Mother and son performe opposite each other in a play, “Oh for God’s sake David, how many more times,” Lionel wailed. “This is the high point when lovely Lady Primrose is offering you her beautiful body. She’s hot for you and you’re clinging together…you are lusting for her, your bodies intertwined, and what do you look like? I’ll tell you, you look like one side of an archway. Look at Kath, she standing upright, she’s even has her pelvis thrust forward, and you’re arching away from her.”
I was playing the role of Garth in the Wagaloo Thespian’s production of the farce “The Mature Lady Always Wins,” directed by Lionel.
The story was that Lady Primrose Grantly, an ex-chorus girl, who had married the wealthy and decrepit Lord Grantly (recently deceased), had a penchant for young guys, but at last she has met her fate in the sexy gardener Garth.
We had one more week of rehearsals and we were in the Wagaloo Memorial Hall rehearsing, and I knew I was making a mess of the role.
“David my treasure,” Lionel continued, “you were sensational as the male stripper in “Girl’s Night Out.” Think of the brilliant critique you got in the Wagaloo Weekly Trumpet, so why…why…why…?”
“It’s…it’s difficult Lionel,” I said.
“Yes…yes…yes…darling, we’ve been over all that before, Kath is your mother, we know all about that, but for God’s sake sweetheart, you’re supposed to be an actor so get on with it. Now try again and put some libido into it my treasure. She’s beautiful…she’s hungering for you and you…oh never mind, just do it again.”
I’m not sure if I had been type cast for the role, but mum only sort of fitted the Lady Primrose character. I saw the ex-chorus girl as being a bit rough round the edges although attractive in a raw sexy way.
Mum is more your real Lady Primrose, tall with a superb figure, and gorgeous Grecian facial features – a real lady. But she was certainly doing of good job of Primrose, and I was spoiling it.
She’s a good actor by local amateur standards and I have to admit that she’d really got into the role of Primrose. If physically she wasn’t quite how I saw Primrose, she did have certain aspects that fitted her for the part.
For example, in real life she had married a wealthy – I won’t say decrepit – older man who was now deceased. Of course he hadn’t been a Lord – he’d got his money making and selling pet food, and by the time mother became his third wife he had a nice house with plenty of land round it in rural Wagaloo. In older times he’d have been a sort of local squire, but of course we don’t go in for that sort of thing in Australia.
Dad as I said made his money selling pet food consisting mainly of chicken beaks, horse and cow hooves with some other doubtful things chucked and, and it was marketed as, “Healthy Pet Joy.”
Mum had once wanted to be an actor, but had married dad too young for her career to get started, but she still hankered for the stage. When we moved to Wagaloo the Wagaloo Thespians had been struggling on for some years with audiences of at best a couple of dozen; most of them relatives of the actors .