TOIL AND TROUBLE

Everything came together for me today. I returned from three days of theatrical pleasure at the Shaw Festival and I watched Errol Flynn play Robin Hood in the 1938 film. His performance, romancing Olivia de Havilland, confronting Basil Rathbone, and thwarting Prince John (Claude Rains,)marked the beginning of a lifelong (well almost) yearning: to be Errol Flynn!

My parents, especially my mother, loved having me on stage where I could “perform.” I was a surrogate for their narcissism. As an eight year old, and for several years beyond, I studied stage. My teacher was the legendary Basya Hunter, a passionate woman of The Left who had studied with Maria Ouspenskaya of The Moscow Art Theatre.


By 1955 I had made a career in radio. I got a phone call from Basya. She was directing a production of “The Crucible” at Holy Blossom Temple and her star had come down with kidney problems less than ten days before the play was to open. She dragooned me. The role of John Proctor was, and still is, one of the great stage roles. I performed it. Sometimes at the top of my lungs. Lorne Greene took me aside, said he liked my performance, but I would have to learn to control myself.

Next a call from Herbert Whittaker, late drama critic for the Globe and Mail. He had seen my John Proctor. He was casting “Streetcar Named Desire” with an all star cast, to be shown at the summer theatre in Vineland. I was to be Stanley Kowalski. It was not until several years later I discovered what was missing. At the time I knew I was faking it, covering a lack of understanding and good direction, with all the Brando-esque bombast I could muster.

I did more summer theatre that year. For the next two years I did get some TV and stage. I even had a continuing role in the soap opera “Search for Tomorrow.” But the truth is, I lacked the talent, the narcissism and the dedication to be the actor my mentor thought I could have been.

Back to radio success. Radio morphed into a lot of television – from news to interviews, to documentaries. I was all over the screen during the 70s.

In 1978 I made a return to the stage and went from success to bankruptcy in 1983. But what I wanted most was to direct. I was finally understanding all I had been taught about subplot, and “playing the action” and avoiding negative playing. Because I was also producing, I had a tailor-made chance to direct one of my favourite plays” “The Gin Game.” I cast Dora-winner Doris Petrie and one of my favourites- Murray Westgate. My biggest challenge was to avoid the self-pitying wallowing that the male lead went through. I said to Murray: “You are not a bad guy. You are a good guy who seems to have no choice but to do things that are negative. But you can’t play it. If you want the audience to care about you, and not to detest you, you cannot allow yourself the indulgence of feeling sorry for yourself.” He was superb. She was, as she always was, enchanting.

I was a little miffed when I read a very positive review in one of the Toronto papers which said something like: “The production of Gin Game was wonderful, even though it was directed by Larry Solway.!” I spoke to the critic after and he told me he loved it. “Why,” I asked “did you damn me with that kind of faint praise?

There are some things I have always wanted to be. In 1938 it was Errol Flynn. In 1982 it was to be a much better director than I was an actor. The other thing is of course, my wish that I could have been a decent musician. (Which is why I still take piano lessons long after there is any hope for anything resembling facility, never mind virtuosity.)

Full circle. The Shaw Festival is a truly grand theatrical experience. “Theatrical” is sometimes the best word for it. Everything is magically staged and costumed. Sometimes the productions are brilliantly moving. Sometimes they are not.

I have never wanted to be a critic. If I had been directing ‘An Ideal Husband,” the Oscar Wilde tragi-farce (I can’t think of a better word) I would have ruled with a very firm hand. As I watched the actors spin and cavort their way through Wilde’s incredible wit (everyone seems to be either Earnest or Algernon) I wondered where the reality had disappeared to.

Sometimes the productions depend on grandiosity before realism; on theatricality before honesty. Sometimes theatre creates a situation where brilliantly talented actors do a “turn” and cater to the audience’s need to see all the flash and foppery they paid for.

In: “An Ideal Husband” the protagonist is the very rich and successful politician Sir Robert Chiltern. He was being blackmailed into reversing his political stand on some Argentinean venture. The blackmailer knew about his hidden past: in his earlier days he compromised principle to become wealthy. By the time we meet him he has already assumed a lofty moral stance and is incorruptible. Therein lies the tale.

Therein lies the trap! From my earliest training I was told that you can’t succeed playing negativity. The audience must be on your side. They must want you to succeed; must want you to survive and prosper. In the Shaw production I simply didn’t care about Sir Robert. He allowed himself self-pity and he literally wallowed in his sorry plight. In real life perhaps it works. But in theatre it is deadly. The actor doing it is required to substitute loud vocal rage for a truly inner sense, a subtext that the audience will grasp without being yelled at. It is the skill of the director to see it and of the actor to find it. Otherwise, you have an actor who is, as I say “acting the lines,” and missing the “action.” Shaw patrons are very forgiving. They applaud loudly. But this performance did not get the standing “O” it should have. Maybe they got it all wrong. Trust the text. If it is sad it will be sad, you don’t have to “act” sad. Like telling a funny joke: you don’t have to be funny. The joke is funny. Don’t get in the way of the words.

It was easier to be ten years old and in love with Errol Flynn...