Here I am as Noel Coward. I was the first person ever granted the exclusive rights to portray Sir Noel on stage in the first person. I thought that a one-man show where you are on stage alone for one and a half hours was the most difficult thing anyone could do in show business. That was until I took up the theremin! I did hundreds of performances of my show and took it all over the place. Including....
...Washington DC, where I performed for the White House - President George Bush Sr. was in the final year of his presidency at that time.
Here I am with the Duchess of York on the front page of a French tabloid. The entire British Royal Family are huge Noel Coward fans. The photo was taken following a private performance for the Royals. After three years of Noel I was bored stiff with it, so it was time for another change.
And now for something comepletely different. I did another one-man show, this time in French (one of several languages in which I am fluent), based on the SONG OF SONGS (Le Cantique Des Cantiques or "Shir haShirim") of the Old Testament.
The work was based on the brilliant cabalistic interpretations of the late Alexandrian-born French cabalist, Carlo Suares. The texts were by the French lyricist Laurence Musy. I accompanied myself on a variety of different instruments. Among them, the lute and the harp - including the brass strung Celtic harp shown above, made for me by harp maker Jay Witcher in the 1970's.
Laurence is a wonderful writer and working with her was an adventure. The harp in this photo is a genuine, ancient instrument which I found in an antique shop in Paris. Very few old harps are still playable because harps have many strings and there is a great deal of tension in them. Over time, the instrument actually pulls itself apart.
In 1996 I more or less retired from showbusiness - that was when I discovered the theremin and decided to learn to play it. You do not choose the theremin - the theremin chooses you. I was swept away by it.
I vowed to myself in the mid 90's that I would never perform again on stage. Once I took up the theremin, however, I did quite a number of concerts, some with symphony orchestras. The photo above was taken on stage following a performance (it is not unusual for people to want to get close to the instrument in order to find out if it is a trick). The theremin above is a Moog Ethervox. I have deliberately "fuzzed" the faces of the on-lookers in order to protect the innocent.