After Life

Now, that has caught your attention! And for many things nowadays, this is important – the actual truth, less so. Consider this story – very early in my career, over 25 years ago, i was appearing with a travelling opera company in the UK in Cole Porter’s Kiss Me Kate – it was a budget production and I had two roles – Kate’s father in Act 1 and Kate’s rich lover, Harrison Howell, in Act 2 – we thought it would look strange on the programme if Richard Suart was named as playing both characters, so I invented Dick Traus, whose surname is mine backwards, and Dick is a corruption of Richard – we even gave him his own biography in the programme which claimed that he had made his Covent garden debut as The Photographer in Britten’s Death in Venice – true, but then the role is a mute one! Furthermore he had made his English National Opera debut as the Weeping Nun in Janacek’s From The House of the Dead – true, however another mute role but for the screaming when being interfered with on the kitchen table by an inmate, (and screamed most loudly on the broadcast night for my family in Cumbria) – I had therefore ’sung’ in neither House, but the casual programme-reader might have been well impressed. I had to kill him off after The Stage newspaper gave him a better review than me!

So how did I come to wet myself? – well, I missed my mouth with a water bottle – this wonderful company thinks of everything and provides us with named bottles which we can use when off-stage – well, I never get off-stage so I take in a fair quantity right at the beginning – these bottles have a fixed straw, but I started squeezing before the straw found my mouth…a quick trip back to the make-up room, and all was well. No colostomy bag needed…yet…

So we have had two performances now, and generally they seem to have been well received – from our point of view, they have gone according to plan, the conveyor belt was a bit wayward on the first night, but I put that down to opening night nerves – it soon settled down – Sarah did not lose a contact lense, which she had done in an early rehearsal resulting in Mr Walter grubbing around on the conveyor belt in the darkness with no success – and she did not accidentally unplug my upstage TV on which there is a vital image of Otto – you might think I am looking at Video-Tapes of my life – but actually it is yet another monitor – and vital; at the second performance, the conductor’s image did not appear at the required moment which resulted in much wailing and gnashing of teeth, until someone made the correct connection backstage – this show is no easy ride!

Tonight is OperaFlirt night to which I am greatly looking forward – what a clever idea to get younger audiences to consider opera as an entertainment – this show is no laugh-a-minute, but it is totally absorbing and thought-provoking – demanding and moving, and ultimately rewarding.

And afterwards – let’s Flirt!!