wo meine Reinigungsfrau ist?!!

I have just washed my underwear and socks in what I thought was laundry liquid, but what on closer inspection turns out to be starch.

First Night

Last night was our premiere, and for the first time it really flew. Rory (Bradley) was on great form, and delivered a beautifully judged performance. Jenny (Ann) managed to tread a very delicate line between frosty and warm, and our scenes were joyous to do, especially the very tender one in Act 2. And Heather (Nina) and I got the warring/loving nature of our brother/sister relationship down pat - I'm very comfortable in that long, wordy scene with her now.
The audience was very generous, too. Some Americans in, I think, but it's difficult to tell because some German people have quite strong US accents. Some of the very parochial jokes got responses, and there were some remarkably young people in the front row.
Afterwards (in the absence of a champagne reception!) we went to Flickenschildts bar just over the road from the Ernst Deutsch Theater. It's dedicated to the German stage superstar Elizabeth Flickenschildt, but it's primarily notable because it's run by the drag artiste Fabian and his partner, whose banter is so authentically bitchy you often wonder if there's trouble brewing. Anyway, a few grosse bieres were sunk and stories exchanged whilst Fabian screeched "I'll tell you vot I vant! I vant to be your vidow!!" whilst storming off to the kitchen. Completely mad.

Home and Away (From Home)

Looks as though I'm moving house. ETH have three flats here, one in Hoheluftbrucke, one in Barmbek and a third in Sternschanze, where I'll be staying as of Friday. This is very generous of them, as it's basically to accommodate our partners (and, in my case, kids). Perhaps experience has proved that actors have a better chance of keeping it together if their loved ones visit occasionally - like soldiers at the front or whatever. It was, I believe, common practice up until the Crimean war for wives to accompany army officers and perform duties like nursing and running errands. Pretty ghastly, though, I should think. Maybe they want Sue to man the first-aid station - I'll have to read my contract.
Last night was pretty good, and the audience was wonderful. They REALLY like to clap here - I mean, we were called back for three calls and we still felt a bit mean walking off. The action's really starting to fly now, too. Lovely details creeping in. The only slightly disconcerting thing is that the prompter (the what? Quite!) sits outside the living room window and is therefore about two feet away from my face and fully visible when I sit at the desk. Most odd.
We haven't needed too much prompting lately, but when it comes it is slightly comic, as Julian and Kai (our stage managers) have quite strong accents and the plays written in a New York style. So you'll get something like "No, really, muzzer, I voss playink mein own penis" as your line, which really makes me want to chuckle.
Last preview tonight before the big opening.

It's Not Much, But It's Home (Away From Home)

Kaffe Kultur

The cafe on the way to Hoheluftbrucke station by the frozen canal - the nearest one to our flat in Kottwittstrasse - has a discreet sign outside saying W-LAN which in noticed by chance yesterday, so I've been in here for well over an hour having coffee and surfing without hassle or the ever present time limits you get normally. It's very civilised.
We had a preview preview last night for English teachers which we managed to muddle through. It got into a dreadful state at the beginning - all around the houses, down to the chemist's and back again. My heart eventually calmed down enough for me to hash up my own speeches in my scene with Mother where I bang on about my penis. They loved that bit, incidentally. Everyone likes knobs.
I suspect we won't see an audience like that again - they got some very esoteric jokes and just adored the grumpy Bradley and uptight Ann. My character and that of Nina, my sister, they were less keen on. They're much less well-written and infinitely less funny than the other two, which is a bit dispiriting, but when you think how few great parts there are for older actors in the normal scheme of things, you can't be miffed for long.

The Cocktail Hour Commences...

Ok, so it's Wednesday - which means three things:

• I've been here three days, nearly.
• I'm not getting much sleep.
• I'm experiencing profound culture shock.

We ran the play today and I muddled through Act 1 without the book - for the most part. Looks as though Wolverhampton was a good dry-run for this. The part, though, is deceptive, as I appear to say rather less than most for a few pages and then BOOM! Massive speeches. And i never go off except for 2 pages in Act 2. It's all very exhausting and they seem to have a strong preference for working in the afternoon - like today, we met at 3pm. I got up this morning at 7, and we won't be back at our digs in Kohlcan'trememberthemiddlebitstrasse until 10.30. By which time I will be all done in.

Everyone is lovely, and obviously I'm very popular for stepping in at the eleventh hour. Rory, my flatmate and playing my dad, is particularly pleased I've arrived because he says it takes the pressure off him not knowing his lines.

So far it's all been a rather knackering mix of learning lines, getting my hair dyed and having stressful times in shops trying to buy food. Although the checkout girl in REWE supermarket in my street speaks better English than I do. Shamefully.

The fruits of a morning's shopping in a strange city. Pitiful.

More when the pressure's off a bit!

Ich Bin (Ein) Hamburger!

Well, they say this business can turn on a sixpence and here, for once, is proof. That job I turned down (see posts passim) has just become live again. The director emails me on Friday night at gone 10pm to tell me that there's something's happened, they don't now have an actor playing John, and do I want to step in? I reiterated my position, there was a wee bit of chinwagging with my agent today and BANG! I'm on Lufthansa flight 4795 at 7.39pm tomorrow, and I'll be in Hamburg until the 28th April playing the lead in "The Cocktail Hour" by A.R. Gurney.

My wife is being an angel about this. We have yet to break it to Jake...

Heavy

I have put on the most astounding amount of weight recently. I only realised when I shaved and saw I had a double chin, and then I pulled out (or perhaps I should say "dusted off") one of my headshots and realised, as Blackadder once observed, I have turned into a pie shop.

This is very annoying, because I had convinced myself that my metabolism had altered and I was now one of those people who remain whippet-thin no matter what they eat. I now realise that my body-image is based on only looking at myself in the mirror when it's slightly cool (and my skin tightens up with gooseflesh) or when I get up in the morning when I haven't eaten for at least 12 hours. And I'm usually sucking in my tummy, too, as a safety net.

I used to get a lot of stick from people, especially porky people, about the whole dieting thing. Granted, I'm naturally tall(ish) and athletic(ish) but I do put it on when I'm not careful. One very chubby friend of mine used to berate me for going to the gym, but as I pointed out, no-one was likely to ask him to take his shirt off at work, were they? And as Charles Dance once observed, sooner or later someone's gonna as you to do that, and when they do you'd better have something to show them.

This was brought agonisingly home to me during rehearsals for "Pera Palas", where we debated what my character might be wearing when he re-enters after suffering extreme diarrhoea in the bathroom.

"I dunno - maybe he's had a shower?" I said. "He'd probably be in a bathrobe".

"Or a towel?" said Michael, the director. And that was it. Five minutes later Sheila Burnett arrives to take production photos, overhears the plans for the scene and immediately knows what shots she wants. And here, featuring the lovely Alex Giles, is the result:

I spent the next three weeks eating salad. I've never been in better shape.

Down in Town

I saw EGBDF at the National the other day, and it was an odd, dispiriting experience. Odd because I was in the revival in 1978 at the Oxford Playhouse and known the play VERY well; and dispiriting because I wasn't mad about it.
Firstly - it's a brilliantly written play, and chocka with great lines. But these lines have to be allowed to b-r-e-a-t-h-e a bit. I've read an interview with the actor playing Ivanov since saying that the language is so rich that allowing every laugh line its space would slow it down too much. Yes, the lines should be right on the back of the laugh, but during the audience reaction? Naah. The sacrifice is too great, especially for the Doctor, who has some of the best lines in modern drama.
The subject - a dissenting individual in an oppressive society - is represented by the neat metaphor of an on-stage orchestra with a discordant member, and through the stark, harrowing but calm reminiscences of the lead character (Alexander) the horror of what happens to such an individual in such a society is relayed. What makes it go tits-up in this version is a prolonged section where members of the orchestra variously play state heavies and victims, the latter tortured and brutalised by the former in a clumsy kind of ballet. OKAY! OKAY! WE GET IT! IT SUCKS TO BE A DISSIDENT! YOU GET BEATEN UP AND STUFF! I felt it completely underestimated the audience.
I also had a problem with the actor playing Ivanov, the lunatic. One of the great twists of the play is that we worry initially at Alexander's being locked up in the same cell as a schizophrenic, but ultimately realise that the biggest threat to his safety and sanity is his own conviction. For this twist to work, Ivanov has to be threatening, and he just wasn't. Curious, genially loony, gently unpredictable, definitely - but there is not even mild peril. When he says "If I smashed this instrument of yours over your head..." there should be a possibility of him actually doing it - his journey is so much less interesting otherwise.
Enough of what I disliked. It really scored on a musical level (ho ho!) and other performances were excellent. The ending was managed beautifully, and the audience were put in a most discomfiting position - with all our hearts we wanted Alexander to accept the sleight of hand of the state, and get better, and live happily with his son, but our heads told us that if this happened then nothing would change. As Alexander says to Sacha, "What about all the other fathers and mothers?" For the first time ever, I think, I wanted the central character to die instead of live, because otherwise his struggle was futile and the consequences for everyone else were so ghastly - the state would win. Again.
Stoppard at the absolute top of his game.

Turning Down Work

...is ALWAYS a nightmare. I was offered a job yesterday for a theatre company based abroad. That's impossible at the moment for a number of reasons, so I had to call the guy this morning and let him down. At least he took it well.
They say as an actor your greatest control over your career (and there's little enough of that, really) is your choice whether or not to take a job - you always have the final say. What they don't tell you is how hoity some people get about you exercising your choice. A guy who everyone seems to have worked for once offered me Prospero in "The Tempest" at his pub theatre in (far) North London, and just wouldn't take no for an answer.
It was mainly the profitshare (for which read guaranteed practically unpaid) factor, but the prospect of providing my own costume and doing six shows a week in front of an average audience of nine really didn't help.
He couldn't believe I was turning it down. "But you've done three shows in a row here - you're just getting started!"
Mmmmmm.

Dear Me

I got the most bizarre letter in the post this morning (almost as bizarre as a pen-and-ink sketch someone sent to my agent once, with a suggestion that it was worth £10. It wasn't!).

It seems that Royal Holloway holds a student drama awards ceremony called the RHOSCARS every year, and this year they want me, "...an outstanding alumnus in the field of acting" to be guest of honour. They encourage me to "...support the event and promote and nurture young talent." Obviously I was on cloud nine about it, and swanked about all morning planning my speech of gentle encouragement and agonising about whether I should wear a square-cut bow tie or a butterfly.

And then I got over myself. There will many guests of honour, of course, and the support they mention I might supply will, I suspect, be fiscal! That said, I have fired off a cagey reply to accept and to try to discover exactly how many guests of honour there are likely to be. I hope it's less than fifty...

Happy Christmas from the Dineens!

She's a great little mover already!

http://elfyourself.jibjab.com/view/puigqAkEK9alPS5w

Early Doors

I was at Jake's nativity play this morning. What a farce! The story had a vaguely familiar ring, but sadly they'd made no effort to place it in a modern context. I mean, there's a single mother who's not sure who the father is; there's a tax review going on; a housing shortage. Couldn't be more 2008!
For all that, the part of the innkeeper was played with verve and gusto, and there was some excellent skin work from one of the pigs. Jake's performance as one of the three sheep was a masterwork of subtle characterisation which overcame his lack of costume (which had been rejected by the actor at the last moment). Some last minute blocking changes, however, left several of the shepherds looking stranded, and there were just too many guiding stars to be strictly credible. On the whole, a charming spin on contemporary mores; a petite farce aimed more at the heart than the head. 4*

And...

I forgot to mention, the director said he'd be in touch when they'd finished seeing people IN FOUR DAYS! Work must be thin on the ground.

Loose Lips

Sooooo......I'm at this casting for a short film at LFS the other day. I haven't done any film since early 2007 because of touring and all, so it'd be very good to get in front of a camera again. Anyway, a friend had suggested me for it and you know, it's going OK.
I'm doing some good impro with a female actor; nice and effortless, good flow, and my objective in the impro is to try to tell her I love her for the first time. Suddenly I hear myself saying "...you hold my heart in these tender hands, and I know you'll be careful with it."
WHAT! WHAT WAS THAT? Her face is like a poster for "The Agony and the Ecstasy".
I glance at the director and CD, but it's too late. They've heard me. I leave like my arse is on fire.