Chapter 15 Prima Le Parole E Poi La Musica

Terence Clarke

The title of this chapter, as I am sure I do not need to tell you, may be Englished as “First the words, and then the music”. And, if you know that, then I shan’t have to add that the name of Salieri’s opera is actually Prima la musica e poi le parole: “First the music, and then the words”. In my collaboration with , it was usually le parole first – but sometimes la musica. More of that anon. But Prima la musica. I first met Nick through the Nimrod Theatre (where I think he spent most of his time when not at University), in 1969 when he was nineteen. I was thirty-four, and still teaching – a career I abandoned the following year, thanks to the insupportable behaviour of my headmaster (and my thanks are genuine: I should otherwise now be a retired non-composing mathematics teacher, and unheard). In 1970 Nimrod had just started and John Bell was looking for someone who could act, play piano and – possibly – compose a little. That is how my collaboration with Ron Blair on Flash Jim Vaux came about, in 1971. The following year Nimrod revived it, and it was taken on a ten-week tour of . Nick, by this time BA, Syd – I was one of those who unsuccessfully tried to persuade him to proceed to an Honours year – was gofer at Nimrod, and joined the tour as Assistant Stage Manager. Our friendship was cemented, and he had the questionable experience of hearing my music every night. He got an Council grant to study directing at New York University; went, studied, learnt, absorbed, and returned to Australia in the late 1970s, and joined the South Australian Theatre Company (as it was then known) as, I think, Assistant – perhaps later Associate (his CV does not make this clear) – Director. It was from there that he wrote to John Bell that, if he was ever looking for a vehicle for Drew Forsythe, there was a play by Goldoni, I due gemelli 214 Nick Enright: An Actor’s Playwright

Veneziani, in which the lead played two markedly contrasting roles. Nimrod Theatre was flourishing. When John Clark and Elizabeth Butcher came to prepare the first and interim season of the new , they invited the leading companies in the town to submit ideas for plays under the umbrella title of ‘World Theatre Season’. John remembered the Goldoni, and commissioned a translation/version from Nick. He then wrote to Nick, “Do you think it could be a musical?” He did. And suggested that I write the music. John had directed the first production of Flash Jim Vaux, and, perhaps for that reason, agreed. Nick set about finding places in the text that might be musicked, and sent frequent packets of lyrics across from Adelaide, which I proceeded to set to music without really knowing where they might occur in the finished play. I was so inexperienced at the job of collaborating on a musical that it did not even occur to me to ask. Nimrod flew me across to Adelaide for Nick to hear the music, and so that we might clean up loose ends, and, in particular, write the finaletto and finale. I doubt that many collaborations have been so arbitrary, so casual, and the fruit so quickly ripened; certainly few successful ones can have been. Of course we had no idea that The Venetian Twins would last beyond December 1979, but it very quickly found an audience, played to excellent houses, and its season was twice extended. I think it was to the last performance of that first season of The Venetian Twins that Sir John Drummond, then Artistic Director of the Edinburgh Festival, came. He invited us to the 1980 Festival. Excite- ment all round. The Nimrod general manager, however, decided that this would not be announced until closer to the Festival, which turned out to be a mistake. Around June or July Drummond wired Nimrod to say that “he could find no theatre” for the show; offer cancelled. It was too late to generate dismay within the profession, appeals to fund- ing bodies, and so on. It is tempting to speculate how various careers might have been affected, had we gone. In particular, I regret the fact that Drew Forsythe’s spectacularly funny (and sometimes touching) twin creations were not seen beyond our shores. By way of a footnote, I fast forward to the night of 22 December 1990, which was simultaneously the last night of the Sydney season of the third production of Twins, and the occasion of Nick’s fortieth birthday, which was celebrated at an after-show party at David Marr’s (David is Nick’s literary executor). Among the guests