Barry Bakker (1945-2002)

Copyright©1993 Evans and Savidge

BARRY BAKKER 1945-2002

 

By Andy Chworowsky

 

Mix together a wicked sense of humour, a healthy dollop of cynicism, a generous portion of artistic talent, and top it all off with a voice redolent of honey and cognac, and you’ve got Barry Bakker. Long a late-night stalwart of the FCC, Barry passed away on September 24 after succumbing to complications brought on by a bout with hepatitis many years ago.

 

From a young age, theatre was South African-born Barry's first love. When called up for military service in the early 1960s he managed to avoid the rough and tumble of army life by playing trombone in the regimental band. After discharge he worked in stage management in Cape Town, was a regularly heard voice on radio plays, and was even an em-cee on skates for a touring “Icecapades” type of show. But his growing disillusionment with the political situation in South Africa in the late 1960s meant that when the chance came to move to Vienna as the stage manager with a travelling marionette show, Barry jumped at it.

 

After a number of years in Vienna (during which he co-founded an English-language theatre company), Barry’s perpetually itchy feet brought him to Hong Kong. He arrived in the early 70s, and immediately became a fixture on Radio Hong Kong (RHK), forerunner to RTHK. The theatre continued to beckon, however, and he teamed up with Sheelagh Cullen, Suzanne Vale, Mark Rouen, and Warwick Evans to create Theatreast, Hong Kong’s first professional English-language theatre company.

 

Barry often told the story of rehearsing their first production, “Murderer,” in his flat. The bloodcurdling screams in this very violent thriller brought the police calling. It was very tricky indeed trying to explain why four people were chasing each other with knives in the middle of the afternoon in an ordinary apartment in a quiet cul de sac in Kowloon Tong.

 

After several years and a string of successes, Theatreast morphed into the non-profit company, Actor’s Rep. In 1983, my own professional involvement with Barry began when I was asked to perform in a satirical revue which had been co-written by Barry, Harry Rolnick, Stuart Wolfendale, Peter Lally and Teresa Norton. This show, “Skitzoid,” which played for two weeks to packed houses, took aim and fired at every stuffed shirt bureaucrat, stupid commercial, greedy TV evangelist, and asinine government policy extant at that time, and spawned two more “oids” in subsequent years: “Bastoid (Son of Skitzoid)” and “Paranoid.”

 

Barry directed all three shows, and wrote the lyrics to the songs (Peter Lally wrote the music). During these years Barry was thoroughly in his element. He had a voice with which to tilt at the people and institutions he found ridiculous, and the arena to exercise his artistry. Perfect for him.

 

But restlessness crept back in, and Barry decided to strike out in new directions. He moved to Pattaya and opened his own night club, in which, ever the showman, he installed a huge water tank in which cute young things would swim in skimpy apparel. Although this club, Nautilus, did well, Barry grew tired of the hassles of the land of smiles and returned once more to Hong Kong to a news reading position at RTHK. Although he made a further short foray back to Thailand, he was to remain at RTHK until his health started to fail him, and work was no longer possible.

 

During a memorial gathering held at the Fringe Club Theatre, Barry’s friends were treated to some video clips of his finest moments. Anyone who saw the original “Skitzoid” will not easily forget the sight of Barry impersonating the singing-woman-in-red from the famously nauseating TV commercial for Design 2000. It brought tears to the eyes then, and on this evening in the Fringe Club, with a small but appreciative audience, and Barry making his final exit, there wasn’t a dry eye in the house.