Thursday 17 April 2008

Turn down the gas!

Not in "Gaslight". Boo. But cast in the other three plays in cracking parts. Yayy! Get this information from Charles Vance lui-meme, who calls on Wednesday a few moments before I'm due to leave for Mansfield.
Charles in an extraordinary man - he's acted in and produced it all; West End, No.1 tours, films too, I think. As an actor he took over from Laurence Olivier in "The Entertainer", as a producer he has given huge stars their first jobs, and he now runs two of the last authentic summer rep seasons - at Sidmouth and Wolverhampton (I'm in the latter). I've already sourced one of the plays, "The Murder Game", so I speed-read it with a different perspective. There's a character called Brian who's described as "about forty, handsome in a florid way" which I guess is me - I'm certainly not playing Gerry, who "...is twenty two, but looks much younger" unless there's been a ghastly error or everyone younger than 30 is going to be in Edinburgh.
Michael Caine tells a great story about the ageing process of an actor, where you don't notice it in the mirror, but in your stand-ins. I suppose when I read "...he's about eighty, but looks much older, walks with two sticks and can barely speak for drooling" it might be time to call it a day.

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