|
Do The Rote Thing
Toronto Life
July 1998
Put your tongue behind your teeth and say "they're." Now say it without that cushion of exhaled air--say it with tongue and teeth touching.
What you get is a sound like "dare," the way an Irishman like Colm Wilkinson pronounces it when he says about his four children, "Ellen, dare healthy." It's
not something he says in passing, as we sit in the plush red seats of the Princess of Wales
Theatre. He says it with his voice lowered conspiratorially, as if fearing to tempt the fates, with that proper measure of Irish superstition and drama
that turns a simple statement into a deeply personal sentiment.
It's all so predictable, everything about this nonsmoking, teetotalling megastar of fifty four, with his fuzzy thinning mop of light brown hair, unpiercing
eyes behind plain specs and nondescript brown suit that says more about his current bourgesis Toronto address than his boho beginings in rock bands, cabaret,
and Dublin theatre. We're here because this month he'll reprise his career-making role as Jean Valjean in a remount of Les Miserables, just as
he's now reprising for me every one of the hundreds, maybe thousands, of interviews he's done since bursting onto the London theatre scene in 1985.
His wife, Deirdre? Wonderful, he's so fortunate with Deidre, she's just a fantastic, fantastic, person. His children (two girls, two boys, aged fourteen to twenty-seven)
are just great, he's learned so much from them. Oh, to be sure, he misses his native Dublin, because you're always bound to meet someone you know on the
street and don't they love their conversation? But Toronto is safe and very good for family, much better than New York--though he does love it there, too. He came
here on a six-month contract with a three-month option in 1989 to play the Phantom, and lasted half a decade before he tired of the role--though not of Toronto, he say
s with a lilting accent that comes and goes during his recitation of the Standard Answers.
Of "Danny Boy," the song everyone wants to hear, he says, "You become sick of it," but quickly adds, "though it's not any fault of the song." He admires film actors, like
Ian Holm, who also perform on stage--but "I'm not saying they're not great movie actors." Les Miz has been tweaked since he first created the role of Valjean in
a production he thought was just fine--but never mind. "It might sound a bit strange, me talking about the show like that."
So as we sit drinking Evian amid the clutter from the night before, I worry that Mr. Colm Wilkinson is far too pleasant for my purposes. It could be an act. He is, after
all, a decorated performer who could easily suppress a sinister side for a couple of hours. But he gives off none of the vibes of celebrity dissembling--the
insecurity cloaked as witty self-deprecation, the highly quotable one-liners, the sullen reaction to the merest hint of deflationary teasing. In fact, when he does
deviate from the prefab responses to elaborate on a favourite subject--say, his eldest son, Aaron, a composer and musican--he starts to stumble, fumbling for words,
saying finally, "Well, I just love him to death because he's my son."
So I put down the notepad and ask for what everyone really wants from him--and what he is supremely able to provide--great dollops of soul-coddling Irish sentimentality. I
steer clear of "Danny Boy," and ask him for another Irish standard.
"Ah, 'Carrickfergus,'" he says, and begins to recite, then softly sing to his audience of one in the empty darkened theatre.
I wish I was in Carrickfergus, only for nights in Ballygrant / I would swim over the deepest ocean, the deepest ocean for my love to find / But the sea is wide and I
cannot cross over and neither have I the wings to fly... / I'm drunk today and I'm seldom sober, a handsome rover from town to town / Ah, but I'm sick now, my days are
numbered / Come all you young men and lay me down.
And when he's done, we both sit quietly for a minute, enjoying the spell.
By Ellen Vanstone
|
