One of the perks of the arts community is that you get invited to things without having to pay. Arts people take care of their friends because like themselves, their friends are always broke.
Tonight I went to the night after opening night of a one man show by John Keyes, a marvelous actor. One of the top actors in Ireland actually. It was a very small crowd in a small venue… this is the trial run, the warmup before he takes it to London.
John is the agent for a close friend of mine, and although I knew he was a top actor, I only knew him in a social environment and had not actually seen him doing his professional thing.
I was awed.
He wrote the play and performed the two acts. Solo. One man show. He didn’t need anyone else. From the first word to the last I was rivited.
Well, almost. To digress… I used to do a great deal of theatre myself. Mostly tech, although I used to do work in musicals. I knew I was a mediocre actor. I pushed choreographers to new levels as they strove to find moves for three left feet… I got the parts because I could belt, pure and simple. Nonetheless, I decided that I was better off doing tech… and then someone talked me into producing a play. It’s that demon rum, something like that. Devil made me do it and it was a bad idea. I can only say that I did *not* commit homicide upon the director; I even went so far as to stop the cast from stringing him up from House One… and I never did theatre again. I was already losing pleasure in theatre because instead of watching the show, I saw the detail. I’d note the light cues, catch the flaws in the fields, nod my head at the use of a particular fresnel… in other words, the magic was gone.
So to come back to our story… I was watching John in the midst of a brilliant monologue and caught myself analyzing the reflections of the straw gelled PAR reflecting off the grand piano strategically placed as a distant backdrop behind him… and caught myself before it was too late.
That was my only slip of the night.
I won’t give you a lot of detail, but the show is about Michael Mac Liammoir, originally from London, who was a founder of the Irish theatrical tradition. A man whose passport was signed by De Valera himself.
The monologues and acting are brilliant. When John hits London, look for it.
