Niddle Naddle Noo
Name the most influential comedians of the 20th century and Spike Milligan has to rate in the top five - probably top three - alongside Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton. There is a "before" and "after" each of them - a moment when comedy was transformed for ever (ask the Young Ones or the Pythons).
For fans of The Goon Show - Milligan's most famous and enduring creation - there is a similar phenomenon. Life after first hearing The Goons is most often remembered as being similar to conversion from black and white to unbelievable, dazzling Technicolor.
Geoff Kelso is one of these blessed many and is also a febrile, brilliant comic actor. His casting as Milligan assures the Sydney Theatre Company’s Ying Tong: A Walk With The Goons of an anchor of craziness in a world gone mad.
"I'm older than the others," Kelso says of fellow cast members Jonathan Biggins, David James and Tony Harvey. "When I was a kid we lived by the radio - the wireless - and I had two older brothers who did the voices, so it came naturally. My first voice was little Henry."
A typical exchange between Henry and Min Crun ...
Henry: Here, Min, hold my elephant gun.
Min: I don't know what you brought it for. You can't shoot elephants in England, you know.
Henry: And why not?
Min: They're out of season.
Henry: Does this mean we shall have to have pelican for dinner again?
Min: I fear so, I fear so.
Henry: Then I'll risk it. I'll shoot an elephant out of season.
From: The Dreaded Batter Pudding Hurler of Bexhill-on-Sea
Like Milligan (and fellow Goon, Peter Sellars) Kelso is an actor whose humour is founded on profound melancholy and an understanding of the place comedy plays in his life and work.
"The Goons were a good indicator of who you were," he says of his school days. "Some thought it pretty stupid, so you gravitated to those people with a similar sense of humour. Of the absurd. And this play is really about the dark side."
The Goon Show was a Sunday night staple of BBC radio - performed live in front of an audience from the studios in central London and beamed across the Empire and Commonwealth from 1952 to 1960.
"It was an incredible feat," says Kelso. "Spike wrote them all - except when he fell apart when Eric Sykes was called in and actually did a brilliant job. But they'd do the show on Sunday and by Tuesday, Spike was expected to have the next script already nutted out so they could start rehearsing and refining it on Wednesday and work on it for the rest of the week.
[page]"Milligan lived very much on the dark side a lot of the time. It's not exactly a truism, but being on the outside is how some people operate. It makes you doubt your sanity."
Kelso will be playing Milligan - the arch loony of all time - for something like seven months. How will that affect him? He grins and takes a quick puff of his rollie.
"We have canvassed that idea," he says. "But I think I'm a good enough actor to stop being Spike. But it is seven months ..." He shrugs and his smile is wry. "There are some parallels between us, but I don't suffer manic depression, although I have sought counselling for depression in the past.
"The funny thing is, the BBC was Spike's bete noire and at that time - 20 years ago - the ABC was mine. It took them three years to make a pilot of a show I was involved in, then for months and months we heard absolutely nothing - and never did. It made me very angry and that became depression, of course. But the counselling was reassuring because I discovered I was already finding ways of coping."
Milligan, as is well known, did not always find ways of coping and his life was punctuated by periods of mental ill health. Kelso says he believes Milligan's experiences as a soldier in WW2 were central to his life and work.
"It comes across in everything," says Kelso. "If you read that book, Mussolini: My Part in His Downfall he describes how he was shellshocked - a mortar exploded nearby - and Roy Smiles says it was a pivot point."
Smiles is the English playwright who has taken Milligan's genius and The Goon Show to explore the depths and origins of his comedy. Ying Tong is set in a mental institution where Spike is incarcerated during a breakdown. He can no longer write the show but is doing so anyway: typing away under the bedclothes. And he's visited incessantly by strange creatures who resemble inhabitants of the Goon world. He's lost his marbles - stolen by the evil Moriarty and Grytpype-Thynne. Eccles, Bluebottle and Neddie Seagoon launch an expedition into Spike's head to recover them. Will they succeed? Will Spike ever write again?
"Spike's brother Des says there was unhappiness before the war. So it wasn't just that," says Kelso. "They grew up in colonial India. His dad was a sergeant major and was retired back to England on half-pay, as they were. It's not that they lived the high life, but India compared to pre-war Catford [a particularly ghastly south London suburb] no wonder he found it depressing."
[page]The war, however, was both terrifying and liberating for Milligan and his sense of the absurd came to the fore as he observed and was thrown into the thick of dealing with the hierarchy of the British army.
"He found a sort of freedom," says Kelso. "He got away from his mum, for one thing. he was what, 21 - 22. He had somewhere to sleep, plenty to eat and they mucked about telling stories, making jokes. it was the genesis of what became the Goons - which were cartoon characters, by the way, with no hair - like Popeye or Kilroy. And he and his buddies became human goons while they were preparing to fight a war."
As well as shell-shock, Milligan experienced the full idiocy of the officer class. In North Africa he was an artillery man aboard a Bren gun carrier which found itself right in front of a German tank.
Seagoon: Oh, horror of horrors!
Eccles: Who, me?
Seagoon: Dear faithful old hairy English Tommy! Ten years you waited here rather than disobey that last order I gave you. Stay here till I come back, I said to him. He waited alone in the desert. He never wavered from his duty. He kept the name of servitude shining bright. Eccles - Eccles - you upheld the flag. You never questioned the order. You stayed out here alone. You, without food or water. You, without money. You, without anything to stop you walking away. You! You IDIOT!
From: Rommel's Treasure
"After Europe which he remembered as never-ending mud, dead bodies, dark, cold, bombs and fear, a real sense of foreboding, North Africa was totally different," says Kelso. "Then they found themselves staring down the barrel of this Tiger tank which fired at them and took out one of the carrier's tracks. Spike was blown clean off and landed on his back in the sand. The commanding officer looked down at him and said, 'Milligan, what are you doing down there? Get back up here at once!' and Spike got back up and the Tiger blew out the other track. They were incredibly lucky they weren't all killed. These ridiculous officers appear throughout the Goons."
Milligan wasn't the only English comedian to come out of WW2, says Kelso and their response to the stupidity and horrors was a kind of surreal and lunatic humour that simply topped the surreal and lunatic situations they had found themselves in.
"Post-war wasn't much of a picnic either," says Kelso. "There was no employment, there was rationing. All the comedians who cam out of that period - Frankie Howerd, Benny Hill, Harry Secombe - all shared that experience of years of being told what to do; being under orders. Then the shackles were off. For Milligan it turned into the absurd militaria of Colonel Bloodnok - a coward and a thief; Gritpyppe-Thynne, Neddy Seagoon, Eccles and Bluebottle. They were straight out of his wartime life."
[page]For Kelso, playing "a real person" of Milligan's fame and stature as an idol for millions is the culmination of some years of what could be a natural progression.
"I've been playing real people since I did John Curtin [in Shadow of the Eagle in Perth] and there's an extra something that happens. I mean, two of his granddaughters came to the first dress rehearsal. They liked my portrayal of their grandfather, thank god.
"Democracy wasn't quite so nerve-racking because not many people in Australia were familiar with Gunter Guillaume [East German master spy]. And Copenhagen was the same - Heisenberg wasn't exactly a household name."
Perhaps not, although thousands of people knew an awful lot more about physics and morality after Michael Frayn's unlikely hit play wowed Australian audiences in three sell-out productions (STC and Perth Theatre Company). It's also likely that an awful lot of new people will know a lot more about wartime morality and its after-effects by the time Ying Tong finishes its extended touring run.
"This role is the closest to me," says Kelso with a merry twinkle in his eyes. "Spike is definitely the culmination of a series of roles. As an actor you need to be as clear as you can, absorb the ideas and emotions and not become subsumed by the sense of madness. And deliver a pleasing performance of course."
For those who would like to join in on The Ying Tong Song it starts:
There's a song that I recall
My mother sang to me
She sang it as she tucked me in
When I was ninety-three ...
All join in on the chorus:
Ying tong ying tong
Ying tong ying tong
Ying tong iddle I po
Ying tong ying tong
Ying tong iddle I po
(Repeat as prescribed. Not to be taken internally.)
Ying Tong: A Walk With The Goons, Sydney Theatre Company production at the Drama Theatre, Sydney Opera House to May 19 then Parramatta Riverside: June 13-16; Arts Centre, Melbourne: June 20-July 28; Glen Street, French's Forest: Aug 1-11; Brisbane QPAC: August 22-September 8; Civic Theatre, Newcastle: September 12-15; Performing Arts Centre, Geelong: September 20-22; Theatre Royal, Hobart: September 27-29.
Ph: (02) 9250 1777 or www.sydneytheatre.com.au.
Catch a Goon Show on ABC Radio National: Fridays, 5.30-6am. Purchase collections of Goon Shows on CD at ABC shops and online.
Radio National schedule of Goon Shows
5-Jan-2007: The Mystery of Marie Celeste
12-Jan-2007: The Case of the Missing Heir
19-Jan-2007: The Missing Scroll
26-Jan-2007: The Sinking of Westminster Pier
2-Feb-2007: Confessions of a Secret Senna Pod Drinker
9-Feb-2007: The Pevensey Bay Disaster
16-Feb-2007: The Lost Colony
23-Feb-2007: The Tales of Montmartre
2-Mar-2007: The Choking Horror
9-Mar-2007: The Treasure in the Lake
16-Mar-2007: The Spectre of Tintagel
23-Mar-2007: Personal Narrative
30-Mar-2007: Wings Over Dagenham
6-Apr-2007: Shifting Sands
13-Apr-2007: Africa Ship Canal
20-Apr-2007: The Missing Boa Constrictor
27-Apr-2007: The Space Age
4-May-2007: Treasure in the Tower
11-May-2007: The Stolen Postman
18-May-2007: The Great British Revolution
25-May-2007: The Burning Embassy
1-Jun-2007: Ten Snowballs that Shook the World
8-Jun-2007: The Curse of Frankenstein
15-Jun-2007: !
22-Jun-2007: The Spon Plague
29-Jun-2007: I Was Monty's Treble
6-Jul-2007: The Seagoon Memoirs
13-Jul-2007: Robin's Post
20-Jul-2007: The Last Smoking Seagoon
27-Jul-2007: A Christmas Carol
3-Aug-2007: The Phantom Head Shaver
10-Aug-2007: The White Box of Great Bardfield
17-Aug-2007: Under Two Floorboards
24-Aug-2007: The Lost Emperor
31-Aug-2007: The Case of the Missing CD Plates
7-Sep-2007: The Sleeping Prince
14-Sep-2007: The International Christmas Pudding
21-Sep-2007: The Greenslade Story
28-Sep-2007: The House of Teeth
5-Oct-2007: The Great Tuscan Salami Scandal
12-Oct-2007: Fear of Wages
19-Oct-2007: The Nasty Affair at the Burami Oasis
26-Oct-2007: Drums Along the Mersey
2-Nov-2007: Foiled by President Fred
9-Nov-2007: The Rent Collector
16-Nov-2007: The Giant Bombardon
23-Nov-2007: King Solomons Mines
30-Nov-2007: The Plasticine Man
7-Dec-2007: The Moriarty Murder Mystery
14-Dec-2007: The String Robberies
21-Dec-2007: The Silent Bugler
28-Dec-2007: The Sahara Desert Statue
4-Jan-2008: The One Million Pound Penny
11-Jan-2008: The Childe Harolde Reward
18-Jan-2008: The Silver Dubloons
25-Jan-2008: Robin Hood
