HIT OR MISS?

Here’s a by-the-way…

I am quite keen on baseball, and currently the 2014 World Series is under way, featuring Kansas City Royals and San Francisco Giants. The first team to win four games of seven clinches the title.

Prior to the start of Game 5 of 2014 World Series on Sunday 26 October, some tattooed troglodyte sang "The Star-Spangled Banner", which is of course, the national anthem of the United States. Don’t ask me why they choose these chumps, but surprise, surprise…the gawk got the words wrong.

This crooner was completely unknown to me, but apparently he is a member of what is described as… an “alternative metal band”. What’s alternative to metal? Plastic? Balsa wood? Blancmange?

When Billy Connolly was asked, “Which words or phrases do you most overuse?” he replied, “Times may change but standards must remain. I use it at least once a day. I found it on an After Eight commercial and I use it when someone’s speaking too loud or throwing their weight about.”

Bully for you, Billy!

WORDS, WORDS, WORDS*

In his book, ‘Tommy Cooper All-In-One Joke Book’ (Preface, 2013) John Fisher claims that Sigmund Freud “…famously states that jokes needed to convey their message not just in a few words, but in too few words.” Mr. Fisher’s has the advantage of me there, because I haven’t read ‘Der Witz und seine Beziehung zum Unbewußten’, (‘The Joke and Its Relation to the Unconscious’), but Ken Dodd may have, because apparently he once said, something along the lines of… “The trouble with Freud is that he never had to play the old Glasgow Empire on a Saturday night after Rangers and Celtic had both lost.”

That’s true, Doddy, but then long before “Golden Siggie” appeared on the scene, Bill Shakespeare informs us through the character of Polonius in ‘Hamlet’, that “…brevity is the soul of wit…”

My regular reader should by now, be fully aware of my admiration for the Austrian-born American filmmaker, screenwriter, producer, artist and journalist, Billy Wilder, director and co-author (with I.A.L. Diamond) of the screenplay for my favourite flick, ‘Some Like It Hot’, made in 1959. Forty-one years later, the American Film Institute listed it as the greatest American comedy film of all time. I suspect that there has been nothing since that came close to bettering it.

Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon play two Chicago musicians, Joe and Jerry, who just happen to witness the St. Valentine's Day massacre. To get out of town and escape from the gangster responsible, they disguise themselves as women, and join an all-female band that’s bound for Florida. They certainly enjoy being around the girls, especially Sugar Kane Kowalczyk (Marilyn Monroe), who sings and plays the ukulele. Joe in particular sets out to woo her while Jerry/Daphne is wooed by the millionaire, Osgood Fielding III (Joe E. Brown).

I remember, quite a few overcoats ago, watching a BBC2 documentary about ‘The Viennese Pixie’, where he dissected the scene where Jerry, disguised as Daphne, has been nightclubbing with Osgood, so that Joe can ‘borrow’ Osgood’s yacht for an evening alone with Sugar. It starts…

INT. ROOM 413 - DAWN

Jerry, still in his evening gown, is stretched out on his bed, gaily singing LA CUMPARSITA and accompanying himself with a pair of maracas. Joe appears over the railing of the balcony, steps through the window into the room.

Wilder gave a riveting explanation of how he and his co-writer pared the dialogue down to the very minimum, but then the whole script is as tight as Dick’s hatband, and the resulting movie has been described as … “…a film of inspiration and meticulous craft."

I’m not in Mr Wilder’s league… but then, who is? However, in my own little way, I do try to craft my scripts and I am a serial ‘tweaker’. Yes, I like alliteration, and occasionally may overdo it, but I reckon that it can help establish a character, and give some rhythm to the dialogue. In the right place, verbosity can be funny

Of course, as I mentioned in my blog, ‘NO LAUGHING MATTER’, (12 March 2013), an actor needs to understand a joke before he or she can deliver it properly. Then there's the business of sticking to the script...

I once guested as the director of an amateur production of Noel Coward’s ‘Hay Fever’. The leading roles of Judith and David Bliss were being played by ageing Thespians with bulky scrapbooks. Well into rehearsals, when it was time for “scripts down”, I realised that they had both learnt only an approximation of the lines, and there was no way they were going to ‘unlearn them’. What with “The Master’s” dialogue being particularly precise and mannered, from then on, it was basically damage limitation.

In my varied acting career, both as an amateur and a professional, I have always tried to be word perfect. I reckon I owe it to the writer.

Have a look at the following (edited) tips about acting comedy which I came across by chance on www.backstage.com. By gummy, it’s always pleasing to find current opinions which match those one has held since Moby Dick was a tiddler! Please pay particular attention to note number 4!

The Top 10 Tips for Becoming a Successful Comedy Actor

1. Find your funny. In what way are you funny? What's funny about you? Being aware of what makes up your personal "funny" - finding the comedy in yourself and your everyday life - is the first step to becoming a successful comedy actor. 

2. Identify your comedy character. Knowing your comedic qualities will help you identify your comedy character.

3. Explore your comedy. To be a successful comedy actor, you have to study the art form…

4. Stick to the script. Comedy is all about rhythm, timing, and pace, and it's your job as a comedic actor to identify those things in each and every piece of scripted comedy you perform. Comedy, when done right, is like a good song. Just as a musician plays the melody as composed, a comedic actor must stick to the script. That means following the words exactly as written. Don't add or drop words or attach handles to the beginnings of sentences, like "Look," "I mean," "Well," and "So." And don't change the punctuation! Always remember that a period is not just the end of a sentence; it's the end of a thought. Blowing past it or changing it to a question mark will not only change the intention of the line but also the "music" in the dialogue.

5. Learn to break down comedy scripts. Comedy is made up of two things: desperation and the unpredictable. These themes are found in story lines, jokes, and characters. 

6. Perfect your funny. As you develop your character and learn your comedic technique, you'll also start to examine more-subtle but important tools for your comedy, especially in the script itself.

7. Stay committed. You and your character need to believe in everything you're doing and commit to it wholeheartedly.

8. Be still. One of the biggest things that can kill a comedic scene is unscripted movement…

9. Watch the comedy masters. There are so many legends old and new in this business, and watching them work is vital to building your comedy career.

10. Have fun.  When performing comedy, you have to enjoy what you're doing. You need to do your homework, find your character, perfect your technique, commit to the text, then… have fun.

Of course you could just ignore all this advice and do your own thing, as many ego-trippers do. That way you end up being unfunny.... or even anti-funny!

* Also a quote from 'Hamlet'.

VARIATIONS

ON A

THEME

Recently, I considered including in a pantomime script, my own version of the comedy routine from the film ‘The Court Jester’ (1956), where Danny Kaye, an ex- carnival performer, Hubert Hawkins, posing as Sir Giacomo of Italy, is about to fight Sir Griswold of Mackalwane (Robert Middleton), in mortal combat, until one of them lies dead. Jean (Glynis Johns) and Griselda (Mildred Natwick) plot his escape. It begins…

Griselda: Listen. I have put a pellet of poison in one of the vessels.

Hawkins: Which one?

Griselda: The one with the figure of a pestle.

Hawkins: The vessel with the pestle?

Griselda: Yes. But you don't want the vessel with the pestle, you want the chalice from the palace!

See it on - youtu.be/N4ni2FxH7v8

Then, I thought… “Nix!” Even though the words would be changed, the concept would be the same, and there might be suggestions of swiping. However, whilst I was searching t’Internet for the actual dialogue, I came across reference to an earlier version of the routine, featured in the 1938 film, "Never Say Die," starring Bob Hope. ‘Old Ski Nose’ plays the role of multi-millionaire hypochondriac John Kidley who, whilst spending time at a health spa in Switzerland, meets Mickey Hawkins (Martha Raye), a Texas heiress, whose father has promised her hand to the fortune hunting Prince Smirnow (Alan Mowbray).

It’s pistols at dawn, as Hope is unwillingly drawn into a duel with the Prince. Mickey tries to even the odds, and the routine starts with the man who loads the weapons (Victor Kilian), telling her…

“All you gotta do is tell him this… there's a cross on the muzzle of the pistol with the bullet, and a nick on the handle of the pistol with a blank."

See it on - youtu.be/FhOEh6lUhLg

Amazingly, the name ‘Hawkins’ is used in both routines!

Lo and behold, a little while after, I discovered that in the 1933 film, ‘Roman Scandals’, one of my favourite comedians, Eddie Cantor, included a brief version of the routine. I had watched this some years ago, but it didn’t register at the time. The plot involves Eddie being “transported” back to ancient Rome, where he becomes involved in a plot against the Emperor Valerius (Edward Arnold), orchestrated by his scheming wife Agrippa (Verree Teasdale}, who is continually trying to poison him. Eddie is made Valerius' new food taster when the old one succumbs to another of Agrippa's plots, and ‘Banjo Eyes’ has to deliver a dish supposedly comprising of two roast nightingales to the Emperor. The Empress advises him…

“You will take the one without the parsley, for the one without the parsley is the one with the poison.”

See it on - youtu.be/2-9Ly8rn_8U

Very recently, another example came forth… or should it be fourth? In the 1948 film, "A Southern Yankee”, set during the American Civil War, Red Skelton plays a bumbling bellboy, by the name of Aubrey Filmore, who accidentally waylays an infamous Confederate spy known as "The Grey Spider" and is mistaken for him by the Rebels. The routine involves battle plans, and begins…

“The paper's in the pocket of the boot with the buckle. The map's in the packet in the pocket of the jacket. Understand?”

I couldn’t find it on You Tube, so you’ll have to take my word for it, although it is included amongst quotes from the film on IMDb. 

Rumour has it that the routine originated in Burlesque, and Eddie Cantor started his career in that branch of showbiz in 1908 at the Age of 16.

There is no such thing as a new idea. It is impossible. We simply take a lot of old ideas and put them into a sort of mental kaleidoscope. We give them a turn and they make new and curious combinations. We keep on turning and making new combinations indefinitely; but they are the same old pieces of coloured glass that have been in use through all the ages.- Mark Twain, a Biography 

Incidentally, according to television lore, the original laughs for the TV laugh-track technology (‘canned laughter’), invented by Charles Rolland Douglass in the early 1950s, were stripped from an episode of "The Red Skelton Show," which was chosen because Skelton was performing in pantomime (that’s ‘mime’, not ‘panto’), providing a dialogue-free recording. Over the years, Douglass added more sounds. (ASSUMES MICHAEL CAINE VOICE) "Not a lot of people know that!"

CLASS ACT #13

Here’s Helen Reddy, singing in the sunshine in the Muppet Show, Series 3, Episode 313, May 1978, when she was 36 years of age. She’ll be 73 in October. Ouch!

How about that corking camel? It would look good in your production of ‘Ali Baba’, ‘Sinbad the Sailor’, or even 'Humpty Dumpty'... hotcha, hotcha, hotcha!

Notice that the body of the camel has got two holes in it, both top and bottom. The dancers wear big feet, trimmed with faux fur fabric with long pile hair. Their leggings and ‘hats’ are similarly trimmed, and the camel body just drops over the two of them. It won’t be easy to make, but It’s a stunner… and Helen Reddy is a ‘beaut’ as well!

No tricky dance steps, but very clever, and brilliantly done. A great musical number for a pantomime, camel or no!

CHARACTER

STUDIES

Recently I had a request from someone who was planning to audition for a part in one of my pantomimes. She was actually interested in two specific female characters, and asked if I could supply “character descriptions”, adding, “There does not seem to be any indication of how to present or sound like the characters. She wanted an idea of “...outstanding features… mannerisms..." and to know, "...if either might have… an accent.”

Are these hypertheatrical questions?

It’s true that I don’t describe the characters in any great detail. Shakespeare offers even less.

On the Internet Movie Database, one of their members lists the “Best Hamlet Performance in movies and on stage.” They are, in order… Laurence Olivier, Ethan Hawke, Kenneth Branagh, John Gielgud, Jonathan Pryce, Mark Rylance, Simon Russell Beale, David Warner, Innokenti Smoktunovsky, and Jude Law. I have seen some of these film performance, and there is no question, they differ considerably… even though they are all using the same words.

I suggest an age range for each of the roles I write, but I qualify this with the general… “The ages are preferred, but not fixed.” 

Perhaps I could be more descriptive, but some people might take the suggestions too literally, when there is obviously scope for variations. It can often depend on the actor’s age, physique, physicality, experience, and talent, since there is more than one way to flay a feline.

Back in the 1990s, I played Judge Brack in a professional production of ‘Hedda Gabler’.The sister of an Oscar-winning actor played the title role…no, I’m not dropping the name... and she had an exercise book full of notes about Hedda’s character, her strengths, her weaknesses, her foibles etc. Horses for courses, but that’s not my style. I have always believed that the character is in the script. If it ain’t there, it’s nowhere. There is a story that J.M. Barrie once told an anxious actor who was seeking help in interpreting his part… “I should like you to convey when you are acting it that the man you portray has a brother in Shropshire who drinks port.” Well, bust my buttons!

Often, there is a speech which is the key to a character. Many moons ago, as the crow flies, I played the part of Leonard in an amateur production of ‘Time and Time Again’, by Alan Ayckbourn. Half way through the four week rehearsal period I was really struggling to find the character, I considered playing him with a limp, a hunchback, a strong regional accent… or maybe all three. Then one rehearsal... eureka! As I remember it, there is a speech where the character looks out over some municipal playing fields and contemplates the changing seasons… putting up the goal posts during autumn, taking them down in spring, and mowing the cricket pitches... and so on and so on, ad infinitum. It’s quite philosophical, and I realised that this was very close to my own outlook, which meant that I didn’t really need to act at all… just play myself. The reviews were glowing. One stated, “The cast of five were superb. It was one of the smoothest first night performances I have seen.” So it must have worked.

Accents are something I use sparingly, because I reckon must scripts should be able to be played anywhere in the English-speaking world, without too much difficulty. I am a Yorkshireman born and bred, consequently, the rhythms of speech and some of the phrases probably shout that fact from the rooftops. Often when I am printing off scripts for groups north of the border, I find myself reading the lines with a Scottish accent. I must say, Dames’ dialogue seems to work well with a Caledonian cadence.

Here are some quotes about performing comedy, by and about people who are far more experienced than me…

“Perhaps my definition of comedy is at odds with current trends, but I just believe that to gain the sympathy of the audience for your character, you have to maintain a sense of reality, no matter how fantastical the situation becomes.” Kenneth Williams quoted in - ‘Carry On Laughing’ Adrian Rigelsford: Virgin Books 1996

Frothy as her image may be, Barbara Windsor is much admired by her fellow professionals for the truthfulness with which she plays her pantomime characters. ‘Plays And Players’ December 1977

In the evolution of a (pantomime dame) performance… (Stanley Baxter) doesn’t think about where he’ll get laughs until a very late stage. The early work is concentrated on those dramatic high points that he regards as keys to his character’s development.‘ Plays And Players’ December 1977

…in my impersonations, for example, I seriously study the person I wish to imitate and rehearse the impersonation many times in the serious vein, before I even attempt to give it a humorous twist. Then I try to insert the humour while still in the character of the person I am portraying. Thus, the basis of actuality is given to the impersonation." Comedian Willie Howard, regarded as one of the giants of American Vaudeville.

Acting is all about honesty and if you can fake that, you've got it made. George Burns

CHORUS LINES

In his hilarious and indispensable book, ‘The Art of Coarse Acting’, in Chapter 4, ‘A Coarse Actor Performs’, Michael Green offers some advice to help the coarse actor get noticed when he or she enters in a crowd, and even steal a scene when they haven’t any words to say. I remember seeing him present his talk on coarse acting, and with the help of some shawls, stout sticks and staffs, he quickly created a coarse crowd from volunteer members of the audience. Very funny… in the right context.

More and more, since I started writing pantomimes, I have tried to ensure that the chorus, as I generally call them, have some worthwhile lines, and significant involvement in the action. In my scripts I list ‘CHORUS #1,#2,#3, & #4’ against the lines, but state in the Production Notes, “Whilst the lines in the script are allocated to just 4 chorus members, they can be shared out as you wish, to more or less… depending on your preference, and the talents of your company.”

During my recent efforts to inform amateur drama and musical theatre groups about my latest script… ‘Sleeping Beauty’… I have visited quite a few of their websites, and seen a good number of photographs from their pantomime productions old and new. What is often very noticeable is the chorus, standing around like the stolid spectators on the ‘Antiques Roadshow’. Even worse is where they are talking to each other at the back of the stage, whilst the principals are acting their knickers off at the front.

I am not apportioning all the blame to those valuable people, the members of the chorus. Maybe they have never been told what to do, or perhaps there has been an instruction to “Just act naturally”. Well… acting ain’t natural, and a director should know it, and guide the chorus where necessary. Of course, the script may not help, and that is why I am trying my best to provide worthwhile involvement for the ‘extras’.

I remember seeing a video of a pantomime produced somewhere in Scotland, where the stage was absolutely jam-packed with extras, in a scene reminiscent of the opening day of a New Year sale at an Oxford Street store. There were even youngsters sat on steps at each side of the stage, from where they couldn’t possibly involve themselves in the action. The answer to this must surely be that the number on stage has to be limited, but offset the reduced number of appearances with worthwhile participation. Again, the script can help.

SLEEPING BEAUTY

Breaking… or even ‘waking’ news!

Now there are nineteen… scripts that is… in the G. Wizz Promotions catalogue. The latest addition is a version of the Charles Perrault classic, ‘Sleeping Beauty’. And once again… (CUE FANFARE), we have beaten Hollywood to the punch. Their twist on the tale, ‘Malificent’, doesn’t hit the screens until the 30^th of May. Someone ought to give them a wake-up call! Hotcha, hotcha, hotcha!

Everyone should follow their dream… unless it's the one where you're at work in your underwear during a fire drill.