And Then There Were Four

After a day and a half of the atmosphere on stage being soggy with testosterone, we finally get to Madeleine's first speaking entrance. This coincides with the off-stage dunking in the Seine I mentioned a few days ago, and the vexed question of her subsequent state of undress has been very sensitively handled. Downstage side of the hospital screen, however, there is nowhere to hide, and poor old Roger has to make do with a towel like a flannel postage stamp. I sincerely hope this is a temporary situation - it's meant to be Vertigo, not Nausea.
Our convention that the psychotic episodes are played out using only the props and costumes in the ward doesn't apply to the imaginary Madeleine, and consequently Laura, our designer, has a sheaf of costume designs for her. The wall in the Green Room looks like a 1940's edition of "Vogue" - with a very small men's section!

Roger, Roger!

I thought I knew this play (and the originating novel) well, but I spent large tracts of today wearing the expression of a man who has just set light to his trousers. There are so many layers of reality, and there are so many characters being disingenuous that it's often difficult to keep track. I mean, at one stage Dan Copeland's character - Nurse Gratin - steps into Roger's imagined scene in a Marseille hotel, takes on the character of a Moroccan concierge whilst Roger questions him about Renee (who is not present as far as Gratin is concerned but whom the concierge can see), and he then briefly morphs into a parallel version of the concierge who reminds Roger that Renee cannot be Madeleine because the latter is dead. Uh-huh.
Led by Karen, we picked the Gordian plot of Act I apart this afternoon as a prelude to putting it on it's feet tomorrow morning, and I feel a great deal more confident about that prospect now.
The creative team's plans for what it will look and sound like are beyond exciting, but more of that soon. Fantastically tired...

Quiet Month

Hell's teeth, that was a really quiet month. One casting for a bank training film and a couple of film castings - I'm not going to get fat on that.
Which is just as well, because the hard copy of the script arrived a while ago and there's a moment in the action when Madeleine and Roger get absolutely sodden when he retrieves her from the Seine. Now, in the rosy tint of my mind's eye, a damp and breathless me equates exactly with Colin Firth's emergence from the lake in P&P, but the reality is very different. It's a great moment both in the novel and on screen, but the mind boggles at how it's to be staged. I can't wait to see the model at the read-through.
That's the moment when it all comes alive for me, to be honest. Those tiny, painstakingly created versions are at once amazing and terribly exciting. When Jeremy Daker unveiled the gorgeous model for "Pera Palas" I had a lump in my throat, and it managed to survive in the guys' dressing room for a couple of weeks before someone sat on it or something, and like everything else it went into the garbage on the final day. A minuscule memento mori.

Doc Shock

Except possibly courtrooms, there are few settings more inherently dramatic than the hospital, and of these surely the most unpredictable and intense is the psychiatric clinic. The basic premise of Vertigo is that Roger Flavieres is hypnotically regressed in Ballard's clinic to demonstrate his phobias and their causes, so the story is told in highly animated flashback - but with the added spice that Madeleine/Renee can be seen by the audience, but by no other character on stage save Roger.
I did Stoppard's EGBDF as a young actor, most of which takes place in a Russian psychiatric clinic. It was disconcerting to step from the safety of the schoolroom area to approach Ivanov, the lunatic, as he posed as the Doctor. The superb Mark Penfold, who played Ivanov in that Oxford Playhouse production, also appeared in some of the Tricycle's Tribunal Plays in the late 90's. I ran into him there whilst I was doing some marketing, and I decided to say hello. "Do you remember me?" I said, "I played Sacha in EGBDF in 1979".
"Noooo, no no no no." he said. "No no no. You can't be. NO! You're a GROWN MAN! Oh God!" 

Night Sweats

I had the most peculiar dream last night. I was hosting a week-end garden party - all very Noel Coward - and my agent was staying. This unlikely scenario was compounded by his having bright red hair (he doesn't), and his refusal to talk to anyone whilst he wrote down notes (unlikely, he's very charming and gregarious), and his complaining that there was no clean towel in his room (sadly all too plausible in our rather haphazard household). I awoke braced for the "Dear Client" letter!

Misapprehensions

There's a moment in the Hitchcock film when Jimmy Stewart complains to Miss Ellie from Dallas that his "damned acrophobia" prevents him from even climbing kitchen steps - I've never noticed this exchange before.
Not for the first time, it turns out that I've been labouring under a mistake - acrophobia is the term for a fear of heights, not vertigo - that's the sensation of dizziness or spinning which can be associated with almost any phobia. You probably get vertigo if you have acrophobia, but it's not a phobic condition as such.

However, Vertigo has now become common currency as the term for a fear of heights, almost certainly thanks to the film.
These sort of global assumptions aren't rare. When we were doing Ab's Party a remarkable number of people would say, "Oh, yes? And who's playing Abigail?" Cue long tedious explanation and gradual glazing of questioner's eyes. The same thing would happen when I was doing "The Importance of Being Earnest", and even when I'd try to jolly it up by saying "Well it's terribly funny really, because Jack and Algy are called Ernest, but then of course they're not, and..." people would get really quite narked.

You feel like a pedant doing this after a while, so I'll let the vertigo thing slide. Instead here's the wonderful poster design, courtesy of and copyright OTC.

From Amongst the Dead

My script for "Vertigo" arrived last week, so I've spent a happy few days leafing through it. I watched the film and read the novel (clumsily titled above) as preparation, and I was very keen to see whether there'd been any easing of the rather unpalatable Flavieres character for this adaptation (as Hitchcock clearly felt was necessary for Hollywood).
If anything, Roger's situation in the play underlines how serious his psychological state is - he's hospitalised under the care of Dr Ballard (a very minor character in the book) and as such is an oddity, a freakshow for Ballard's audience. Looking at my notes for the recall, they were of a damaged, compromised person, short-tempered and mercurial - but this is really him before he meets Madeleine. Afterwards he's emotionally destroyed by the experience of loving and losing her, and without much hope, tries to reassemble himself with Renee. Of course his hubris is to try to remodel her, and do a better job than he could have expected.

Corporation Acts

Corporate video - the first one I did was for M&S when I worked there in about 2001; a spoof of various films which would probably have prompted a hefty lawsuit or two if it'd been more widely seen. It's possible I now own the sole surviving copy of my recreations of Hannibal Lecter and Renton in "Trainspotting", and trust me, that's a good thing.
By contrast, the PriceWaterhouseCoopers vid I shot this week had all the hallmarks of filmmaking - high production values, great production talent and a very tight shooting schedule.
Originally I was up for the maverick, off-message non-PwC type with a brash tie and Rolex, which is a part I tend to get seen for a lot. But when Tod called me on Tuesday, there'd been a volte-face of mammoth proportions and I was instead offered the experienced, aspirational PwC executive - basically a paragon, an archetype in a very crisply-ironed shirt. These parts worry me, because playing someone perfect is much harder than playing someone flawed. And the audience is not likely to be very forgiving in their assessment of how you're doing in the job they want.
Anyway, the whole process was made delightfully bearable by the crew, my co-actor Nina Voelker and the director Sacha Damjanovski. Like almost all video directors, he is an independent writer/director/filmmaker. Unlike most, he has just released a truly great-looking feature called "Dance With Me". This, in a gorgeous Small World way, stars Adam Napier, who I worked with on "Cornelius Crow" and "Folie a Deux" for Sean Martin - check links right.

Total Recall

Not everyone does recalls, but most do. Captain Cabot does them, but he doesn't expect actors to perform in front of each other (for which he is devoutly adored). A similar approach happened at a casting I went to for "Actors of Dionysus", but there the unlucky ones were surgically excised during the day, so the parts went to the last men standing. Strangely invigorating though.
Plently of directors do want you to exhibit in front of your peers, though, and although this process sounds like torture I honestly think it's a very effective means of raising your game, and it's worked for me in the past - "Midnight", most notably. Plus you get to see how good the competition is.
Trouble is, though, it's damned good. There's at least five of us, including me, up for Roger Flavieres (the lead); two for Ballard (the psychiatrist) and about three for Gevigne/Gratin/Leriche. The first Ballard kicks off and he's prepared so well, done so much work it's practically at performance level. The applause is genuine and enthusiastic, and the next contender jokes "follow that" - which is what we're all thinking.
As I watch the other Rogers I'm filled with conflicting emotions - each take is very different, and a way of doing the character that I hadn't considered. But I stick with my character choice - world weary, compromised, mercurial. As the afternoon wears on, my emotions crystallise and clarify. It's not that I didn't think of these other approaches - I don't think I could have done it those ways. They're not parts of myself I could recognise and use. I've gone with my instincts, and I've done more work than I've ever done for an audition before. I can't ask more of myself.

Despite my best efforts to the contrary (like very obviously forgetting one of the audition panel's names on the way out) I'm up aganst the big guns on June 9th.

Loving May

I'm not famous for my abilities as a self-promoter - this much is known. However, when "Loving April" came to my local venue even I realised that calling the Artistic Director and seeing if we could meet would be a good idea. I was seen for "The Firebird" at OTTC some years ago and also Chris Wallis (of Watershed) suggested her as a contact - so the lines of potential contact were established. All I had to do was pick up the 'phone.
Now this takes some balls, deep breathing, ready access to water and careful timing. But "screwing my courage to the sticking place" (if it's sticky why does it need screws? Surely overdoing it...) I make the call and have a very productive chat with Karen Simpson. She's doing Vertigo in the autumn and promises to look a my CV for it.
That was in April. Today, at the London Welsh Centre, is the fruits of that labour.

Powerful Stuff

Richard

Richard Talbot, who died last week, was the first person I met when I joined the Arena agency in 2004. He interviewed me in the manner of Frankie Howerd, and of course, won me over instantly.
He was a brilliant conversationalist with a mine of stories about celebs which you were never quite sure were really his - until he'd send you a photo of himself with Judi Dench, that is. He was criminally underused as an actor, but one who got great notices for his stage work and who had a superb radio voice. A mentor to many young actors, he was always entertaining, flirtatious, wise, loved cooking and also found it impossible to be serious in agency meetings. He'll be sadly missed.

Wrapped

So that's it - the ad is in the can. All told it's been a pretty civilised shoot, and it was very entertaining having penguins knocking about all day today - they've been greenscreening them into the set and having stuffed ones making eye contact with us and what not(I've no idea what the live penguins make of their upholstered friends - they don't give anything away). I've never seen animals being used on set before - it's a sort of organised chaos.

It turns out that Steve Hudson, the director, is responsible for some of my very favourite ads - including the NHS one where a girl talks about her father's lung cancer. It's so compelling and ghastly and touching; looking down his CV he also directed the Boursin ad with the "du tracteur" ending. What an instinct for real comedy and tragedy - and in a medium which often seems to prefer you to sail the middle passage.

I think Nicola, my make-up artist, is in love with the footballer...