The Rotters' Club (24 page)

Easy to be clever with hindsight, I know, but I was right, wasn’t I? Look back on that night from the perspective of now, the closing weeks of the closing century of our second millennium – if the calendar of some esoteric and fast-disappearing religious sect counts for anything any more – and you have to admit that I was right. And so was Benjamin’s brother, the little bastard, with his sparkler and his horrible grin and that nasty gleam of incipient victory in his twelve-year-old eyes. Goodbye to all that, he was saying. He’d worked it out already. He knew what the future held in store.

After that, anyway, I didn’t hang around at the bonfire for much longer. It was nearly eight o’clock, which meant
The New Avengers
on ATV. Joanna Lumley would soon be running around the countryside in some skimpy outfit, and I wasn’t going to miss it just for the sake of a few Catherine Wheels. You had to take your pleasures where you could, in those days.

7

THE BILL BOARD

Thursday, 9 December, 1976

THEATRE SPECIAL

As the Senior Drama Soc goes into dress rehearsals for its Christmas production of ‘Othello’, we bring you exclusive interviews with the two leading players.

Steve Richards as OTHELLO

Interview by Doug Anderton

‘I see him as a noble man, a man of courage and action, but he has this fatal weakness which is that he has a bit of an ego on him. And that’s where logo is able to move in and do his bit of mischief.’

This down-to-earth but insightful reading of one of Shakespeare’s greatest tragic heroes is typical of the fresh perspective being brought to the role by Steve Richards of the lower science sixth.

Already well known as the undisputed star of both the rugby First XV and the cricket First XI, Steve is a newcomer to the world of backstage tantrums and first-night nerves. But is he enjoying the experience so far?

‘It’s been fantastic,’ he grins. ‘The rest of the cast are a great gang, and despite the heaviness of the drama, we’ve been having a real laugh most of the time. You know, at first I was daunted by the challenge of this part. I’d read “Othello” when I was doing O-levels and I knew there was a real mountain to climb there, for any actor. But I like to drive myself. I like to push myself. That’s how you get the best out of yourself and that’s what I reckon this school is all about, isn’t it?’

Steve’s parents, Lloyd and Connie, came to this country from Kingston, Jamaica in the mid-1950s. They settled in Handsworth but, like many of their fellow Jamaicans, did not find it easy to assimilate at first. Lloyd was a cabinet-maker by trade but the only work he could find at the time was unskilled. He started as a panel-beater in the Hay Mills plant of what was then the Wilmot Breedon company, and has since worked his way up to become a British Leyland foreman. Steve’s mother Connie works in medical catering. They have another son, Steve’s younger brother Aldwyn, named after Aldwyn ‘Lord Kitchener’ Roberts, one of the most famous exponents of calypso in the Caribbean.

‘Yeah, we’re a close family,’ Steve agrees. ‘It was tough for my mum and dad because they left a lot of relatives behind in Jamaica. So as far as family was concerned, they had to start again from scratch. They’re going to be there to see me on the first night, that’s for sure. And the second, and the last!’

A few people were surprised, I told him, when it was announced that he had been catapulted straight to this starring role. In a school not exactly overflowing with members of the ethnic minorities, was he not worried that he had landed this plum part simply – to put it bluntly – because of the colour of his skin?

‘Sure, it was the drama committee’s idea that I should read for it,’ he answers. ‘But the bottom line is that I auditioned for this part like everyone else. We’re not talking about tokenism here.’

Finally, rumours have been flying around the school corridors for the last few weeks about the on-stage (and off-stage) chemistry between Steve and his leading lady, Cicely Boyd. Bad news for the gossip-mongers, though: Steve insists that there’s nothing in it. And when he tells me why, it turns out there’s further bad news for his legions of admirers on the other side of the Founder’s Drive.

‘Sure, Ciss and I have got a very intense rapport going on stage,’ he says, ‘but that’s as far as it goes. I’ve got a girlfriend called Valerie and we’ve been going steady now for about six months. We’ve known each other for years, actually, because we met at Sunday School, which makes it sound really boring, but she’s a great girl and she’s going to be sitting right there in the front row, making sure I don’t cross the line in any of those love scenes!’

A smart handclap from the show’s director, Tim Newsome (whose ‘Endgame’ proved a bit too austere for some tastes last term) signals that my time is up and Steve is wanted for another run-through of the demanding finale. On my way downstairs I drop in at the Porter’s Lodge and am told that ticket sales so far have been extremely brisk. So one thing at least seems certain: both schools are convinced that this is going to be an ‘Othello’ to remember.

∗ ∗ ∗

Cicely Boyd as DESDEMONA

Interview by Claire Newman

There’s a certain kind of hair which is just made for tossing, and without a doubt, Cicely Boyd has it in spades. The legendary flaxen locks which cascade over her perfectly formed shoulders have probably inspired more fourth-form poetry, over the years, than the Dark Lady ever managed to get out of the Bard – and they also give her the most expressive repertoire of tosses I’ve ever encountered.

This girl can toss with disdain, toss in agreement, toss with impatience, and of course (how many English masters have found this out, since joint lessons were introduced?) she can toss flirtatiously, too. No wonder that you often hear her awestruck schoolmates remarking ‘What a tosser!’ whenever they pass her in the corridor.

Today, though, she is tossing with passion and sincerity, as she discusses the draining experience of immersing herself in the part of Desdemona for Tim Newsome’s upcoming and eagerly awaited production of ‘Othello’.

‘You have to do a lot of what I call “emotional eurhythmics”,’ she gushes. ‘On the night of the performance, you have to be at your absolute peak, physically and spiritually. The karma has to be just right. I find that meditation helps enormously. I’ve taught Steve quite a lot about this, and before rehearsals what we’ll often do is just sit cross-legged on the floor, staring into each other’s eyes for half an hour or so.’

Straight out of the RADA textbook, I’m sure. ‘Steve’, by the way, is Steve Richards, he of the pulsing thigh muscles and gleaming pecs, who will be making his theatrical debut opposite la Boyd as the insanely jealous Moor. Was she finding it hard, so far, working with a relative novice?

‘Steve was my own choice to play Othello,’ she pouts. ‘And I think I’ve been proved right. For a long time I’ve thought he was just the most intriguing person. He has this very ordinary facade, very upfront and straightforward, but I was sure that when I peeled all of that away, there’d be something enormous and fascinating underneath, which I really wanted to explore.’ (She means his talent, I think.) ‘I just know he’s going to be fantastic in the part. He has a real feeling for the verse.’

Somewhat nervously, now, I take my life in my hands and suggest that there are critics, in some quarters, who maintain that she has come to wield too much power on the Drama Committee, and that her style of management has been described – again, only in some quarters – as dictatorial. How does she respond to these comments?

At first she doesn’t respond at all – at least, not in words, but simply with a majestic toss of the hair that could stun a rhino at fifty yards. Then she purrs:

‘I can’t help it if people become jealous. That’s simply not my problem. We’re enjoying a wonderful year and we’ve already put on some wonderful shows. All I can say is that that gives me enormous satisfaction.’

And this jealousy, I venture, might have something to do with her looks?

‘It’s true, you know, Claire – there is this prejudice that makes people think a woman can’t be beautiful and intelligent at the same time. But the truth of the matter is, I don’t consider myself to be beautiful anyway.’ (She looks to me for confirmation, or perhaps disagreement, but I am preserving, at this point, the studied neutrality of the professional reporter.) Now she leans forward, confiding.

‘Actually, Claire, I’m going to let you into a little secret.’ I point out to her that, as I’m interviewing her for the school newspaper, it will hardly remain a little secret for very long, but she tells me anyway. ‘I have a serious problem with my body-image,’ she whispers. ‘I actually have a kind of loathing of my own body, and the only way I can fight it is by confronting that image daily, hour by hour, minute by minute. Which is why my bedroom wall at home is simply plastered with polaroids of me. Stark naked.’

At which revelation my cub reporter’s pencil, upon which I have been sucking abstractedly, breaks off between my teeth and I decide it’s time to bring this interview to a hasty conclusion. I thank MS Boyd and she heads back to rehearsals with a lovely valedictory toss. Truly, I reflect, she is a magnificent creature sent down to us as a gift from the gods, and no self-respecting pupil of King William’s, male or female, will want to miss next week’s performance. Meanwhile, boys, don’t let the thought of all those polaroids distract you too much from your Greek irregular verbs…

∗ ∗ ∗

(‘Othello’ will be reviewed in the first issue of next term by our new drama critic, Benjamin Trotter.)

∗ ∗ ∗

LEISURE NEWS
The Walking Option

For the third week in a row, the members of Mr Tillotson’s walking option got hopelessly lost last Wednesday, this time in the grounds of Waseley Country Park. Next term the Option will also be opened to girls. Let’s hope one of them brings an Ordnance Survey Map.

The Wanking Option

The first meeting of this group was cancelled owing to mass non-attendance. It’s believed that members were unable to read the relevant noticeboard.

8

THE BILL BOARD

Thursday, 13 January, 1977

‘OTHELLO, THE MOOR OF VENICE’

(Big School, 13, 14, 15 December)

Reviewed by BENJAMIN TROTTER

Ah, the mystique of the theatrical life! Here I was, stepping into the shoes of Harold Hobson, Kenneth Tynan and… erm, other famous drama critics. My first foray into the glamorous world of the jobbing reviewer. The stretch limo waiting at the door… the coy flirtation with the hat-check girl as I hand over my gloves and topcoat… the gentle embrace of the plush velvet as I ease myself into the front-row seat. The audience’s hushed expectancy…

OK, so it was like this. There I was, still waiting at my Lickey Road bus stop at a quarter to seven for a 62 bus which should have turned up half an hour ago. Then, when I reach Big School with 90 seconds to spare, I find I have lost my ‘press pass’ – a crumpled sheet of paper, as it happens, on to which Tim Newsome has scrawled ‘WE HAVE TO LET THIS PILLOCK IN FOR FREE, APPARENTLY’. Fighting my way past the bouncers on the door, I squat down on one of those wooden benches which seem to have been bought at a job lot from some pensioned-off Dickensian workhouse, and am just in time to catch the end of Scene One.

First, flustered impressions, then: Julian Stubbs as lago. Great casting. He has the right diabolical sparkle, and he really chews on the verse, audibly relishes the sibilant venom of his lines. Three hours later, he will be on stage again, down the road at The Bournbrook, fronting for King William’s very own punk prodigies The Maws of Doom (in whose birth your reviewer himself had a small part to play), and you can see that he brings the same spiteful energy to both roles. This scene would be fair cracking along, if it weren’t for lacklustre support from Graham Temple, whose Roderigo is wooden by comparison.

Othello enters, and you can feel a shiver of admiration run through the audience. Steve Richards looks the part. He is massy, imposing; the man has a presence. Emily Sandys’ simple but effective costume enhances his bearing, his easy militaristic swagger. This is a figure to be reckoned with. When he begins to speak, the voice, initially, is a disappointment. He falters, stiffens, seems to mishear the rhythms. He is in fear of the verse, not in command of it. One’s heart sinks: this isn’t going to do. It has been too much to ask, throwing the whole weight of the play on to a first-time actor.

But this is a false start. A few more speeches, and Richards has gained immeasurably in confidence. He can sense the audience’s respect, and is buoyed up by it. Soon he is into his stride:

Rude am I in my speech

And little blessed with the soft phrase of peace,
For since these arms of mine had seven years’ pith
Till now some nine moons wasted, they have used
Their dearest action in the tented field.

Richards missed none of the tonal ambiguity of this passage: his delivery was courteous, but he caught the undertow of boastfulness, of thinly veiled scorn for the men of peace, which lies beneath these honeyed words. This, you could tell, was going to be a rich, pregnant, multi-layered performance. And so it proved right up until the end.

Then comes the fatal moment. Act I, Scene iii, line 169. A simple stage direction, ‘Enter Desdemona’. And suddenly the whole production starts collapsing like a house of cards.

Later in the play, Cicely Boyd’s Desdemona will ask lago, ‘What wouldst thou write of me, if thou should praise me?’, and the wily manipulator replies, ‘O, gentle lady, do not put me to it, For I am nothing if not critical.’ Well, Cicely – sorry and all that, but I’m with lago on this one.

The point about Desdemona, surely, is that she has to have some kind of spirit, some kind of pluck and resilience, if she is not just to come across like some annoying little wallflower that the men happen to be fighting over. The grounds for this can be found in Shakespeare’s verse: all any actress has to do is remain faithful to its supple, muscular movements, and the rest will follow. But Miss Boyd, either wilfully or through sheer incompetence, betrayed the verse at every point. One’s heart sank as soon as she opened her mouth and pronounced her first line – ‘I do perceive here a divided duty’ – with two quite meaningless and inappropriate stresses on ‘do’ and ‘duty’. What could she be thinking of? Sadly, this set the tenor for the rest of her performance. Desdemona can be seen either as a loyal and virtuous wife, or as a saucy temptress who is responsible, in part, for precipitating the play’s tragic denouement. Better still, an actress can try to negotiate a path between these readings, and portray a character of real complexity and contradiction. Instead, all we got from Cicely Boyd’s Desdemona was sing-song delivery and a range of responses to her husband which never stretched much further than moonstruck adoration. This was a performance which let down her fellow-actors, the play itself and, worst of all, Cicely Boyd’s own reputation as one of King Willliam’s most gifted thespians.