A word on understudying from cast member David Gillard (MBE)

Week 7 of rehearsal - understudying

I'm going to be honest, David is one of my all-time favourite cast members. Not because he's an excellent actor, not because he's amazing person (seriously his life is am-azing), not because as an MBE he has the Queen on speed dial, but because he's willing to take main parts, and when the casting isn't sympathetic to him he's more than willing to step back and take the lesser parts to help the production. I've done it many times myself, and we have several excellent cast members in the chorus who've had leads in very big productions who are helping me in the 'smaller' parts - I'm very proud of the chorus because these are the people that make a show and if they do it well they can turn a good show into an amazing show. Anyways, here's David Gillard MBE giving you a glimpse into understudying and his life....

I’ve just spent the last two rehearsals happily ‘reading in’ for absent colleagues – great fun and the nearest I’ll get to playing Mack and Kessel. And it set me thinking about those largely unsung heroes and heroines of the stage, the understudy. They learn a role but often never get to play it. And if they do it’s rarely on the Press night, so they never get the reviews. But a great training ground, none the less. When I was starting out in am-dram (at the South London Theatre Centre back in those ‘swinging sixties’) a friend knew a young professional actor named Fred who was an understudy and ‘spear carrier’ in Olivier’s fledgling National Theatre company at the Old Vic. Fred very generously came to see us strutting our stuff at SLTC a couple of times. In the bar afterwards he told us how amazing it was working with stars like Sir John Gielgud and Michael Redgrave, young lions like Tom Courtenay, Derek Jacobi, Michael Gambon, Robert Stephens, Frank Finlay, Maggie Smith and Billie Whitelaw (not to mention the great Sir Larry himself – apparently just ‘Sir’ to the company). And he hoped that one day he’d get a decent part. I saw Fred twice at the Vic. He was (very briefly) a hotel guest dashing on to a balcony in the hilarious Feydeau farce ‘A Flea in her Ear’. And, yes, that was Fred marching slowly up and down in the gloom at the back as a soldier on sentry duty while Olivier mesmerised us front-stage in Strindberg’s powerful ‘A Dance of Death’. A couple of years later (when I’d been forced to give up am-dram to attend first nights of my own as the theatre critic of the old Daily Sketch) I heard that Fred had left the National. He’d been offered a part in a new TV soap called ‘Emmerdale Farm’ (now, of course, just ‘Emmerdale’). It meant spending rather a lot of time in Yorkshire but it was regular work and the money was good. So Fred created the role of Matt Skilbeck, stayed in ‘Emmerdale Farm’ for 17 years and went on to become the head of Equity. But – panto players, please note - he reckoned some of his happiest theatrical experiences came later when he realised a lifelong ambition to play Dame. His name is Frederick Pyne.

David Gillard