And Banish All the World

This last weekend I was reminded of the gifts we give each other as artists. Sometimes those gifts go beyond just a satisfactory performance, they evoke more than a genuine emotional response in the recipient. They take you somewhere, somewhere very special you haven’t visited in a very long time.

The performance in question was a rare treat that I cannot recommend enough. The Paradise Theater School, namely Erik Van Beuzekom’s (directed by wife Patti Miles) one-man production of Mark Jenkins ROSEBUD: The Lives of Orson Welles. The play is very in-depth look at the tragic arc of Welles’ life and career. The show is terrific and it’s being remounted so you’d do yourself a great service by seeing it-- the moment that resonated so deeply for me was in that latter, lumbering stage of Welles’ life where he’d ballooned into this grossly overweight glutton. The fact that he had become the physical embodiment of Shakespeare’s Jack Falstaff was lost to no one, including Welles. He produces the film Chimes at Midnight a project rumored to have been in the works since he was in grammar school.

(I have a copy of the film, but it’s a blurred and garbled bootleg VCD transferred from old VHS tape. I don’t believe any stateside studio currently holds the rights to the film. Without digital transfer technology, the film would be lost to most.)

Erik tells this bit of the story while pulling on a fat suit and applying an atrocious white wig and beard. All the while he’s talking about Welles tremendous appetite for life and how, when viewed from a grander scope, Welles, like Jack Falstaff is not a consumer, no, he’s beyond that—he’s inhaled so much life he has become something more, he embodies the appetite of world.

A world that, in return, rejects him.

Fal:

My lord, I know the man.

Hal:

I know thow dost.

Fal:

But to say I know more harm in him than in

Myself, were to say more than I know. That he is old,

the more the pity, his white hairs do witness it, but that

he is, saving your reverence, a whoremaster, that I

utterly deny. If sack and sugar be a fault, God

help the wicked! If to be old and merry be a sin, then

many an old host that I know is damn’d. If to be fat

be to be hated, then Pharaoh’s lean kine are to be

lov’d. No, my good lord, banish Peto, banish Bardolph,

banish Poins, but for sweet Jack Falstaff, kind Jack Falstaff,

and therefore more valiant, being as he is old Jack

Falstaff, banish not him thy Harry’s company, banish

Not him thy Harry’s company—banish plump Jack,

And banish all the world.

Hal:

I do, I will.

In 1993 I was a company member at American Players Theater in Spring Green, WI. I did two seasons at APT and I was terrified by my own inadequacy the entire time. Yet working there was a dream come true, a terrible dream because I never felt my talents or experience even held a candle to the regional veterans with whom I shared a dressing room. Yet I learned so much. Every day was so full of so many gifts, it was like Christmas. A scary Christmas.

By that time I believe the company had been in existence for over 20 years. Since the day they’d dug a pit in the woods for their amphitheater, an actor named Stephen Hemming had been a part of the company. As regional theaters go, he was adored by audiences and critics alike, and for good reason.

My first season at APT, Stephen played Falstaff in Henry IV, Part I. I had bit parts show: Young Prince John and Francis, the drawer—aleboy in the Boar’s Head Tavern. This was the part I treasured. Not for my acting contribution, not for my feeble comic bits, but my opportunity to watch a masterful artist up close and as personal as could possibly be.

Stephen was a rake of a man—stick legs and arms, he looked almost brittle out of his doublet, but each night he transformed himself with Olivier-like facility; fat pads, facial prosthetics, beard and wig. He was unrecognizable when he walked on stage.

I loved that show. I loved being in that show. If you’re familiar, there is a play within-a-play where Prince Hal and Jack Falstaff improvise a whole scene in the royal court and I got to sit at Stephen Hemming’s feet in the matinees and evenings in the heat, the rain, the humidity, the mosquitoes, black flies and gnats and watch that man live that role over and over again.

It was magical. It was Christmas.

Stephen and I were never friends. We didn’t talk. We didn’t sit around the table at the pub after a performance and swap stories. We mechanicals would hit the bar and start a round of pitchers and pool. Stephen was more of an introvert and addicted to the blackjack machine in the corner.

At times I would approach him where he held court at the gambling machine, but he preferred the company of his gin and tonic and Newports to a would-be Prince Hal, hoping to banty just a skosh of brittle wit.

Still, I had a dream that someday I would not be sitting at his feet, but looking him in the eye, onstage--his Horatio, his Grumio, his Banquo or maybe even his Caliban.

Stephen died of AIDS in 1996 and with him left not only the gift of one of the most amazing actors I have ever known, but my dreams of sharing the stage with him in more than a drawer’s capacity.

This last weekend Erik Van Beuzekom unintentionally gave me a gift I never saw coming. He took me back 20 years, when I sat at Stephen Hemming’s feet and watched him make magic.

And it was Christmas.