by Mark Thomas
MUM: ELEPHANT LAMP LIGHTS UP He’ll probably go with hypostatic pneumonia or something like that.
What’s that?
MUM: ELEPHANT LAMP LIGHTS UP Because he doesn’t swallow properly sometimes he gets these bouts of coughing because something has gone down the wrong way.
That’s what will kill him?
MUM: ELEPHANT LAMP LIGHTS UP Yeah it usually does. It’s usual in these kinds of cases.
But after a while she does open up and start to talk about the changes happening in my dad.
MUM: ELEPHANT LAMP LIGHTS UP If he was aware of what he does now like if he wets the bed or he does things, he’d be mortified normally.
When I come down here I try and see characteristics in him. I try and see something about him that links the old him to the new him.
MUM: ELEPHANT LAMP LIGHTS UP No this isn’t your father it’s just the shell of the person that we are just going through rituals with.
What do you mean?
MUM: ELEPHANT LAMP LIGHTS UP You could give him last week’s paper to read and it wouldn’t make any difference.
So he has lost his grip on reality?
MUM: ELEPHANT LAMP LIGHTS UP He had the same book for a year and it fell to pieces. So we took it away and gave him another one. It’s like a comfort blanket.
About six years ago I was bathing my daughter, who was five at the time. I had soaped up my hand to wash her legs and feet and was about to wash in between her toes when from nowhere I suddenly find myself going,
‘A bravo Figaro! Bravo, bravisimo.’
She is as surprised as I am. ‘Do it again!’
And it becomes a ritual, whenever I bath her she says, ‘Are we doing the Bravo song?’
‘A bravo Figaro! Bravo, bravisimo.’
Then one night she says, ‘No, no more, I’m not that girl any more. I’ve changed.’
And that was that.
One afternoon I am walking down Oxford Street, a beautiful sunny day when without a thought I walk into a shop and say, ‘Have you got the Bravo Figaro opera, the Verdi?’
‘Rossini.’
‘The Rossini.’
I get the opera home and I don’t know what to do with it. I played it on a Sunday afternoon while doing the VAT receipts, because we’re not all Jimmy Carr.37
The first opera I went to see was shit. By the end of it two thirds of the cast are dead onstage and if they had asked me halfway through I would have helped out. I go to the comic operas, the light operas, the music is fine but the comedy is the most insufferable bourgeois shite imaginable.
‘Oh the professor has caught his monocle in the harpsichord, how very very funny.’
And you just get this stabby stabby feeling.
I talk to my mate PD,38 he is an eighteen-stone tour manager, an East End boy who has worked every West End theatre including the Coli and the Cov. He knows a lot about opera because he has shifted scenery on most of it. He says, ‘Nah, I won’t listen to opera now. It’s all shit, except for John Adams, Nixon in China – fucking brilliant.’
And he is right, Nixon in China is amazing. John Adams’ opera The Death of Klinghoffer is one of the most amazing things I have seen, an opera about the hijacking of the Achille Lauro, using contemporary history as the basis for high art, using reportage in the opera and all set to modern minimalism. Amazing.
I start to take my son to the opera. I say to Paul, ‘I am taking him to Don Giovani.’
‘Good entry level opera. Mozart, like salmon. Very hard to fuck it up.’
I go and see Britten. Amazing brilliantly British sound within what is essentially a foreign art form. Puccini, Madame Butterfly, first act, good. Second amazing. Third felt like I had been run over by a steam roller. Wagner, The Flying Dutchman, two-and-a-half hours of listening to a tool being passed. Some opera is brilliant some is shit. Sometimes it is brilliant and shit in the same opera. But that’s ok because if you don’t doze off it’s not really opera.
I end up going to the same places my dad went to. I go to Covent Garden and see Salome, Strauss doing Oscar Wilde doing John the Baptist, how can that miss? English National Opera, I see Gaddafi the Opera, it is shit as it sounds. I end up at Glyndebourne, the poshest opera house. I am late for the bell and I am running through in my dinner jacket but forgot my shoes so I am wearing Doc Martens boots and a ‘Fuck the War’ badge. As I run through the bar someone says, ‘Good lord, is that Mark Thomas?’ and I turn round and go, ‘Yeargh’ THUMBS UP AND GRINNING I am a cigar away from saying, ‘I’m as fucking good as you.’
I get asked to meet the director and occasional opera director Mike Figgis.
So we meet in his studio, lots of camera equipment and a director’s chair in one of those dockland warehouses. Nice fellow who strangely manages to have more and yet less hair than Art Garfunkel at the same time.
He said, ‘Look I’ve been asked to curate a festival at the ROH and I wanted to work around the theme of ‘tell the truth’ just tell the truth! It seems to me that this is what people want, whether it is politicians or press or police or banks. Just tell the bloody truth! SO that is the theme and we have a variety of art forms appearing, we have dance, music, we have a discussion with the fashionistas on society, politics, fashion and gender AND I have done an interview with the art critic John Berger, lives in France won’t come back, filmed the interview and am going to play it on a large screen in the Opera House. First thing he says is, ‘You know I physically can’t abide the rich, I can’t even be in the same room as them.’ Marvellous interview. Now do you think there is something you could do for the festival at the Royal Opera House around the idea of ‘tell the bloody truth’?
‘Yes. Yes, I think there is but I want opera singers. Proper ones from the Royal Opera House.’
‘In the performance?’
‘Sort of. Not really. I just want to borrow them.’
‘I’ll see what I can do.’
A plan is hatched and I get my pocket full of sopranos.
SFX: PHONE RINGS TWICE. DOG BARKS. MUM’S VOICE
Get out of it!
WALK AND RUB HANDS. START SLOW AND END HIGH
‘Mum, first born, I’ve got this idea, don’t shoot it down hear me out. Dad doesn’t get out much, doesn’t listen to opera and can’t watch it on DVD. Mum I’ve got these opera singers, proper opera singers from the ROH. What would it be like if we did an opera for Dad in the living room? If we did a concert for him in the bungalow?’
My mum’s first reaction is, ‘Oh my God, what will the neighbours think?!’
She has got reservations so I leave her a few days.
SFX: PHONE RINGS ONCE. DOG BARKS. MUM’S VOICE
Get out of it!
‘First born, Mum, it is really important to me that we try and make this concert happen, I know you have problems with it so let’s talk them through one by one.’
‘Well what if he goes to the loo?’
‘What?’
‘He can be in there for hours and nothing will shift him. The singers will have come all the way from London and he’ll be stuck on the bog.’
‘Mum that will be fine, we can take him to the loo in advance.’
‘Well what about the ceiling?’
‘What?’
‘The ceiling is too small Mark, it’s a bungalow with a low ceiling. The singers have got big voices and they need big ceilings.’
‘Mum it will be fine …’
‘I’ll have to do a buffet …’
‘What?’
‘I know these opera singers they like to eat.’
‘Fine do a buffet …’
‘And would it be alright for the nextdoor neighbour to come along? He’s as deaf as a pisspot but he does love his music.’
‘Yes I am sure that will all be fine. Can we do it?’
‘Yes.’
‘Are you going to tell Dad?’
‘Not yet love he’ll forget, we’ll tell him nearer the time.’
I meet the singers.
I rehearse with the singers. My dad is told, time passes. The day of the concert arrives and my mother has laid on the finest selection of cold meat platters known to Marks and Spencer. There is ham of every kind, there is roast, honey glaze, mustard seed and pancetta; sausages, sausage rolls and saucisson, pickles, gherkins, silver onions, pickled onions and piccalilli – or as my wife calls it ‘working-class yellow food’ and we have celery in a jug in the centre of the table. In an operation reminiscent of the Berlin airlift my dad is taken to the loo well in advance.
We’ve moved the furniture to one end of the living room creating a little performance space at the other end of the room where there are a pair of sliding doors.
So the audience, us, will sit in front of the fireplace and face the sliding doors that lead into the kitchen. The singers will enter through the sliding doors via the meat platters.
The hire piano has been delivered and is set up. The bungalow is hoovered and jiffed. My mum bustles and bristles with hospitality. The singers arrive and my mum goes out to meet them, saying what she always does, ‘Welcome, welcome.
MUM: ELEPHANT LAMP LIGHTS UP This is the Mad House.
This is the Mad House.
And,
MUM: ELEPHANT LAMP LIGHTS UP Help yourself to whatever.
Help yourself to whatever.
Everyone comes in and the bungalow is full.
SFX: BACKGROUND CHAT FROM THE CONCERT
The talk is small and the drinks are large and the singers go into the living to meet my dad who has accidentally sat on the TV remote and the widescreen TV has two words on it ‘ADULT CHANNEL’, not words you want to see on a telly in a room with a large man shaking in the corner.
ROH have done playbills for the concert and hand them out.
They list the arias. Starting with Verdi, the ‘Brindisi’ from La Traviata and finishing with Puccini, Tosca and La Bohème.
PROJECT THE PLAYBILL
The attic of the bungalow is converted to the singers’ dressing rooms and they warm up upstairs, running through scales and it all seems very familiar.
Robert the next-door neighbour comes around.
My mum says, ‘You look smart Robert.’
‘What?’
‘You look SMART.’
‘Smart?’
‘Smart.’
‘SMART.’
Sophie from the ROH is co-ordinating the singers and she whispers, ‘Is he the neighbour?’
‘Nah the reviewer.’
We sit in the living room anxiously. My brother Matt has work so can’t be here, but my sister Liz is, there is my mum and dad, Robert and the nephew, nieces and my son are all on a three-line whip. They sit in the second row of seats or as we call it the bungalow’s middle stalls.
We sit clutching the playbills, my mum leans round to the kids sitting behind, ‘Now you lot best behaviour don’t embarrass me.’
Sophie clutches the playbill and looks on attentively.
The pianist walks through the sliding doors and bows, the dog39 bounds over and shoves its snout into her crutch, my mum hisses, grabs the dog and singers enter through the sliding doors to a backdrop of cold meat and start to sing the ‘Brindisi’.
SFX: SINGERS SING THE ‘BRINDISI’
The singers seem to pitch the songs right at my dad, almost ignoring the rest of us. Hurling the notes at him as if willing him to be with us, to be present.
My mum is right. The ceiling is too low.
My son Charlie is filming with his camera from over my shoulder, Sophie from the Royal Opera House holds the playbill still. And my mum is smiling, one hand on her lap, the other clasped around the dog’s snout with a grip a python would be proud of.
My dad. His mouth is agape holding the arms of his chair forcing himself upright. His face is red with concentration, his white hair stands out against his complexion. But his eyes. He has fought with the eyelids that are closing and won. His eyes are open and I had forgotten they are blue. They are crystal blue. He is with us. He is back in the room.
SFX: APPLAUSE AS SINGERS FINISH40
The applause is somewhat teary.
Everyone moves into the kitchen for the buffet. My dad stays in the living room, as he is being fed by my nephew George and naturally doesn’t want strangers to see him being fed. But after he has eaten the singers nip in one by one to talk to him and he is the most lucid we have seen him in a while. Slowly the food turns to alcohol and alcohol to coffee, the coffee turns to coats and the coats turn to cars. And we are left alone and this is when we record the conversation I have been playing to you this evening.
MARK: What did you think to the singers, did you enjoy them?
DAD: BUILDER’S LAMP LIGHTS UP They’re beautiful.
MARK: Did you like chatting to them?
DAD: BUILDER’S LAMP LIGHTS UP Yes.
MARK: They were very friendly weren’t they?
DAD: BUILDER’S LAMP LIGHTS UP Yes actually they were lovely.
I said this story was about a gift. I wanted to give my dad a gift of the opera singers, the ROH singers – a gift no one else could give him and to that extent all of this is very egotistical. But I wanted to give him a feeling, an emotion, a connection. A gift you cannot commodify, a gift you can’t buy and sell, a gift that flies in the face of all his political beliefs. So I am right and he is wrong. Subsequently I have turned the story of that gift into a show, sold tickets and commodified it, so he is right and I am wrong.
But there is something else. I wanted to work out why it was so important to do this concert, to have the opera, to have him back in the room for this moment. And I think it is this.
My dad and I are too old to sit down on the sofa and share. We are never going to make things right and heal old wounds and even if he wanted to my dad is no longer able. We have got to the stage where we just have to live with what we have from each other.
I wanted him back in the room so I could say the only thing left to say. I wanted to say goodbye. Because all the real goodbyes are going to be very messy and I just wanted one that was beautiful.
Funny thing is since doing the concert I don’t much listen to opera now.
EXIT WITH SACK BARROW LOADED WITH GREAT COMPOSERS SERIES.41
NOTES
1 Caused by the build-up of fluid in the lungs.
2 Friday Night Live, 1988.
3 Imagine Bryn Terfel Jones mid-Wagner eulogising on jism.
4 I did a show called The Manifesto where the audience could submit policy suggestions to create a blueprint for a better world and during the tour, at every single show, someone would submit ‘bring back hanging’. I got so sick of it I eventually agreed. ‘Fuck it, we should bring back hanging but let’s do it on a voluntary basis. So if you agree with the death penalty, you sign up to a public register and then if you fuck up, we kill you.’
5 Bravo Figaro! was massively rewritten after its first outing at the Royal Opera House and opened in its current form at the Traverse Theatre during the Edinburgh Fringe. The Traverse was my first and only choice – it’s a great venue, with a seriously brilliant tech and stage crew. Not to mention you’re sharing a bill with a set of performers and writers who make you up your game.
6 The authenticity of the props was very important, the barrow was actually my dad’s old sack barrow. When the show opened in Edinburgh we had a backdrop of a skirting board and wallpaper that exactly matched what we had at home at the time, and a massive frame into which we projected a picture of my dad.
7 It’s an old elephant lamp belonging to my nan. She left it to my mum who gave it to me. The lamp is made of old hardwood, the statue is an elephant lifting its head and trunk upwards and the bulb goes at the end of the trunk. It’s more likely to appear at a car boot sale than the Antiques Roadshow. Before touring the show in Australia, my tour manager removed the small remnants of a white tusk – just as well or we would have been arrested for ivory smuggling.
8 The actual packaging of my dad’s medicines.
10 Some of my fellow drama students may care to date the start of my stand-up career to performances at college, in particular the profound and moving ‘fart sketch’.
11 The Iceman – the nom du guerre of performance artist Antony Irving – is still performing but tends to paint more these days.
12 He’s an ex-comic now, turned author and Camden tour guide and still a good friend.
13 When the show toured in New Zealand and Australia, the audience there were unfamiliar with Little Britain. I was left looking for an example of reactionary, boorish humour. It is the only time I have been thankful for the existence of Jeremy Clarkson.
14 There were a lot of bigots to choose from in the 1980s – these were the days of James Anderton and Section 28.
15 My dad used to preach in the street in Clapham Junction and on Northcote Road. My uncle Norman told me that, as a young Teddy Boy, he once saw his mate sitting in front of my dad while he was preaching. My uncle bent over and asked him what he was doing. His mate replied, ‘I’ve been saved.’ Norman said, ‘No, you fucking haven’t, you’re coming with me.’
16 This section is improvised on a nightly basis and cannot be regarded as word for word accurate – but you get the jist.
17 One of my genuinely treasured memories of my dad is of him leaning out of the Commer van window and shouting, ‘Oi Cuntybollocks!’ It was something he did quite a lot while driving.
18 My mum says they were called Betty and David and she used to give them a lift to the cash and carry.
19 Magistrates’ Court, Lavender Hill, Battersea.
20 The situation has improved since his day. Back then, half of the working adult population in England and Wales had no qualifications. Now it’s a fifth. A fifth. In the fifth largest economy in the world. In the twenty-first century.
21 The ark is a large wooden boat on wheels, sturdy enough for a child’s rough play. It looks a little more like a military landing craft than the vessel of two of every animal, which is entirely in keeping with my dad to create a paramilitary Bible toy. It survived the tour and is now in my office.
22 He’s eight years younger and a building site manager. In my best man’s speech at his wedding I described how we used to share a bedroom as kids. I said we used to sleep in bunk beds and I slept on the top which I hated because I got motion sickness.
