I have to confess to feeling more than a little proud when everyone who stepped into the building took one look at the place, with its spectacular, oriental, high-Victorian decor, and murmured deep purrs of approval.
First through the doors was Lord Howard, the former leader of the Conservative party. I believe he stood in the leadership contest against Cameron, whom I hold as chiefly responsible for the mess this country has found itself in, so, as he spoke to our camera with a steely look in his eye, I wondered how the story would have ended had the Tories opted for someone else.
It was my Rabbi’s turn next - and he was singing. Actually, I think I’d given him one of the most complicated lines in the whole piece, but he sailed through it, and sang with passion and great beauty. Michael Etherton, who leads the choir at New West End, was on hand to make sure everyone was on track with their vocals. It was rather lovely to not have to worry about that side of things, and, instead, disappear with Keith to plan shots like a proper director.
Our third “face” was 93 year-old, diamond dealer, Willie Nagel, whom I’m told once chatted up the queen! Willie arrived with his cousin, who essentially decided to take over the directing of the film! I think at one point Willie was so surrounded by people barking orders that he forgot what he was meant to be saying. It instantly made everyone feel stressed out. Keith lost his sense of humour and I think young Mitch might have got rather short shrift from me.
After Willie, we filmed Keith Harris - not, I’m relieved to say, of Orville The Duck fame. Imagine if I’d put Orville in as one of the faces? I don’t think Orville was Jewish. Hmmm.... Anyway, our Keith Harris comes from North London, is born in the early 70s and is now Keith Khan-Harris, as a result of getting married and because he got rather tired of having such a plain name. He told me yesterday he’d even been invited to join a society of people called Keith Harris!
Keith was followed by David Zachary who is a member of the extended Brass family, having worked as a chaperone for both NYMT productions of the show. In this capacity, he remains one of the few people who has actually told me off in my adult life, on account of my trying to do a face swap with a Barbie mug whilst he was trying to admonish a group of cast members for whom I was meant to be taking responsibility. The moral of that story is that you should never make me responsible for enforcing rules. The older I get, the more I realise I have a kind of compulsion to shun rules. Imagine me in an old people’s home?!
Anyway, David was brilliant on camera. Funny. Conscientious. He sang wonderfully. I was very impressed, as were the crew.
The last two people into the shul in the morning were Adam Music, a stunning mix-raced opera singer, whose surname really is Music, and David Freedman, who was also singing. The poor bloke is a bass, and I’d given him a baritone line, but he coped manfully. We filmed him right up in the organ loft at the synagogue, with a perilous, somewhat vertiginous drop behind him!
After lunch, we filmed four more faces at the shul, Flora Frank, a 76 year-old veteran of about 80 marathons (all of which she runs for charity), the stylish and beautifully-voiced Chazan from New West End, Yohel Heller, Yoav Oved, who sings tenor in the choir with me, and sang yesterday with mellifluous beauty, and Katherine Rodden, a red-headed siren-like actress who charmed many of the men in our crew!
We were out of New West End by about 3.15pm, and winging our way up to Hampstead to film my close friend, Vera. I have spent many happy hours at Vera’s house on Keats Grove. In the 1990s and early naughties, she was the epicentre of a group of Hampstead-based, bohemian artists, actors, writers and therapists including Billie Whitelaw and Arnold Wesker. Vera was a firebrand, a survivor of Stuthoff camp, who went to Israel at the end of the war, and was sent to Germany in the 1960s to make a documentary series about the lessons which had been learned from the Holocaust. Vera was a theatre critic for a German newspaper when I met her. She used to come and talk to me when I was a barman at the Royal Court Theatre. Her belief was always that the most interesting people in the theatre were the bar staff and ushers because they were destined to be the stars of the future... without (yet) any of the attitude.
Sadly, those heady days at Vera’s house have long since gone and Vera doesn’t really talk any more, which makes me feel incredibly sad. When I decided to make 100 Faces, the one person I knew I wanted to have in the film was Vera. I felt proud to film her.
From Hampstead, we travelled to Finchley to film a charming 98-year-old called Betty, with one of the most infectious smiles I’ve probably ever seen and, from there, we went to Wembley to film a lady, born in 1924, who was replacing Eric from Nightingale House who sadly died last week. Our new lady, Helen, was charming and heartbreaking. She talked about her family. “They’ve all gone” she said, “I miss them. I hope they’re all okay where they are.”
I went home on a high until I learned from young Mitch that the location we were meant to be filming in today weren’t expecting us and that the person who runs the venue - also one of our faces - was not planning to be there. They’d apparently asked someone to send an email to us telling us that filming needed to be moved to next week (when we’d have had no crew) but the email had not been sent. Some people just don’t get it! Fortunately, it was all sorted by this morning... Just!
100 Faces is certainly a roller-coaster ride and today has witnessed an even lower point... but you’ll have to wait until tomorrow to find out about Fenella Fielding...
76 faces down. 24 to go
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