Young actor takes lead in ‘Brighton Beach'
When you are 18, 15 doesn’t seem all that long ago.
Young actor Antony Hodgson has found the best aid he has to playing 15-year-old Eugene Jerome in Neil Simon’s “Brighton Beach Memoirs” is his memory. “I can remember 15 so it’s not that hard,” the actor said of his role in the Court Theatre production, which opens on Friday. He has had to allow for some variables, however. Fifteen-year-old Eugene lives in 1937 and “a 15-year-old. then didn’t know what a 10-year-old does now about life.”
Eugene’s main characteristic is his smartness, not in a cocky or sarcastic way but with a smile that is hard to rebuke. That is Antony Hodgson’s summary of the character.
It is a role that he is enjoying in rehearsal after wishing he hadn’t got it. “When I came to the Court the role was more than likely mine depending on how I did during the year. I wasn’t sure I wanted it.”
Rehearsals are going well, however, and working with an experienced cast has made the task easy for the young Nelsonian who is determined on a career in theatre. He grew up in a musical, theatrical family, although his parents left Nelson amateur theatre about the time he was starting as a 10-year-old. The interest grew out of “organising school journal plays at school. It just sort of moved through and here I am.” His father and mother were more interested in music than theatre. His father has just taken a year off to play the trumpet and do some singing training. His son says he should have been a singer years ago but did other things instead. His mother is also musical and his younger sister, Joanne, seems to have inherited that interest. “She’s very musical, plays the oboe and sings and is very good at. acting. Some day she’ll be joining me (in theatre) I hope.” His older brother, Michael, already has. Or
rather Antony joined him at the Court Theatre when he was accepted into the company in March. Michael was already at the Court in the properties department for the last three years. That was not the reason Antony chose the Court. “I came down for an audition last year. I had lasted as far as the seventh form at school and then decided I didn’t like it and went to work for the Catchment Board in Nelson. I came down for the audition late last year and they told me to come back in a year.
Then they rang in January and said they wanted me to do another audition. I started in the company in March.” At 18 he is the youngest of the Court’s actors. The studentship he accepted provides a grounding in theatre, backstage as well as under the lights.
Since March he has had bit parts in "Pravda,” played the homosexual son in “Torch Song Trilogy,” stage managed “Paper Towers” and now plays Eugene.
“I signed for one year but it could be renewed for a second.” After that? “Work. I just want to keep working if I can.” The likeable teenager rates his.chances of making a living in theatre in this country fairly high. “It has changed now that theatre is seen as a profession rather than a hobby. I want to be in theatre. I guess that could change but right now I’m determined I want a career in theatre. I don’t think that will change. I want to do something in theatre.” He thinks the training he is getting at the Court better suits him than drama school would have. “My attitude to school was bad so I think it would have been the same at drama school. The school is more intensive than the learning at the Court. But there is
more pressure at the Court because the audience expect a professional performance -when they come to see you. They don’t expect a student performance.”
Young actor takes lead in ‘Brighton Beach'
Press, 10 December 1986, Page 22
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