Corpse

(In the following Blog I will use only the protagonists' initials to protect the innocent)

One of the scaliest problems ever to afflict me during the course of my affairs has reared it's fearful head once again. I refer to the actor's nightmare. Corpsing! The uncontrollable fits of giggles that overcome most actors at some time or another during their careers, either before the camera or on stage. I have found this an all too recurrent theme in my work.

The first time I can really remember it being a huge problem was at drama school in the dress rehearsal of George Bernard Shaw's "St Joan". During the trial scene, we, the non-speaking roles were encouraged to shout out and comment in an improvisational manner in order to give the scene pace, verite and a general ooomph which the director felt it otherwise lacked. Unfortunately, in a lull, my sole voice rang out, making the very unShavian interjection, in reference to the rather loquatious prosecuting council, "the man's a tit!". The run ground to a halt as the entire cast wept tears of uncontrollable joy. Not assisted by the fact that the director, the late, great, K McB decided to deal with the situation by coming to the front of the stage and adopting a "schoolmarm" face. Advice to all young directors presented with a group of actors giggling like a schoolgirl outing to a nudist colony... This approach does not work. The soothing tone and a twenty minute break is the only cure.

Much later I was in the Terry Johnson play "Dead Funny" at the West End's Savoy Theatre. SK and I found that the merest sight of each others performance would reduce us to pools of molten mirth and our leading ladies' irritation only fuelled the flames. But we actors are a resourceful bunch and we instinctively re-blocked the play so that even the most intimate moments were played by both of us staring wistfully into opposite wings of the theatre, resolutely back to back.

The separate eye-line approach was readopted by KB and I in a TV movie about Earnest Shackleton's voyage to cross the South Pole. In one poignant scene, we had to toast each other in his cabin, commiserating that our ship had become trapped in the pack-ice. One of us, I can't remember who now, had to clink the other's glass and give breath to the, in retrospect, perfectly reasonable phrase, "Damned Ice!". For some reason we were unable to get even close to this line without doubling up, eyes filled with tears like two men who had just received a firm boot to the testicles. The final cut of the scene has us both toasting each other in spirit while staring out of separate port-holes.

TE, in a 1980's Granada mini series found my performance as an ex-alchoholic football genius SO ludicrous that even the sound of my stockinged feet, softly padding down a thickly carpeted staircase would reduce him to a choking consumptive. In that case staring at our feet seemed to help us, if not the director.

Corpsing is not only confined to ones fellow actors. The director and now big-shot Hollywood TV producer IT felt that my portrayal of SAS hard-man Johnny Donahue in "The Contract", pulling a gun on a Soviet spy in a field in Yorkshire was so rib-ticklingly hysterical that the first assistant director suggested he turned his back on the scene. This only seemed to exacerbate the situation. Eventually he was banished to an adjacent meadow with a megaphone where an assistant director would shove him under a bush after he shouted "Action!'. He never managed "Cut!"

My present trouble involves myself and CE. The star of my new pilot "P" for WB and ABC. Everything was going swimmingly for him in his finely tuned performance, one of wit, charm and dexterity until I showed up. He instantly became a five year old, seeing one of the better Punch and Judy shows for the first time with me as the string of sausages.

Oh well, give it time. I am sure we will both find somewhere to look!