Memoirs of Many in One: Text Classics

We started off on the first stage of our journey into the wastes of Philistia. As it was early morning I was able to escape my daughter’s advice. Through a cold and windy dawn my beloved cats wound down towards the gate piteously mewing after their defecting mother. I cried a little and at once realised I had forgotten tissues. Craig produced some. He is immensely considerate of his leading lady. Attractive thighs – but no use.

I drive with Craig in the first of our four vans. Craig is our director. He won’t be any bother, because I made it clear at rehearsals that my performances, while formally structured, depend on my creative instinct for the drift of nuance and the fleshing out of character. You, Patrick, will understand immediately what Craig only finally accepted.

Craig and I are the only occupants of Van No. 1. Gary and Barry (sound, lighting, and general purposes) travel in No. 2, along with props, and all that angular, splintery stuff which will be put to many uses as it becomes transformed into settings of luxury and exotic beauty.

Other members of the company seem perfectly happy to squeeze into Nos 3 and 4. Most of these young people show great vitality and enthusiasm. They enjoy closeness, which is all to the good in the circumstances. One sulky little thing – Linda – may give trouble before very long. She has ideas above her billing. But I have no doubt firmness and tact will deal with Linda if the need arises.

They have rigged up a bed for me at the back of our van where I can recline during the more tedious stretches of the journey, and my God how many of them there are, dust and trees, trees and dust, or simply dust. I lie amongst my sumptuous costumes, their velvets and brocades, the trappings of Athens, Egypt, and Illyria, attempting to protect them from the glare and mediocrity of the Australian bush. Sometimes I am carried off into dreams. I am standing in a robe of midnight velvet holding a great black fan of sequined net, I am about to launch into a role which has not yet been devised, although I can feel it forming in me. Incorporate it perhaps into Dolly Formosa’s dance sequences and reveries.

When suddenly I am brought to my senses. I am tossed several feet in the air, my skull makes contact with the roof of the van. My God, I am concussed, if not fractured!

That’s all very well. I could be maimed. Shall I sue the Council? Or will it be punishment enough if I am unable to perform at Cutncumagen? (I must remember little Linda, though – waiting to jump in and make the most of an emergency.)

Patience is the secret of life on the road, and magnanimity. I have become quite attached to some of my fellow actors, and they to me – I like to think. Even little Linda has her sulk-free moments. She shared a Mars Bar with me yesterday while Barry, Gary and Craig were skinning their knuckles changing a tyre on Van No. 2. Actually, if one is prepared to wait, some amiable brute of a farmer will appear from beyond the horizon and do the job in no time at all.

So far there is a drama attached to each town (sic) on our schedule, but I shan’t bore you with these stories unless they are very special. Actually, there is a sameness about the stories as there is about the towns. I can’t go on writing (sic) because there is almost too much sic about this journey. (Oh dear, when I thought I had learnt humility while playing an assortment of nuns, or just from living with an impossibly dictatorial daughter. It seems I shall never be humble. Are artists ever?)

There is a subtle difference about the sameness of the towns (…) difficult to analyse – whether Peewee Plains, Lone Coolabah, Ochtermochty, Kanga Kanga, Toogood, Baggary Baggary, or Aberpissup – some nuance of civic pride or absence of it, a clump of dusty cannas or bed of burnt-out salvia, a row of dying or living poplars.

Dust is everywhere. I know every cranny of the School of Arts by heart. The smell of every urinal or dunny. The figure one may bump into in the dark.

When we started out I was told that members of the company would be billeted with private families in each town. I refused this warm offer, insisting that a room be booked for me at the Royal, the Imperial, the Commercial, or whatever. I love the iron-lace balconies. I love to limber up by running a leg along the rail, regardless of the gratuitous audience in the street below, whereas in a private home the hostess is worrying about her savoury boats, her sponges and Pavlovas for the after-performance supper in her lounge room. I know every lounge room from Cutncumagen to Ochtermochty. I know every balcony of every Imperial or Royal Hotel. At Ochtermochty – no, wait – I think it was Lone Coolabah – the balcony had been carried away by fire. I almost lost my balance, lifting my leg to limber up against the darkness. I could have toppled with disastrous results into my devoted audience in the street below.

Need I say that reactions to performances vary in any theatre, School of Arts, salon, or convent refectory throughout the world. You are a seasoned performer as I am.

The audience is puzzled by much of what I do, which I take as a tribute to creativity. Who wants to go on seeing the same old boring Rosalind, Viola, Hamlet, Lear, for ever? Mind you, most of the deprived individuals we play to haven’t seen any of these characters in any shape or form. Not like the professional ‘bardolators’ in the capital cities of this colony.

Sometimes creatures, always at the back of the hall, shout rudery such as, ‘If the guy’s supposed to be fat and short of breath ’e shouldn’t look skinny as an old ewe on agistment,’ or, ‘Why’s the lady carryin’ the straw dolly got whiskers tied on under ’er chin?’ In such cases the mayor, or at least an alderman, has to go round and silence them, or if that doesn’t work, ask them to leave. Sometimes that doesn’t work either. At Peewee Plains there were eggs and tomatoes: quite a scandal.

You will wonder why there’s been a pause in my report on our progress. It is not that I’m deterred by rebuffs. Isn’t it what we expect when we lay our necks on the block for art? If the axe falls, the blood may reach somebody and dragons’ teeth spring up to defend our cause.

What may prove to be the historic climax of our tour came at Ochtermochty. Or was it Baggary Baggary? Frankly I’m too dazed to remember. The Sydney Morning Herald had promised to fly their critic, K.V.H., to cover our performance. They kept their promise! K.V.H. landed at dusk in a Cessna. He was driven to the Royal, Imperial, or Commercial for a wash and brush-up, the usual armpit drill, before the Mayor turned up to drive him to the hall. No time for more than a ham sandwich, but it was hoped he would be elegantly fed at the post-performance supper.

At the Royal, Imperial or Commercial I could hear the Critic freshening himself at the washstand. He was embarrassingly close to the star. I was too discreet to knock at his door and tip him off to my potentialities, as no doubt many would have done – nibbled at the opposite end of his ham sandwich till they met in the middle, brushed away the dandruff from his coat collar.

Discussing the event with members of the company before what turned out a disastrous evening, none of us could think what the initial in the centre of the cluster stood for. We were all familiar with King Harry, but that V … Linda, who is a bitch, but a nice one when she is on side, suggested the V could stand for Vampire, except that K.V.H. might have shown more signs of the blood he has sucked.

We enjoyed a giggle as we slapped on the make-up. In my case, as Cleopatra, a lengthy operation – to suggest the earthiness, the Nile silt, the ful medames of which this Egyptian slut is composed. I reflected how my mother-in-law Magda Demirjian, herself a Middle Eastern slut, would have appreciated the transformation. I could not help feeling pleased with myself as my glance roamed from dirty navel to bloody talons and ditto toenails – except the one whose toe had got jammed in a door. I was ready for King Vampire Harry of the Sydney Morning Herald – to challenge ‘bardolatry’ with truth.

The programme started with scenes from some of the comedies performed by supporting actors. Poor things, I could hear the yawns from where I sat brooding over the missing toenail, waiting to project my interpretation of Cleopatra at an audience which might, or might not, be won over – including K.V.H. of the S.M.H. To pass the time I composed snatches of the notices I might receive: ‘… unorthodox to say the least. But do we expect orthodoxy from a great creative artist? No Bernhardt, no Duse, Ms Gray stands on her own – she flows rather, as rhythmically as the waters of the Nile. If the audience was puzzled at times by what she offered, they may understand in retrospect the experience through which they lived that night in Ochtermochty. For me it will remain a landmark in the theatre of the unexpected …’

I was in a slight sweat by the time I made my appearance. Considering the poetic realism of my interpretation sweat only enhanced my portrayal of the Egyptian Queen. After the first shock when I made my entrance, excerpt followed excerpt smoothly enough with all these sweet, enthusiastic young people doubling and quadrupling in my support. In the circumstances, sound and lighting effects were a bit off-key, and some of the yobbos at the back of the hall enjoyed the humour more than the poetry. Once or twice I caught sight of the Critic’s face (so unmistakably pallid) surrounded by the official party.

Craig had introduced the play, obviating all those (to my mind) tedious battles with which Shakespeare litters his work, and explained that we were concentrating on the tremendous scene of Cleopatra’s death which is in fact the raison d’être of this epic drama. (I had coached him carefully and I must say dear old Craig made his point very elegantly.)

With much clatter of hardware and actors swirling on and off, we conveyed the hurlyburly of war in a series of economical but credible impressions. Men, men and more men (sometimes women in disguise). Considering the burden our actresses had to bear in an almost wholly masculine cast, I persuaded the director to cut the role of Octavia, an insipid character any way you look at her. No one could accuse me of having it in for Octavia, when Cleopatra herself shared my opinion. Octavia is dispensable.

For that matter I could have dispensed with some of the men – Caesar with those thin shanks covered with a fuzz of sandy fur, and alas, a puny Antony, graduated from NIDA a couple of months before the tour.

My aura, even when Cleopatra is off stage, had to authenticate some of Shakespeare’s more sensuous visions – indifferently painted here by mediocre artists:

The barge she sat in, like a burnished throne,

Burned on the water: the poop was beaten gold,

Purple the sails, and so perfumèd that

The winds were lovesick with them …

Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale

Her infinite variety; other women cloy

The appetites they feed …

Nobody could ever deny that – no husband, lover – not even my daughter Hilda Gray.

VOICE FROM THE DARK: Talk, talk, talk … Oh, Gawd! This is where I nip out and knock back a few at the old Imperial …

I confess there are longueurs. I drift for stretches on a river of words and memories. I shall never forget the look of terror in Antony’s eyes as my tongue planted a kiss between his parted lips. Poor boy, the Lindfield in him could not take it. The slimy Nile aspic might have entered before its cue. Men and words … I float on the waters of frustrated passion and poetry between the mud banks which contain my life. So, roll on the aspic! I do not dread the asp for the end it brings, but for the performance.

My stalwart women, Charmian/Linda and Iras/Sue Mk II, will not let me down. Not even in hauling Antony up into the Monument, their sinewy arms nearly dropped, then recovered him.

It is the Clown Countryman I dread. This WAYNE. I could have done it so much better, and cannot prevent myself letting him see it. Wayne was unendurable from the moment I set eyes on him emerging in a not-so-muscular T-shirt from Van No. 4. Let it be said however, no Wayne is to be endured. O Wayne, O wine, full of sediment and dubious cork …

RE-ENTER GUARD, WITH A CLOWN (BRINGING IN A BASKET).

GUARD: This is the man (sic). He brings your figs.

CLEOPATRA: Avoid and leave him.

Hast the pretty worm of Nilus there, That kills and pains not?

Don’t get it into your head, Wayne, that you’ll spare me pain, I all but mutter.

CLOWN/COUNTRYMAN: Truly I have him …

… his biting is immortal: those who die of it do seldom or never recover.

CLEOPATRA: Get thee hence, farewell.

CLOWN: I wish you all joy of the worm. (SETS DOWN HIS BASKET.)

CLEOPATRA: Farewell.

CLEOPATRA: (between her teeth) Urghhh, get thee gone, get thee gone – Wayne.

Now at last my reliable girls are with me alone. I have almost forgotten the audience.

CLEOPATRA: (applying asp to her breast) Come thou mortal wretch …

VOICE FROM THE DARK: She won’t get bit. There’s nothing to bite on.

Though some sniggered, I could tell the majority of the audience resented this insult to one who has always been considered voluptuous (envied even by her Demirjian mother-in-law). I am not deterred.

CLEOPATRA: Peace, peace!

Dost thou not see my baby at my breast, That sucks the nurse asleep!

VOICE: Rock-a-bye – boo-hoo-hoo!

CLEOPATRA: As sweet as balm, as soft as air, as gentle.

O, Antony! Nay I will take thee too (applies another asp to her arm).

What should I stay … (DIES).

I lie half-dead in life. Forget the rest – Caesar with sandy, fuzzy shanks – of the McDermott clan perhaps? All all is pointless.

We took our calls to sparse, but frantic applause and I looked forward to meeting K.V.H. at the post-performance supper in the Mayor’s own lounge room, where I was confident of dispelling any reservations he might have had about the performance. Imagine my disappointment when, after ridding myself of the Nile silt, and arriving still reeking of coconut butter, I was told the Critic had been forced to return to his paper, to write his review. The Cessna had taken off.

Reviews … we both know about them, Patrick, do we not? You will have read K.V.H. on Cleopatra. Because our friends always point out the bad ones while overlooking the good.

That K.V.H. found my Cleopatra ‘very, very funny’ did not hurt me as much as my enemies would hope. What did distress me – momentarily – was his remark that he did not stay for Ms Gray’s monologues Dolly Formosa and the Happy Few because he might have found them ‘too, too modern’. Understandable of course when you and I know that the Critic’s last gesture to modernity was many years ago when he invented Brecht.

I performed Dolly Formosa the second night at Ochtermochty. I was determined not to chicken out and move on immediately to Aberpissup as the management and some of the company favoured. I would give my all in this blighted little corner of Philistia. The Mayor was rather sweet (he pinched my bottom during supper) and his wife had slaved so nobly at the buffet the Critic walked out on.

Linda and I took refuge at first in the bathroom. A haven of pastel blue and pink. Linda, somewhat smashed, fell into the bath. An emissary arrived, jiggling the door-knob for me to come and cut the Pavlova prepared in my honour. I managed to extricate Linda from the bath and our hostess’s shower cap, not before she had torn off a tap. We were more or less presentable on arriving at the buffet. In any case most of the guests were well away on the punch the Mayor was ladling out. As for the Pavlova, it was a masterpiece of the Country Woman’s craft. A passion-fruit seed made straight for the only hollow tooth in my head and stayed there to martyrise me.

I made a little speech. I – we – loved everybody in Ochtermochty for taking us so readily to their hearts etc. etc.

I lay awake half the night crying my heart out on an already damp pillow, under the honeycomb bedspread at the Royal-Imperial-Commercial, while somebody at intervals tried the door-knob.

Most of the following day I lay on my bed. At least the door-knob had calmed down. I rose towards evening and took stock of myself in the deal dressing-table glass. I looked interestingly ravaged, ageless, ready to do battle with art and life.

Grave misgivings at the School of Arts. Craig remains loyal. He kisses me and chafes my body from the rear, to give me the courage I only momentarily need. Barry and Gary are there for sound and lighting, but the auditorium is ominously dark. I see figures distributed here and there through the stalls, like soft sculpture in crêpe shrouds – presumably members of the company, with the exception of Linda, who has stayed smashed, I am told, ever since she played Charmian to my Cleopatra. From the back row I can already hear the braying of the jackass, waiting to worry my words every time an opportunity offers.

Do they think I am simple enough to give them these opportunities? If they could not understand the language of Shakespeare, why waste on them the complexities of Dolly Formosa’s thoughts? I decide to confine my performance to dance, to those movements which have already begun to inspire my limbs.

When I stride out centre stage I am wearing my midnight robe. I am carrying the great black fan of sequined net. I introduce myself quite simply to the soft sculpture forms of my audience: ‘Dolly Formosa welcomes you tonight, her Happy Few in appreciating art and life.’

By now I scarcely know whether the lighting and the tape which accompany my performance are controlled by technicians. The iron roof has slid back and my sequined fan and midnight robe are in correspondence with the galaxy.

I move magnificently in time with the rhythm of the earth. No matter that several of the sticks of my fan have broken, or that the net is reduced to dusty tatters under stress from the emotions which possess me.

One of the jackasses at the back seizes the opportunity to bray, ‘Good on yer, missus! Never seen the like in all my days …’ I should think he hasn’t.

But the Happy Few will understand, as I shed my midnight robe, and my naked body conjures up the archetypes of birds, serpents, insects, many of them fiendish in their savage beauty, all hatched out of Dolly Formosa’s teeming brain. I sink down exhausted at last into the earth from which we have come and to which we shall return.

I hear a cry ‘… it’s a shame – the Government ought to protect decent people from such indecent rot!’ and from another quarter, ‘Why don’t they send us something like How to Succeed in Business?’

I need no support. I have my convictions my belief in truth. If I hobble it’s because I must have trodden on a tack. It is not surprising that I have gooseflesh. The evil blast of popular ill-will is trained on my nakedness, and the draught from an open door hits me in the pubics.

However long or short, chilly or stifling, the rest of the night, I rose before dawn. I put on one of those grey shifts which I have always found adapt themselves to any situation. I walk barefoot, down the creaking stairs, along the sticky hotel lino, stained by grease, alcohol, semen, and wine, past the stagnating kitchen where the cockroaches are at play in the pans of leftover cabbage and mash, congealing snags, and chuck steaks waiting to be transformed into a tasty lunchtime braise.

Loathsome as it all was the somnolent hotel seemed to accept me as an extension of itself, a detail in its reflections of human nature and the putrescence which living breeds.

O God! I don’t know why I should invoke the name of one who probably does not exist.

As I stepped out across the rotting floor-boards of the hotel veranda, through the cracks in which sink-water is already steaming, the sun has started rising across the plain. My feet are excoriated by the stones on the surface of what passes for a street.

I walk on into the plain beyond, a carpet of dust, almost a mattress. A few ghost trees console the revenant I have become. Small birds skitter across the desert, larger ones rise by grace of a stately basketwork of wings. I bow my head under the increasing weight of heat, my eyes humbled by the sheets of metallic light opening out, swingeing at me from the distance. If I were at least a shadow, but I am not, I am nothing now that my ghost trees have evaporated in heat and glare. Not even an insect. Louse fallen from a bird’s wing. Grain of mica.

I drop to my knees. My tears are molten as they pour from sockets sunk deep into my leathery cheeks.

Then I look up and he is kneeling opposite in exactly the same position. We are a few yards apart. I cannot see his face, because it is gilded by the sun’s glare, but sense that it is smiling, and know that it must be as dark as the smooth dark kneeling thighs. I can feel the stream of understanding which flows from this miraculous Being, bathing my shattered body, revitalising my devastated mind.

The vans are drawn up outside the hotel. Props and costumes must already have been collected from the School of Arts by the back-stage team. The less responsible members of the company are drifting out of side streets from their billets, laden with belongings: garments which mutate depending on climate and circumstances, photographs, mascot-toys, make-up, a tarot pack, cigarettes, dope, and parcels of sandwiches put up by hostesses grateful for the favour they believe culture has done them.

Some of the actors’ possessions are dropped and retrieved, dropped and retrieved, from the gritty street. The heat encourages indolence. I see amongst those taking part in the movements of this languid dance, Barry, Gary, Craig, Sue Mk I, Mk II, a Robin or two – WAYNE. The only John in the company, my Antony, as straight as Lindfield makes them, has always tried to look through me as though I did not exist, so it is no surprise that he should do so now.

Linda shows up, blowing gum-bubbles, trailing a kimono by one sleeve. Linda, too, does not seem to know me, when we have enjoyed moments of intimacy at various stations of our journey. Her eyes look unusually pale; perhaps the glare prevents her recognising the person approaching. She climbs up beside Craig, in the passenger seat of Van No. I. His thin, rather hairy arms set the van in motion.

I wonder who will inherit my midnight robe and sequined fan. Or have I never existed for any of them? They drive on to Aberpissup, is it? Toogood? Baggary Baggary? No matter which, for their offerings from the safer Shakespeare.

I stoop and pick up a snapshot lying in the middle of the street. The figure at least is mine, limbs daubed with Nile silt, crimson talons, lacquered toenails, except for the one removed by jamming in a door. But the face has come out blurred, it could be anybody’s.