When I was 12, I did Guys and Dolls for a school play. It didn’t leave some massive, psyche-reshaping mark – I don’t fly to it like a homing pigeon every time there’s a production – I just went to the one at the Bridge theatre in London because it sounded good. And it is good; it is tremendous. But apparently the work did reshape my psyche after all, if only because I have so much of it stashed in my memory that I came out reeling from the thought of all the things I might be able to do, if I’d managed to displace one stanza of Marry the Man Today. Maybe I’d be able to speak German.
Look, for 12-year-olds, it was an interesting choice; I was in the chorus, for which a near-perfect song is crafted – Take Back Your Mink – to give an urgent narrative necessity for the chorus girls to strip to their underwear. First they give that rotter back his mink, then his gloves, then his pearls, then all his clothes – the ones they’re wearing. There’s quite a bit of developmental variation at 12 or 13 years old, so half of us looked like burlesque dancers and the other half were basically naked before we started because we had nothing to keep our corsets up. My tits weren’t even the same size; I can still remember which one I flashed at the audience.
