Willy Plumb: An old soul, forever young

By SIMON PRAST*

* September 6, 1975-September 11, 2002

I first met Willy in 1993. Son and best friend of Wellington poet-playwright Vivienne Plumb and director Colin McColl, he spent some time with Colin during the rehearsals of Daughters of Heaven, just the Auckland Theatre Company's second production.

Not yet 18, he seemed still such a boy: shorts, roman sandals, unruly curls. The angelic facade gave little hint of his extraordinary intellect and pagan sense of humour.

Indeed, he had an affinity for the culture and mythology of the ancient civilisations of Rome and Greece and spoke of them with such authority one could suspect in some previous life he had sat with the crowds at the Colosseum or worshipped at the Temple of Apollo.

His youthful passion also concealed the illness, leukaemia, of which he so rarely spoke and to which he would eventually succumb.

Despite everyone's best efforts to dissuade him from a life on stage, he made it his life and in the all-too-brief time allotted him, he made his mark.

He appeared in four ATC productions: a stroppy little stoat in The Wind in the Willows (1998); the eager young actor who accompanied Ilona Rodgers into the spectacular finale of Amy's View (1999); the hapless and telescopically obsessed Bartley McCormick in The Cripple of Inishmaan (1999); and the much-(ab)used Alfred, leading "lady" of Michael Hurst's acting troupe in last year's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead.

At Downstage, he appeared in The Visit and Cabaret; he toured the country in A Midsummer Night's Dream for the New Zealand Actors' Company. Even today, we can see him on the box, cleaning up some ferocious old lady's backyard, only to be rewarded with a boiled egg.

He didn't have much luck with eggs. As Bartley in The Cripple of Inishmaan, he wore three unboiled eggs every night, triumphantly exploded over his head by Sophia Hawthorne. But as with all things, he wore it well and without complaint.

He was to join his father Colin this month, again in Auckland, for the rehearsals of Waiting for Godot. But it wasn't meant to be.

Colin called to say he had to return to Wellington as Willy had been admitted to a hospice.

He called again to say he had to leave even sooner, as Willy was now on oxygen and morphine. One still hoped he would rally, as he had done so many times before. But it wasn't meant to be.

My phone rang during lunch on September 11, already a dreadful anniversary. He was dead. As if on cue, the skies opened and it poured.

His friends and family gathered in Wellington last weekend to bid him farewell. The venue was called The Pines at Princess Bay.

"Very Twin Peaks," Colin whispered. How Willy would approve. Seemingly on the very bottom tip of the North Island, the Southern Alps were clearly visible across the water.

Cameron Rhodes sang You Can't Take that Away from Me. Rima Te Wiata sang the title song from Cabaret, adapted in his memory. Robin Malcolm read from William Shakespeare, his namesake.

We listened to the boy himself singing There's a Place for Us from West Side Story, recorded at the funeral of Colin's mother. Colin and Vivienne read some of his words: wry and wise and way beyond his 27 years.

Coldplay's Yellow played as his casket was carried out: "Look at the stars, see how they shine for you."

Over it, one could hear Nancy Brunning's waita tangi. Haere Ra. Haere Ra. Haere Ra. Everyone inscribed a message on cards attached to white, helium-filled balloons, which we released into the bluest skies.

"Go well, Willy. Until we meet again." An old soul, forever young.

* Simon Prast is the producer at the Auckland Theatre Company