Had I thought about it a few months ago I would've created this blog and given you a rehearsal by rehearsal account of my progress in bringing my character of Dennis Wicksteed to fruition. As it is, I'll try to get you up to speed with this entry and explain my journy to this point. Then obviously, successive entries with continue the progression until I bid Dennis farewell in January when our run of Habeas Corpus closes.
I was telephoned by the resident director of Full Circle Theatre Company (http://www.fullcircletheatre.biz/) and invited to read for Dennis Wicksteed. As I'd performed with the company befroe she didn't require a full audition but asked me to read so she could gage weather or not i was right for the part. I asked her what sort of character he was so I could have a good preconcieved idea of him before the read-through. She told me that Dennis is a limp, lofty, hypochondriac of a mummy's boy, and falls in love with the beautiful Felicity. My mind immediately went into Monty Python mode as I likened Dennis to "Prince Herbert" from Monty Python And The Quest For The Holy Grail. "Prince Herbert" has a whiney voice and a northen accent. I felt this was perfect.
On 31st August, myself, the director, her assistant director, and the other auditionees attending this particular session sat around a table reading through selected parts of the script, each of us reading for several parts. As well as Dennis I read for Sir Percy Shorter. There were 2 reasons I didn't get Sir Percy. First I put more effort into Dennis, and secondly, Sir Percy is about 5 foot tall and i'm over 6 foot.
I was given the role of Dennis. Now the fun began.
Voice
I found that when speaking in the style of Prince Herbert, everything was fine at first but as the play progressed and Dennis experienced different emotions, the whiney voice became too much of a restraint. I felt like I was trying to dance the macarena in a straight jacket. After a disasterous second read-through and a monotonous performance, I decided I needed to rethink the voice.
My director decided that Dennis should be from down south rather than up north so that was my starting point. I needed him to sound wimpy but at the same time, interesting. Lose the monotony but keep the disaster. How the bloody hell was I going to do that???
I started trying different ideas such as speaking through the nose. This made Dennis sound far to positive and self-confident. I needed him to have a more innocent voice with hardly any self-confidence at all. So I tried closing my throat slightly. This gave him a quirky cartoon-esque voice. It was getting there but still needed something. So I started to play with tones and it was when I made my voice higher that I felt I'd found Dennis' voice. There was much rejoicing. Then I realised - I'd heard a similar voice somewhere before. BLUEBOTTLE!!! There's a part in the play where Dennis has to laugh so as an homage, I've tried to give him a similar laugh to Bluebottle. If you've never listened to The Goons, click here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1H-yF50BD0Q otherwise you're seriously missing out.
So the voice was there.
Mannerisms / Body Language
Michael Caine has been quoted many a time as stating that acting is all about the face. Get the face right and everything else follows. I would go further than that. For me, it's all about the eyes. Get the eyes right, and everything else follows. And I don't just mean what you do with the eyes - I mean the eyes themselves. If you look at an actor in performance closely, you can always tell if he truly believes in his performance by looking into his eyes. Despite what his body language says, if he doesn't believe that he is the character he claims to be, you can see it in his eyes. Therefore, as an actor, I always try to get myself into the mindset of the character as soon as possible. Everything else then follows, though research is always required. Because I am playing Dennis as an innocent mummy's boy, I've decided to make him pretty much a child in an adult's body. So his eyes are often wandering, surveying all he sees as though it's all new to him. I also want him to feel awkward so he fidgets with his clothes alot. As research I started to think of any characters I could relate to Dennis. I watched Dad's Army to see how Ian Lavender played Pikey for sincerity, Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em to see how Michael Crawdford played Frank Spencer for awkward believability (or believeable awkwardness). And whenever I'm in London, if I have time I like to sit upstairs in Liverpool St Station and people-watch. I'm still not completely satisfied with my characterisation of Dennis as I need to give him a walk, a stance...He's getting there but he's not quite there yet.
Make-up & Costume
In the play Dennis believes he has Bretts Palsy and one of the symptoms of this is spots. When i were a lad (cue Hovis music) there was a tv show called Copy Cats with a load of impressionists doing their stuff. One of them was a man called Gary Wilmott who went on to publish a book called The Right Impression. In the book he gives away some of his secrets to his impressions and I always remember one of them was to use rice crispies for spots. (Stop the Hovis music) I used paint to create different shades of red on them and threw in a few lentils and other small dried veg for yellow-heads, etc. So I now had various types of spots in a pot.
As the show is set in the 60s I wanted Dennis' outfit to reflect the neglect he has suffered from his parents but still show that he is thought of. So a clash of mismatched colours and jack-ups were the answer. The weird thing is, I actually quite like his shirt. And i'm not the only one :).
As far altering my 'look' goes, I have had a hair cut which will be slicked back with Brylcreme and I will be clean shaven for the role.
Dress Rehearsals
I don't like wearing my characters' costumes too much outside of performance because i don't want to become too comfortable in them. So I went to the rehearsal in normal clothes and got changed in my van. I wanted to spend the entire rehearsal in character but this wasn't possible when people were asking me questions and i gave them the proper answers in the style of Dennis. Anyhoo, the visual impact was brilliant but as the rehearsal progressed, Dennis' spots migrated onto people's costumes and the floor. The problem was the spirit gum. I had ordered a high quality one online but it had not arrived so I had to make do with a cheap one. It was rubbish. I explained this and at the next dress rehearsal I had the proper spirit gum and it worked much better but still not perfect. To this end I have been to the fancy dress shop and bought some joke spots. Let's see how these go on Sunday.
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