Content area
Full Text
Victor Spinetti, who is now in his early 70s, made his first appearance singing popular songs in a London pub for pounds 3 a night.
That, at least, is verifiable. But Spinetti is a shaman, a story- teller who can seduce you into believing anything, so he may well have been on stage at ten-years-old in some long forgotten panto in a remote Welsh village during the war.
Spinetti is not so much an actor, who, for more than half a century, has moved in and out of a variety of parts from classical roles with the Royal Shakespeare Company at Stratford and with Joan Littlewood's players at Stratford East, he has also played frequently in America, particularly in Leonard Bernstein's Candide.
He is the actor personified, protean, feral and uniquely fascinating with an instinctive kindness and generosity.
The Producers (based on the Mel Brooks hilarious movie of the same name) has been in the news with the departure of Richard Dreyfuss from the cast.
Spinetti recalls afternoon tea several months ago with Mel Brooks at the Connaught in London when the show was under discussion.
'Mel said, 'I'm bringing The Producers over Vic, and you've got to be in it.' 'I said if I was 50 or 60 I could manage it. But I'm over 70 and there's no way I could get through eight shows a week. Bitter disappointment from Mel.
'But I tell you what, boyo, we can sitgazing deep into one another's eyes looking for cataracts - how about that?'
Spinetti has always been more than the product - he is its unwritten guarantee. When he played Lord Foppington Flutter in The Relapse at Stratford, a handpainted caricature of him sold like hot cakes in the Swan Theatre shop, and you couldn't get a seat.
'Yet I've never really had a career, work has just come along,' he says - totally without guile.
'I sort of began, that's all I can say. When I was singing around the London pubs in the early 50s it was to pay the rent because I couldn't afford to live up here. 'The money wasn't enough, so during the day I worked as a paint sprayer. Terrible job. You had to drink lots of...