“The Heavy Lifting”
I started this blog with where I started in my profession, the theatre, which — like so many actors of my age and older — was as an Assistant Stage Manager. It occurs to me that there are many workers in the theatre who take care of what you might call the heavy lifting, and who are not really obvious to the audience. Not that playing leading parts is anything but heavy work!
What about understudies? A necessary job since plays go on night after night throughout the year (Lockdowns excepted), and very rarely are performances normally cancelled. Think of all the sick days people have in other occupations.
There were two young actors, Barry and John. Barry was sounding off about what he called “chi-chi” instructions and terms used by directors. “I understudy quick! I understudy slow! I understudy stop! I understudy go!” he insisted. John looked at him quizzically. “You understudy all those, do you?” Barry stared. “Of course I do”. “And what are they — characters in Restoration plays?” Only slowly did Barry understand that he had used the wrong word for ‘understand’. I suspect a subconscious comment on his recent career.
No, it wasn’t me. Those are real names. I did do a batch of understudying at one point, and was amused and gratified to be in work for a complete year — sometimes in overlapping jobs. Admittedly a kind friend who has been on both sides of the desk, as it were, suggested there was a bit too much understudying on my C.V., and I edited it. As the years go on, you can afford to be selective.
Was I always raring to go on in one of the parts? Well, it’s not always as simple as that. Sometimes understudies are rather nominally rehearsed, sometimes covering various roles complicates the job. The old joke about trying to push your principal down the stairs is outside my experience. Actors are nicer to each other than that! Certainly the nicest of my principals was Sam Kelly in “Dead Funny” in the West End. I remember in a break between shows, a group of us were coming back from Leicester Square and a street barrier came down suddenly, close to Sam. “Don’t hit him!” I quipped “I’m his understudy.” No killer instinct, me? Anyway, I did eventually go on with the principals in that play.
The start of my Year of Understudying was a short tour in which the long renowned George Cole played a characteristically seedy little petty crook. I reported to my old friend Robert, actor and drama teacher etc., “I understudy the younger men.” “You understudy the YOUNGER men?” Robert repeated with surprise — he was twenty years my senior. “Younger than George Cole” I answered firmly.
My very first experience of it had been covering Michael Aldridge, a charming actor who I eventually gathered was always losing his voice. Nerve-wracking. Michael asked me to sit at the back of the audience, when my own small part was over, at the Royal in Brighton to report to him whether he was audible. After that, I used to do a couple of lines of his from the wings that he shouted from off, to save his vocal chords. I did a good imitation by then.
The only person I have “covered” who got a title was David Jason. I wasn’t his understudy, but I stood in for him at several performances in London while he did a television job. And they once left the slip in the programme saying that the current actor was Roger Sansom, when it wasn’t. I nearly got credited with Sir David’s work.
