Читать книгу You’ll Miss Me When I’m Gone: The life and work of Eric Morecambe - Gary Morecambe - Страница 14

David Pugh hung on in there for as long as possible as the show was up for an award, but, when it didn’t win, the cast and crew were soon recalled to the UK. The production was given immediate notice and, with a brief countdown to closure, they were six miles up in the sky and flying home.

It was an interesting rather than a commercially viable run—an exercise from which we perhaps all learned something, and I include myself here in my vague role as consultant to the project. And there had been time for one cheerful celebratory event before leaving New York: Kenneth Branagh married his girlfriend Lindsay. As Hamish McColl recalls, it was ‘definitely one of the high moments of the run…a great memory.’

One final personal memory: I remember taking my mother to look at the splendid Grand Central Station. I’d seen it used as a location in so many films, so to actually stand there and marvel at this iconic sight was a treat beyond all other treats. A lady travelling from the station, clearly uncertain of which platform she was searching for, marched briskly up to a cop—great using that word in its appropriate context—and said, ‘Oh, do excuse me, but could you tell me…?’

‘I’m sorry, madam,’ interrupted the cop, gently raising his hands and giving an apologetic shrug, ‘but I’m closed Sundays!’ Both of them laughed loudly at this, and it reminded me of years earlier when my father had just returned from one of those Ed Sullivan shows he wrote about in his diary. ‘I have to say the one thing that struck me is the native New Yorker’s sense of humour,’ he once told me. And now I got it first-hand.

The story of The Play What I Wrote didn’t end in New York. In April 2007 its nationwide tour of Britain—happily back in its original format—concluded. And that was with its third cast since The Right Size created and starred in the show.

I still get involved with the publicity for the play whenever it’s recast and up and running, occasionally visiting venues where it’s due to open to talk with the press about Eric and Ernie, and about the play, its history, its metamorphosis in New York, its changing casts, and, of course, its guest stars. Sometimes I did a Q&A session with David Pugh for the touring productions. We would sit on stage in front of an invited audience and David would tell the story of how it all came together and then turn to me and ask relevant questions about Eric and Ernie to which I would give lengthy answers. We worked up quite a little double act ourselves.

In the last production I got talking with Andrew Cryer, who took on the Eric Morecambe role, while Greg Haiste played Ernie and Anthony Hoggard played Arthur and the myriad roles originally played by the great Toby Jones. Andrew recalled how, as little more than a toddler, once a week he would stay at his gran’s house because his parents would go out. It must have been a weekend, because it always coincided with The Morecambe and Wise Show being on. He was usually allowed to watch it, but has memories of times when he wasn’t supposed to: he’d sneak onto the landing and watch it through the banisters. That he should go on to portray Eric in a play seems deserved as well as ironic.

Echoing the thoughts of Hamish McColl, my own hope is that one day The Right Size will team up again to appear in the play—perhaps a special West End run, as Hamish suggests, with some mouth-watering guest stars equal to the long list of previous ones. Or, alternatively, they’ll take it to somewhere else where Morecambe and Wise are recognized and hugely appreciated. I’m thinking specifically ofAustralia. My second wife, Jo, comes from New Zealand and has lots of family spread out across Australia, and visits we made when we were still married proved to me beyond doubt that admiration for Morecambe andWise still exists there. I found their books and DVDs on sale in many Aussie stores.

Mentioning that part of the world, if I have one recent regret—and I certainly have too few to remember, to paraphrase Frank Sinatra—it is not taking up the opportunity to join the actors and crew of Lord of the Rings filming on location in New Zealand. Jo and I had planned to visit the members of her family in Australia, and a quick, seven-hour hop over to NZ would have left us watching Peter Jackson directing Orcs andAragorn and Gandalf and Saruman and Frodo and Sam and…well, you get the idea. And to make it worse, Peter, I later learned, is a big Morecambe andWise fan. The offer to go there had come from Andy Serkis (Gollum), whom I’d met a few times, because for some serendipitous reason we’d ended up being interviewed on the same radio programmes with indecent frequency.

The big link between The Play What I Wrote and the Lord of the Rings movies is Ian McKellen, who played Gandalf. Throughout the playThe Right Size made constant remarks about him, encouraging the audience to believe that he was the permanent guest star in waiting and would soon be making his big entrance. But then Sean Foley—in Eric mode—kept explaining the actor’s absence by saying, ‘Can’t get him out of the pub’ and suchlike. When the play won an award McKellen fooled everyone by staggering on the stage behind Sean and Hamish and pretending to be drunk. Keeping up the act, he then tapped them on their shoulders mid-flow—to their huge and genuine surprise—and presented them with their award before reeling off the stage. It was another one of those nights that brought the house down.

Ken Branagh says, ‘It’s interesting to try and work out the mystery of what makes people laugh. I have great admiration for those comics who can stand in front of 3,000 people and make them fall about laughing—like Billy Connolly and Lee Mack. It’s truly jaw-droppingly impressive.

‘With Eric and Ernie and other double acts, there is the protection that comes of having a partner that guards against the loneliness out there, but there’s still the basic concern of “are they going to like us tonight”? Yes, it goes with the territory but it’s that which actors admire most in comedians.’

As I finished lunch with Ken Branagh, he made me smile when he told me of a play he had recently been doing—a dark, Russian tragicomedy called Ivanov. ‘And for no good reason,’ says Ken, ‘we all start doing impressions of Eric Morecambe as we walk up and down the corridors before going on. It was a way for the cast to get themselves going; almost like a vocal exercise.’

It would seem Ken Branagh can’t escape Eric Morecambe!