Don't shoot the actor...

Not many actors have ever wondered if someone in the audience is going to draw a gun and shoot the cast on stage. One exception is John Vernon, who, as a young man in the 1980s, was appearing with John Bindon at the King’s Head in Islington, in QRs and AIs Clearly State.

Bindon (pictured) had a colourful life away from the stage, including drug use, gangland connections, intimacy with Princess Margaret and physical attributes that cannot be mentioned in a family-friendly newspaper. “We had heard some hard men were looking for him,” John says, “One night he said to us all in the dressing room ‘If someone stands up in the audience and points a gun at the stage, don't worry; just hit the deck. It’s me he's after’.” 

Gunfire never erupted, and twenty-five years later, John is back at the King’s Head. This time he’s alone on stage, in Ben and Joe’s, one of three monologues in Californian Lives. “It’s an unusual piece, about a middle-aged man reminiscing about the bar he used to frequent in the San Fernando Valley. He wants to be accepted by those around him, but he’s never sure if he is.”

Californian Lives represents a significant challenge for John. It’s almost twenty years since he last acted in front of a live audience. For a long time he appeared regularly on television; you might have seen him in Call the Midwife, East Enders, The Bill and Doctors. More recently he has been worked mostly in voiceovers for documentaries and dubbing for foreign soap operas and Japanese anime. At one time, if you were a fan of stand-up comedy, you could have caught his act at the Tunnel Club or Hackney Cabaret.

So why return to theatre? “Not for the money,” he says. “It’s more for the opportunity to exercise some acting muscles that have been dormant for too long and to reintroduce myself to the whole experience of theatre – although I can't help feeling that with a thirty minute one-man play, I have started in at the deep end...”

To make things even harder, he’s playing against type. “My career changed back in 1997 when I was glassed in a pub - I had over eighty stitches in my face and now have a permanently wonky smile and an occasional twitch in my left eye. For a time I even had a livid scar running down my cheek which was helped me get cast as villains and viking types rather than the 'decent young man' roles I had had before.”

Then there’s the third challenge facing him; on opening night his partner of the last sixteen years will see him act for the first time. At least John won’t have deal with another problem that John Bindon caused the last time at the King’s Head; to please the Daily Mail photographer Bindon grabbed his and another actor’s girlfriend and presented them as his fans.

Reminder - Californian Lives opens on 21st April; book tickets via the link right. 2 tickets are being given away every day; email "I want tkts" to info@arberyproductions.co.uk