Diaries 1969-1979_ The Python Years - Michael Palin [187]
At about 12.30, more press photos outside. For some reason a Daily Mirror photographer issues us all with pickaxes – no-one knows why until we see the photo in the Mirror on April ist with the caption ‘Pick of the Jokers’. No wonder the Mirror are losing their circulation battle.
Thursday, April 1st
At the theatre the last of the bare-breasted Ipi-Tombi dancers1 are leaving (in sensible Jaeger sweaters and two-piece suits!). Neil’s band Fatso are heaving in their equipment. Outside in King Chas II Street the Manor Mobile Recording Studios are parked with cables and wires running into the stage door.
People milling around. We’re all in one dressing room – Cook, Bird, Jones, Gilliam, Cleese, (not Bron), Bennett – all of us plus Roger Graef’s camera and mike, which searches around picking up snatches of conversation here and there. Brief’Lumberjack Song’ rehearsal. A book is opened at P Cook’s instigation on the length of the show.
Curtain up at 11.35. Jonathan and I walk out. Me sweeping the stage, him directing me. Then into ‘Pet Shop’ and we’re away. First half runs till 1.00. JM does some ruthless cutting of the second half. Eleanor and Johnny Lynn2 fed up their bits have been excised, but so has ‘Crunchy Frog’.
Roar of recognition and applause (still!) on things like ‘Argument’, ‘Lumberjack’ and ‘Pet Shop’. End with making a balls-up of ‘Lumberjack Song’. I start too early, try again – too flat – try again and we get through it.
Many curtain calls at the end, though – they really enjoyed it. It’s 2.15 and Roger Graef is filming’after the show’ atmos. Feel tired, depressed, just want a scotch.
Saturday, April 3rd
Probably the best night of all tonight, though ‘Argument’ is cut for time and Graham is boisterously drunk. Alan Bennett feigns mock-horror in the dressing room as Graham, at his most baroque, is fondling Terry J as he changes. ‘Oh dear,’ says Alan to Jonathan, shaking his head with a worried frown, ‘We never used to do that sort of thing. We never used to touch each other.’
Graham and Peter make a strange pair – both with inflated eyes and a sort of boozy calm which can and does easily flare up. Graham’s bête noire tonight, and not for the first time, is Bill Oddie. Tonight is the only night the Goodies appear. They are in a different world from everyone else in the show, with their ‘Funky Gibbon’ pop numbers, complete with dance movements – a rather gluey, trad, middle-of-the-road Top of the Pops appearance.
John Bird has useful suggestion for ‘Court Sketch’, which I worked on hard tonight. He says I’m doing my Prosecutor in the same way as Cleese (i.e. starting with outrage and working up from there) and I should play it differently. Good thinking.
We may have made £15,000 or £16,000 for Amnesty from the three nights.
Sunday, April 4th
A winding-down day. No need to prepare for America until tomorrow. So just enjoy, for once, the laziness of Sunday. Up at 9.15 – no adverse effects from Amnesty show – brain damage, throat damage, hangover, etc. Feel in good shape. Buy croissants and papers up at South End Green.
Spend a couple of hours in the evening working my way through the entire American show, trying to look carefully at characters, possible rewrites for US audiences, dangerously difficult English regional accents, etc, etc. I feel it’s very important to sit quietly and work out one’s own problems before we reach New York. After tonight’s session, I feel I know the show much better and, if we suddenly had to put it on tomorrow, we could.
Tuesday, April 6th, New York
Sunshine in New York and a freshness in the air – a perfect spring afternoon. First sight of our home for the next four weeks, our very own brownstone in East 49th Street between Second and Third Avenues.1 No. 242, once home (still sometimes the home, I presume) of a writer, Garson Kanin,2 and his actress wife Ruth Gordon. A feeling of euphoria swept over me as I explored its four floors – none of which had a room, a picture, a piece of