‘IF you’re not barefoot, then you are overdressed.’ So reads a sign in the dining room of Gabrielle Robbé’s home.
She and her new husband, Guy Browning, have decided that they will even name their La Pouquelaye home Barefoot – because of the show Barefoot in the Park where they first appeared together as husband and wife.
In real life they got married this year – barefoot, of course – on a private beach in Thailand on Liberation Day.
And here she is, sitting on the sofa with her bare feet tucked underneath her.
- Lady Macbeth (Such a challenge, especially learning lines with a chemo brain)
- Doris in Same Time Next Year
- Audrey in Little Shop of Horrors
- Blanche in Street Car Named Desire
Gabrielle has a new short haircut, in anticipation of losing some more through chemotherapy. She is facing six months of chemo to treat a cancer which has been aggressive in the last year.
‘I love my short hair,’ she smiles. ‘I have been told that with the new chemotherapy that I am on, my hair will fall out, and I was told that the weight of my hair will make it fall out quicker, so I thought, that’s something I can control. This way it won’t be as dramatic as long hair falling out.
‘The more you’re in control, the better the journey.’
Gabrielle has stage four colon cancer, which has spread to the liver and now the lungs. The discovery of the illness came just seven weeks after having a full mastectomy. Breast cancer was diagnosed in 2013 after she had gone for routine mammography, having turned 50.
‘The surgeon and the team at the hospital were just fantastic,’ she said. ‘Unfortunately there’s still work to be done, but all the cancer was out and I felt extremely lucky that I hadn’t needed chemotherapy or radiotherapy. It was done and dusted.’
However, alongside the breast cancer scare, Gabrielle had been developing unrelated symptoms – of headaches, back pain and severe constipation. She had tried changing her diet and tried to work out whether the symptoms were IBS, but she said it reached the point where her abdomen was bulging more than when she was pregnant with her daughter.
A visit to Accident and Emergency confirmed that there was a blockage. Even then, Gabrielle didn’t think in terms of a tumour, but a scan confirmed the need for emergency surgery to remove about 12 inches of her large intestine.
‘It was severe,’ she said. ‘It was about to rupture, and if it had, I would be dead.’
To cut a long story short, Gabrielle had four major operations in as many months. She laughs at the memory of vomiting while holding onto the stitches.
She began her recovery, looking into her nutrition and building up her strength with walking and gentle work-outs in the gym. ‘I was on the mend, I had just started my first chemotherapy, which was harsh and painful, but I was lucky that I could have it locally,’ she said. ‘And then one day last October I was in a lot of pain and began throwing up.’
It required another emergency visit to hospital. ‘I was quite despondent at that time,’ she said, ‘but I had to deal with it. I’m surrounded by amazing people – family and friends.’
At her side throughout was Guy, her partner of ten years. ‘He’s my rock,’ she said. ‘He’s the one who sees the down side on my duvet days. It’s got to be tough on him.’
As a birthday present to him, they went to Venice last December. ‘On the last day of the holiday it was a beautiful sunny day and we stood by the banks overlooking the Grand Canal, and that’s when he proposed. It was a lovely, lovely moment and a total surprise.’
What has come as a surprise is that Gabrielle has continued to appear in amateur dramatic productions – including Hairspray at Easter and, as recently as last month as Lady Macbeth with the Samarès Players.
‘I fully believe in Dr Theatre. You can feel absolutely horrendous, but you get on stage and Dr Theatre sorts you out.’
By the time Macbeth came around, she was on different chemo and the side-effects were different, and towards the end of the five-day run she admits that she felt ‘a bit low’.
‘But I am not working, so I was sleeping all day,’ she said. The day after the show, however, she wasn’t feeling well and she went back to hospital. Tests later revealed an infection.
‘It was the best thing for me to do, to stay in hospital. I had 24-hour care and it was lovely seeing all the nurses and all the staff, after last year when I was so poorly, and they all came and chatted about the wedding.
‘I do have some grotty days. but I have learned not to expect too much from myself on certain days.
‘I wouldn’t say it has changed my outlook, but what it has done is given me time, because we’re all on this treadmill, aren’t we? We get up and go to work, we have dinner, we do things around the house, we fit what we can into a weekend, if we’re lucky we get a nice holiday a year, and that’s the pattern. We spend the majority of our life doing that.
‘Unless we have a job which is our passion, we don’t make the most of our lives. And sometimes we focus on things rather than people. But it’s the people in our life who make it wonderful.’
Gabrielle says she is fortunate to have loved what she did – being a professional dancer and choreographer. Jersey-born, she trained at the Jersey Academy of Dancing and Laine Theatre Arts, one of the UK’s top performing arts colleges. Her dancing took her around the world – and then back to Jersey.
‘I choreographed for Dick Ray for ten years, here and in London. I started at Caesar’s Palace – that was my first professional job as a choreographer. I loved it.’
While her next focus is on the Opera House’s 150th anniversary concert in November, Gabrielle says that if there is one thing on her bucket list, it is to act on stage alongside her daughter, Finleigh (15), who has just been nominated for a Young Star of the Year Award in the JEP’s Pride of Jersey awards. With her friends, Finleigh organised a cake sale and raised £155 for Jersey Hospice.
‘Hospice are delighted when young people show such initiative,’ Gabrielle said. ‘I am so proud of her. We’re two peas in a pod. It would be lovely to play a mother-daughter role or an older and younger version of the same person. I do keep all my mementoes, cards and programmes in a show box. It’s bulging – and hopefully still growing!’
THIS interview took place on 23 July, the day Dick Ray passed away. Gabrielle said that they had been in touch with each other over the past 18 months.
‘While I knew how close he was to passing, it was still with immense sadness that I heard the news, she said.
‘Dick helped hundreds of artists and technicians at the beginning of their professional career, many of whom are still working the West End, on TV and all over the world.
‘His two passions were the theatre and his family, and he was immensely proud of both his children. He was a true gentleman and I remember how humility in others impressed him.’
In a recent email to Gabrielle, Mr Ray recalled the first time they met, in the 1980s. He wrote: ‘You came to see me and said, I want to be your choreographer. I asked you to show me a routine you had created and it was so good that I thought maybe it might not be your work, and gave you a track which I knew you would not have heard and said be back here in a week with a dance routine to that. You did, and it was amazing.
‘And that was the beginning of a wonderful relationship which I know we have both enjoyed for so many years.’
