‘An actor without a playwright is like a hole without a doughnut.” So said the American drama critic George Jean Nathan. As someone who’s earned his crust for nearly 40 years by treading the boards, acting is a profession I reckon I know my way around. And now, having been a hole, I’m about to sample my first doughnut.
Sometimes the best way to try new things is simply to be asked. A journey that began two years ago with a telephone call from a producer: “I’ve bought the rights to a book – would you like to see if you can turn it into a play?” comes to an unlikely climax on Monday night when my adaptation of a bestselling memoir, Dear Lupin, opens in London’s West End.
For those who perform, first nights may be nerve-shredding affairs, but at least when you step out on to the stage you’re the architect of your own destiny. Being the playwright is a very different matter, because the script you’ve worked on for so long has been stolen from your grasp. By the time rehearsals begin, you’ve handed your precious baby over to the fragile care of the director and the actors.
And now, with the first performance upon you, the house lights going down and the show commencing to a full house of paying punters and eagle-eyed critics, you’ve nothing to do but sit there squirming in the dark, your feelings yo-yoing between joy and despair as each line is spoken, each moment marked and each laugh extracted. Or not.
Dramaturgy being new territory for me, I’m going to have a ticklish problem on Monday evening.
How best to cope with this unique sense of impotence? Sit chewing my handkerchief in my seat? Stand at the back of the auditorium muttering each line simultaneously with the actors under my breath? Or jump up on stage, wrest the costume off the leading actor and shout: “Here, let me show you how it’s done!”
According to theatre folklore, playwrights frequently choose to avoid the ordeal altogether. The great Victorian dramatist WS Gilbert found premières so difficult that he used to walk along the banks of the nearby River Thames until the curtain fell.
The lyricist and composer Lionel Bart found such occasions even more unnerving. On the opening night of his musical Oliver in 1960, he scuttled off to the nearest cafe and stayed there until it was time to return for the audience’s verdict.
Legend reports that as he approached the theatre he heard the ominous rumble of 600 people in uproar. Thinking they were baying for his critical blood, he had to be physically manhandled by the concierge into the auditorium, where he found the noise to be a rapturous audience giving the show a standing ovation. The cast took 27 separate curtain calls that night, the show ran for 2,618 performances, and Bart’s fortune was made.
Mind you, his next premiere wasn’t so successful. Blitz!, a musical about London during the German bombing campaign of 1940, ran for more than three hours on opening night and drew lukewarm reviews as well as the now-famous comment from Noel Coward: “It was twice as long as the real thing …”
Perhaps my best policy on Monday should be simply to follow the lead of the great Oscar Wilde, who far from being cowed by the terrors of his opening nights, positively revelled in such occasions, turning up in a florid suit, his fingers bedecked by ornate rings and with a green carnation in his lapel.
Who am I kidding? I already know how I’ll cope. I’ll end up at the back of the auditorium, my eyes peering over the serried rows of heads, eyes goggling, mouth dry, peering at the action on the stage like some theatrical rubber-necker at a car crash, knowing it’s rude to stare but unable to stop myself.
Hopefully the first night will go smoothly, the critics will be kind, the play will enjoy an uneventful and successful run, and I can get back to some more acting. No more doughnuts. It’s time to revert to being a hole again.
Michael Simkins is an actor and writer who lives in London
On Twitter: @michael_simkins
