One very cold night, before rehearsals began for OVER THE RIVER AND THROUGH THE WOODS at Mordialloc Theatre, Glenn Robinson chatted with Eric Heyes about the early days of Mordialloc Theatre, old age, and the problems associated with grabbing the wrong set of car keys...
Shall we start at the beginning, Eric?
I was born in England, in Liverpool. Lanceshire actually. I moved to Warwickshire, then back to Lancashire and I came to Australia when I was sixteen. I got my first taste of theatre at school, I was about twelve or thirteen. It was purely by accident. A friend of mine was doing something in theatre and I followed him and it “evolved.”
Did you want to take it up as a profession?
I never had the guts to do it "professionally", never had the guts really. I was too safe. And in those days it was an iffy career anyway. I had a job as an apprentice printer back in England for twelve months before coming here. In the back of the mind you always wanted to do something like that but it would have been around the age of fifteen or sixteen, maybe. As soon as I came to Australia, within six months, I joined the Mordialloc Theatre Company at age sixteen. My first play was THE HAPPIEST DAYS OF YOUR LIFE and I was a school boy. I started work with the Gas and Fuel in 1956 and was there - man and boy - until I retired in 1991.
So, you would nick off from work as the professional jobs arose?
Oh yeah. "Nick off" was the right word. It was very lucid. There was no industrial relations and work place bills in those days. I would never have got released! I used to take half days and full days off my annual leave or sick leave and say I was going somewhere. Of course all the stuff was being done around Melbourne in those days with HOMICIDE and DIVISION 4. My first professional gig was CONSIDER YOUR VERDICT and that was part of Crawfords and in those days when you auditioned for Crawfords you were on their books and that was it. And you sort of got called in for all sorts of gigs. I did SULLIVANS, COP SHOP, DIVISION 4, MATLOCK POLICE, HOMICIDE, RYAN, BELLBIRD and lots of commercials all the time. I did a commercial with Tony Barber; the original Cambridge cigarettes and went over to Tasmania and spent one or two days filming that. I was asked to go for an audition with Melbourne Theatre Company but I didn't go.
When did you join Mordialloc Theatre Company?
I joined Mordi in 1951. It had started in 1946 or 1947. Lorraine (Madsen) was there then. The theatre used to be where the police station is now - I visited it recently! During SWEET ROAD in 2005 I left the theatre - very late after a good party - to go home and I took the wrong keys. I thought they were my car keys and they were prop keys - the ones from the play! I tried to get in the car and couldn't get in and I thought “stuff it, I'll walk home from here for Edithvale.” And on the way I passed Mordialloc police station. I saw this light on and it was like a moth to a flame and in I go. “Evening, officer!” I slur. “Had a good time, have we?” he asks. “Yes, definitely! Can I ring my daughter please? I have prop keys.” So my daughter came and got me. But Ross Mack set me up there, giving me the wrong bloody keys!
What was the Company like then?
It was good. Well, it was always good. I suppose your memory plays tricks on you but it seems to have maintained that - certainly its attraction to me. You know; the spirit of the place. They were doing four shows a year then and it was in the old mechanics hall with the flat floor and old stage - very, very minimal conditions. John Madsen made these flats on masonite about twelve foot high and they weren't gonna come down. They were huge bloody things. We had a great time. The lighting leads were just hanging and you just joined them together. Of course if anyone walked in we'd probably be gone. It was all very basic. I enjoyed it and had no intention of going anywhere else. They were doing farce, comedy, drama - they were all "known" plays. Things like REBECCA, YOU CAN'T TAKE IT WITH YOU, RELUCTANT HEROES, DARK VICTORY, ARSENIC AND OLD LACE, all those plays.
When they moved premises I was President. It was a big move, coming here. I think they were going to pull the place down where we were so we had to find somewhere else. Shirley Burke, who was the counsellor was the instigator behind that. She was the one counsellor who understood what we were doing. The rest of them had no idea. That's why its called The Shirley Burke Theatre. The first play we did here was THE MAN WHO CAME TO DINNER and - I think - Lorraine produced that.
What about the Old Time Music Halls you were directing then?
That was something different for everybody. We found people who could sing and dance and it was terrific. We would pack the place out and run for three or four weeks from Monday to Saturday and you still couldn't get in. The theatre had a flat floor then so we had tables and food and people brought their own grog. Before that we used to do melodramas as a bit of something different to end the year.
How did your work with John Hancock’s Music Halls come about?
What happened with that was by 1978 we did three Music Halls here. Some of us with Eric Taylor got together and formed a group and we went all round Victoria and interstate performing almost every weekend for a couple of years. Initially, I was working for John from about 1978 and by 1981 John Hancock was moving from Mt Eliza to Sandringham and he asked me if I would take my team into the Mt Eliza theatre. We were originally from here and there were also five of them up there, plus a pianist and a drummer. Initially when I went up there I was hired as a performer. Then, when I took my company around the place and went in I was responsible for writing it and directing and formulating the whole thing. And we begged, borrowed, stole and bought material and did four shows a year - which we had to keep changing which was bloody hard. A typical show would go for around two, two and a half hours with a meal which was served first then we would do the show. It was like a variety show; we had a singer, comedy, sketches, more singing, all the standard shit - cough - “stuff”. I kept going until 1995 when I came back here to do THE SUNSHINE BOYS. I had another break and came back to do LAYING THE GHOST in 2004. I didn't realise how much I missed Mordi when I came back as it was a long time away from the place and the people here are like family. Once I came back it was like I had never been away.
Do you have a particular favourite show that you were involved in?
I enjoyed all of them really. I always have a soft spot for ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST. We are so fortunate that they do so many great parts down here. I remember directing TEAHOUSE OF THE AUGUST MOON and OH WHAT A LOVELY WAR which were tremendous tasks to do. When you talk about difficulties of today, with TEAHOUSE we got a brand new mini-moke which Keith Lowe drove up onto the stage. This bloody great tea-house was built with fountains and whatnot and we had a goat which we had to keep in the bloody wings and who would promptly piss all over the floor as soon as it saw an audience, plus there were thirty actors in the cast. OH WHAT A LOVELY WAR was a play with music and singing and about sixty five lighting cues and fifty five sound cues. And it was all pretty basic in those days but we got through it.
How do you approach acting?
Its a lot to do with pretending. I'm very intuitive and things will come to me. I'll probably get an image of something or somebody and - who knows? - maybe the walk will come first or the way of talking. But something happens and you go from there. Unless of course you are in a part that doesn't suit you and you're really struggling. That's when you think "Shit, this is no good. I can feel myself acting!" But if you get into something its just intuitive. I don't think Les Kennkatt (from BOY GETS GIRL) was based on any one person but more that "type" of person. I didn't want to make him a caricature because there was something more to him than that. Initially he was going to be Australian but I couldn't do him as one and Tim (the director) agreed. He had to be an American, you know. The part in ALL MY SONS was one I enjoyed. It was a good part to come back to as I'd been away for so long. I think I've done about one hundred and twenty plays. THE SHOE-HORN SONATA was perhaps the most relaxed performance I ever gave cos I was backstage and I had the script in front of me and no one could see me. ON GOLDEN POND was a lovely part too. I dried on stage in that one - there's one hundred and sixty people in the audience all staring at me and I have no idea what I'm going to say. That was when you realise what it’s all about. I thought I was in the eye of the storm when it’s all very calm. I got out of it by telling Geoff Arnold who was also on stage at the time that I would be back in a minute. I walked off and left the poor bugger on his own looking at the paintings and picking up pieces of furniture while I went off stage and woke up the stage manager. I don't know what happened. Old age probably.
What about directing? How do you tackle that?
You gotta like the play haven't you? If it leaps off the page and you can see an overall image and you can hear it and you can see it then you're half way there. You have to be mechanical because you have to block it and get all that stuff out of the way first. Then, you have to get lines out of the way! Then you can start! You can't do anything until you get all that out of the way. I've always said that the success of a play - and I don't care what anyone says - is done at the audition. If you get the right cast you want then you are half way there. Everyone knows what they are doing and you know what they can do - that's why you cast them - and everyone will be on the same path. FUNNY MONEY was the first play I had directed in a long, long time. And being farce it is very physically demanding. You gotta fall over chairs, you have to remember lines which are similar to everyone else’s and you can't afford to be down physically or mentally. There's no time to relax.
How about now? You going to relax?
I'm not gonna give it away now, even if its only little parts. But it does catch up with you physically. When I was thirty five there were roles all the time. Now, however, there's very few plays that are based on older people. GOLDEN POND and OVER THE RIVER are are a rarity in terms of those types of plays. These days, I find that theatre companies are more transient and people are moving around and auditioning here and auditioning there which is of course fine. But when I started out Heidelberg Theatre was Heidelberg Theatre and Clayton was Clayton and Mordialloc was Mordialloc and you sort of stayed in your own theatre. And you would watch people’s kids grow up in the theatre and hang around and stay around - it was more of a family and social atmosphere. We all grew up together. But its great now, as it was then. Enormous fun, really.
Eric Heyes - thanks very much.