Tugba Tamer, on set for Sophia (out next year) Photo: Sive Butler
Even before the vampires appeared (age 6, a post-modern horror film called Fright Night), a macabre and romantic streak seemed to have attached itself to me.
Watching The Addams Family, a childhood favourite, I was repeatedly struck by Gomez’ incredible good luck in having found so PERFECT, so like-minded, a woman as Morticia. I made no mention of it, to my family or anyone else, but already, those twenty years ago, had quietly determined that such good-fortune was unlikely to be mine.
I was five, so I probably wouldn’t have sneeringly dismissed the girls around me as materialistic, tanned and vacuous. But I suspect that was the sense that underpinned my fears. The idea of leaving South Africa had not begun to occur to me.
Such pessimism faded as such issues became more pressing. First my standards dropped; then, for a while, I developed doubt, and grew willing to adopt the most ridiculous poses and characters to please those whose banal company I really ought never to have kept.
This continued through the London days. At my accommodations in Oxford Street, Camden, Hackney, Islington, Manor House, Dalston, Westbourne Park – a different character for each one, and each insufficient, denying more of my desires than they embraced.
And then I moved back to Manor House, a little over a year ago. The decision was a functional one – I was spending far too much on rehearsal space, and it was a warehouse, and I was assured by the couple running it that extended practices would be fine – even that I could requisition an area of the house as practice space. Most of the fellow residents seemed quite tolerable – there was an awful pink rabbit that shat all over the places, but every place has a (figurative) pink rabbit of some sort.
I arrived on a cold wet day in what should have been summer, the gloomy, not terribly celebrated composer of one of the sadder albums of recent history (“few can brood like Donen” went one press-quote), with my many cases of crumpled suits and foreign instruments. And was pounced upon – impossibly gracefully – by a beautiful Turkish girl who demanded that we play music. Which we did. Late into the night. Driving others in the house quite mad, no doubt. Starting as (unwittingly) we meant to continue.
Outside at the warehouse Photo: Magnus Arrevad
Her speciality was corporeal mime (‘not that sort of mime!’), a technique and series of poses developed by a French performer half a century ago. Her background was in cabaret. The more macabre the better. I was just beginning work on an album called Vampires.
Within weeks, the – previously quite natural – huge black rings around my eyes were painted on, and she was trying me out as a prospective theatre double.
Over the next year, she was both teacher and exemplar. The joy of watching her practice, then of watching her perform, was equalled by the pleasure of working alongside her, and the grace of her movements began to become a subject for my words and melodies. Perhaps more importantly, her sense of the aesthetic began to permeate.
I flattered myself that in 18 months I had learned from her to dress myself. But still saw fit to double-check costumes with her for larger shows. And so returned home with a proposed outfit for one set of the UK Vampires launch – a pair of (black) 1950s highwaisted trousers. To which, Tugba, unimpressed: “Adam, baby, are those your father’s?”
It says much – I think completely to her credit – that upon our first attempt to leave Manor House for Kings Place for the Vampires show (in which she performed so magnificently) – I, scatterbrained creature that I am, managed to remember Every Item of Every Costume INCLUDING the Strange Belt Thing, but forgot the stage piano.
But I am being flippant. And indulging in anecdote, which degrades the seriousness of the praise she deserves.
She is the physical, moving manifestation of all that I try to do in syllables. And the finest person with whom I’ll ever share a stage.
PS She’s also got a new theatre show out in a church in London next month.
Performing in The Gambler, Roundhouse Theatre, 2011 Photo: Hande Gr
