Festival Theatre SLUMDOG DEBONAIR
‘HE PROCEEDED TO RAPE MY SISTER AND I ON A DAILY BASIS’
Actor and choreographer Noel Tovey tells Mark Fisher the story he kept quiet for decades
I t is the ultimate rags to riches story. Yet the tale Noel Tovey tells about himself is more distressing than any version of Cinderella. It is a narrative that shocked even his closest friends when he chose to tell it to the world in Little Black Bastard, his 2004 autobiography, and some of them found it too much to deal with.
the They knew him as a successful dancer, actor and choreographer, the man responsible for orchestrating indigenous opening ceremony of the 2000 Olympics in Sydney and an energetic campaigner for Aboriginal rights. Little did they suspect he had achieved his career highs – including directing at Edinburgh’s Royal Lyceum, co-founding the London Theatre for Children and teaching at RADA – in spite of a horrific childhood that he was lucky to survive.
In conversation, the 75-year-old is charming and intelligent, but scarcely a sentence passes without him revealing some other cruel detail of a past he kept secret for decades. ‘I have the most horrific memories of Melbourne,’ says Tovey who was born in the slums to a cocaine- addicted African-English father and an alcoholic Scottish-Aboriginal mother. ‘My elder sister and I were abandoned in the house and had to fend for ourselves. The nuns found out how we were living and they locked us in a shed in the back yard because we stank – I think – we must have done. That evening, we were taken to the Royal Park Welfare Depot for Children.’
It was here, Tovey woke up one morning to find the 11-year-old in the next bed had hanged himself. Things only got worse when he and his sister were adopted by a white man whom he describes as a ‘paedophile and a maniac’. ‘For
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the next five years in a small country town, he proceeded to rape my sister and I on a daily basis. Eventually my sister told a little girl at school whose father was a policeman. He came down to report the rumour that was going round and when he walked onto the veranda he saw the man raping my sister.’ That was the end of one period of misery, but it was immediately replaced by another. The children were sent without food or money on the 1000-mile journey back to their mother who was still an alcoholic. Tovey became a street kid and a petty criminal. At 17, he was arrested for buggery at a time when the offence still carried the death penalty in Australia and he came close to suicide. By a miracle, after his release from prison, he fell in with a bohemian crowd and discovered a talent for dance. By the time he set off for London in 1960, he had gone into denial about his Aboriginality and his unhappy past.
To revisit this material in a play is as traumatic for Tovey as it is moving for his audience. ‘When I tell it on stage, mentally I have to go right back to that day,’ he says. ‘Unless I really go back there, I can’t do it and once I start going back there, I start having nightmares again. The first draft I did was the draft I thought everyone expected – I had this glittering career in London and Paris – and I woke up at 2am and thought that’s absolute rubbish. If you’re going to tell this story, you have to tell the whole lot. That’s why it’s called Little Black Bastard – they’re the first words I ever remember hearing.’
Little Black Bastard, Gilded Balloon Teviot, 7–30 Aug (not 16, 23), noon, £8.50–£9.50 (£7.50–£8.50). Previews until 6 Aug, £5.
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Great Danes As ever there are numerous interpretations of Hamlet at this year’s Fringe. Veteran performer and woman of many voices Linda Marlowe picks her favourite versions of Shakespeare’s most famous text
1 DIRECTOR GRIGORI KOZINTSEV’S FILM OF
HAMLET
Made in Soviet Russia in 1964 and starring Innokenty Smoktunovsky as Hamlet, this version is a visual masterpiece
with magnificent black and white photography and a dramatic score by composer Dmitri Shostakovich, capturing the malevolence afoot in Denmark. Smoktunovsky’s Hamlet is a quiet and tortured soul in great contrast to the look and sound of other aspects of this epic piece.
2 STEVEN BERKOFF’S 1980 PRODUCTION
This version, which Berkoff directed as well as performing the title role, featured a bare stage and a chorus of actors creating the set, the sounds, the poetry, the horror and the very fabric of the piece with physical virtuosity. It’s an example of ensemble acting at its best.
3 THE SHAKESPEARE RECORDING SOCIETY
HAMLET WITH PAUL
SCOFIELD
This recording, directed by Howard Sackler, was first published in 1963 but is still being re-released now. Although I never saw Paul Scofield play Hamlet, he was one of my favourite actors and it was a great treat even to hear him do it so brilliantly.
4 MARK RYLANCE AS HAMLET AT THE RSC
Ron Daniels directed this production back in the 1980s, with Mark Rylance in the lead role. To me Rylance is always fascinating to watch in anything he does and his Hamlet didn’t disappoint me despite high expectations. The production was highly acclaimed and toured all over the UK and the United States.
5 TIMOTHY WALKER AS HAMLET WITH CHEEK
BY JOWL
This 1990 production, directed by Declan Donnellan in collaboration with international theatre company Cheek By Jowl,
featured a definitive performance by Timothy Walker, hitting you with raw pain, energy and unromanticised integrity. A truly great Hamlet and my personal favourite. ■ My Hamlet with Linda Marlowe, Assembly Rooms, 623 3030, 7–29 Aug (not 14, 24), 5.20pm, £11–£12 (£10–£11). Previews 5 & 6 Aug, £5; The World’s Wife by Carol Ann Duffy, Edinburgh International Conference Centre, 17 & 19 Aug, 7.40pm, £12 (£10).