by Chris Cowland –
Back in 2016 the Peninsula Players sent out a notice saying they were auditioning for the coming performance of Fawlty Towers at the Charlie White Theatre. It had been 40 years since I last set foot on stage, more on that below, and I ended up playing the cantankerous old character called “The Major.”
We probably had more laughs backstage and in the rehearsals than during the actual performances. One of the episodes featured a pet rat that escaped right in the middle of a hotel inspector’s visit. An ingenious set designer built a radio-controlled rat out of a model electric car, and it worked flawlessly. Except during the first performance. We had rehearsed so many times that the batteries gave out as the rat was halfway across the dining room table. Luckily, the Major was an avid newspaper reader, so I was able to run over and swat the rat with the Daily Mail until it fell off the table and I could surreptitiously boot it under the tablecloth.
My very first stage performance was a German play that my all-boys school put on in conjunction with an all-girls Convent School across the road from us. The play was co-directed by Sister Anthony, who had a tremendous lisp. One scene required two of us to be seated in front of a fire eating grapes, but we did not realize that Sister was sitting right behind it as prompter, until a disembodied voice yelled out “Thtop thpitting grape pipths over me … .”
I acted in quite a few French plays at university, and enjoyed it immensely. Then I made the mistake of auditioning for a play called The Duchess of Malfi, written by the English playwright John Webster in 1613. I had several small parts, and then came the day of the great performance.
In one of the scenes, a group of madmen, one played by me, run onto the stage and terrorize the poor duchess, who is being tortured. The director had the brilliant idea of having us go out of the back of the theatre, sneak in under cover of darkness to various spots inside the theatre aisles, and then burst out screaming and run through the audience onto the stage. The torture scene was one of the most dramatic parts of the play, and you could have heard a pin drop. The sudden surprise of four screaming characters appearing out of nowhere was a clever enhancement.
I will preface the next part of the story with a reminder that in those days I was a poor student, and my meat diet consisted of fried or casseroled liver, and my staple vegetable was baked beans. So I had taken up my position in the darkness, crouched down like a sprinter on blocks about to run the 100-yard dash. We were in place for about three minutes, and then I was overwhelmed with a pressing urge to pass wind. I totally underestimated my ability to do this noiselessly. The back four rows of the audience swivelled round, and several of them started laughing. I totally destroyed the most dramatic part of the whole play, the director was furious, and I was given a lifetime ban.
Hence my intermission from the theatre for 40 years. I did think of auditioning for Gone With the Wind, however … .
