Mar 27

Mar 27 Tim Bannerman's Theatre Chronicles Part Seven: Labyrinth III

Colin – he could have been a Dark Age shepherd, drunk with humanity; a great, joyous, hairy-faced melancholy savoured in the reek of solitary confinement.

He’d just come out of it, come out of Winchester Gaol that morning and slept in the fume of release and whisky, stretched out on the grass of a wonderful world.

He quoted “William Shakespeare” to me. And cowboy books.

He’d hit a man who’d shoved him away when he’d begged 50p.

He’d been in 30 prisons.

His mother, who died when he was two years old, never washed – “The dirtiest woman you ever saw but she was good.” His father called her an old slut.

“Never forget where you come from,” he said. And I wanted to say I came from nowhere.

He shook my hand three times hard with his, tattooed with “l – o – v – e” and other pledges.

He said we should use and not abuse this world.

He was a Catholic.

He loved the world, a policewoman from near Newcastle called Mary, life and, now, me. And I loved him.

I talked of Chaucer to him while we drank from his half bottle of Bells. He gave me a can of Whitbread and showed me his scars.

I gave him nothing but myself.

He left at Southampton “to live rough”. He’d been a tramp for 20 years.

He was alive.

I wrote that in the back of my battered copy of The Poetical Works of John Keats on 1st July 1983, on my way back home in the train from rehearsing Labyrinth with the guys at Troubadour in New Milton.

Trapped in the labyrinth of 30 prisons, I met Colin again, or someone not unlike him, James, on a train in Ireland on the way to Ennis for a job a year and a half ago, on 23rd September 2019.

“You can’t trust them when they’re nice to you,” he said, just out that morning after six months banged up inside with “the biggest criminals in Ireland” for company, who ruled the roost in whichever gaol he found himself back in again.

Drunk, but with a sweetness to him, he asked me if I had a pen so he could write in the birthday card he’d bought of a dog in a hat with “Do it in style” inscribed inside, below which he wrote, at my suggestion, him being lost for words: “To the best person and mother I” and then he jumped in with: “…could ever have by my side,” which delighted him as his battered face lit up in a radiant smile.

Later: “Loser,” he said. “That’s what I am. You wouldn’t believe how many times, the record I have, but never – only petty things – but I’ve been a worry to her, my mother, and my brother too. I told them before I left. ‘Losers. That’s what we are’. And they agreed.”

“10 o’clock this morning after six months. I can feel my wings. I can feel them.”

Later that evening, in Ennis, on the stone steps beneath the great stone column to O’Connell in the heart of the town, I stumbled on him again. James.

He’d left his card to the best mother he could have by his side on the train, as I feared he might. He was drunk and sad, abandoned by the world and by his mother too, maybe, and his brother too.

“Do you have anywhere to sleep?” I asked him, sitting down beside where he was slumped against the column.

“No,” he replied. “But I will drink until I do.”

I lay in my hotel bed later, hearing him say he had “a big head” because I and a friend he’d bumped into in the pub had said he had “a big heart” and, my words “a sweetness to him” if not said as such. But he is abandoned, truly, by me, his family, the state, the world, and has no future but a labyrinth of bars – of every kind.

But Colin and James were different too. The difference was the joy.

Colin knew joy and freedom. His “wings” could fly, for all the caged life that he led. He could sing, too, and revel in the good dirt of his mother of whom some strange two year old vision must have lodged in the fumes of his memory.

He had his knotted sheet of string and his sword of Bells, however many times he might be thrown back into the labyrinth to be devoured by the Minotaur of society and the criminal justice system. Whereas James, it felt to me, had neither string nor sword, however illusory Colin’s might be. Or if he had, he’d left his sword on the train and the ball of string was trailing behind him, getting shorter and weaker each time, hideously pulled back in again by the Minotaur, only to be spat out once more in a dreadful yo-yo of repeated, unredeemed indignity until the day he’s not.

Meanwhile, back at Troubadour, the show was on! Theatre games had translated into tightly meshed worlds that flashed back and forth, vocally, physically. Acrobatic feats were performed with perfect coordination and wonderful surges of energy. A sea journey was conjured out long, expertly manipulated strips of cloth, complete with vocalised sound effects of the sail being hoisted and the storm raging around them. Then came the arrival at the labyrinth itself with the tangible fear as they approached the Minotaur’s lair before setting the scene for the fight to come and the two protagonists prepared and blindfolded so that neither could see the other nor anything else. And all the while the music built slowly in surges and waves, ebbing and rising with the action until the fight itself.

We held our breath as each protagonist stalked the other with no other sense to guide them but sound and some sixth sense at work until – bang! The rolled paper ‘sword’ struck its first blow. Another and another. And then they were grappling, rolling, wrestling on the ground, each seeking for the upper hand. At last, the sword was held high and struck down, deep into the heart of the one below. The fight was done. The observers cheered. The winner carried high around the arena and, with a final rush, the farewell bow of all concerned.

It was over. Done. Justice and denouement duly delivered. And we, the audience, were dazed, dazzled by it all, by its sheer, stunning, heart-stopping beauty.

Something had happened. A rabble of assorted individuals had been turned into team of exquisitely attuned performers. People who listened to, supported, responded to each other in every possible way. Not in the classical sense of a trained dancer or schooled actor but deeply expressive, sensitive human performers creating a harmonious whole out of who and how they were, whatever their individual strengths or challenges. The promise of “no work, drink beer, smoke fags all day” had been transformed into “Oh man! He was lying. Working with Troubadour was the total opposite. It was tough, hard work and very disciplined. But eventually I came to love it.” They were loving it.

Another person said, “I was lucky enough to have been able to explore, create and participate,. It was fun, crazy, tough, bonding, poetic, alive, respectful and argumentative. Freedom, expression, a sense of self instead of self-loathing. New, alternative, unique, hysterical, closeness, intimate. Grounding, difficult, laughter, appreciation, nerves. Belonging, political, commitment. Routines, movement, music, application, testing. It was my foundation to a love of the arts and the beginning of a notion that maybe I did have potential.” They all had potential.

And another: “Linda’s enthusiasm and creativity found whatever that was in each of us. She allowed and encouraged that to flourish.” Oh boy, did they flourish.

And another: “Within a week, Troubadour became a chaotic family that I didn’t know I wanted….that was down to Linda’s dedication to each and everyone of us.”

“Everything I learned at Troubadour was so important to me. It taught me to work as a team in a really close connected way. You rely on your fellow actors on stage, so building up a rapport off-stage is essential.”

“These valuable life skills have helped me to grow as a person ever since… I can honestly say it was a turning point in my life…(It) proved that if things don’t go to plan, you can use that experience to help you do what you want. I’m always saying to my group ‘Let you mistakes work for for you, rather than letting them stop you’…. It gave me a belief in who I was… It was one of the best times of my life….I’m proud that I was part of it.” We all were.

All thanks to Linda Fredericks, the inspiration and loving, driving force behind it all. No thanks to Mrs Thatcher who killed it all, whose effigy we burned in the rec behind the building we all lodged in for the Gazebo Youth Training Scheme Festival for all the drama groups around the country.

I think we got a special mention for our performance at the festival. It doesn’t matter if we won or weren’t mentioned at all. For us, it was uniquely beautiful – to be part of this group of honed, committed, graceful, quiveringly alive, human souls of such dignity it moves me still to think of them, nearly 40 years on.

We met up at Linda’s extraordinary “Making an Exhibition of Myself” she curated and magnificently presided over shortly before she died in 2017. Although I’d kept in touch with Linda over the years, it was the first time that nearly the whole Labyrinth group had come together, me included, since we’d waved tearful good-byes after our last show in September 1983.

“Buttercups and Daisies” was for 6-8 year olds aimed “to awaken the younger New Foresters awareness not only to the existence of common and less common plants in the Forest but to ways of preserving them in the face of ecological and sociological threats.” I still have the highly interactive and poignantly humorous script. It followed another show that enabled our young audience to travel through time from the Romans all the way to the future, with music and dance to wing them through the worlds. And that was it. We all moved on into other lives.

And here they were. Big, grown-up people. 50 years old! Many with children of their own. And jobs. And all the ups and downs that 35 years can bring, etched characterfully on their faces – and mine, of course.

At the same time, of course, they were exactly the same. Zak, Fizzy, Sally, Mona – not their real names but they know who they are. And as beautiful, funny, crazy, mysterious, cool, uncool as ever.

I was a Granpa and yet, to them, I was still somewhere the same idiot who’d raced across the car park to get to the minibus ahead of Zak. I’m glad we didn’t have a replay – although I might still have tried it on, as I’m sure he would, had Linda thrown me the keys again.

I have though a 32 minute and 12 second file of a hazy, very un-high definition video taken of “Labyrinth” at the time which I will ration myself to watch every 5 years or so. Just to remind me that sometimes my job has given me a level of true privilege I had no concept of until I stumbled on it. And “Labyrinth” comes very close to the top.