We ended...with a devised show that was to be taken round the local old-people's homes. Our first date was in Hampstead. The show went well. I approached a couple of old dears after it had finished and mouthed and nodded loudly to the one nearest me, "Did... you... enjoy... the... SHOW?" She turned and said, "Yes thank-you. I'm their warden."
Between the end of my first year and the beginning of the second, Naomi and I went on holiday to Crete. A month or so before going, I had decided to dye my hair blonde and experiment with eye-liner. I was a huge fan of a band called Japan, and an even bigger fan of the singer David Sylvian, a Bowie-esque figure, dubbed the world's most beautiful man by someone or other. I would put the eye-liner on in the morning and go to college wearing trousers that ballooned out Kid Creole style. I felt Gooooood! I thought I looked quite cool! That was until the local skin-head, he of the spider-web tattoo on his face muttered, "Poof" as I passed him on the Finchley Road one day. The trousers and compact bit the dust pretty soon after that, and I took to wearing the same pair of shitty track-suit bottoms every day for the rest of my stay in North London. The hair stayed. During the holiday, it went from Sun-In orange to white blonde! Cool!
In some sort of weird coincidence, I was cast as the blonde Italian immigrant, Rodolpho, in our first production of the second year., "A View From The Bridge" by Arthur Miller. Jerome and Sean shared the role of Eddie, so I got to fight the first and kiss the second during the play...magic!
The second show was the Restoration comedy, A School for Scandal. Pshaw! I was given the part of Moses, the money lender, and rushed back home to share the news and do my funny Jewish voice for Naomi. I ran in and did my first line for her. "I did all I could for him, Sir Oliver, but he was ruined before he came to me for assistance" in my best, weak-R'd, Fagin. Naomi went quiet. I didn't think anything of it and carried on with the evening. Eventually, she came to me and explained that she had something to tell me. I was dumb-founded. She promised to tell me the following day. I spent all that day trying not to think of the worst. Was she leaving me? Was there someone else? Was she ill? I got home and prepared myself. She sat me down and began...
She was Jewish.
Watching her fear as she told me who she was, touched me deeply and I felt more in love with her at that moment than I ever had before. It simply hadn't occurred to me, and to see her discomfort made me feel stupid and shallow. I was proud to be associated with her. I didn't give a stuff about anything else. A few weeks later, we went to the West End to see Martin Sherman's "Messiah" starring Maureen Lipman. I stood in the foyer and looked at all the other Naomi's there and felt an intense sense of belonging I'd never experienced before.
The third and final show of the second year was Ibsen's "John Gabriel Borkman", a real crowd-puller. The lead role was split into three and I was to play the last. By this point, the man is eighty-odd and near the end of his life. I was twenty. I decided to grow my first beard. At the 'Crits' afterwards, where the staff sat with us all and commented on each of our performances, they simply smiled and said that I'd had a "stab" at it. The director was a little more constructive. She said she could've "eaten me for breakfast". Mmmm.
The second year of the course was the busiest of the three. We rehearsed our shows; we had classes in voice, movement, verse, circus performing; we went to the zoo once a week for animal study.
Animal Study was the brain-child of Barbara Caister, movement guru extraordinaire. She began the first lesson by telling us how Dorothy Tutin's - or was it Claire Bloom's? (Peggy Ashcroft?) - 'Puppies in their Basket' was astonishing. We had a hard act to follow. Quite how Dorothy, or Claire, or Peggy, managed to be four or five puppies at once was beyond me, but there you go. Barbara was a law unto herself. I'm sure she lived in another world most of the time. She had a heavy accent and looked like a Russian who'd had one too many vodkas. When she put on her sheepskin hat in winter, she was Brezhnev. She freaked us all out once by telling her story of how, in her youth, she'd had sex with a young man in a punt. To put that image in our young minds was, quite frankly, irresponsible. I joke a little, of course. We held her in great affection and she has unfortunately since passed on to the great distillery in the sky. I'm sure Central is the poorer without her.
Anyhow, part of our second year was Animal Study, culminating in a 'showing' at the end of the second term. We had passes to London Zoo and would go along there once a week to find an animal we felt an affinity with.
The showing itself was a huge eye-opener. It displayed people's self-images so effectively, it was scary. The two most shocking and obvious were Amanda Donohoe and MJ Cuckson. Now we were all pretty aware of MJ's sexuality. He would strip to the waist on a hot day and think nothing of doing press-ups on the college steps in full view of the public. He wasn't your average Adonis. He was 6' 7" for a start and stood with his weight on his toes and his hips forward thus giving him a curiously unbalanced air. MJ didn't give a stuff about that. We had the distinct impression he reckoned he really was God's gift to woman-kind, so we let him get on with it. His animal showing, though, was a peach.
He'd chosen to be a monkey. Fair enough. We'd already had an extremely good chimpanzee from Neil Caple and a couple of marmosets from girls, so, as we and the staff settled down to watch MJ's chimp, we were all expecting pretty much more of the same. He began harmlessly enough - a bit of crouching and grunting - but then he went beserk! The room we were performing in had wooden exercise bars up the walls and he leapt up and climbed to the top, swung with one arm while staring us out, and... began to masturbate. We all covered our faces with our hands and quietly groaned. MJ meanwhile finished himself off and came down to a smattering of applause and embarrassed sniggers.
Amanda Donohoe decided to be a leopard. Again, fair enough. We'd also had a tiger and a panther before her, so you would've thought a leopard held no scope for unexpected surprises. We watched as 'Donohoe', as we affectionately called her, lay on the floor in front of us in a vaguely leopard-like position and began to lick herself from top to bottom for what seemed like hours. When she finally finished, we were so mesmerised, it took quite a few moments to come round and register our appreciation.
I'd had great trouble finding an animal I felt at one with. I felt too long in the spine and neck to be able to convince as anything cute or compact, and giraffes were just too dull. Every week I'd visit the zoo and stare at penguins or snakes or elephants or bats and try to see something in them I could relate to. With only a week to go before the showing, inspiration struck. I felt physically foot-heavy, and not particularly fluid or cool, slightly comical with a big chin. I turned a corner and came face to furry face with my doppleganger... a kangaroo. Once I'd made my decision, I could visualise Skippy's shape within mine and the rest was easy. Come the day of the showing, MJ's masturbating monkey and Donohoe's ridiculously sexual leopard had distracted me from the job in hand - mainly, constructing a fluent three or four minutes of kangaroo action. Before I knew it, I found myself out there with eighty eyes looking my way. I winged it. Thought on my (over-long) feet. I ate bits of leaf from imaginary bushes. I leant forward and lurched forward on my hands bringing my legs up to meet them in a very - if I say so myself - kangaroo-like fashion. Then I ate a bit more, pretended to hear something, ate again, heard something again, and completely ran out of ideas. I stood motionless for half a minute or so, then, inspiration struck. I imagined a cartoon 'clang' and snapped my head to the side, froze and fell stiff as a board, announcing as I got up, "Boomerang." Cue laughter and tumultuous applause. Oh, yes...comedy genius, even then!
All did not go as well that year, however. We had started stage fighting in earnest on Saturday mornings. A qualified stage fighter taught us how to tumble, pull punches, sword fight etc. all in preparation for an exam at the end of the year to gain the fight certificate - all stunt men have this certificate and almost all drama students...it's not rocket science.
Things were going well. We'd all independently chosen and rehearsed scenes from suitable plays we could incorporated fights and swords in, and performed them for the staff, and soon, the Saturday morning arrived when we would all be examined by the panel of experts. The guy who took us through our paces insisted on calling us "boys and girls" which wound us all up the wrong way for a start! He had a ridiculously small, hairy dog, that sat under the adjudicating table and yapped at you if you got too close with a sabre. All in all, I felt he was a bit of a prat. At the end of the session, everyone left the room and sat outside. I was called in first. I stood in front of them and felt the shame seep through my body from the legs up as Terry King, our fight teacher who was a member of the panel, his brow wrinkled with sympathy, tried to explain how they had had no choice but to fail me, and that - ignomany unconfined - I was the only one of the year who hadn't made the grade. The tosser with the 'dog', ventured his three penneth by saying, "You're very tall, aren't you?" as if that explained everything! My fighting partner was MJ, the masturbating, six feet seven inch, giant of the year and he had patently passed. I walked out to the expectant faces outside and felt very lonely indeed.
A postscript to all this could be the fact that I have successfully taken up sword in many a panto and beaten the crap out of various King Rats in my capacity as minor celebrity. In fact, Terry King, the fight teacher, who broke the news that day, has actually worked with me on these shows at least twice! Oh, read this and weep, Mr. Tosser with dog!
We ended this intensely busy second year with a devised show that was to be taken round the local old-people's homes. We chose to create a medley of songs and headlines from 1933, the year our prospective audiences would have been at their most cogent. Our first date was in Hampstead. The show went well. One old guy sat the entire time, gently scratching the back of his friend's hand with his index finger, the smile never leaving his face. When his friend was wheeled off, he simply continued with the gentle scratching only this time on his own thigh. Others were much more vociferous and gaped and gawed their way through the songs. A few were as deaf as a post. I approached a couple of old dears after our little show had finished and mouthed and nodded loudly to the one nearest me, "Did... you... enjoy... the... SHOW?"
She turned and said, "Yes thank-you. I'm their warden."