day after the opening of the priority-priority booking period!) revealed that previews are now split into early and later ones. The first two, when the actors can’t remember their lines and the director hasn’t quite made up his mind about lots of stuff and the lighting is less than perfect, are cheap-ish; and the rest are even more expensive. Outrageous!

Then there’s chicken. Once upon a time, if you bought a chicken, you could be more or less assured you were getting nice, lean meat (perhaps not as much as turkey, but less chewy and a bit more tasty). Now we’re told that ordinary chicken is just as fat as fast food, so to get the same good-for-you food you need to buy “organic” chicken, i.e. fork out a lot more money!

See a pattern here? There’s a constant erosion of goods and services and it’s happening everywhere. How do we stop it? No idea.

A slap to all those sly providers of said goods and services who are playing with us and think we’re not aware of it!