A Tart on Tour
Actor: Andrea Kelland
Directors: Alison Quigan and Tom Sainsbury
Written by Andrea Kelland and Paul Sonne
Original Dramaturgy by Deb Filler
At The Basement Studio
I’m reminded of the words of the inimitable Sir Donald Wolfit as I trudge up the stairs to The Basement Studio. He is reported to have said “I used to be a tour de force. Now I’m forced to tour”.
I’ve always loved that phrase because, being an old hoofer, I’ve done my share of ‘smalls’ in the provinces, and touring is in my DNA, so this elderly agony, engaged step after step, up the stairs, is worth all the effort I need to expend to get to the top.
Why?
Because I’m going to see – experience – the work of Andrea Kelland, a favourite, from what seems like a thousand years, and many lives, ago. You see, our paths have unwound ahead of us, and almost touched, on so many occasions and rarely does the theatre provide any of us with such a narcissistic opportunity.
I doubt Kelland knows any of this, but I do, and this bit is shamelessly about me.
Kelland was a young actor at Theatre Corporate when I started out. I began my journey there too, only a couple of years behind her. She and the late Caroline Claver were my fairy heroes, not that I was telling anyone that then.
Many of Kelland’s memories ring absolutely true and my memory is jolted by similar reminiscences … but I get ahead of myself as is my won’t.
Loads of my experiences at The Basement have been fun and filled with the laughter of recognition, and this before I even get into the performance space. Actors are, after all, actors wherever they are in the world and The Basement is no different. This, sadly, was not one of those fun occasions. I had booked an extra ticket to take an additional guest – Kelland has pulling power – so arrived in plenty of time to pick it up, but there was no one at the box office during the twenty minutes I waited to hand my money over. Sure, the young things at the bar exude a greater degree of fascination than I do these days – but, at the end of the day I have the keyboard so here goes.
Kelland is the client, and she was let down and that’s not good enough. I have no doubt Kelland would earn every cent of the ticket price and she deserved to have my money. Once I finally got to the top of the stairs, the young man on the door could not have been less interested in his customers. He was rude and perfunctory, so I think some sort of FoH training might be in order.
The wee programme reads like a Who’s Who of my life: Alison Quigan (big hugs on the way in and more on the way out), clever Tom Sainsbury, the delicious Paul Sonne, Derek Ward, John ‘Gibby’ Gibson, David Mahon, the late Dean Parker, and a cast otherwise too numerous to mention.
I did wonder about Kelland.
I needn’t have.
From a cheeky first entrance to exiting after more than a few curtain calls, what I saw was an artist in her prime and in control. This should not be the case, I mused. Her joints should be like mine, arthritic, her hips and knees should have begun to crumble just as mine have done, she should have her orthopaedic surgeon on speed dial as I have (Hi Andrew) but there is no evidence that any of this is the case, and it pleases me immensely. To free her up to do what she does so well I’ll happily take one for the team.
So, to the show.
We meet her mother, and we don’t like her very much. Towards the end of the piece, we meet her again, and she is as monumentally unattractive then as she was at the beginning.
We are so impacted by those who shape our early years.
An unwelcome shift sees her relocate to Taumarunui and, while we have already warmed to Kelland, we don’t feel the same about the capital of the King Country even if it is ‘on the main trunk line.’
When you have the opportunity to see ‘A Tart on Tour’ – and I hope you will – please be prepared as this section is heart-rending and not at all fun. The acting is understated but the narrative is not and having lived for some years in the world she is revisiting – Taumarunui in the ‘70s, bloke central, shearers, rousies, farm workers – I find myself getting inordinately angry. Kelland transcends her material however and we move on.
These are extraordinary moments of rare theatrical quality – Kelland’s Ophelia audition is sublime as are all her references to that 70s hit ‘Boeing Boeing’. There are moments that, having ‘been there done that’, are a form of exquisite agony.
‘Story Theatre’ and ‘TIE’ (Theatre and Education) provided wonderful opportunities for a few of us to really learn our craft. I recall watching Kelland in TIE and being absolutely blown away by her talent.
We learnt more than what ‘Story Theatre and ‘TIE, taught us, of course, because there were the parties, the drinking (casks of Babich’s dry red) and tarting ourselves around. Buy me a drink and I’ll spill the beans about being back in Taumarunui, how that turned into a day with Bob Marley, and the making of a sweet memory that I will take to the grave.
We were, of course, given this exquisite opportunity by a man who certainly earned the right to call us tarts and, here we are fifty years later, still celebrating this. Kelland relates an occasion when she was called the ‘C’ word, and this was not unusual. Now it’s everyday parlance but it wasn’t back then. I recall one instance when I was rehearsing just with the great man, and I was being especially dim. He lost it with me – I deserved it – and told me there were two c**** in the room and, realising there was only he and I, had to say that I was both of them. I was, and I freely admit it. No words were off-limits when it came to describing our ancestry.
There were memories of the Mercury, and a tantalising snatch of her Mary Ann Sailors from Dylan Thomas’ ’Under Milkwood’, as touchingly beautiful today as it was when I first saw it all those years ago. Sailors is deeply religious and believes that Milkwood is the Garden of Eden. My memory of Kelland delivering the simple phrase ‘the old man playing the harmonium’ was enough to bring tears to the eyes.
Then there’s the story of the giant koala which cracked me up in a way that seldom happens, a car crash that didn’t, the narrative of the boy with magic hands, brief snippets of Jonathan Hardy, Jan Prettejons, and a subtle but powerful impersonation of iconic trade unionist from the 1930s until his death in 1963, Fintan Patrick Walsh.
The hat did it for me.
Then it was time for the watershed that was ‘Vita and Virginia’ and bingo, another production I loved despite initially not wanting to go. It changed everything for Kelland, and now, in the blink of an eye, the evening is almost over.
So, what is it – apart from a quirky personal story featuring a wonderfully talented actor? Well, it’s a unique track through our theatre history that’s immensely important. We need more of them. If the arts in Aotearoa are a national park, stories like this are the tracks that criss-cross the landscape giving us an intersecting network of pathways to the past, no two tracks the same. Kelland Track has great signposts and you’re welcome to wander wherever you wish.
It’s a show about courage, love, and bad decisions. It has exceptional moments, a wee 10-minute flat patch (it might have been me) and is beautifully structured. It winds up as it should, how it should, and when it should.
‘My name is Andrea, and I am an addict. I have been clean and sober for 27 years.’
Hearing this is like a bash in the chest with the blunt end of a fence post, a reminder of all those dark places I’ve been pretending I never went to, yet I know I did. Who can deny six months of cold turkey at Lake Alice?
I tried, but I don’t anymore. I wear it like a badge.
Andrea’s story makes me inordinately happy.
Why?
Because I am Lexie, and I am an addict. I have been clean and sober for 47 years. In 1976, the theatre and its people – Kelland was one of them but it seems she didn’t get the message at the time – saved my life. I’m proud of her, of us, of ‘Frederick’, Jonathan, all the Paul’s, Jan, Deb, a brace of David’s, my old new mate Chris, of Jude, Erin, Linda, Gill, Kelly, Cliff, Peter and Peter and Peter, École Internationale de théâtre Jacques Lecoq, Rangimoana, Johnny, and a cast full of equally tasty tarts, some met on tour, who are just too, too sweet to mention.
Because what happens on tour, stays on tour.
(Thanks, Andrea, for this raw and bloody trip down memory lane, a stumbling, bumbling lurch into a past that I wouldn’t change a single second of for all the fame and riches in the world. Forced to tour? I’d go tomorrow – or as soon as I’ve scratched out these wretched and inadequate words of praise).
dykiegirl 