Theatre--Actor's Notes

Duncan Thistlethwaite will be opening in The Vertical Hour at the Baton Rouge Little Theatre this week. He wrote this note about his experiences with the show, parts of which appeared in The Times of Acadiana. Thanks to Duncan for sharing this with us, and break a leg!

Actors of a certain age develop an eagle eye for auditions which feature characters of a certain age, so when I got an audition emailer for the Baton Rouge Little Theater’s production of The Vertical Hour, my eye did its eagle thing: “Oliver – mid-fifties British physician.” Being verifiably ‘mid-fifties’ myself, I drove over the next day and read for Keith Dixon, the director of the play and BRLT’s Artistic Director. I was thrilled to get cast. The Vertical Hour is a fascinating piece, debuting on Broadway with Bill Nighy and Julienne Moore in the lead roles at a time when the invasion of Iraq and the resultant quagmire of mayhem and chaos were at the very forefront of the world’s political stage. On one level, it’s an exploration of the political, moral, and philosophical ideas surrounding the whole event, but one shouldn’t assume that the play is a screed for political diatribes or yet another blatant attack by the foes of the Bush administration. David Hare is much more subtle than that.

Yes, the play examines what happened in Iraq from several opposite polarities, but more important to the theater-goer are the characters who inhabit those polarites. The central dramatic line through the play is the relationships between those characters and not their political view-points. All the political yak-yak takes a back seat to what is happening between them personally, and what a bunch of interesting characters they are.

My character, Oliver Lucas is an English physician, a GP (general practitioner) who lives in the remote countryside on the Welsh border. I’d never done a British accent before, and my joy at being cast was immediately followed by near-panic as I realized I’d have to come up with a solid British accent. I began attacking that immediately, working with Paul Meier’s excellent Accents and Dialects for Stage and Screen, and quicker than I thought, I found Oliver’s voice, surprising myself that he didn’t sound like Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins (‘Allo Guv’nah!) or some over-the-top imitation of posh English aristocracy. Whew.

The script is demanding beyond accents. It is dense with ideas and high-stakes relationships. Oliver Lucas is wicked and sweet, smart and funny, kind and cruel, wounded and wounding, and all sorts of interesting things that are fun to play. I’ve never been presented with a character of his dimensions and depth. The play mainly focuses on the interplay between Oliver and Nadia Blye, his son’s American girlfriend who is an academic/journalist of high profile, much like CNN’s Christian Amonpour. They stand at their poles, fending with each other, using their political philosophies as a means to get at their personal truths. It’s a rich combination of things for an actor to play with: high stake personal relationships which are dismantled and rearranged through intense political discussions.

Keith Dixon is a nimble, accomplished director and has made the experience a joy from the get-go. Rehearsals are focused and business-like, yet fun and friendly at the same time. Part of the joy of being an actor is working through a script, refining moments and tweaking relationships, and Keith’s steady hand and clear view of what the play is about and who the characters are have made each session something I anticipate eagerly. The hour-plus commute to the theater out on Florida Boulevard in Baton Rouge isn’t even a minor hassle. It’s an asset really: a great opportunity to run lines (on the way there) and review what we just did (on the way back). I’m home before I know it.