February 16, 2011
By Staff Reporter
And then, to its delight and amazement, the Hurricane himself, as he has done elsewhere, emerged from the back of the theater to join the actor/writer on stage.
Walking back up the aisle, he shook hands with people, some of whom possibly have never seen a snooker game.
“I warmed to it more or less straight away,” Higgins said about the play in an interview earlier.
Not that it could be easy sitting through the story of his rise and fall, his two broken marriages, and the resultant absence from the lives of his daughter and son, his alcoholism, and his throat cancer and also the reminder that despite his extraordinary fame he’s been left without anything to show for it in material terms.
“I’ve seen it between 30 and 40 times now,” Higgins said. “I’m a bit more relaxed with it.
“I knew I got up to all sorts of things, as scallywags do, but sometimes when Richard portrays me on the stage, it leaves me a bit aghast. Otherwise it’s a very good portrayal.
“There were a lot of mistakes in my life; obviously you’d like to change those if you could, but you can’t turn back life,” he added.
As Higgins amiably greeted theatergoers after the show, there was evidence of the charisma that helped make him hugely popular through the 1970s and ’80s. Posters were bought and he signed them.
One immigrant from Glasgow introduced himself, his girlfriend and another couple. The Scot confessed to being a Celtic fan, noting that the star’s allegiances were elsewhere. They agreed, though, that both Rangers and Celtic should compete in a league with the major English clubs.
Dormer’s play recalls a time when there was more snooker on television than soccer. Though it’s still popular, its heyday in terms of ratings began in 1974 — by which time color TV, for which it was perfect, was quickly becoming the norm — and continued up to 1986. New major competitions, in addition to the world championship, sprang up to cater for the demand.
Its 1970s revival owed a great deal to Higgins, who gate-crashed upon the scene, winning the world championship on his first attempt in 1972. For the next eight years, he toured Britain and Ireland.
“You got your earning from exhibitions, just like a rock-band would,” he recalled. “It was a very hard life.
“But equally I made myself very well-liked by the public.”
He won the world championship again in 1982, a victory dramatically recalled by Dormer in the play’s final moment.
“I wasn’t playing with the same type of fluency that I had before,” Higgins remembered.
And the game was changing. Dormer’s play refers to the “percentage” game that was emerging.
Higgins went further. “Not percentage. They were frightened to play,” he said. For him, combining flair and speed was part of the entertainment.
Only his friend and prot