Life & Society
Julian’s week
Published 07 February 2008
I provide a counselling service in the wings between scenes. I'm known as Trisha, I believe
Before the curtain rises on our nightly performances of Cabaret, I peer through a hole in the set and peruse the audience. It seems only fair after all: they’re going to be leering at us for the ensuing couple of hours, and this is my chance to scrutinise the paying public and see if there is anyone famous or fanciable in. The ensemble gather behind me and await my report. “Couple of gym queens in the second row!” I might inform them, or “Chavvy straight boy worth a look in the box on the left”. They can then direct their performance to the area of interest. Should Davina McCall or Bobby Davro be spotted, we all enjoy a collective cheap thrill.
These are the things that keep you going during a long run. Otherwise, churning out eight shows a week, you feel a bit like a battery hen. Once or twice our flirtations have paid off and handsome punters have appeared grinning at the stage door before waltzing off into the night with the cast member of their choice. We all rush into work the next night to see how they scored. The public might think they're paying to see a West End show, but really they're being assessed and auditioned. If they're very lucky, they're getting a night to remember in every sense.
As an experienced, worldly-wise homosexual, I also provide counselling in the wings between scenes. Chorus boys and stage hands flock to me to unburden themselves of their romantic entanglements and hear the solutions. (I'm affectionately known as Trisha, I believe.) What I'd forgotten about being young is how enslaved you are to lust. They might be stepping out with a dysfunctional, crystal-meth snorting alcoholic who is never going to cause them anything but pain and distress, but they'll put up with all that for 20 minutes of sex. Interestingly, when you get to my age, you find yourself attracted to well-balanced, teetotal, drug-free, gainfully employed types and it's the sex you put up with. C'est la vie.
Spare a thought for my sister. She’s working as PA to a group of rich bachelors on holiday in an unfeasibly luxurious villa somewhere posh. There are chefs, chauffeurs, masseurs, valets and servants for every occasion. There’s even a DJ. The villa has its own disco.
One of my sister's jobs was to organise a minibus to the airport to collect a posse of 14 working girls specially flown in from Poland. Their job is to provide "ambience" in the disco. Suitably dressed, they take it in turns to dance around their handbags 24 hours a day, just in case some of the rich boys wander in. When they do, they make the girls line up for an inspection. Their faces are turned to the light, their breasts inspected.
Three girls were declared "ugly" and returned to Poland. Those who remained did their duty and my sister was called at 3am to come and clean up the dance floor.
Talking of working girls, the stage door of the Lyric Theatre, where I’m currently employed, is in Great Windmill Street. Girls wearing unconvincing wigs and killer heels stand in the doorways of seedy clip-joints all day long calling to passing men: “Hello! You want to come in? Only five pound!” They’ve even had the nerve to proposition me. “Don’t be ridiculous!” I said.
Once inside, according to a distressed American squaddie who ran into our theatre the other night to escape, you don't get so much as a lap dance before a burly bouncer appears and demands an "exit fee" of several hundred pounds. If you don't have the cash on you, you're frogmarched to the nearest cashpoint.
As I explained to the attractive squaddie, as I gently wiped the sweat from his troubled brow, for that sort of money you could buy yourself a front stalls ticket to Cabaret, and who knows what might happen after the show?
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