Anyway, given the disaster of the second production at the Old Red, I removed the subtlety of the initial version of Swaggers and turned it into a full-blast (dark) comedy… It worked. We packed that small room above the pub and night after night, had it rocking with laughter. We had a guy called Rupert Farley onboard. He’d appeared in Fantasy Bonds and that guy is some actor. Why he doesn’t get more work is beyond me. In Fantasy Bonds he played one of two brothers. They were gangsters. Their connection to the club was that their sister Lorraine, played by Elaine, was the long-term partner of Weasel. The young man who stood to inherit it. The other brother was played by a guy called Peter Tate… who was fantastic. Right, on meeting Rupert, he came in with his glasses on and all was well during rehearsals but for the “Dress”, he took them off and slicked back his hair to look more like a gangster. I talked him out of it and that night, I learned something about casting against type. If your actor looks the part, remembers his lines and doesn’t bump into the furniture, all’s well. If he doesn’t look the part but can act, something interesting occurs with the audience. Initially, it’s an unsure “He doesn’t look right to me” sort of thing.
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