|
|
The Tour of Ireland
with The Anew McMaster repertory company (1951-52)
|
||||
"I toured Ireland with Mac for about two years
in the early 1950s. He advertised in The Stage for actors for
a Shakespeare tour of the country. I sent him a photograph and
went to see him in a flat near Willesden Junction [...] He offered
me six pounds a week, said I could get digs for twenty-five shillings
at the most, told me how cheap cigarettes were and that I could
play Horatio, Bassanio and Cassio. It was my first proper job
on the stage." "We played in Cork in a theatre that burned down, called the Cork Opera House, a wonderful theatre. It had a backstage bar, so actors could pop in and have a drink while the show was running. We were doing Lady Windermere's Fan, and I was playing Lord Windermere. Joe Nolan came on one night wearing a top hat, tails, white tie, monocle, cloak and carrying a silver walking stick; in other words, dressed to the nines. He walked up to me on stage, in front of the full house, and said in a very, very quiet voice, under his breath, "I'm totally pissed, say something!" I said, "Ah! Lord whatever-his-name-was, you've been I should imagine to the Garrick." Harold Pinter to Mel Gussow, Conversations with Pinter, Nick Hern, 1994, p.110. |
||||
Charles the Wrestler in As You Like It by William Shakespeare Horatio in Hamlet by William Shakespeare Edgar and Edmund in King Lear by William Shakespeare Macduff in Macbeth by William Shakespeare Cassio and Iago in Othello by William Shakespeare Bassanio in The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare Hortensio in The Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare Creon in Oedipus by Sophocles Sir Robert Chiltern in An Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde Lord Windermere in Lady Windermere's Fan by Oscar Wilde John Worthing in The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde |
||||
| The Drama in April | ||||
 |
 |
|||
| So March has become a museum, | ||||
| And the April curtains move. | ||||
| I travel the vacant gallery | ||||
| To the last seat. | ||||
| In the spring decor | ||||
| The actors pitch tents, | ||||
| In a beak of light | ||||
| Begin their play. | ||||
| Their cries in the powdered dark | ||||
| Assemble in mourning over | ||||
| Ambassadors from the wings. | ||||
| And objects and props in the rain | ||||
| Are the ash of the house | ||||
| And the grave unnumbered stones | ||||
| In the green. | ||||
| I move to the interval, | ||||
| Done with this repertory. | ||||
| Harold Pinter, 'The Drama in April' (1952), in Various Voices: Prose, Poetry, Politics 1948 - 1998, Faber and Faber, 1998, p.148. | ||||
| Back To Acting main page |