View From the Green Room: There’s a place for us; somewhere a place for us
Keith Dunphy 'Word against the Word'
As the opening whistled tri-bar of West Side Story sounded, a figure in inky black silhouettes on a tightened stage solo spot and Keith’s journey begins.
He’s at RADA now.
In a world of strange consonants and syllables where RP is everything – Standard British/RP (Received Pronunciation) intonation – Keith is struggling with the bias against regional accents.
Talking posh is, apparently, de rigueur if you want to work as an actor.
In seconds, he’s got the house on its feet.
And it’s ‘altogether now…A-E-I-O-OOO…as posh as you can make it sound’.
The blaas in the house love it but existential questions emerge…’who am I?…what am I?...why am I here?’.
He’s getting ahead of himself now and he brings us back to that little boy in Doyle St. and Stephen St. school who – try as he (along with teacher and mother) may – cannot read. He’s being kept so far back that his lanky frame will not fit the desk any longer and he needs breaks to walk around the back of the class to stop cramping.
Keith loves the sound and depth of words but he cannot read them.
Dyslexic in a world where dyslexia doesn’t exist yet, he’s struggling.
He’s intelligent and very likeable in school but reading and writing is elusive.
And then…theatre creeps in.
There’s always music in his home and his mother loves Tops.
She’s performed in the Sack and Bag and now she has Keith queuing for Flaggy Lane tickets for the Gods.
He’s transformed by the magic of the Theatre Royal and the impact theatre has.
A chance encounter sees Br Ben noticing the lanky red-haired lad in the Royal and Ben’s dead keen to have him in DLS’s West Side Story.
Game on!
Ben tells him ‘just do it’ if he wants to pursue a career in drama.
‘There’s a place for us’, West Side Story tells him. But…the doubts remain.
How does a dyslexic read and prepare a script for audition?
Keith pounds the floor.
Asks people to read words he cannot access.
Lands in London and the Underground Map baffles.
Colours help but barked information from the ticket booth…’Bakerloo line…change at Waterloo for Central…’ He gets a taxi and joins the other hopefuls at RADA.
Working class…no posh accent…no educational qualifications…profoundly dyslexic.
The odds are stacked against him. But…Keith has one overwhelming quality…ambition.
He wants to be an actor and nothing – no person, system or word blindness – is ever going to stop him.
Auditions loom and he’s lonely.
Living above a pub in Camden, he pounds the city and the litany of street names somehow takes on the consolation of a prayer.
He’s always been likeable and this shows through in auditions.
Easy to work with…tries hard…flexible.
When he finds Mercutio’s part is gone, he offers a package: hey ‘I’ll play Tybalt and understudy Mercutio? How’s that? Deal!’ And now he’s with the Royal Shakespearean Company for two magical years.
Other parts follow.
Films like 'Peaky Blinders', 'Star Wars', 'Les Mis', 'Children of Men', 'Black Death', 'The Wind that Shakes the Barley', 'The Winter King', 'Rebellion', 'No Offence', 'Beowulf', 'The Hollow Crown'… Plays like 'Macbeth', 'Romeo and Juliet', 'Backsides to the Wind', 'The Red Iron', 'The Rivals', 'The Birthday Party', 'A Woman Walks into a Bank', 'The Lovely Bones'… Regular conversations with voiceovers give that extra zing to the production and keep the show snapping along.
Experts in dyslexia offer clinical awareness while homespun advice grounds the young wannabe actor who wants to play kings.
Keith feels a connection with the hapless Richard II who suffered the grimmest of fates – starved to death by Henry IV – after launching a disastrous clean-up raid of Irish rebels in Leinster having first landed in Waterford.
Laois’s Fiach MacMurragh had a lot to say about that expedition.
Alone in his cell, he muses ‘I wasted time, and now doth time waste me.’
It’s a Shakespearean phrase that haunts the Waterford actor.
This one-man show is a joy.
This is a hugely entertaining, life-affirming story of the struggles, pain and joy Keith encountered on his journey from Doyle Street to classical acting.
There are tears and laughter, anger and acceptance but, above all, pride in the indomitable spirit that brought him there.
As the lights dim to black, the words of West Side Story whisper around the theatre…’there’s a place for us…somewhere a place for us.’
