Anything Goes (13 page)

Over time, Peter began to get fewer of the male romantic leads (they went to yours truly), and Marilyn, my best friend from Opryland who had encouraged my enrolment at USIU and was in the theatre programme herself, was regularly cast as my female lead more often than Peter’s regular co-star.

Admittedly, Peter was a much better dancer than me, but I was a better singer, and since USIU now had two pairs of strong male and female leads, the directors would cast us in different plays running in repertory. They’d do a show and we’d do a show. However, this kind
of professional trading off didn’t stop Peter crossing the line from professional rivalry to personal wankerdom,
⁵    
as far as I was concerned. As in high school, though, what I thought of as his jealous behaviour simply made me even more determined to succeed.

Throughout my years at USIU – the string of shows, the post-performance parties, the hard work, Marilyn becoming my girlfriend, the workshops and classes … what? I’ve not mentioned the girlfriend part yet? A quick digression, then.

Over two summers and the seasons in between, my friendship with Marilyn deepened. Since up to this time I had experienced only one real gay relationship – and, as you’ve learned, even that never went beyond the secret handshake – Marilyn and I decided to try out the boyfriend/girlfriend thing. I have to admit there were lots of things I enjoyed about it, including an increased appreciation for the softer parts of the female form, but in the end it simply confirmed to me that I was a fully committed player for the boys’ team.

Obviously it was never going to last, given my sexuality, but the best thing about the whole affair was that Marilyn and I remained dear friends. A few years after we officially broke up, she got hitched in my native Scotland at Gretna Green. Marilyn had fallen in love with Scotland when she’d toured it with my parents and me in the summer of 1989, the year of my big break in the West End. I had a traditional Scottish wedding cake specially made for her celebration.

To this day, Marilyn has the honour and, dare I say, pleasure of being the only woman I’ve ever seriously snogged, and I mean seriously – but that’s all I’ve ever done with a woman. My boys and I have never gone where no gay man should ever go. And now you know how I know that I’ve never sired children.

During my studies at USIU, Andy Barnicle, my acting teacher, would deliberately piss me off as a way to challenge me. From the first class I took from him, he read my nature correctly, recognizing that my competitiveness was equal to my professional pride and my thirst for learning – and he exploited this to my benefit. In class Andy would say, ‘If you’re a working actor, you’re a successful actor,’ and I let that motto shape many of the career choices I made in the years before the success of Captain Jack. When last I checked, Andy was the Artistic Director for Laguna Playhouse in California. Whenever I’m in a West End show, Andy makes a trip to London to visit me.

Trips to the West End in London were, in fact, part of the USIU course. Every year, faculty members from the Performing Arts School travelled with a group of students for a semester in England to study Shakespeare, and to see shows and plays in and around London. My class and Peter’s were scheduled for this trip in 1989. Peter and I were even assigned as room-mates, but as things turned out, I was to spend my nights with Reno Sweeney at the Prince Edward Theatre in the West End, and Peter would be rooming alone.

In all the stories I can tell you about my life and my career, the one about how my big break in theatre came about is still one of the coolest, because it has so many of the characteristics of a musical. Here’s the rough plot. A successful West End show needs to find a replacement for its American leading man – and quickly. A handsome young boy walks off a street in Glasgow, auditions for the role in said successful West End show, and is flown to London for a callback audition, where he meets and has an instant connection with the already famous leading lady. Cue orchestra. Sing.

In the summer of 1989, before beginning our course on Shakespeare, Marilyn and I went to Scotland to visit my relatives in Glasgow. One afternoon, my dad’s eldest brother Neil heard an
announcement about an open casting call for
Anything Goes,
which was running at the Prince Edward Theatre in the West End. The auditions were being held at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music in Glasgow. According to the announcement, the producers were looking for a young man with an American accent who could sing and dance. I knew the perfect person.

As it had before and many times since, my Barrowman risk gene burst into life. I figured I had nothing to lose and a hell of a lot to gain. Thanks to Bev’s advice about doing community theatre, I’d already played Billy Crocker, the role they were looking to cast, once before in 1984, so despite not having any sheet music with me on the trip, I knew Billy’s character and I knew I could sing Cole Porter.

Before the audition, I went to a restaurant near the Academy to prepare in private. I started warming up my voice in the restaurant’s bathroom, but I was forced to vacate the space in the middle of practising my scales, when an old man banged on the door and yelled, ‘I dinna ken what yer on, Jimmy, but if it’s good for piles, I’ll huv some a’ it!’
⁶    

By the time I’d finished my song in the audition, Larry Oaks, the resident director, was no longer slouching in his chair and I knew I’d hit all the right notes. Larry went on to become a friend and a significant mentor during those early days. He’d show up in my dressing room after every performance with a page of notes, advising me on everything from how to hold my hands in certain scenes to which way to tilt my head in others. No detail ever escaped him. I’m a better performer today because of his keen eye and generous spirit. Larry even let me stay at his house until I found a place of my own in London. Years later, while I was judging
Any Dream Will Do,
there were many times when I felt as if I was channelling Larry, especially when one of the Josephs would call me at home for advice and encouragement. I always gave them plenty of both.

I sang a second song from
Anything Goes
in the audition, and when I’d finished, Larry asked, ‘Can you do an American accent for us, John?’

Now, keep in mind what I’ve already told you about me being bidialectical. As I’d been travelling for the past couple of weeks with my parents, visiting relatives in Glasgow and revisiting my roots, I’d come into the audition speaking with my Scottish accent.

‘I’ll try,’ I said.

I went off to read the script alone for a few minutes, came back into the room, and then read a few lines as an American.

‘Thank you very much, John,’ said Larry. ‘We’ll be in touch.’

I learned later that the casting team immediately called Elaine Paige, exclaiming, ‘We’ve found him!’ Elaine, who was playing Reno Sweeney in the production, was also one of the show’s producers, so she was involved in the audition process. Elaine’s own West End debut had been in
Hair
in 1969. By the time she starred as Eva Perón in Sir Tim Rice and Lord Lloyd-Webber’s
Evita
in 1978, she’d become the First Lady of the West End.

When I got back to my cousin’s house after the audition, Larry had already left a message, asking if I could fly to London immediately for a callback audition and a meeting with Elaine. Her opening line when I walked on to the stage at the Prince Edward Theatre the following day was, ‘He’s pretty, but let’s see if he can sing.’

Once I’d convinced her that I could, she asked to see me dance.
Anything Goes
is a dancer’s delight, with lots of show-stopping numbers and tons of tap, so it requires strong all-rounders in the lead roles. The whole musical is a fast-paced romantic comedy set
aboard an ocean liner sailing to America. Reno Sweeney is the ship’s nightclub star and Billy Crocker is a young lovesick businessman (and Reno’s ex) who stows away on the ship so that he can be with Hope Harcourt, a beautiful young woman with whom he’s fallen in love. The rest of the ship’s passengers are a bunch of wonderful eccentrics, including Public Enemy Number Thirteen Moonface Martin and his girlfriend, who are posing as a minister and a missionary. The show is full of mistaken identities and misunderstood motives. All those high-energy dance numbers make it demanding for the principal performers, though. It was not surprising that as Elaine climbed up on to the stage during the audition to dance with me, she admitted her legs were a bit tired.

Now, one of the things I hope this book has already demonstrated is that my mother did not raise an impolite lout. My only excuse for the following speech is that I was nervous.

‘Don’t worry, honey,’ I said aloud to Elaine Paige, leading lady extraordinaire and the woman who quite literally held my fate in her hands, ‘I’ll keep you up. I’ll keep you in time!’

Elaine stared at me for a moment, and then she laughed, a big, throaty, ‘you’ve got something’ kind of laugh, and that was the start of my professional career and the beginning of a beautiful friendship with Elaine. I landed the role and the rest, as the saying goes, is history.

During the next few months of my professional debut in the West End, my class from USIU remained in London studying Shakespeare and going to the theatre, while I was learning on the job from Elaine and Bernard Cribbins, who was playing Moonface Martin. I couldn’t have had a better pair of mentors. Bernard has been in television and film since the 1960s, with credits in a number of the
Carry On
comedies. Bernard was also the narrator for one of my favourite animated children’s shows,
The Wombles.
My absolute
favourite role of his, though, was as the spoon salesman in
Fawlty Towers,
whom Basil Fawlty mistakes for a hotel inspector. Bernard is a terrific musical comedian and his recording of the song ‘Right Said Fred’ is one I remember singing along to on the counter of the record shop in Scotland.

Most of my peers from USIU were thrilled for me on the day I announced to all of them that not only would I be missing class during the ‘Shakespeare’ semester, but I would not be returning to San Diego with them when their time in England came to an end, because I’d gotten a job as the leading man in a West End show. At first, Peter Prick appeared to be pleased for me too, but after a few weeks, our rivalry raised its head again, with him saying he believed me to be ‘a one-hit wonder’. Incidentally, that damning phrase was not only apparently employed by Peter, but also Peter’s father, who used it to describe me to my own dad, when they happened to run into each other the following year at a show in Chicago. Despite Peter’s seeming sour grapes, however, whenever he could, he’d show up at the Prince Edward Theatre and want to schmooze with all the stars.

By the time my class was ready to return to USIU without me, friends like Marilyn were still important in my life, but I’d taken Elaine Paige’s advice and flushed out ‘the Negative Nellies’. Peter and some of the others had long since been stopped at the stage door.

That wasn’t the only tip I took from Elaine. Over those few months, Elaine and Bernard became my surrogate parents, and I’ve never forgotten the gist of their professional advice. ‘Don’t do things just because other people want you to do them, John. Do them because you want to, because even if you fail, you’ll still be satisfied, because when you look back on it, it was your choice to take part.’

When I think about that time in the West End, I’m surprised I remembered to eat. Everything was new and exciting and incredibly hectic.
Along with Elaine and Bernard, a fellow actor Ian Burford, whom I met when we were both performing at a Jerry Herman concert at the Royal Palladium, and his partner Alex Cannell, were a second set of surrogate parents to me. After a long day at the theatre, Ian and Alex always made sure I had company when I wanted it and a bowl of the best chilli whenever I needed it.
⁷    

So, Peter and my peers returned to California, time moved on, and so did I. Then one afternoon, almost ten years later, while I was in New York performing in Stephen Sondheim’s
Putting It Together
with Carol Burnett and Ruthie Henshall, I came out of the stage door at the Ethel Barrymore Theater and literally crossed paths with Peter. We were surprised to see each other, but we were older and more mature and so we shook hands and went to dinner at Joe Allen’s restaurant.

Peter was working in New York choreographing a Broadway show and we chatted about the things we’d done since we’d parted ways in London. Our dinner was perfectly amicable, but – as always – I felt that Peter’s jealousy was so present that we might as well have been at a table for three. We weren’t boys anymore. I decided I would rise above the sourness I suspected. We finished our meal, he offered to pay, I refused to let him, and we went our separate ways once again.

That is, until the summer of 2004, when I found myself once again in New York and walking toward Peter on Ninth Avenue. This time, I was blond
⁸    
and – even if I do say so myself – looking pretty
hot. The dye job wasn’t done on a personal whim; it was related to an exciting film role. A few months earlier, Mel Brooks and Susan Stroman had come to see me in Trevor Nunn’s revival of
Anything Goes
at the National Theatre on London’s South Bank. In my dressing room after the performance, they’d asked if I’d be interested in taking the lead tenor role in the song ‘Springtime for Hitler’ in the upcoming film of the hit Broadway show
The Producers,
which Stroman was directing. I agreed immediately – partly because I’d been a fan of Brooks for years, especially
Young Frankenstein.
Once, during a long plane trip back to Scotland from America, Carole and I had recited entire scenes from that movie, much to the annoyance of most of the passengers around us, except Murn, who every time we said ‘lovely knockers’ would laugh and heave up her ample bosom.