And to that most colourful character, the Duke of Plaza-Toro, whom I had the particular honour to play at the Church Hill Theatre. Looking back on my life, which has been an eventful one by any standards, I might be tempted to say that that episode is probably one of the great saliences of my personal history.
“At the risk of sounding boastful, I have always had a rather fine voice. As a boy I sang in the local church choir, and had I auditioned for one of the great Edinburgh choirs, the choir of St Mary’s Episcopal Cathedral, for example, I would probably have got in. But I did not, and so never sang in Palmerston Place. I did, however, join the Savoy when I was at university and was in the chorus of several productions. I am quite certain that I would have had principal roles were it not for the fact that the various producers who did those productions did not like me for some reason. It is very wrong when producers allow 318 The Ramsey Dunbarton Story: Part VIII – I Play the Duke . . .
personal preferences to dictate casting. It happens all the time.
People pick their girlfriends and boyfriends to sing the choice parts; it’s never a question of merit. And I gather that you find exactly the same thing in the West End and on Broadway.
“After the Savoy, I joined the Bohemians, and appeared in a number of their productions, often at the King’s Theatre, again in the chorus. There was The Merry Widow, which I always enjoyed very much, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, and Porgy and Bess, to name just a few. In Porgy, I was an understudy for one of the principals, but was not called upon to sing. I must admit that it is very difficult not to wish ill on a principal in those circumstances, but I shall never forget the story told me by one of the Bohemians about how, some time ago, he had been an understudy for somebody in Cav and Pag, and had wished that the other singer would fall under a bus. Which he did. I’m not sure which number the bus was, but I think that it might even have been the 23, the bus which goes up Morningside Road. Fortunately, he survived, although one of his legs was broken, and of course the understudy felt so bad about it that he could barely bring himself to sing the part.
“After a break from the Bohemians, I joined the Morningside Grand Opera, an amateur group which put on a range of performances at the Church Hill Theatre each year. They were ambitious and even did Wagner’s Ring Cycle one year, to mixed reviews, but they also did a lot of the old favourites, such as The Gondoliers. And it was in The Gondoliers that I sang my first principal role, that of the Duke of Plaza-Toro.
“It was a wonderful role, and I would have enjoyed it far more than I actually did if the other singers had been slightly stronger than they actually were. Only a day or two before the first night, I could not help but notice that a number of them had not bothered to learn the words correctly, and there was one young man, who sang the part of Luiz, who just sang la, la, la when he came to a bit that he had not learned. And as for the woman who sang the part of the old nurse, she only had two lines to sing (where she reveals that Luiz was really the baby), but she could not even remember those!
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“The young man who played Luiz was particularly irritating.
My feelings over his behaviour became quite strong at an early stage in the rehearsals, when I overheard him saying to one of the gondolieri that he, rather than I, should have been cast as the Duke of Plaza-Toro.
“If the whole idea had not been so laughable I would have remonstrated with him. One needs a certain gravitas to play the Duke of Plaza-Toro, and I had that and he simply did not. I was a WS, after all, and he was not. He was also far younger than I was and it would have been absurd to see him pretending to be the leader of the ducal party.
“But it gets worse than that. He had a most annoying manner, that young man. I expected him to call me Mr Dunbarton (or perhaps ‘Your Grace’ in the circumstances!) but he actually used my first name immediately after we had been introduced. And then he presumed to shorten it, and began to refer to me as
‘Ramps’. That was almost unbearable, particularly when he turned to me at one point in a rehearsal and said ‘That’s a B-flat by the way, Ramps!’
“I must also admit my doubts as to the casting of the Duchess.
The woman who had the part was very friendly with the producer. I shall say no more about that. However, I did feel that a more appropriate person might have been cast in that role. In particular, there was somebody in the chorus who had been Head Girl many years before of the Mary Erskine School for Girls, when it used to be in Queen Street, where it had that wonderful roof garden for the girls to play on. That sort of background would have equipped her very well to play the role of the Duchess of Plaza-Toro, but do you think that the producer took that into account for one single moment? He did not.
“But these were minor matters, when all is said and done. The final production was not at all bad, and a number of people said that my own performance as the Duke of Plaza-Toro was the best portrayal they had ever seen of that role. That was very kind of them. It’s so easy to be disparaging of other people’s efforts, and I must confess that there is a slight tendency in that direction in Edinburgh. But I am not one to criticise Edinburgh, in
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spite of its occasional little failing. We are very lucky to live here and I for one will never forget that, bearing in mind what so many people have to put up with when they live in other places.”
He put down his memoirs and looked at Betty. Her head was nodding in agreement, or, if one took the uncharitable view, sleep.
98. Younger Women, Older Men
Down the steps into Big Lou’s coffee bar, the very steps down which Christopher Grieve had descended when books were sold there (in the days when coffee was instant, and undrinkable); down those steps went father and son, Matthew and Gordon.
Gordon had arrived at his son’s gallery without notice, had saun-tered in, and indicated that he wanted to talk to his son. And Matthew, embarrassed by the memory of his churlish behaviour over dinner – behaviour which he somehow had seemed just unable to control – had said: “We must have coffee, Dad. I usually go about this time to a place over the road.”
“Anywhere, son,” Gordon replied. “You know my feelings about coffee.”
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Matthew frowned. “I don’t, actually,” he said. “I didn’t know you had views on coffee.”
“It’s a racket,” said Gordon. “All these fancy alternatives.
Skinny latte with vanilla. Double espresso. Americano. So on.
It’s all just coffee, isn’t it?”
Matthew thought about this. “But what about your malt whiskies?” he said. “You go on about fifteen-year-old this and twenty-year-old that. It’s all just whisky, isn’t it?”
Gordon looked at his son with pity. “That’s different, Matt,”
he said, adding: “As you well know.”
Matthew had said nothing in response to this. He had never been able to argue with his father, whose tactic of defending a position was to imply that the other side knew full well that what he, Gordon, said was right. And there was no time for argument anyway, as they were now entering the coffee bar and Matthew had to introduce his father to Big Lou. A thought occurred to him, and made him smile: Big Lou would now be able to say of him, I ken his faither. This was a useful thing to be able to say in Scotland, as it could be used with devastating effect to cut somebody down to size. And cutting others down to size, Matthew knew, was at the heart of Scottish culture. What better way of suggesting that the other person was just a jumped-up wee boy than to say that one kent his faither?