UK Theatre Network

It’s taken something close to seven years to get A Last Belch for the Great Auk onto the stage, so understandably, I’m looking forward to 6.45pm next Wednesday and curtain up at the Old Fire Station.

David Halliwell, who wrote the play, was a friend of mine. We met in Charlbury in 1996. We were introduced in a convoluted way by local jazz musician (and now childrens author) Alan Fraser, and Harry Potter director David Yates. Long story short, David Yates had directed me at drama school and when I moved to Charlbury, (where he was living) he happened to be doing a ceilidh and needed an authentic Scot to do some readings. There aren’t too many authentic Scots in a village like Charlbury, so I got the gig. That’s when I met Alan Fraser, who asked me to do some stand up at his cabaret nights, The Outhouse, and also said that David Halliwell was looking for a Scot (another lucky break) to appear in his production The House. I got the House gig too (I was the only one in Charlbury with a kilt), and subsequently played the same role (Private Billy Meechan) in a London production (retitled In That Summer of Sweet 16) directed by Jane Clark of I’m a Camera at the Old Red Lion in 1997.

I also formed a company with David, The Wychwood Depiction Engine, which produced several plays for the Charlbury Arts Festival (including Merriel The Ghost Girl, which had prompted Sam Peckinpah to write to David when he saw the original production). David had pioneered multi-viewpoint drama in the 60s and 70s. He said, “if you are telling the story of man bites dog, you see it from the point of view of the man, from the point of view of the dog, and from the point of view of the bite.” He also founded the first lunchtime theatre company in Britain and possibly the world, Quipu. He won the Evening Standard Most Promising Playwright of the year in 1966 for Little Malcolm and His Struggle Against The Eunuchs.

David’s tales were always full of humour, controversial and always, always full of ‘names.’ When I first met him, I thought he was probably full of , well, you know, but it turned out that he did indeed share fish and chips with the Beatles during a recording session at Abbey Road (one of the VERY few outsiders who ever got to attend a recording session with the Fab Four). This occurred after George Harrison (who went on to produce a film version of Little Malcolm as the first film in Handmade Films cannon) attended Little Malcolm on stage and persuaded the others that David might be the director for their next film - in the end, this turned into the animated Yellow Submarine.

David introduced me to many of the people he’d met throughout his career; many people who were probably frustrated, as I was, by his refusal to compromise, his refusal to ‘play the game.’ This was also one of the reasons I admired him and one of the reasons why, however difficult it was to be his friend, I was always glad I was. As Mike Leigh (probably David’s oldest - not in an ageist way Mike - friend) said in his obituary in the Guardian, “Nothing he wrote had the weight or depth of which he was undoubtedly capable, and nobody who knew him or his wit, intelligence, or indeed his writing would disagree that he could and should have been up there with Beckett and Pinter, his two major influences. He in turn was a great influence on me, and it fills me with immeasurable sadness to know that I will never again spend a scintillating drunken night with this perceptive, invariably confrontational, and always funny genius.”

David’s sister Liz and her husband Cliff are coming to see the play at the Fire Station. They haven’t seen ‘Belch’ performed before. I only hope we (myself, Alexa Brown as Dymphne Pugh-Gooch and director Sarah Dodd) give them a memorable and entertaining evening out and live up to the writing.

I wanted to ‘Belch’ ever since I found a copy at David’s house probably around 2001 or 2002. I am an occasional birdwatcher - I discovered that I birdwatch more (once or twice to the point of twitching) when I am unhappy with another aspect of my life. I’m pleased to report that i am not currently an ‘active’ birdwatcher.

We were always going to put on A Last Belch for the Great Auk and at one time interviewed an actress who was in neighbours (Nicola Charles) for the part of the model (she was ‘busy’ recording a single at the time. I can’t remember the name of the single (he said bitingly).

For one reason or another, we never got around to doing it before David died in 2006. I’d seen him in the street a few days before he died, and had made plans to have a pint with him when I got back from filming in Glasgow. While I was away, David died.

I was at the point of splitting up with my wife at the end of 2006, so everything else went on the back burner, but the urge to ‘Auk’ never went away. Last year, I showed it to a director friend of mine, Sarah Dodd from the Oxford Playhouse and MakeSpace theatre company, and she loved it. She also happened to know an actress/model who would be perfect as Dymphne. And so finally, I got the chance to play Reg Armitage. We did a rehearsed reading last November, and got really good audience feedback. I really think it’s a great play, and we are hoping to tour it if we can get funding. Hopefully, the two nights at the Old Fire Station as part of Oxfringe won’t be the end of the story….

Next up, I’m hoping to do a Scottish tour of a play written by a friend of mine, Simon Farquhar. It’s a revival of his Rainbow Kiss, which is set in Aberdeen and premiered at the Royal Court in 2007. It’s set in Aberdeen, and you don’t get many plays set in the Granite City. I’m also hoping to do Simon’s new play, which was only completed a week ago. It’s brilliant, very real, very dirty, and there are a couple of parts I’d love to play. Then there’s a film on the last days of Robert Louis Stevenson which I’ve been tracking for two years while it raised funds. Everything is almost in place, and I’m hoping they’re going to be casting soon. I read a part in that while they were developing the script and it’s fantastic - it’s got everything, rape, murder - and the fact that I possibly don’t exist! And of course, the fact that the writer is playing loose with Scottish history guarantees a certain level of notoriety and scrutiny from Scotland. Of course, all of that depends on the casting directors…

I’m also doing my spoken word evening at the Jam Factory, 27 Park End Street, Oxford OX1 1HU, tel 01865 244613, on Monday April 6 at 8pm. It’s basically… a swanky swashbuckling scoundrel showing off with others of that ilk. Some call it poetry. They’re mishapen. Some say prose. So we prose - and primp and preen. And some cameras go off. And on. And off. It’s words, all about the words, man. And woman. It’s for us all. Anything might happen. This is not guaranteed but likely. And it’s still a raggedy gathering of rags makeing melly. Come and make some of your own You never know who’s going to turn up, or what might happen (although I’m pretty sure you’ll hear me doing a couple of John Lennon’s brilliant poems from In His Own Write and Spaniard in the Works).

David Halliwell’s A Last Belch for the Great Auk at the Old Fire Station on April 1 and 2 at 6.45pm. It’s directed by Sarah Dodd and the two-hander cast features Alexa Brown as Dymphne Pugh-Gooch and Steve Hay as Reginald Armitage. Tickets cost £8, and can be booked at The Old Fire Station, 40 George Street, Oxford OX1 2AQ; Tel 0844 844 0662 or see the website

For my profile and showreel, see http://www.uk.castingcallpro.com/updateall.php and http://www.stevehay.co.uk

Background on David Halliwell: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/david-halliwell-472814.html

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0356668/

http://www.filmreference.com/film/28/David-Halliwell.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/2006/mar/22/guardianobituaries.artsobituaries

http://www.thestage.co.uk/features/feature.php/12264/david-halliwell