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 the extensions. I might even still have them, twenty years later. They 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.
