Hart to Hart: The latest actors to play one of Sir Roger Hall's great characters compare notes

NZ Herald

2 days ago

Andrew Grainger (left) and Ross Gumbley play Dickie Hart in different versions of Sir Roger Hall's The End of Summer. Photos / Supplied
In a possibly historic moment in NZ theatre, Andrew Grainger and Ross Gumbley will be men alone, on stage at opposite ends of the country playing the same guy in the same one-man play at the same time.
Dickie Hart first came to life on stage nearly 30 years ago in C'mon Black, a play inspired by Roger Hall's visit to South Africa among a party of All Black supporters for the 1995 Rugby World Cup. Upon his return and thinking the team's defeat in the notorious final had killed his idea for a play about the jaunt, Hall wrote a piece for the Listener about being there. But writing that story inspired C'mon Black, a solo show featuring Dickie, the rugby-fanatic cow cockie easing into retirement who finds on his travels that the outside world is a complicated place.
With Timothy Bartlett in the role, it premiered at Dunedin's Fortune Theatre. Dozens of Hall's plays had been the box office lifeblood of the southern company until it foundered in 2018.
But it was a Wellington actor, the late Grant Tilly, who played many Hall characters on stage and screen, who picked up the C'mon Black ball and ran with it. He toured the play all around in New Zealand and took it to London. He got the benefit of Hall editing the monologue after its Dunedin debut. 'Good friends told me the script was too long and too preachy, so I hacked a lot out of it,' Hall tells the Listener.
Back then, Hall wasn't thinking there would be a Dickie Hart trilogy – 'Hard enough to look ahead to the end of the play'. But now there is.
You Gotta Be Joking debuted in 2013 and had Hart and wife Glenda shifting to a townhouse in Wellington. And now End of Summer Time, in which the couple have moved to Auckland – the one place Dickie said he'll never live – to be near their grandkids.
When the new play starts – it's set between 2019 and 2023 when Dickie is in his early 70s – they, like Hall, are living in an apartment near Takapuna Beach. But that's as close to home as the latest work gets to its author.
'There are often many parallels between me and my characters. Move along; nothing to read into this.'
End of Summer Time may be about Dickie being a fish out of water, stranded on Takapuna Beach, in Auckland traffic, suffering apartment bodycorp politics, and worse. But this City of Sails tale premiered at Wellington's Circa Theatre last year and came back for an encore season in April. Circa stalwart Gavin Rutherford played Dickie, having first performed him in a 2011 revival of C'mon Black, timed for that year's RWC.
Hall wasn't involved in the Wellington End of Summer Time production but he liked it. 'Gavin's performance was magic. For me and for everyone else in the audience.'
Sir Roger Hall: "There are often many parallels between me and my characters. Move along; nothing to read into this." Photo / Supplied
Now Auckland Theatre Company and The Court Theatre in Christchurch are staging simultaneous productions. Hall has had two plays in production at the same time before, but it's been a while.
'During the giddy days of Glide Time there were two productions of that, at least, and similarly with Middle-Age Spread. It was enjoyable but I always had to make sure I had put enough money aside to pay for provisional tax. This was an era when the IRD expected you to estimate your income for the following year and pay tax on it. I pointed out this was impossible for me to do since I didn't know that far ahead how many productions there would be.'
Yes, in a possibly historic moment in New Zealand theatre, two blokes are playing the same guy in the same one-man play at the same time. Well, more or less – Andrew Grainger, a familiar face on the Auckland stage since arriving from the UK in 2007, will be in the ATC production for 20 performances at the ASB Theatre from June 17.
Ross Gumbley, Court Theatre's former artistic director and now artistic adviser, will start his 51-show run in the Court's intimate Wakefield Family Front Room four days later. Each man will deliver some 10,000 words in every performance.
On a late Thursday afternoon, after each putting in a long day's rehearsal a couple of weeks before opening night, both actors join the Listener via Zoom.
Gentlemen, welcome to the Dickie Hart group therapy session.
Ross Gumbley: I've certainly never done anything like this before. In fact, Andrew, I think the last time you and I met was when you auditioned for The 39 Steps.
Andrew Grainger: Goodness me, that was a long time ago … I hadn't been over here that long.
Doing a Roger Hall play with a character of this particular seniority, do you have to age up for it?
RG: Well, I'm a little insulted, you had to ask [laughing]. There was a quizzical tone in your voice. I can't speak for Andrew, who looks ridiculously undercast. I mean, I'm only 12 years off his age … the play takes place in a sort of a zone between 71 and 75. I think you have to cast it that way because of the sheer stamina required…
AG: Yeah.
RG: …to keep this piece driving right through to the end. Andrew, you're much more match-fit than me. I think I've done three, four plays since 2006. So the first week of rehearsal has been … I've been sleeping well. Let's put it that way.
AG: You're right. It is exhausting, especially at this stage, when you're really searching in your head for what's next, and the change because you've got to remember what leads into what. But as far as age is concerned, I might be too young, but you can't get wrapped up in that because if you start playing 'old man' too much, it becomes … people are here to listen to the story.
RG: Yeah. It's the oddest thing to rehearse a comedy. When the audience isn't there, they're the other character in this game and all you're doing is actually getting ready and making yourself prepared to accept them into the world of the play that you're creating.
AG: That's right.
RG: And if something happens in that room, you are duty bound to write it into the show that night. Because when the audience knows you're on your toes and you get that sense of danger, then they have to keep their eye on you.
What's it like being on stage alone with 10,000 words?
RG: Andrew, have you done a one-man play before?
AG: No, I haven't. It's my first time.
RG: I'm keen to hear your experience of this.
AG: It's exhausting. It's all encompassing. For me, I'm paranoid that I'm going to be boring. So you have to trust the director going, 'It's interesting, it's fine.'
But it's also about finding when we move the story forward, when we hold back, what's important for the audience to hear at this point. All these technical things. Normally you have a bit of time where you can go off, have a cup of tea. But in this, you're just always on and for me at the moment, I'm going, 'Oh, this is going ever so well. Oh, I'm liking this …' And then boom. It's like this big thing comes down in front of me, and I'm going, 'I have no idea where I'm going next or what I'm doing.'
RG: I'm just going to mute you now, Andrew, I don't need to hear any more of that [laughing]. I've never done a one-man play before, but I've done a few two-handers with Mark Hadlow, which is almost like the same thing. In this play, you're a long time waiting for a cue if you drop your line. So, I'm thinking about it as one line – 10,000 words, a bit of punctuation, over 29 pages. It's taken me the best part of this week to get over that feeling of there is no other actor here.
And as Andrew says, you never get to catch your breath. The key in a one-person play is variation of rhythm. Roger has got some beautiful set pieces, like that lovely run where Dickie takes the ute into the CBD and the pace of the anxiety. Your foot is on the accelerator, literally as an actor.
Having read those 10,000 words, I know there's an event in the middle of the story that might cause a very big lump in the throat for anyone performing it, and audience alike. How are you finding it?
AG: Well, it's playing the truth. It's not being worried about: 'Oh, I'm in a comedy here and I've got to keep them buoyant.' Hopefully, if you play the comedy right, it gives you the licence, and then the room to give them that. And I think that's even more powerful. It's great.
RG: The thing that always affects us in life – and it's the same in the theatre – is when you see courage within somebody. Coming from this New Zealand farming stock, Dickie wasn't allowed to have feelings. When you see somebody who has every right to break down and they don't…
AG: …it can actually be even more moving.
Andrew Grainger at Takapuna Beach. Photo / Supplied
On a lighter note, the ATC production is apparently 'a love letter to Auckland'. It's possibly less so in Christchurch.
RG: Dickie talks about Auckland being the one place in New Zealand I swore I would never live, and we are hooking into that, because there's a rule of comedy that says, 'put your characters where they don't want to be'.
So my role is slightly different to Andrew's. I have to convince Cantabrians that it would be a good idea to retire to Auckland … there's a lot of comedy where Dickie puts the boot into Auckland and I think that'll play for us.
Given that this character has had previous iterations and that he dates back nearly 30 years, he's got quite a legacy. Does that affect your approach?
AG: It's a bit like James Bond, isn't it? [Laughing] I did see Gavin in the play down in Wellington. It was great but I'm different, and Ross is going to be different. There are different things in it that I see and that's what you play to, your strengths.
RG: If anything, knowing that you're stepping into Grant Tilly's shoes – and let's face it, if he were still alive, he would be playing it – that gives you a huge sense of respect. Somewhere in your bones, I think, it makes you work a bit harder. It makes you dig a bit deeper, and you just want to respect the legacy of the actors that have taken this on.
I've got a beautiful Grant Tilly story in this role. When he played Dickie Hart in C'mon Black they did huge business all over the country, and then they go to Westport and they play in a pub to 12 people. Tilly comes out afterwards, full of Grant Tilly-ness, and says to this wizened old West Coast guy who's at the pub, 'What's going on? We've played this play up and down the country to full houses, and we come here to Westport, we get 12 people.' And the guy he's talking to says, 'Well, if you were any good, you wouldn't be here, would you?'
End of Summer Time by Roger Hall, Auckland Theatre Company, ASB Theatre, June 17 to July 5; The Court Theatre, Christchurch, June 21 to August 16.