Anything Goes

by John Barrowman

  ‘Haven’t you heard of the Donner Party?’ he chided, walking back to his truck.

  Apparently, not nearly enough.

  On 27 December 2006, Scott and I became civil partners at a late-morning ceremony at the St David’s Hotel and Spa overlooking Cardiff Bay. It was a glorious day, even if the weather was overcast and cold. I wore my kilt and Scott wore a black Neil Morengo suit with thin red piping on the cuffs and collar. I hired Claire Pritchard-Jones and another artist from Torchwood to do hair and make-up for the women in the family, and our three beloved dogs at the time, Penny, Lewis and Tiger, were accessorized with tartan ribbons and sprigs of heather. Scott and I adopted Tiger from Dogs Trust, one of the charities I support, and he was our present to each other in honour of the day.4

  During the ceremony, my dad read the Robert Burns poem ‘My Love is Like a Red, Red Rose’ and my mum sang (as she had done at Carole and Kevin’s and Andrew and Dot’s weddings). Just as Gavin Barker, my close friend and manager, and his civil partner Stuart Macdonald stood up to be our witnesses, the sun burst out from behind the clouds and three white swans glided across the Bay and into view behind us.

  After the ceremony, Scott and my immediate families and our close friends joined the happy couple upstairs at the St David’s for a New York-style champagne brunch. Our guests included my Torchwood team, Eve Myles, Burn Gorman, Naoko Mori and Gareth David-Lloyd;5 Torchwood executive producer Russell T. Davies and his partner Andrew; and my friend Martin Marquez, who plays Gino in Hotel Babylon,6 and his wife and children.

  Whenever Scott and I travel back to the States, the first morning after our arrival we love to pig out on a huge artery-slamming American breakfast. We order the works: pancakes, waffles, fruit, bacon, muffins, hash browns, scrambled eggs and sausages. The brunch table at the St David’s on our civil partnership day had all of this and more. The room was decorated with arrangements of green and purple heather, and each place setting had a traditional, individually wrapped Scottish cake for guests. The main cake was also a traditional Scottish fruitcake, with frosted icing sculpted into figures of Scott and me on top. Scott’s back rested against three skyscrapers and he held a set of architectural plans in his hand, while I leaned against a curtained stage and held sheet music in mine. Later that day, as a gift to our families, Scott and I gave each guest a treatment at the spa. After eating my fill and receiving lots of toasts and good cheer, I dashed away to do two shows of Jack and the Beanstalk at the New Theatre in Cardiff to pay for it all.

  Since that day, I’ve received hundreds of emails and letters of congratulations and goodwill regarding Scott and my commitment to one another. We were especially overwhelmed by the best wishes from the Welsh public. Cardiff is one of the most cosmopolitan cities in Europe – and I’ve travelled to a lot of European cities. I love Cardiff, and its sincere response to Scott and me has only strengthened my good feelings about the city by the Bay. Elderly people, young people, couples of all sorts regularly stop me in the shops or in the city centre to congratulate and thank Scott and me for choosing Cardiff as the setting for our public statement about our relationship. We chose Wales because we wanted to celebrate Cardiff the way Cardiff has celebrated us.

  I’ve also had many people, gay and straight, ask me if the civil ceremony has changed our relationship. And I have to say it has. First of all, we both eat more cakes and ice cream. Seriously, we do. Secondly, even though before the ceremony we’d been together for over thirteen years, publicly acknowledging our commitment to each other has strengthened our partnership. We talk even more about ‘we’ and ‘us’ and even less about T and ‘me’. And we’re less worried that in our future, when we are both tottering old men, someone else will make the important decisions in our lives for us.

  Most gay couples I know have lots in common with their non-gay counterparts. They are devoted to each other, concerned for their families and their futures, and are active contributing members to their neighbourhoods and communities. When I stepped across the threshold of the St David’s Hotel that December afternoon to greet the press and well-wishers, the rush of sheer joy I felt was one I wished all gay couples could experience.

  In April 2004, my parents celebrated their fiftieth wedding anniversary. Carole, Andrew and I threw a surprise party for them at a hotel in Milwaukee. Close friends and family gathered from all over the States, and a few travelled thousands of miles from Scotland and Europe to celebrate my mum and dad and their marriage. Watching my parents wander the tables together, smiling at their friends, laughing with each other, dancing and holding each other with the same passion they’d had fifty years before, made my heart swell. Scott and I want to be able to mark our union with family and friends in a similar celebration when we reach our fiftieth, and in December 2006, we formalized that desire.

  In our relationship, I’m a bit like a sailboat. I’m always moving, riding the crest of the waves, letting the wind carry me in lots of directions. Scott’s my keel. He slows me down and gives me stability. He can guide me when I need to be redirected, and when I do on occasion, shall we say, ‘cut loose’, Scott gets me home, gives me two paracetamol and a glass of water, and puts me to bed.

  In February 2005, Scott’s sister Sandie died of glioblastoma – a form of brain cancer – at the Royal Marsden Hospital in London. One of the terrible ironies of Sandie’s death was that Scott’s brother Steven, one of the foremost brain surgeons in the world, could do very little to help her. The other was that Sandie’s two oldest children, Iris and Gabriel, had already lost their dad to cancer when they were young. Sandie fought heroically to stay alive because she wanted to make sure her children, including her youngest daughter Eden, were prepared for her death. Steven was able to remove the tumoured section of her brain and this gave her a little more time.

  Through those long, achingly sad months, I watched Scott help take care of Sandie. He never treated her as if she was sick. He never saw her as a burden. He took time away from his work and sat with her during her stays at the hospital. When she came home, he took her to movies and out on short day trips to visit family and friends. He spent a week with her at the seaside on the Norfolk coast, reading, talking, watching films, living.

  The night before Sandie died, she rang everyone in the family. After she talked to Scott, she spoke to me.

  ‘John,’ she said quietly, ‘remember to look after my brother.’

  ‘I will,’ I promised.

  ‘Anything Goes’

  In many cultures, the magpie is considered to be a harbinger of good fortune, and magpies are everywhere in Cardiff. On any given morning on my way to the Torchwood set, I find myself saluting like crazy and saying, ‘Hello, Mr Magpie. How are your wife and kids?’ over and over again, which, in case you didn’t know, is how you greet a magpie in order to benefit from the aforementioned good fortune. If you ever pass me on the motorway or on a city street, don’t panic about all this manic gesticulation. Remember I have a driver, Sean. All my saluting is not the least bit distracting, although he may think otherwise.

  Why all this tip o’ the hat stuff, you may ask. Well, it’s because, as I mentioned in an earlier chapter, I have a few teensy weensy phobias and superstitions. On a scale of one to five – one being slightly superstitious to five being obsessive-compulsive about superstitions – theatre people in general are a six. I’m about an eight and a half.

  As the song title from The Producers says, ‘It is bad luck to say good luck’ in a theatre – and that’s probably the most rational of all the superstitions I’ve acquired over the years. Theatre folks prefer ‘break a leg’ to ‘good luck’ because during Shakespeare’s day, or thereabouts,1 actors went down on one knee when taking their bows. Lots of bows meant a risk of falling or wrenching your knee; therefore, ‘break a leg’ implies a performance worthy of many bows.

  A theatre is ‘dark’. It is never ‘closed’. Why? Because a closed theatre sounds terribly terminal, while darkness implies that at some point the lig
hts will be turned back on.

  Never whistle in a theatre. To purse your lips and blow is bad luck because stage managers didn’t always call ‘thirty minutes, ladies and gentlemen’ over comms systems. Years ago they used real whistles to give cues to the company instead. You can imagine the chaos it might cause if someone whistling for the hell of it sent an over-enthusiastic actor into a scene before his or her cue.

  Dark-coloured roses before a performance are bad; red roses after a performance are good. Yellow roses are really bad at any time. A poor dress rehearsal is considered a good omen. Peacock feathers are an ominous sign (which is why real ones are never used in costumes). If you leave something belonging to you, like a bar of soap, somewhere in your dressing room, you’ll be invited back to that theatre in the future.

  The mother of all superstitions, of course, is that ‘the Scottish play’ should never ever be mentioned anywhere in a theatre.

  Do I really believe all this stuff? I’m the idiot sitting in his car saluting birds, for God’s sake. What do you think?

  During my run as Billy Crocker in Anything Goes at the National Theatre in 2002–3, a stagehand’s foot was run over by a scenery truck and the show had to stop. You guessed it. Some asshole said, ‘Macbeth.’

  Ssshhh!

  Another time – same show, different night – a light fell from its rigging and just missed hitting a gaffer.2 You got it. Someone mentioned the M-word. You may be thinking, ‘A load of bollocks, just coincidences,’ but you’ll never convince those of us in theatre that’s all it is. Sometimes people think it’s funny when they find out I really believe these superstitions, and they deliberately mention you-know-what just to be a prick. I once held a curtain3 in Sunset Boulevard and refused to go on until the person who’d mentioned ‘the Scottish play’ was sent outside the stage door, made to spit twice, turn round three times, and come back inside only once he’d been invited. This is standard procedure in such circumstances. I’ve been told it’s something to do with the fact that ‘the Scottish play’ opens with three witches cursing, ‘Fair is foul and foul is fair.’ The fates of the theatre are fickle and even those of us who are not particularly religious bow down to them before every performance in one way or another.

  Most of my family is superstitious, too. My mum never puts shoes on the table, always throws salt over her shoulder if any spills, and if she were to drop a glove, she’d stand around for hours waiting for someone else to pick it up for her, because it’s bad luck to pick up your own dropped glove.

  Hang out backstage with me and you’ll see that superstitions are only one small part of what keeps a company on its toes, actors fresh and at their creative best. Audiences attending the theatre may enjoy the performance of a lifetime, but there’s always another show going on behind the scenes, one that never interferes with the quality of the one they’re watching, but that can be just as entertaining.

  A theatre company backstage is a lot like a big family getting ready for a visit from the Queen. Lighting folks, stage crew, stage management, wardrobe artists, wig designers, hair and make-up people, musicians, dressers for all the performers, and then the performers themselves are all running around frantically, all with a mission: put on a great show. Behind the scenes in a theatre there’s a complex network of people all supporting each other.

  After the preview performances, the director of the show makes only an occasional visit to the theatre, and he rarely has anything to do with the show going on behind the scenes that he never blocked or rehearsed. Once the production opens, it’s down to the rest of the cast and crew to keep the energy up and the standard high. Performing in live theatre, on average actors have eight or nine shows a week, depending on the matinee schedule. If they’re lucky, and the show runs into years, that’s eight shows multiplied by fifty-two weeks, minus one day off for Christmas. That’s 415 shows in a year. When you, the audience, come to see the show, it may be our 365th performance, but it’s your first and may be your only one. In order to keep ourselves fresh and to keep our creative adrenalin running at the level it was during show number ten, we shake things up on stage for each other. Sitting in the stalls, you perhaps had no idea – did you? Until now.

  During a scene in Matador, for example, we had to recreate convincingly a dinner party as a backdrop. Many of the characters were seated around a table, being served a meal, while the main action was taking place at the centre front of the stage. The audience could see us enjoying a meal, and they had to believe we were having a dinner party, but they could not hear a word we were saying.

  Oh my God, some of the things we said. The actress playing my character’s sister, Caroline O’Connor, who later went on to appear as Ethel Merman in De-Lovely, would begin the conversation by introducing Stefanie Powers as Ginger Dungbucket. That’s all it took. We were off. One of the boys, dressed as a waiter for the scene, would serve us stupid notes with dirty jokes on them or he’d bring us someone’s panties on a silver tray. Through the whole scene, no one could hear or see what we were really doing around that table, which was just as well, on reflection.

  In 1994, I played Joe Gillis to Betty Buckley’s Norma Desmond in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Sunset Boulevard at the Adelphi Theatre in London. Sunset has one of the best opening scenes in musical theatre. When the curtain rises, the audience is looking at Norma’s swimming pool where my character, Joe, is floating dead on the shimmering surface. The musical is told in flashback from that moment.

  The show is set in 1949 and is about an ageing Hollywood diva, Norma Desmond, who is clinging pathetically to her past glory in silent movies twenty years before, and hoping once again to find fame. Joe Gillis is a poor, disaffected writer who accidentally meets Norma late one night when he is trying to flee his creditors. Norma sees in Joe the chance to perfect her comeback script, Salome, at long last. Joe views Norma as a meal ticket. Their relationship eventually collapses under the weight of Norma’s delusions and ends with Joe’s watery demise. His death is hastened by his developing relationship with Betty Schaefer, whom he meets at his friend Artie’s flat, and who helps Joe to write his own movie script.

  The set for Sunset was one of the most complex and massive stages ever created. It was constructed to look like the inside of Norma’s decaying Sunset Boulevard mansion – spiral staircase, chandeliers and all. The entire set shifted at various times during the show with two levels that moved up and down using powerful hydraulics. During one scene, Norma Desmond’s house ‘flies’ into the upper area of the theatre, leaving the set underneath visible for a scene we affectionately called the ‘Artie’s Party’ scene because it took place in Artie’s apartment. The room was furnished for a sing-along party with a table and chairs, a piano, a bar and a small toilet off to the side. The toilet’s interior wall was cut away so that Joe and Betty Schaefer, played by Anita Louise Combe, can have a private moment to which the audience is privy (pun intended).

  The final matinee of an actor’s run in a production is usually the one in which the most pranks are pulled. During Anita’s last matinee of Sunset, she and I moved into Artie’s small toilet as usual for the scene where we flirted in song using the towel rail as a dance bar. The song started and Anita promptly hiked up her skirt, dropped her knickers and proceeded to sit on the loo as if she was having a pee.

  I couldn’t lose my composure, because it’s impossible to stretch or stop one of Andrew’s duets once it’s begun. Between my lyrics, I was biting my cheeks so hard to keep myself from laughing that I could taste blood. I still don’t know how I made it through the number with my romantic interest taking a leak in front of me. To make matters worse, for the entire duet we were full front to the audience, who I can only imagine thought such an intimate moment was part of the script. When Anita was finished, she wiped – she really did – and then she flushed all before the song ended. By then, I could barely hold it together, though I managed to make it into the wings before completely losing it and peeing my own pants.

&nbs
p; Unfortunately for me, Anita was just getting warmed up with her stunt in the toilet. Later, in the same performance, during one of the final scenes, Anita’s character stormed into Norma’s mansion to tackle Joe about his infidelity. The moment was dramatic and very ‘in your face’. When Joe – me, that is – saw his girlfriend charge down the huge spiral staircase, he turned in anger and confronted her.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ I said angrily to Anita as Betty.

  ‘I’m here with my twin sister,’ she replied, and then Anita pulled the actress who was due to replace her on to the set behind her. She was dressed in the same outfit as Anita. This was so not in the script.

  ‘Your sister?’ I sputtered, choking back laughter and turning my back to the audience in an attempt to regain my composure.

  We proceeded to play the scene with two Betty Schaefers and probably most of the audience had no idea how wrong the whole scene really was. Anita’s replacement said nothing. She just stood there grinning while I desperately tried to avoid making a fool of myself and wrap up the scene as quickly as possible. After all the jokes I’d played during our long run of Sunset, I was the first to admit that payback was in order, and Anita’s were gems.

  Earlier in the week, during another performance, I’d made a mistake during a scene with Betty Buckley and I think Anita had taken her cue to pull a prank or two from my screw-up. In the scene before Joe and Betty Schaefer have their confrontation on the stairs, Norma Desmond rushes to the phone, picks it up and out of pure spite calls Betty to tell her what Joe has really been doing in the mansion for all these months.

  Into the phone, Norma says, ‘Miss Schaefer, why don’t you come over and see what Mr Gillis is really doing at my house?’ or something like that.