The first major problem we came across was that we needed about fifteen girls. We made a trip up to St Dominic's to audition some girls for parts, and our hopes were raised by the reasonably large number who turned up. However, after a few people had read parts, someone kindly mentioned that she couldn't be in the play, and that she was only there because they had been told that they must all attend the audition. So all the people who were not interested in being in the play were asked to leave - and we were left with just one girl! However we eventually succeeded in getting some girls from the Sacred Heart sixth form to take part.
There were obvious personal difficulties in playing such a big part. Firstly, I had to learn a great deal of words - there were about 800 in just the first scene - which I learnt mainly on the train going to and coming from school. It was a very tiring part : the play itself lasted about 2½ to 3 hours (fortunately we only did 24 scenes out of 36, and all of those were cut) and there were only 2 scenes which I wasn't in. Also I had to rehearse four lunchtimes and at least one evening a week. The biggest difficulty was getting a contrast between the three different ages and voices, especially during rehearsals when I sometimes had to keep changing from one to the other. I had to think carefully about how to play each part to get an effective change in age. I tried to portray the young Peer - the village idiot with his incredible fantasies - as energetic, impish, erect, immature and with a sparkle in his eyes. This was the most physically tiring section of the play. I felt that the middle-aged Peer should be mature, travelled, upright, well spoken, and with head held high. I treated this section as a kind of rest period, since it was the shortest and least demanding. But the old Peer desperately trying to discover his true self was certainly the most difficult section to play. I tried to suggest the age by assuming a raspy voice, keeping my head down more into my shoulders, and limping slightly. Keeping this impression of age presented probably my biggest problem, and I was never once satisfied with the way I did it. This section bf the play was almost completely philosophical - with many long speeches and not much action - and this was the cause of another major problem. The audience must have already been fed up with my voice, and when there was no action and no apparent story-line, it was doubtful that they would find the last bit very interesting. I just had to do what I could to suggest an increasing desperation in Peer which reaches a climax of almost total despair and then changes into a mood of hope near the end of the play. This part of the play is full of interest and meaning for someone who can sit down and read and study it in detail, as was originally intended, but tends to be boring and perhaps seems almost superfluous to a school play audience. One of the biggest pressures for me personally, of course, was the responsibility of knowing that if the play was a failure it would almost certainly be my fault. Of the entire play, I would say that the most difficult scene was the "Boyg" scene. Here I was trapped in a circle of light and had to mime trying to fight my way out of it, always finding something in the way. This represented Peer fighting against his true self, the Boyg.
A number of things in Peer Gynt were amusing, worrying or frightening, or a combination of the
three. Such as when, on the Wednesday night, I tottered and swayed dangerously, frantically
trying to regain my balance, after losing it as I attempted to rush up some steps carrying my
mother, fireman's-lift style, over my shoulder. The audience gasped anxiously as I narrowly
avoided dropping my mother into hospital at the beginning of the first performance! The last
act contains the famous "onion speech" in which Peer peels an onion only to find that it has
no heart, but is merely a series of layers. It was very interesting to see what kind of onion
I would get at different performances. One time I would get an enormous onion, so that I had to
furiously rip off layers at a time to get the silly thing peeled in time, whereas another time
I would get a tiny one and have difficulty in making it last. Some of the words which may have
sounded marvellous in Norwegian sounded rather peculiar to say the least in English. For example
I had trouble not to laugh when, in a fast moving wedding scene, I had to turn to the audience
and bitterly utter: "Their glances and smiles are needles in my back. My nerves grate like a
saw blade under the file"! But the worst moment of all was when I forgot my words. Surrounded
by a crowd of bullies, I was supposed to boast: "I can ride through the air on horseback!" But
suddenly I had absolutely no idea what came next - it is an amazing feeling. It seems incredible
that one can forget, having said the words correctly so many times before I did not hear the
prompt whisper anything, and all I could do was helplessly wait for someone to say something!
After what seemed like ages, a quick thinking voice blurted out: "He's run out of steam!" and,
prompted by this relieving remark, someone else rather explicitly hinted: "Can you to ride
through the air?", and everything came back to me again. Something which I never looked forward
to was the scene where my mother died. In it I had to stand on the end of her bed pretending
that it was a carriage driven by a horse taking my mother to heaven. But the bed was
frighteningly unsteady and as it creaked and swayed beneath me I felt sure that it would
collapse at any moment, but fortunately it never did! I often wondered if the audience realized
how remarkable it was that they saw the Young Peer in his rags and with unkempt hair at the end
of Act III and then, after just five minutes, return to begin Act IV dressed smartly in shirt,
cravat, suit and shoes, adorned with a beard and with combed, short, greased hair. It was a
remarkable change in which a number of people were engaged. Shortly after exiting I could be
seen dashing barefoot across the front of the school to the dressing room, I threw my wig and
shirt to someone, and was made up while I changed my trousers and had my shirt, cravat, socks,
shoes and put on by various members of the cast. Then I hurried up to the stage, picking up my
straw boater en route and tried to begin the next act as if nothing had happened. At the dress
rehearsal we were nothing like ready in time, but somehow we managed at the performances. During
a blackout at the end of one scene near the beginning of the last act, I was supposed to reach
into the trapdoor and collect a canvas bag, which I needed for the next scene, from on a ledge.
One night, however, I missed the ledge and groped desperately for the bag, and very nearly
overbalanced and disappeared down the trapdoor! As the lights came up I could be seen emerging
from the trapdoor clutching the bag which I had at last found! During another blackout a ship's
gunwale was supposed to be hoisted out of sight up to the ceiling, but one night something went
wrong, and during the next scene it dangled ungracefully in full view of the audience! And,
every night during the busy emotional scene when Peer returns to Solveig, his faithful lover,
while the audience was hopefully busy being moved with pity and sympathy and being inspired by
hope, I was frantically trying to plug in the microphone ready for her moving song which ended
the play.