Beautiful losers feeling the vibe

By GREG DIXON


Neal Cassady sips at his takeaway java as I light up. A light spray of rain blows through. We stand waiting, waiting in this dead-end street as the spring sky glowers.

Jack Kerouac is late. God damn him. And he's the one with the key. Time apparently means nothing to these crazy beatniks. Being late must be cool. Only squares like me are on time.

Jack eventually shows, all goofy grin and apology. We move upstairs. He puts on a little jazz and we sit down to shoot the breeze and sip our joe.

"We might not show up on the first night," says Jack.

"We might just stay at home and play jazz and drink booze," says Neal.

"We'll have to see whether the vibe is right," says Jack.

Some of us are enjoying this. It could be me. Or it could be actors Ian Hughes or Scott Wills who will be Jack and Neal for the next fortnight at Auckland's SiLo Theatre.

The pair will take the famous American friends - Jack the author of the beat generation bible On the Road, Neal a raconteur and con artist - on the road from New York City to Mexico in Beautiful Losers, a play by Aucklander Mike Hudson which debuted as part of the theatre's Restless Ecstasy series in October last year.

Described by one review in its first, short incarnation as "marvellous ... irreverent ... a fine piece of work", it has been broadened to a full-length, stand-alone play taking in the birth of cool and the consequences of fame.

On arrival in Mexico, after a road trip filled with conversation, booze, jazz and drugs, the pair fall in with chemical lab-cum-author William Burroughs and his partner Joan. Bad things happened, but it made a good book.

"It's the story of how On the Road came to be," says Hughes, who can be seen on Shortland Street as geeky Dr Stickwell. "Then about what happened once it got published and what it did to their friendship. At a basic level it's a story of their friendship, how it inspired this book and how the book undoes their friendship."

"And themselves," Wills adds.

Hughes says what interests him about Kerouac and Cassady is that they were seeking the new. They wanted to be first at something, to discover something. What they got instead was fame.

"You could say that Cassady was one of the first celebrities who never did anything," says Wills, who won a best actor gong for his work in the local film Stickmen.

"He never published a book. He couldn't write because he couldn't sit down at a typewriter for five seconds. He was just crazy. But all these people were inspired by him. Burroughs, Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg all loved him."

And it is that which Beautiful Losers director Margaret-Mary Hollins wants to focus on, says Hughes.

"There was a huge amount of joy in what they did. You read On the Road and it's inspiring and uplifting. There was this ultimate tragic ending, drugs, alcohol and Jack died living with his mother. But with the play we mostly focus on the good, though this version is a little darker."

The question, of course is, in 2003, is there still interest in these two beautiful losers?

Hughes says yes.

"Jack Kerouac articulated rebellion, the young person's got-to-go-out-and-find-myself attitude. It's an incredibly energetic and inspiring time in people's lives. For most people, all of their good stories are from their mid-20s, living in Berlin or wherever, when they were out doing something, on the road. These are not 'I just bought a dishwasher and God it's got this amazing rinse cycle'. Those are not the stories that come up late at night."


* SiLo Theatre, December 3-20