I have been opening a play. It is called Allegra and is about a woman who is relentlessly happy. This is not typecasting. ‘Why do we actors have so much self-esteem and so little self-respect?’ demanded Edmund Kean in the eponymous play Kean,which I last saw in 1990. Funny, I never forgot that line. I’d been bobbing along merrily in rehearsals, learning, improving, rejecting and rejoicing. Now, suddenly, it was a technical rehearsal in a real theatre, the Brighton Royal, and there was a microphone taped under my wig, battery packs belted to my underwear – real orchestrations, quick-change shoes. My ancient make-up sticks must be laid out and lip and tongue exercises from my Lamda days, 60-odd years ago, must be performed. My brain turned to cod’s roe and I forgot not just my lines, but my children’s names, my marital status and my reason for living. Yet you will have seen enough Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland movies to know that in the end the show went like a rocket.
Just before curtain up on opening night I received an email from a friend, Deirdre Kennedy, telling me her son Fraser had died. I have been in touch with this family, two of whose children have now died from the effects of the genetic disease Friedreich’s ataxia, ever since I helped Deirdre with some charity work more than 30 years ago. Rebecca, Fraser’s sister, died at 34 of this wasting illness, but Fraser seemed utterly indomitable. Even in a wheelchair and without sight, he skied, he parachuted, he surfed, he beat all the odds to live the fullest life he could until his 45th year. At the curtain call I dedicated the show to Fraser, which was a bit pretentious of me, but how else do I mark the passing of a real superhero?
