Victor Spinetti was wrong to tell me I'd got the part. It was highly flattering that Peter Wood wanted me to play the role of Pincus but the reality was that the other actor had been contracted and to give it to me the management would have to buy him out which would be prohibitively expensive.
My heart went out to the other actor that afternoon as I watched him working with Peter Wood on the scene I'd read that morning. It must have been very difficult for him in the light of Wood's loudly proclaimed wish that I should play his role.
However these guys were all pretty tough when it came to such situations. During lunch one day I had a chat with Jeff Shankley who was playing one of the reporters. By this time Peter Wood had developed a palate of insults for each of the actors and I asked Jeff if he was at all affected by his remarks. "I'm director-proof," was his answer.
Whenever Peter Wood became exasperated with the company he would rasp loudly: "My god! It's like pushing treacle upstairs!"
He soon became something of a tyrant to certain people. Both Tony MacCauley and Dick Vosburgh were often banned from rehearsals. Vosburgh occasionally sidled up to actors and surreptitiously handed them a slip of paper with a line change on it. When Wood saw him doing this one day he bellowed: "Out!' The hapless Vosburgh shuffled away.
There were certain roles which hadn't yet been assigned understudies and the part I dearly wanted to cover was that of Earl Williams, the sad convict whose execution by hanging formed the basis of the plot. Earl was being played by Robert Longden who, unlike me, was over six foot tall which was difficult as he had to spend almost all of the second act inside a roll top desk.
I began lobbying by telling Rosemary that I dearly wanted this job.
Three of us were playing police officers. Myself, Murray Ewen and Steve Law. The day that the guns were passed out for us to use in the chase scene when Earl Williams escaped, I was approached by Shaun Currey, who played the mayor. A distinctive looking man with strong eyebrows and a thick moustache, Shaun looked me straight in the eye and beckoned me to follow him.
"I'm going to show you how to use a rifle," he said. Shaun had a military background and in addition to teaching me how to handle the weapon he took me through an exercise, spinning the rifle around which I incorporated into my daily warm up routine.
The chase turned out to be a fairly exciting and mildly exhausting experience for it had to work the same way every time.
Steve Law and I began to improvise in character as our respective cops had a quiet moment talking before the alarm went off. We invented long elaborate tapestries of intolerance in which we'd complain to each other about this minority or that. This was a therapeutic way of fighting off boredom and it amused us enormously.
"Hey Tom," Steve would stage whisper to me as my sergeant was Thomas O'Roone. "Have you heard the latest news about that fruitcake Williams?"
Murray, the other cop, never engaged in this routine with Steve and I so it remained our little club however, many of the actors did this in the show. Neil MacCaul who played Woodenshoes, a police officer of European extraction was constantly making observations in character much to the amusement of those who heard him.
Somewhere during rehearsals I had to escort Longden's Earl Williams down into the cell and Dennis Waterman as Hildy would bribe me so that he could sneak in and get an exclusive interview with the condemned man. Standing nearby, Victor Spinetti described it loudly as: "The bribing of Johnny M."
The sight of me at 5'6" aggressively escorting Longden who was at least 6'2" must have amused Peter Wood as he suggested the two of us should develop a comedy act.
Because of gigs, I wasn't able to go to the pub in the evenings while we were at Alford House but I heard all about these sessions from Steve Law who told me that Spinetti would put a pair of nipple clamps on the bar along with a £50 note and challenge anyone to down a pint of beer while wearing the nipple clamps. If they could keep the clamps on for the duration, the £50 was theirs. If not they paid Victor a fifty. Presumably he made a fair bit of money on that one as the nipple clamps were, according to Steve, excruciatingly painful.
Spinetti was very funny and a thorough going rogue. I remember him with a wicked twinkle in his eye suggesting that I should come up to Shevelove's flat with him for some candy.
He was a very outspoken actor who didn't have a high opinion of Peter Wood, particularly his habit of making personally insulting remarks about the actors in front of the whole company.
Spinetti was also a marvellous raconteur and, since he knew so many famous people in show business, his yarns were never dull.
His skill with accents and impersonations meant that he did wonderful imitations of all four Beatles. One of these yarns involved the time he took John Lennon and Yoko Ono to the National Theatre to discuss his production of Lennon's play with Sir Laurence Olivier. Spinetti bounced from a perfect Sir Larry to an equally perfect Lennon with ease.
"My dear Johnny," he said frenetically as Olivier, "My dear Johnny if this play that dear baby is directing is turned into a film. If this play is turned into a film my dear Johnny I have to tell you that…" At this point he babbled emphatically: "…the National Theatre will own 60% of it!"
To this Victor's Lennon replied in quiet drawling Liverpudlian: "Don't you have people you pay to talk about these things who can talk to the people I pay to talk about these things?"
* * *
Alford House where we rehearsed was big and a bit dusty and the set we were working on was on two levels. The first floor was just lumber on scaffolding so that the planks actually bent a bit when you walked on them.
One physical detail about the set I didn't quite understand was that, at certain points in the show, it was to move hydraulically as the full set, which included a police station, press room, mayor's office and a jail cell was actually wider than the stage at the Hippodrome, Bristol and the Victoria Palace.
So the stage management would loudly announce that the set was moving at the appropriate times during rehearsals.
The days leading up to our departure for Bristol were fairly hectic. Steve, Murray and I all visited Berman's in Camden Town to get fitted for our police uniforms and I also got my Pincus costume.
In spare moments I was also making preparations for my Hoagey Carmichael night at the Pizza Express. Having a background in graphic design, I did all my own publicity and got some handbills printed before taking the coach to Bristol from Victoria. My girlfriend Annie, a nurse living in Pimlico, promised to come to Bristol to visit as soon as she could.
My Bristol digs were up in Clifton not far from the suspension bridge which became a regular landmark in my early morning walks.
Ant Bowles had two deputy musical directors who would conduct the shows when he couldn't and who played keyboards in the orchestra. They were Robert Tapsfield and Gareth Valentine and both served as rehearsal pianists at Alford House.
Gareth was the younger of the two and the whisper was that this was possibly his first job after graduating from music college. Another whisper was that Ant was his god father.
It was no great surprise to anyone who met Ant that he was gay as he was extremely camp and spoke in a highly flamboyant manner with equally animated gesticulations. But there was nothing ostentatious about the way he dressed which was very low key and ordinary. For the duration of the rehearsal period in London this was true of Gareth too.
But when we arrived in Bristol Gareth had died his hair bright orange. His natural colour was blondish brown. On my first evening there I bumped into both of them down near the Hippodrome and we went for a meal.
Ant was not happy about Gareth's vibrant new hair colour and told him so. The older M.D. was somewhere in his fifties while Gareth was early twenties and though both were gay there was a generational difference in their approach. For Ant, being respected by the musicians was terribly important and, though he never disguised his sexuality, he certainly didn't flaunt it in their presence. Gareth, however, didn't feel that way at all and if his hair colour and dress sense caused offence so be it.
Our new rehearsal hall was the ballroom at the Grand Hotel which was as different from Alford House as it was possible to be. The dusty approximation of the set had been constructed exactly the same but in sumptuous surroundings.
By now we were engaged in full runs of both acts which were followed by detailed notes from Peter Wood. Everything had moved up a gear and the tension increased significantly. Dennis Waterman, whose dance rehearsals had always looked a bit casual to me, suddenly became very polished indeed.
The nightlife also hit a new high for me as I was able now to indulge in evenings out with fellow cast members and did so. I was already friendly with Steve Law who was a regular drinking companion of Dennis Waterman's so I naturally was pulled in that direction and my first few nights in Bristol produced some serious hangovers.
Our first daytime visit to the Hippodrome was terribly exciting for me. Seeing Carl Toms' set in the theatre was a bit like discovering the lost ark of the covenant. It was a fabulously beautiful piece of work and must have cost a fortune. The wood was as solid as any house and the detail took my breath away. They let us all loose on it and while wandering around upstairs I encountered Tony MacCauley who asked if Steve and I would like to see the train. Naturally we said yes and he got someone to run it past the top window with the skyline behind it. Tony was even more like a kid in a toyshop than usual.
Ant and his colleagues were not with us at the Grand Hotel rehearsals because he, Robert and Gareth were all working with the musicians who had convened in the bar down at the Hippodrome. It was like seeing the different parts of a model plane converging to witness the separate components of this new musical locking together. The set, the orchestra, the lights and the singing all met each other for the first time.
We also were assigned dressing rooms and I was sharing with Neil MacCaul, one of the funniest members of the company so I had no complaints.
As the technical rehearsal grew nearer the nightlife also became more intense and Peter Wood, whose notes were now much more detailed and pointed, began lecturing us on the need to conserve our energy. Warning the assembled company about all night drinking sessions Dennis Waterman shouted out: "I'm over here!"
To be continued…
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