Sepia Footage of Yellow Longhair

 Here's me as "Morningstar", a psychedelic re-imagining of General Custer from Tim Plester's play Yellow Longhair which played at the Oval House pretty much exactly twenty years ago. It was the first London play I'd performed in after finally leaving home in 2000 at the age twenty-five, and as you can see from the photo below I was made pretty comfortable. I thought at first I should play the General as Klaus Kinski in Aguirre: Wrath of God, bursting with boggle-eyed territorial ambition, but after the dress rehearsal director Anthony Fletcher approached me in the café and explained that he'd hated every single aspect of what he'd just seen me do, and that as far as my character was concerned I was actually helping people, showing them the way. We were all very into Alan Moore.

 Too... Much... Neck... (and Cristina Corrazza)

 So we fixed it. It was good advice, and I often think about it. Anthony also said the poetry would play itself, and I think about that too. Tim put some snippets up on youtube years later, and here's one of them, in which I monologue to a journalist played by Sam Rumbelow after a particularly meticulous killing-spree. Back then I was "Simon Kain", waiting for another Kane to leave Equity, and not all the hair was mine, but it is now. I got to keep it. I might even still have it twenty years later. It might even turn up in my introduction to Act One of Henry the Fourth when I finally finish editing that, hopefully tomorrow. Someone's hair turns up anway... I was really fond of this. It was bloody lovely writing. Happy twentieth birthday, it.