Alfie Page 14
Chapter Eighteen
PINCHING MYSELF
I had to really turn everything around over the summer. And Albert Herring really built up my confidence again because I threw myself out there, used all the emotion that had been coursing through me, and it paid off.
Britten premièred Albert Herring in Glyndebourne in the 1940s. The title character’s a young kid who’s governed by everybody and he bows down to them all. Bosses demean him and he’s very humble about everything, quite an unassuming guy. He’s under the thumb, he does what he’s told, and he gets humiliated, because the villagers can’t find a suitable woman to play Queen of the May for the May Day festival, so they choose Albert instead. I related to him at the time – I couldn’t answer back, I didn’t say what I’d wanted to say, I’d sucked it up, I’d shut up and retreated. He’s even given Foxe’s Book of Martyrs at one point, the book my mum used to read to me in bed. The nightmare machine, my old nemesis. It’s supposed to be a comedy, Albert Herring, but it’s quite an emotional one to play, it certainly was for me, and I took full advantage of my state of mind to do it. Saying that, I also based him on David Jason as Granville from Open All Hours and Pike from Dad’s Army.
We performed Albert Herring in August, seven shows, and I pulled it out of the bag. I got a standing ovation every night, got great reviews and won the John Christie award. John Christie started the Glyndebourne festival in the 1930s and died in 1962, and good old Richard Van Allan won the John Christie award in 1966. So I was really chuffed to win that, it was a big honour and meant a lot to me. And it was one of the best productions I ever did, I really loved it. La Bohème on Broadway, Les Misérables in the West End, and Albert Herring at Glyndebourne – those are the productions that changed my life. My last performance went down a storm because I was so adrenalised, so excited to be leaving for America the following day, I was on fire. The whole thing was something of a slap in the face for the Vilar people – I’d left their programme, done a major operatic festival, got outstanding reviews and won the John Christie award. Although even some people at Glyndebourne were saying, ‘Why are you doing this La Bohème on Broadway?’ Why not? That was always my answer. ‘Why not?’ They’d say it was a controversial production. I’d say, ‘What’s controversial about it?’ And they could never answer because they didn’t know. I think it was just because it was on Broadway. There was nothing different about the opera, it was in Italian, it was the full score, we hadn’t cut anything out.
The morning after my last Albert Herring show off I flew to New York for our first music rehearsals. A friend of mine had a flat, excuse me, apartment, in Inwood, north Manhattan and had gone away, and I stayed there. I felt like my life had begun again, I had a good old time in the bars and diners, I was in my element. We did a TV commercial in a massive warehouse in Yonkers. We played against bluescreen. I couldn’t believe I was on this film set, making a TV ad for a Broadway show, working with Baz Luhrmann. My word. We had publicity shots taken, I’ve still got the pictures of me and Wei Huang, who starred alongside me as Mimì. The photographer was Douglas Kirkland, he’d done that great shoot of Marilyn Monroe wrapped in the bedsheet. Moments like that, I had to pinch myself. And I really enjoyed the rehearsals, 10 hours a day. I loved Baz’s take on Bohème. He wanted audiences to be able to instantly identify with it, just as Puccini’s audiences did when it was first staged in the 1890s. He brought it forward to 1957 Paris, because that was a specific period of time where bohemian life was really blossoming there, and the social and economic situations had parallels. It was a magnificent production. It had transvestites and drag queens, prostitutes, a right motley crew. Parpignol, who sells toys to kids, was a clown, there was a jazz band in the café, it was hilarious, so much fun. And Baz had glitzed it up a lot more than his Sydney production, he had more money to spend on sets and lights. It was really dazzling.
There was nothing controversial about it. Some purists grumbled about our use of microphones, but they weren’t for amplification, they were for voice-enhancement, it’s a different technique. We were put through the same system as the orchestra. The musicians were miked because they can’t afford to keep an 80-piece orchestra running all the time, so they cut down the size of the orchestra considerably and used synths to double strings, things like that, to make it sound thicker. And because they were put through a sound system, we had to have voice enhancement. If it wasn’t for the mics it would have sounded ridiculous. Saying that, nine times out of ten, my mic would fall off, down my back, no matter what I did. So I was singing it acoustically anyway, and everybody could hear me. The sound guy would come up to me and say, ‘Your mic fell off again, didn’t it?’ Sometimes I told him to just take it off and I did entire shows without a mic. Baz had gone by then. I don’t think he knew.
I mentioned this in an interview for The Scotsman newspaper a few months ago and there was a bit of kerfuffle about it, because I said microphones have also been used in the English National Opera. A few people piped up online and said I was talking nonsense. For the record, we used mics for The Merry Widow in 2008, for the dialogue. On Kismet in 2007 we used mics for the whole lot, dialogue and singing. Some people just don’t wanna hear about that. Sure, they might not have ever used microphones, but I certainly have, and I know that other people in other productions have. It’s frustrating when people try to protect the industry like that, it’s very hypocritical and really weird. They’re very blinkered. They don’t see what they don’t want to see.
Anyway. If you’re comparing what Baz was doing with what critics would call legitimate opera, those were the only differences, that we were playing Broadway, we were playing to a mainstream audience, and we had some voice enhancement. There was something of a rivalry between us and the Metropolitan Opera, because they were performing Franco Zeffirelli’s production at the same time, an absolutely stunning production. Very different to ours. But critics were always comparing them, reducing it all to: ‘This is the real deal, on the Metropolitan stage, compared to the Baz Luhrmann farce on Broadway.’ Baz’s perspective was very similar to the way I feel about opera. He made a point of saying, while he was promoting the show, that Puccini made it for everyone, from the street sweeper to the King of Naples, and Baz wanted his production to be accessible to everyone, not just the opera elite. It was amazing to meet someone who was so respected and so established in their career, and who shared the sentiments I had.
My Rodolfo was rougher than how I’d played him in Glyndebourne, and quite different to the other two actors who were sharing the role with me, David Miller and Jesus Garcia. David and I were both doing three evening performances a week, Jesus did the two matinees. I have so much respect for those guys. David played him in a very suave, romantic Italian style; that was David, he’s a tall good-looking guy, he’s got a beautiful romantic voice. He’s a good guy, he’s in Il Divo now. Jesus Garcia’s performance was very subtle, he’s a beautiful singer. More studious, timid, somewhat similar to how I’d played Rodolfo in Glyndebourne. This time I played him quite forceful, strong, but pretty deluded. A bit thick really, basically kidding himself, because as I said he comes from a wealthy family and they look after him, they make sure he’s comfy, make sure he’s safe, with enough money. And Baz encouraged everyone to interpret their roles their own way, which was evident in his choice to cast three very different people. Smart too, because people could watch one performance and come again and see someone else do it differently. And that’s what happened, we got audiences coming back to see us all do it, paying three times to see the same show.
I was nervous at first, but I knew the piece. And the first thing Baz did was to get everybody to write the opera in their own words, their own translation of the piece. Rewrite it in our dialects, so how I would say that dialogue as Alfie Boe from Fleetwood. We’d start off slowly, singing it in Italian, then the following day he’d say, ‘Now do it in your own words.’ We had to change just like that, so we got to know it inside out, we rea
lly understood what we were saying. Then he had us tag-teaming, interchanging the actors with the actresses. Because the main roles of Rodolfo and Mimì were shared between three couples, in these rehearsals Baz would keep mixing it all up, it was brilliant. He was nice with it too, if we fell apart, we fell apart, and he’d go, ‘Let’s try again, guys, back up.’ So chilled, so cool, so relaxed, no pressure, no anger.
There was one time when there was a bit of upset. Wei Huang, my Mimì, was straight out of music college in Shanghai and she wasn’t that experienced with working with a guy. And I found it a little frustrating because she would never hit her mark, and she would never do the direction that Baz gave her. So I’d take her and I’d gently move her, physically move her. Baz pulled me aside one day and he said, ‘Listen, Alf, you can’t move Wei. You cannot do that, you can’t correct her mistakes.’ I apologised. And then he had a word with Wei, told her to trust me. The other two couples were fine, but Wei just wasn’t comfortable with me, she was incredibly nervous and didn’t quite know how to react in an affectionate scene, to the extent that when I would give her a kiss or a hug, she would nip me and pinch me. At one point I had to kiss her and whenever I did she bit my lip, because she was that nervous. She bit me so hard one day she made me bleed. I thought, ‘How can I turn this around, how can I win her confidence, and show her that I’m not going to pressure her?’ And I decided to just make her feel special. The next day I went into work with a box of chocolates and I said, ‘Wei, I was just thinking about you, I know you’re a long way from home, so I bought you some chocolates, I hope you like them.’ She was gobsmacked. So every morning after that I did something like that, bought her some chocolate or some biscuits, brought her some coffee, schmoozed her a bit. All through rehearsals, San Francisco too. And it was working. It worked! And we turned out great together. When we were on Broadway, Time Out and the New York Times both said Wei and I were the couple to see. And months later when we were in LA, during the third run of the show, Baz visited to see the show, and we were asked to go into his dressing room. And he turned around to us and he was in tears. He said, ‘You guys just blew me away. That was the most emotional performance of La Bohème I have ever seen in my life.’
Chocolates and biscuits.
Chapter Nineteen
FALLING IN LOVE IN SAN FRANCISCO
Rehearsals continued in San Francisco, where the show would be opening for a few weeks before Broadway. I spent most of my spare time in the first couple of weeks hanging out with Ricardo and Radu. Ricardo’s 3ft 6in, he played a switchblade-wielding pimp in the show. He hadn’t acted for years before that because he’d broken his neck while trying out for a stunt job on Howard the Duck in 1985. Small guy, huge personality. He smokes cigars, so the first thing I said to him was, ‘Do you know what, mate, that’ll stunt your growth.’ He said, ‘I love you, Alfie, I really love you. We’re gonna get on well!’ And we did, we were best friends. We dressed the same, we used to go to these biker shops on the Sunset Strip and wear the same jeans and T-shirts and walk down the street together. He used to let me drive his car, a Mazda Miata, which had extended pedals for him, so my knees rubbed my chin. Radu meanwhile is a 7ft Romanian kickboxer who played opposite Ricardo. Radu drank an entire bottle of olive oil every day, said it was full of the protein and nutrients he needed for his body. He’s built like a brick shithouse, very muscly. He was too tall to fit in the Mazda, so Ricardo would take the top down for him.
For those first couple of weeks I was renting a room off a woman who would bring guys back all the time and get into some really violent arguing and shouting, four in the morning, hell it was loud. Then at breakfast I’d see them and it would be like nothing was wrong. I couldn’t live like that, so I got out of there and found a cool little apartment room on Pine and Mason, a lovely part of San Francisco. My apartment was pretty high up, it overlooked quite a lot of the city and I’d stand out on my little balcony and survey it all, in love with the place. Eating fantastic Italian pizza every night, going to great bars and drinking proper American beer, I felt like I was in a movie all the time. And rehearsals were going great, it had all really kicked into gear, we were singing with the orchestra now, feeling it all come alive. We were in the American Conservatory Theatre on Geary Street, an actors’ college, and because of the triple cast I’d sing the first section, then David would do the same, and then Jesus. One gorgeous hot day, I finished my aria, got past my big high C, I’d done ‘O Soave Fanciulla’, the last song of Act One, and I walked out to this kitchenette to get a cup of tea while David did his bit. The only cup I could find was one of those Thermos ones with a huge base and a tiny narrow top. I busted three teabags trying to shove one into this idiotic cup. Then as I walked out of the kitchenette I looked up and saw this girl, and she looked at me. Sarah. And I know this is about as corny as it gets but the song ‘Dream Weaver’ came on in my head. ‘Dreeeeeam weaver . . .’ Everything else disappeared. Total tunnel vision. Slow motion, the works. She was glowing, absolutely glowing. She had a white vest on, tiny blue shorts, she was tanned like nobody’s business, luscious long brown hair, beautiful. I thought, ‘Right. You’re the one.’ I made a beeline for her, went straight over and sat down. I said, ‘You can’t get a decent cup of tea around here,’ which may not make it into the pantheon of great chat-up lines. Stupid, stupid thing. I felt an idiot. I thought, ‘What the hell are you saying?’ She said, ‘Lovely music in there,’ and I said, ‘Yeah, it’s La Bohème, by Puccini.’ She asked me what I did and I said I worked on the show, and she assumed I was stage crew. I asked her out within five minutes, told her to get some friends together and come out with some of us that night, and she said yes. Jessica Comeau, who was playing one of the Musettas, had come over and started talking to her, and was apparently reassuring her that I wasn’t some crazy person.
We met up for a drink that evening, in the Union Square Sports Bar and we had a great time, although she told me some time afterwards she’d thought it was a dive. She brought a friend, Alex, with her and we played pool. I put Steve Miller and Aerosmith on the jukebox and was horsing around with the pool cue, spinning it on my foot, playing air guitar with it, basically being a bit of an arse. The ’80s alien sitcom ALF was playing on the TV, and Sarah couldn’t get a handle on that being my name, so she called me Alfred. Everyone there called me Alfred anyway. In London it was Alf or Alfie, but in America, always Alfred. Some of Sarah’s family still call me Alfred. Her grandmother calls me Alford.
I was drinking Guinness, accidentally knocked into her and spilt it all over her back, her white vest, so that was good. Again, I felt an idiot. I’ve felt an idiot since I first met her. I still do now. I apologised, and she wanted to go home and get changed, funnily enough. I practically begged her to come back out later to a blues club with a few of us, and gave her enough cash for a return cab journey, to make sure she did. She seemed to think that was chivalrous, a kindly act by this exotic Englishman. American boys, or at least the ones she’d dated, didn’t do that, she later said. More fool them. I met up with Ricardo and Radu and grabbed a cab to this awful Indian restaurant where David Miller was having a party for the singers. I’d asked if I could bring Sarah and he insisted it was cast only, so Ricardo, Radu and I thought we’d show our faces for a bit while she was off sprucing herself up. We turned up, Ricardo said, ‘This is the biggest pile of crap I’ve ever seen Alfie,’ and it was. We had a poppadom, some lime pickle and then cleared off. Those two weren’t even invited because they weren’t singers. That’s what it was, singers knitting together. That happens in college, in opera houses, it’s something that just seems to go on in the professional classical business. There’s no other music world that has that cliquey group – you don’t find that in music theatre or pop music. It’s all so segregated in that world. So. We went to this blues club, Biscuit And Blues, I used to go there to see bands all the time.
Sarah and Alex were acting students at the American Conservatory Theatre and had class a
t 9am, and this was around 11pm, but Sarah had bribed Alex to come back out with the promise of cute guys, as I had said I was bringing friends. Radu had disappeared to a massage parlour, so when they turned up I was just sat with Ricardo, who dresses like a Mafia boss. He was wearing a trilby, a three-piece suit and a badge that said ‘No shit, I’m short.’ Alex, visibly, wasn’t impressed; I guess she wasn’t into older married guys who were 3ft tall. I thought she was gonna smack me silly. She made it clear that she needed to get home to bed, and I asked her to stay, I told her my other friend was on his way. Soon enough Radu appeared, and Alex kind of lost it. Guess she’s not into 7ft Romanian kickboxers. I thought I’d arm-wrestle Radu, which is a pretty stupid thing to do unless you’re also enormous and a kickboxer, and I am clearly neither. I was actually managing to hold him up, but I couldn’t move him. And suddenly something cracked. It just went, and my arm died. Completely lifeless. I had, it transpired, snapped a ligament, and it killed – my elbow has never been the same since. I can still feel it, and whenever my elbow twinges it reminds me of Radu. But I wasn’t going to let it ruin my night; we were having fun, we were dancing. Me and Sarah got some time to ourselves, we talked a lot, connected really quickly. I was wearing a ring that Dad had bought me and she asked me about it, so I started talking about him. That was a big deal because I hadn’t properly opened up about him to anyone, not even my family. It was a real release.
We left the club together and walked down to the main road, past the theatre we were playing in, The Curran, and Sarah looked up and saw the poster, which featured me and Wei in an embrace, with our names on it. She said, ‘That’s you! I thought you were stage crew! I thought you shifted boxes!’ We kissed goodnight – cordially – and I put her in a cab home. And I was on cloud nine. Those San Francisco hills were really small, because I was flying over them, I really was. I’d never felt like that before. I got back to my apartment, opened my balcony doors and took in the skyline, the moon shining. Everything at the Vilar programme was behind me, and I just felt happy. Really, really happy, really warm, really content, really satisfied with my life. It was an absolutely beautiful moment.