Colm, Geraint, Richard: A whole lotta Higgins
By: Robert Crew
May 18, 2002
It's early April, and Colm Feore is deep in rehearsals for this year's Stratford Festival musical, Lerner and Loewe's My Fair Lady.
One of three actors who will play Henry Higgins this summer, Feore has the role until July 13. Geraint Wyn Davies moves in July 14 to Sept. 14, and Richard Monette takes over for the rest of the season, ending Nov. 10.
But it's rehearsal time, and Feore is in full Henry Higgins mode. Aware of an upcoming interview, he asks with a full, Higginesque flourish:
"What, are there no crumpets and tea for Mr. Crew, Mr. Wyn Davies and myself?"
Fast-forward an hour or so. The dapper and elegant Feore and I are chatting, waiting for Wyn Davies, who lives in Santa Barbara, Calif., and is stuck in traffic en route from the airport.
Suddenly the door is thrown open and in marches a line of people, led by stage manager Cynthia Toushan. Tea and crumpets are served.
Feore laughs delightedly and thanks them. Like Wyn Davies, he's back at the festival to have fun and to help celebrate its 50th anniversary. He's glad to be working with old friends and new ... and the feeling seems to be mutual.
We start the interview without Wyn Davies, and maybe that's appropriate: As William Shakespeare might have said in this situation, Henry I comes before Henry II.
In principle, Feore says, helping himself to a muffin, he has always loved the idea of coming back to Stratford, where he tackled many leading-man roles between 1981 and 1994, but has never really found a "must-do" project.
Then artistic director Monette asked him if he would consider sharing the role of Higgins, the man who tries to turn flower girl Eliza Doolittle (Cynthia Dale) into a society lady.
"It was a rainy, misty, beautiful Stratford day, and I don't know why I said, 'Yes, that sounds like a good idea,'" says Feore, who still lives in Stratford despite a film and TV career that takes him around the world.
"My concern was if there was only one show for me to do, I would end up doing only three, four shows a week, which is a good deal less busy than I like being. I don't like to be away from home more than I have to be, but I like a lot of intensity and doing two or three things at the same time."
Then Wyn Davies was approached, and, Feore jokes, "he must have been drinking, too, because he said yes."
With portraying Higgins and playing the title role in the recent CBC TV miniseries Trudeau, Feore says this is his "year of the pedant."
Both Trudeau and Higgins enjoyed holding forth on a variety of topics, and Feore says his Higgins may have a little Pierre Trudeau about him. "There will be a good dob of Leslie Howard, and here and there, a helpful nod from Rex (Harrison), but not too much."
Wyn Davies, who was also in the Trudeau series playing former Ontario premier Bill Davis (complete with pipe), breezes in, looking bronzed and trim.
Wyn Davies and Feore are friends. They acted together at Stratford in the 1980s but actually met playing cricket back in 1974, Wyn Davies for Upper Canada College, Feore for Ridley College.
Wyn Davies is full of questions about My Fair Lady. How is Monette conducting himself, how extensive is the use of microphones, how is Feore playing the role?
"It was this wag here who convinced me to do it, " Wyn Davies says, indicating Feore.
He turns to me.
"Besides, don't you know the peak of musical stardom that Colm and I reached at this place? Who else could they bring back to do it?
"I don't smoke any more, as well as not doing anything else any more. I have got terribly boring, but I have noticed an enormous amount of voice, which is completely worthless now (because of the microphones).
"What's the point of spending 25 years getting a fine-trained voice," he booms, tongue in cheek, "now that it doesn't matter?"
"I'm doing running and jumping," Feore tells him. "You are going to be dashing, and I have to find something to distinguish myself."
Wyn Davies is told about the Trudeau idea.
"So do I just get to smoke a pipe?" he asks. "I am going to be the patches on Colm's tweed, a bit more worn."
Suddenly, it's Feore's turn to strut his stuff with a gloriously embroidered, actorish rant: "This is where we differ and where people who have had the good sense to buy three pairs of tickets are going to get huge dividends," he declares.
"I tend to be a lean, rather spare performer. I have to be drawn out of my shell. I am a little shy. I also lack imagination and comic credibility.
"I need a director like Richard Monette to give me the touch familiar, the vulgar touch. 'Why don't you squirt some orange juice here or cross the stage on your nose or maybe a fart would be helpful.' I need someone to help me out with those kind of things."
"I bring my own vulgarity," Wyn Davies murmurs.
But Feore is not to be stopped.
"You bring that Dylanesque, poetic ebullience, that 'I am charming, and we'll do a play.' I don't have that. If the play stops, Ger is still charming. If I have nothing to do, I panic and run away."
By the end of the tirade, Wyn Davies and I are laughing and applauding ironically. Feore looks pleased.
Outstanding classical actors, both left the festival to seek fame and fortune in film and television land. They have become, in Wyn Davies' words, "jobbing actors, leading a gypsy existence."
And it has worked, for them. Feore has concentrated on screen acting; Wyn Davies manages to fit in a lot of everything - acting, directing, production.
"In the last couple of years, I have released a CD for charity. I have directed a show in Chicago, taken the family to live in Paris for a while, I shot two short films, directed a bunch of television shows, acted in a bunch of them, did a play.
"Will anyone see any of it? I don't care. I actually got a chance to do it."
Wyn Davies will also appear in three performances of Do Not Go Gentle, a one-man play about Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, at the Studio Theatre Aug. 22, 23 and 28.
He stresses that the key is to make your own opportunities. "You can't sit around and wait for the next shining thing and just worry how much ink you'll get or celebrated you will be. You have to do the celebrating."
Fame is a gradual process, Feore says. "There is no movie, no show that will push you over the top. It is more like a flagstone patio than stepping stones. It's putting a stone here, a stone there and building slowly to something, even if you don't have a vision of what the final result will be.
"I'll just keep going, keep the babies in shoe leather, and it will add up to a career. If retrospectively it looks as if you had a plan, that's a bonus."
It's something Wyn Davies intends to discuss with young company members while he's at the festival. "We are lucky, me and Col. But I think you have to come back and tell people that there is luck out there."
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