The curtain fell at the Bloomsbury Theatre, located in the heart of London’s West End. Applause rings out from all quarters of the arena, Sean Eve stands majestically at the foot of the stage and bows toward the standing ovations. As the intense driven sound of a thousand hand claps echoes through the inner most core of this old theatre, he exits the stage for the last time, a quick glance back at the audience on his way out and the enigmatic Sean Eve was gone.
The Player had just finished it’s gruelling extended by popular demand six month run at Bloomsbury. Tickets were hard to come by such was his popularity. Described by the art and theatre critics as ‘astounding’ and ‘Eve is simply incredible’.
Sean sat in his dressing room, he gazed into his dressing mirror, a glass of scotch lie on the side next to his mobile phone, it was untouched, he would always pour the liquor into the glass before going on stage, but never drank it. The Beatles ‘Hard day’s night’ play in the background, listening intently to the words, he still didn’t know them even after all these years. He thought about the first performance he ever did on stage in the 70’s at a small venue in South London, the play was called Beat in Time, Eve still remembered his lines word for word. Sean sat and pondered his performance for a while, before grabbing his bag and leaving the theatre alone through a basement door to escape the fans that lay desperately in wait to besiege him upon first sight.
There was a knock at his small dressing room door, and Sean was catapulted back to reality, and this reality couldn’t be further from his reminiscent thoughts he had just been having. He picked up the glass of scotch and gulped it back in one go. There was a time when he wouldn’t have done that, but then this wasn’t the Bloomsbury theatre anymore, it wasn’t even London. It was the Christmas panto run of Babes in the Wood, the venue The Tower Theatre in Folkestone, Kent.
The actor dragging his body from a scruffy looking wooden chair, went to answer the door. It was the five minute call. Sean nodded and slouched back in his chair again. He would soon grace the stage for the final time before Christmas as The Sherriff of Nottingham. It was all he could get right now. Tickets were easy to come by, starting price was £8. The Tower Theatre was a former church, a modest arena that seated 300 at most, but struggled to do so most nights.
It was a far cry from Sean Eve’s once glittering hey day, he had at one time commanded the stage in London’s west end with such refreshing vigour. He started out on stage in the 70’s as a young man with boyish good looks and a natural acting talent. The man was always destined for stardom it seemed. Even as a young boy at school he excelled in drama and the arts and liked being the centre of attention.
His parents always supported his love of performing, most parents at the time were not so encouraging, pushing their children headlong into far more practical career choices, such as medicine or accounting.
Sean made the most of his parents backing and attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. He cut his teeth treading the boards in the capital, performing at various theatre’s before finally working his way to the glorious west end.
In the late 1970’s Eve, already catching the eye of talent seeking executives, was offered the chance to audition for a brand new detective series starting on the BBC. After impressing the panel, he was given the lead role as Jack Saunders, a slick black haired DCI in Watch Tower, a show that would go on to be a ratings success and would make Sean Eve a household name throughout the UK. Appearing each week in his trade mark cream white suit and tie accompanied always with a black shirt, and a killer smile that women would die for. The show ran for the best part of Six years, and by the time it finished, the name Sean Eve had been firmly cemented in the hearts and minds of the great British viewing public. He’d made it to the big time.
He met his wife Debbie Rowe on an episode of Watch Tower, they married soon after in the 80’s and had two daughters together. On the back of Watch Tower Sean was offered plenty of lucrative film and TV work, and for a while at least, seemed never to be off our screens.
Sean trudged off stage at the Tower theatre and slowly walked back to his small dark and dank dressing room. He was wide eyed, suspicious as if expecting a massive coronary at any time. Eve couldn’t bare to face the mirror, such was the depressed morose expression that would greet him. Sighing quietly he finished off the bottle of Scotch, and walked out of the theatre. There was no group of fans laying in wait for him, not tonight, not even one.
As he walked the cold December streets of Folkestone, both hands tucked tightly away in his trouser pockets, Sean was deep in thought, grimly bracing the icy air, armed with only a thin layer of clothes to attack the freezing elements. A small torn black leather jacket drape over him lazily, not quite done up to the top exposing his neck to the biting conditions.
He thought back to the golden days, when he was the BBC’s most prized asset, topping the Christmas day viewing figures, year after year. He was unstoppable. He had been unstoppable.
People rarely recognized this once unforgettable face that had adorned TV set’s up and down the land. The drinking had well and truly taken it’s toll on him, the once pretty young face, sparkling out from the stage, lighting up a thousand venues, like the brightest of stars, was now covered cruelly in pot holes, with wrinkles imprinted upon his forehead, darting out and crudely encircling the whole of his face. His eyes red and blood shot, he wiped away a tear as he fought against the cold night.
Sean often wondered what forgiveness would feel like. He dreamt about it everyday, he cried when he felt it’s warm and peaceful sensation giving him a second chance in life. He longed for this so much that it hurt him to even embrace the thought for just a moment, a mere second of this idea filling up his mind would cause him so much pain. He’d seen others comforted after they’d fallen, picked up and dusted down, served back to the public, placed back upon the pedestal and repackaged as if a brand new being had emerged. He now thought this special privilege to be reserved only for others and a chance never to be afforded to him.
He opened the door to his ground floor flat, lighting up the hallway, balancing with one hand perched upon the door, the other swiped the light switch. He shuffled through to the small living room, looking out beyond the large window it came with a perfect view of the sea front. Even at night, specs of light shone on and off though the discoloured net curtains. The sea shimmered seductively as if trying to entice all into her realm, like a mistress beckoning to her lover tantalisingly in the cool midnight breeze.
Sean knew all about mistresses, with success always comes temptation. The girls that would hang around backstage of theatres, or events and wait around the TV studios, would nearly all find their way into his bed. He couldn’t stop, he wanted to, he told himself every time that she would be the last, and so would the next one.
A year long affair with a co star was the final straw for his wife, after hearing whispers of his sordid meetings through colleagues and friends alike, she then suffered the indignity of a tabloid front page exposé on her husbands short comings. Sean was greeted by scores of paparazzi and blood thirsty reporters instead of his wife and kids, who had now left his side, leaving him to face this damaging media circus alone.
After his period of reflection had finished, the drinking didn’t. The work soon dried up, and the man who was at one time constantly inundated with scripts and offers for work, wasn’t getting any at all. He was like a boil that had risen and popped spilling it’s poison out all over his family and the media world. Turning up for work half cut and dishevelled led to arguments with producers and co stars, directors wanted nothing more to do with him. The news was out that Sean Eve was finished, or would have been if anyone had remembered him. Despite the public melt down, he always remembered his lines. He never forgot a scene, his memory would lock that piece of information away and feed it through to him as he executed his part to perfection. It was a tragedy some thought, when they recalled, that a man with such talent could go to pieces in quite such a way.
Sean would still see his kids occasionally, but it was the scripts that he missed. He knew deep inside that it was the fame and celebrity that he missed the most, he just couldn’t help it. Desperately yearning to taste stardom again, he would sometimes convince himself it could happen again, as he look deep inside another bottle. He wanted the girls once more. Sometimes he thought about them, the ones he could remember, never their names. The attention was addictive, and he couldn’t get it back or replace it. He read about the young kids of today who chase after fame as if it were the be all and end all of life itself, and he understood them completely. He once had it all, and would of willingly done anything to get it back, even for just one day.
Walking into his bedroom, with a glass of whiskey in one unsteady hand, Sean gets undressed. Hurrying over to a large vanished wooden wardrobe in the corner of the room, he takes out some clothes, spilling some of his drink in his haste he begins to dress. Spread out across the room and covering nearly the whole of his single bed are piles upon piles of script pages. These were the entire works for every single Watch Tower episode ever shot. He had the script memorized in his head, he was going over the words, the grubby looking white suit was back on and he was right back in the early 80’s again. The smile had returned to his worn out face, and the ill fitting clothes, in his mind made him that character again. He began to sing the theme tune with real purpose, he was ready for the cameras to role and the director to say places please and ‘action’. Eve adjusted himself in the mirror, and slicked back his now straw grey hair. Jack Saunders was back.
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END
S. HOVERY
