The Crafty Art of Crying

For the majority of people who've seen me act in something, it may come as a surprise to know that my characters have fallen into two distinct categories. In one camp are all the familiar harbingers of the Swantonesque sensibility - that endless parade of semi-comedic fools, idiots, goons and grotesques on which I let loose my pent-up reserves of manic energy. Good examples of this are the eight characters with which I infest The York Dungeon... and, come to think of it, every character I've played since coming to Cambridge. In the other camp though, there rest a few basically straight dramatic parts; often twisted into some semblance of comfort by character acting, but something more than one-dimensional buffoons to provoke a cheap laugh. Even stranger, I've wound up doing far too many scenes in which I've been required to bawl my eyes out. The reasons for this aren't exactly clear to me, especially since I'm yet to reach a decisive consensus on how to approach the awkward things. Crying onstage is something I feel I've got markedly worse at as my 'career' (ha!) has progressed. This is a particular cause for concern in Pickwick & Nickleby given the frequency that poor old Smike dissolves into a sobbing, quivering wreck. I'll be using this entry as an opportunity to reflect on the trials of these eclectic crying scenes, and to see whether any pearls of wisdom can be extracted from so much thrashing about in murky waters.

The story starts when I'm thirteen years old (pimply, bespectacled, idealistic). The story also starts with Claude Rains (eminent, renowned, by this point quite dead). For the uninitiated, Rains is one of cinema's master character actors: the man who stole Casablanca from his distinguished co-stars, taught John Gielgud the basics of his craft and possessed a voice like a pipe organ embossed in velvet. His performance in the 1943 version of Phantom of the Opera (curiously lacking the 'The') was a revelation to me. It's not a film that's generally held in high esteem - it's variously reviled for bastardising the novel (not that the novel's all that great to start with...), sanitising the Gothic with the glossy Technicolor finish so common in the period's 'prestige' pictures, and - in a soundbite that's become a petulant rallying cry for disappointed horror fans - containing 'too much opera and not enough Phantom'. My own motives for seeking out the DVD were less than pure. It was to get at another David Skal documentary that made obtaining the film so thrilling; a supplement sure to be packed with the writers and historians I found so stimulating at the time! Greg Mank - Scott MacQueen - Tom Weaver - legendary figures, the lot of 'em! But when I actually got round to watching the film, it was something of a surprise. It bowled me over. Rains turns in an overwhelmingly gentle, sympathetic and (most important of all, this) compassionate performance. He plays the part of Erique Claudin, a much lightened Phantom figure who receives a sizeable tragic back-story before a token splash of acid reduces him to living beneath an opera house. Never has the Phantom been further from the shameless, coarsened seducer of Andrew Lloyd Webber - never has the Phantom been better for it. His interaction with Christine is so blithe and innocent that it would bring a tear to a glass eye. The character crystallised a few things that were central in my mind at the time: a feeling of being prematurely aged; a sort of mixed pity and empathy for older men; my absolute failure to fire up, let alone consummate, any sort of passion for the opposite sex; not least of all, the timeless 'beauty and the beast' resonance that underpins the tale. When I watch the film now, I'm more alert to (or perhaps just more cynical about) the maudlin, sentimental devices with which it manipulates audience sympathies. It no longer has the same impact. But at the time, it channelled much that I found bothersome in my own life and provided it a limited form of release. I remember being particularly stricken by Rains's haunting vignette at the piano, where he sits down and plays Edward Ward's wonderful 'Lullaby of the Bells' with his arthritic and soon to be useless fingers. It's a scene where acting, music and judicious dramatic placement all come together beautifully. There's one particular flash when Claude stares up into the air, mouth slightly agape, looking utterly dejected as he pounds out another thundering chord. Very potent. Have a picture.


As it happened, drama lessons had started that very term at my secondary school. These alternated with dance lessons, which were only there to be gotten out of by such timeless devices as behaving preposterously, setting fire to the curtains or faking an ingrown toenail. (I remain certain that Alastair Timmis accomplished the latter feat for well over a year - a P.E. transferable skill, you see... the clever fellow!) Still, I'm sure that many felt the same way about drama. Leading the classes was Mr Andrew Crisp, and I doubt that I'll ever have another teacher who I respect or admire more. Mr Crisp had an unnerving habit (and this continued, somewhat bafflingly, into GCSE English classes) of getting everyone under his authority to write and perform their own monologues now and again. To hell with Assessment Objectives! We'd wind up with grand monologue festivals that stretched from week to week. The first of these happy occasions came in the drama lessons. Stumped for a subject, I looked to Claude, and dashed off a heartfelt if shallow knock-off of the character that had so inspired me. Basic scenario: pianist attends funeral of beloved music teacher, reflects on his highly successful career, then, just before reaching his apex, drops the newspaper in his lap and exposes his hand for all to see... I had every intention of posting the whole thing, but my thirteen year old writing is so cringingly awful that I could only bear to read it between my fingers. Here however is the pay-off, shortly after the furtive newspaper manoeuvre:

It’s a funny thing, really... A piano lid... Down! Slammed down on one's fingers... Crippled... Crippled, they said. Most incurable... Undone by a dead piece of wood...

Now came the tricky bit. I'd decided that my character should cry here. I'd diligently practised in my room for hours on end (oh, when there was time to rehearse things obsessively...), hunched over on the floor with a large mirror to better observe all manner of strained and convulsive facial expressions. This was a valuable exploration in itself. I was able to learn the rudiments of crying and work out the order in which they could be most effectively deployed. It's odd that something as natural as bursting into tears has to be painstakingly relearned, but surprisingly satisfying to do so. Lip wobbling - the obvious one, the least important in many ways. Skin pulled very tight across the nose. The grimace and mask of grief - the mouth pulled back with such violence as to almost seem a grin. Eyes nearly closed now - on the verge of vanishing into the skull. Looking back, I think that this was also the first time I worked on a character by observing my own facial contortions. By this late stage of rubbery facial manipulation, I find myself automatically grimacing in the presence of mirrors - whether it's for a play or not! Maybe it's the vampire in me.

At any rate, I acted the piece, and then, feeling horribly nervous, reproduced the punishing facial arrangements I'd so carefully pieced together, now combined with all manner of strangulated chokes and hisses. Next thing I know, the rest of the class is clapping with Mr Crisp good-naturedly bellowing 'YOU'VE GOT YOUR A STAR - GET OFF THE STAGE!' Now, this wasn't great acting. Not by a long shot. But I remain certain that it was on that day that I discovered acting as I understand it now: as a seriously engaging and deeply exciting creative process. It also marked the moment that I was able to escape from acting being boring and juvenile - an interminable parade of musicals, pantomimes, nativities and other such showcases engineered by parents to make their children feel clever and useful. Now I could do the odd bit of serious stuff, and by doing so release latent energies that I couldn't have done by any other medium - least of all talking to somebody. Little did I know the dangerous foundations I'd laid for my relationship with crying scenes. Feeling a little bit sorry for myself and letting air escape my throat in a series of fits and starts, combined with the adrenaline rush of doing something a little bit audacious, was fine. For a first time, that is. The very novelty of the procedure was a distraction from the daunting reality behind all such showy emotional spectacles - that I've never once felt comfortable in doing them, or even qualified to try.

For a little while, nothing happened. Mr Crisp eventually let me play Scrooge in A Christmas Carol, in which the old miser gets just a bit overwrought when he's hanging about at his gravestone. I still consider Scrooge to be far better than any performance I've given since, but, as with my heightened response to Claude Rains, this may be down to association beyond anything else. Here was the chance to play another hopelessly aged individual, doomed to isolation from the human race and forever denied happiness in love. By this point, I'd fallen in love for the first time, and disappearing into Scrooge's torturous botched courtship of Belle was again something of a personal release. But here came the fall. I never really felt I got the anguished Scrooge right. Make no mistake, I writhed and contorted and went blue in the face with screaming - it just never felt particularly believable to me. I had the sneaking suspicion that this was hammy business that would look deeply unconvincing to the outside eye. The remainder of the play disintegrated for me after the graveyard. I have no idea what my Scrooge was playing at when he woke up on that fateful Christmas morning, but I don't think it conveyed much of the blind joy of spiritual redemption so vital to the story's impact. I think I gave an adequate impression of Scrooge having lost a few brain cells after a violent collision with a bedpost, but raging insanity doesn't add up to heartfelt happiness for me. I'm sure it was funny enough. But was it right, was it right? Being allowed to perform in the play was happiness enough for me. Maybe that was the problem. I was certain that my personal brickbats would pound on and on forever (only partly true) and that freedom from them could come only in ways far more childish and improbable than ghostly visitations. I had no time for wrenching myself free of the self-pity I was growing dangerously close to becoming infatuated with. I found all of my happiness right there on earth, exploring the dark side of Scrooge in A Christmas Carol, replete in his heart-staking, ruler-throwing, marriage-hating glory. Perhaps my inability to cry to my satisfaction was the natural consequence of feeling that much more invested in the unpleasant side of Scrooge. Perhaps it stemmed from my ignorance of my own emotional immaturity, which seemed real enough at the time, full of adolescent indignation and self-righteousness, but wasn't quite up to presenting a man repenting the sins of a lifetime. Or perhaps it was all a great deal simpler than these overworked efforts at dramatic insight, and I was simply a bit worried about spoiling a very good part with an inappropriate dollop of absurdity. Like Richard III, it's one of those parts I'd love to have another go at - I imagine the time in your life you play it at causes it to work out completely differently. And who knows, maybe I'd get it right next time.

Later came The Elephant Man, and the addition of a new scene... one in which John Merrick quite literally lays himself to rest, suffocating to death after trying to lie down 'like everybody else'. I think we did two rehearsals of the death, and given the overwrought, bombastic way I ended up playing it, I don't think anything other than a total change of approach would have improved it. Here is another problem of the crying scene though: the conflict between egotistical self-indulgence and entirely justified melodrama. The scene's dialogue - with which Chris Guard, who played Treves, invariably regales me when I run into him now - positively demands the overwrought and bombastic: 'I am angry... I am angry... Go on, say it, you freak! I am angry! I am angry! I am angry! I am angry!' Underplay that and you're truly screwed; the inherent lunacy of the scenario emerges, and mockery can be the only result. We live in reticent times. No matter how fitting a Wagnerian eruption of emotion may be, the inclination is to label it a faintly embarrassing act of ego. When I look back on that drama lesson monologue, I can detect a definite spice of ego, subdued and redundant maybe, but there nonetheless. You've got to muster up a little arrogance to do these crying scenes with conviction - a certain suggestion of 'yes, this is true, this is real - my emotions are more sincere than anything you're feeling and attention must be paid'. And maybe that arrogance is enough to carry you through even a terrible imitation of crying. This attitude goes against my acting ethos however, so it presents me with a bit of an ideological crisis. Perhaps crying onstage is one of those incredibly rare scenarios in which contempt for your audience is called for. Rare is the occasion that anyone wants to be seen weeping, after all - why should you feel anything but hostility towards these hundreds of nasty, prying eyes? That would certainly explain why I've never been able to cry comfortably onstage. I'm always happiest when there's an atmosphere of mutual cordiality between actor and audience, and an emotional breakdown seems incapable of sustaining such a thing. This might also explain why certain other types of actor enjoy crying onstage for the sheer virtuoso thrill of it, without once feeling a scrap of genuine emotion: an acting philosophy founded on contempt, or at least a far more buoyant ego than I've ever been able to sustain. I look back on The Elephant Man as by far the most convincing crying scene I've done. I'm even told that it was contagious, and that the odd tear sprouted amongst audience members, but I regard this proposition with the deepest suspicion. Ah, well. I've included a photo of Merrick's post-tantrum, pre-death praying to give a vague idea of what the scene was like:


Scarlet Petals Underfoot was the next time I wound up doing a passable imitation of bawling my eyes out. The production was not a happy one for me. Actually, that's a lie - I enjoyed the rehearsal process a great deal, a very rare sensation. But that didn't alter the fact that my character's every line prompted gales of unexpected laughter. Nothing is more corrosive to your confidence than being laughed at by an audience. (By the same token, nothing is more uplifting than laughing with an audience by premeditating and cushioning the jokes.) I was a fool figure, so certain that I'd been delivering a refined and elegant performance in the Paul Scofield vein. That is, until the second I hit the stage. It's experiences of this sort that remind me just how horribly restrictive my natural voice is, in spite of all the alchemy I try to work on it, and why I've come to hate it with such a passion. The laugh quota had fortunately dried up by the time of my drawn-out ten-minute death scene - and that was an enormous relief, given quite how ridiculous an undertaking it was. My character identifies it as the final stages of syphilis (the very mention of the word is enough to provoke titters for many), but it more closely resembles the dreaded consumption. There I sat for a good ten minutes - sweating, gesticulating, coughing up blood, disclosing my numerous liasions with prostitutes, and then (most bizarre, this) freezing every so often to allow for the action to continue on another part of the stage. Here's a snippet of dialogue:

You should have seen Cecilia's mother when she died... The labour had been long and fitful. She was pale as a lily, beautiful still, but daubed in a ghastly red gore. It was the blood that killed her. So you see, Kathryn! I didn't lie about that! Cecilia destroyed her mother! There really is a curse of blood.

To my never-ending chagrin, my seventeen year old writing isn't that much better than my thirteen year old writing... Hoary old melodrama through and through, a piece stoked by my twin passions for The Fall of the House of Usher and the bloodthirsty hilarity of Tod Slaughter. In retrospect, the death scene was deeply unpleasant. A few hours after I faked death with such barnstorming histrionics, someone very close to me passed away in the quietest way imaginable. No matter how convincing acting can be (and this wasn't one of those examples), it remains utterly different to the real experience of death. And that experience is, on the whole, utterly black and horrific. Another dilemma then. Should acting really seek to mimic such horror? Is it ever going to be possible to reproduce it? And is it even advisable to try? Crying scenes, in a muted way, may well tap into the same problematic dynamic of death scenes; that unshakeable feeling that the desire or compulision to perform them stems from some fundamental incompleteness as a person - a lack of life experience or empathy for others, perhaps. What onstage tears can live up to the real thing?

Yet despite this failure, I was coaxed into doing another big shouting and crying scene in Pericles. Again, not a happy production. Frankly, I felt like a total idiot most of the time, a sensation that increasingly came to plague me in my last years at York Youth Theatre. Good place that it is, it was always too bloody sociable for someone with all the social airs and graces of a walnut. I've never made friends easily, and thanks to my own reticence, I wound up feeling pretty isolated most of the time - a horrible feeling when working on any play. Rehearsing this ridiculous scene of Cleon weeping over his adopted child's murder felt horrendously uncomfortable in front of a group of people for whom I didn't have a lot of natural sympathy (perfectly nice people, it must be said - I'd just been shamefully backwarding in befriending any of them). I'd never experienced stage fright before this play either. Now I was terrified of a repeat of the Scarlet Petals catastrophe - gales of laughter blasting through all the wrong places. Cleon is the most joyless and self-serious character in a play rife with whimsy and enchantment. He's one of Shakespeare's perennial fallen kings, and is burned to death at the end on the sole basis of his wife's treachery. It wasn't a terribly good performance, but at least it didn't end in laughter. Maybe it's because people approach Shakespeare with certain expectations regarding the elevated style of communication that means they're more willing to forgive woodenness and misinterpretation. As far as I can recall, people only laughed on the first night, and then only on one line - Cleon's petulant 'Heavens forgive it!' - so perhaps they were attuned to the withering irony. Or perhaps not.

And even now, I have no idea if any of it was any good. I have numerous photos from the production by which I've tried to gauge how effective the crying scene was - but it's only one piece of the jigsaw, of course, devoid of voice, movement and dramatic context. From left to right then: default or 'control' Cleon; mid-tantrum Cleon; deep anguish Cleon. Enjoy! (And remember - clicking enlarges! Look at the vein pulsing in my temple! Stunning!)


It became another curious phenomenon at York Youth Theatre (and again, probably one that only ever bothered me) that we were given practically no direction in creating our characters. On further reflection, that's not completely fair - we had a very good director on Pericles. Yet there still seemed to be an odd reticence in dishing out criticism. Generally, I like being told when I'm shamefully awful at something - provided the time and resources are there to make it passably good. I'm always incredibly paranoid about uncommunicative directors. I instantly assume they're against me and detest the work I'm putting out. I clearly remember how upset I felt, after the first night of Ninety Eighty-Four, when the entire cast assembled for notes. I was singled out (naturally) with the memorable statement: 'Oh, James. Could you tone down some of the gestures? Syme became a little camp yesterday'. Wild laughter, and thereafter an inability to get away from crass and irritating jokes about my character's sexuality in the dressing room. 'Oh, thanks,' I thought. 'You give me no advice on how to play the character in rehearsal, let me make an idiot of myself in front of hundreds of people, and then use my failure to curry a bit of warped popularity with the cast. Charming. Just charming.' In actual fact, I thought I'd been precociously clever in interpreting Syme as a waspish and embittered homosexual. I still have the shoddily written character notes on my computer to prove it:

He is a very, very frightened man. He shares an affinity with Winston in his cleverness, which makes him very vulnerable. He hides this fear, attempting to outwit others in order to push their guilt and make himself feel above suspicion... Or is he just a nasty piece of work who gets a perverted thrill from upsetting others? He hides behind the vast superiority of Big Brother, covering up the all-encompassing misery of his own life by making Winston feel scared for his life. Probably also a repressed homosexual. Some of his lines to Winston in particular are very suspect. He does come across as screamingly spindly, weak and mannered...

Retribution of a sort came when the reviews labelled the direction flavourless and dull, but at least appreciated my performance for being that wee bit zesty and flamboyant. But enough digressing. I suppose that what I'm trying to say is that had our Pericles director given me a little more guidance with the nasty task of crying, the performances probably wouldn't have felt like such an ordeal. All the directors that I've worked with have shyed away from giving the crying scenes proper attention - out of what can only be lablled embarrassment, I suppose. Now, if I find them so humiliating (if strangely exhilarating) to perform, then they surely can't be a picnic for the audience to watch. It falls to the sainted Andrew Crisp and his kind bellowing at my thirteen year old self to kindle the least faith in my power to weep onstage.

As a postscript, I'll share the list I devised when at work on the Smike scene in Pickwick & Nickleby, hoping to ease the most meagre drop of water from the resistant Swanton tear ducts in doing so. I came up with a bunch of things across a range of media that have, at some point, made me cry, bawl and weep - or more frequently, sent me into a depressive haze pretty darn close to it. Maybe it's this beastly commodification of emotion that made the exercise so redundant, but if anyone with a grudge against me ever decides to ambush me with a combination of three or more of these things, they will successfully reduce me to a nervous, gibbering wreck. I've tried to include links where possible:

MUSIC: The second movement of Beethoven's Symphony No. 5 (very restful, but almost unbearably sad); Tchaikovsky's 'Pathetique' Symphony (another association-driven memory; my first listen to it came after a good few hours of reading about Tchaikovsky's tormented life and feeling jolly sad about it); Noel Coward singing 'Time and Again' ('Just when I think my guardian angel's winning / I go spinning / Back to the beginning...' - ouch); 'I'm on Fire' (anyone used to sympathising with the monster will get a lot from this stalkerish atmosphere piece); 'Hurt' (I favour the Nine Inch Nails version for the purposes of instant self-pity, but Johnny Cash is also harrowing); 'Bette Davis Eyes' (I've great admiration for the actress, but no idea why the song hits me so hard - there's some powerful tonal melancholy hidden in there, I expect); the credits music for The Animals of Farthing Wood (not a programme I ever had a particular affinity for... but the music conjures up a lost world of childhood); 'Someday' from The Hunchback of Notre Dame (a film I still hold very dear - being a credits song, I associate this music with leaving it); Einaudi's 'Behind the Window' (this stayed with me for years after hearing it on the radio, but I only found the name out recently - it's the slow bits that get me); 'After the Rain' (not much of a Bassey-booster, but this song caught me).

FILM: Just about all of Lon Chaney's tortured pantomime in The Phantom of the Opera (it's the film that got me into classic horror, and remains potent for that reason alone); the blind hermit scene in Bride of Frankenstein (every damn time... acting with absolute integrity); Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (oh, dear - dedicated to the witch as I may have been, it conjures up so much lost innocence); Charles Laughton in The Hunchback of Notre Dame (especially the section beginning 'I never realised till now how ugly I am...'); The Wizard of Oz (the entire thing is painful - an atmosphere redolent with grandparents and certain sorts of home that can never be returned to); the end of Dark Victory (dying with dignity attains a whole new meaning once you've seen this film); Bela Lugosi's monologues in Bride of the Monster (a desperately unhappy actor going to pieces and giving his all in absolute dreck); Peter Cushing staring at his dead wife's portrait in The Ghoul (sadder when you know the back story - the loss of Cushing's beloved Helen was raw at the time of filming, and he insisted her picture be used); Vincent Price's death in Edward Scissorhands (too much to see someone I love so much looking this feeble - I think I lost sleep over this when I first saw it).

LITERATURE: Shakespeare's Sonnets (I defy anyone not to be moved - they've aged better than anything else in the canon!); Frankenstein (the creature has always struck me as a sympathetic companion rather than a cruel manipulator - his diatribes on 'the wretched' hit me hard at a young age); De Profundis (not the thing to read when you're coping with your own unrequieted love, I can tell you); The Phantom of the Opera (not a particularly good book, but the Phantom's monologues came to obsess me for a long while - I ended up recording them and putting them online, but I'm far too embarrassed to post the links); Love is Where it Falls (full of quite remarkable personal anguish, but my own passion for Callow tips this over the edge); Father of Frankenstein (quite a few of the monologues that Christopher Bram puts in James Whale's mouth are very touching).

This has been a ridiculously long blog entry even by my standards - so long that it deserves a special edition DVD boxset with featurettes, deleted scenes and an audio commentary in which snooty historians try to coax something coherent from surviving cast members. This rant was spurred on by the difficulties of performing the Nicholas and Smike relationship in my Dickens show to an acceptable standard. I'm sure that it's a point of contention that'll come up again. For now though, I am too tired to carry on, and I imagine that you're too tired to keep reading. Have a rest, treat yourself to something nice, and I only hope I've shed some light upon the the crafty art of crying.