Teach Yourself Acting with Ellis Jones
One of the best-ever British TV actors has left us at 92. He created terrific characters in dramas like “Colditz” and “An Inspector Calls”, but was also a seasoned theatre director – and an inspired comedy performer. For me there are great memories of “The Squirrels” in the mid-seventies.
Rest well Bernie – you deserve it.
Just how depressed was T.S. Eliot when he wrote “April is the cruellest month”? What would he have written had the Muse stirred him in late February or early March? Given those days just past, when storm, ice and snow brought Gloom to our island, and with little to look forward to but years of dystopian squalor brought about by Brexit and Trump’s trade wars, February 2018 has got to be up there as a candidate for the Unkindest Month of All. And mid-March brought a new, “mini-Beast” – more withering winds, new snow-flurries – but there are daffodils by the water – Walthamstow Reservoir Number 5 isn’t quite Ullswater, but then I’m not quite William Wordsworth…
But like the Old Romantic, my thoughts have strayed to Lakeland, to the heady sunlit days of last December, when I revisited old haunts for a Christmas amongst old friends, where once I ran a theatre on the banks of Derwent Water. OK, Christmas Eve and Day were frightful, with a hurricane-level storm churning the waters. However that didn’t deter some of my more robust Cumbrian friends from taking a Christmas-morning plunge amongst the surging waves, while I stood agape and full of wonder. Perhaps there is hope after all for a nation with souls capable of such resilience?And optimism soon returned, for on Boxing Day the clouds cleared, the sun came out and for several days we saw the full glory of the Lakes. The sun and the hill-top snow and the glistening water – you pause breathless before such scenery – and almost want to eat it!
The last of these is looking down Derwentwater towards Borrowdale, and was taken from the café at the Theatre by the Lake, successor to the fondly remembered Century Theatre, known affectionately as the Blue Box. This amazing contraption – a travelling collection of trailers and caravans, which toured the highways of England before coming to rest at Keswick in the 1970s – still exists, and if you happen to be into Leicestershire you can go to see it at Coalville, and maybe even to this day catch a show. The County Council there has refurbished and restored this unique artefact – click on the link below, read the history and then click on “What’s On”. It may change your life: it did mine. I first met this theatre-on-wheels in a car park in a snowstorm at Guildford in 1963, and it was to play a recurring part in the twists and turns of a colourful life. Many stories, many – to be unrolled in the memoires. All right, I know – just be patient.
Now when you go to Keswick you will find the splendid Theatre by the Lake – a properly funded, proudly supported asset to Cumbria’s cultural profile – and of course its all-important tourism. It’s now open all year round – in my day we couldn’t operate in the winter – we had a platoon of buckets on the stage to catch the drips from the thawing snow leaking through the roof. Christmas 2017 saw a smart, polished version of The Secret Garden, and from now until the theatre’s own repertoire starts in the early summer there is a well-chosen range of touring shows, including Elizabeth Mansfield’s stirring tribute to Edith Piaf, Hymn to Love, and A Streetcar Named Desire, appropriately produced by English Touring Theatre, a company which has its roots in the touring days of Century Theatre.
And if you are in the Northern Lakes, you mustn’t pass by the amazing Upfront Gallery, in a village not far from Penrith rejoicing in the strange name of Unthank. John and Elaine Parkinson have wrought a miracle in this lovely but remote spot – a gallery, a restaurant – and a wondrous Puppet Theatre. This Easter you can see there Stanelli’s Super Circus – one of the largest and most complete puppet circuses in Europe. Just click on the link below.
When I was a kid in Cardiff one of the after-Christmas milestones beckoning through the winter doldrums was St David’s Day. On the morning of March the First we would all wear a daffodil on our jacket lapels, and at school sing songs and act in plays. I remember leading my class in a parade around the school hall proudly wearing a cardboard crown as a six-year-old King Arthur with Queen Guinevere on my arm, while everyone sang. Sang what? I can’t remember. Bread of Heaven…? No, I doubt it – all I can remember is Guinevere tugging me – and thus the whole parade – to a halt because she could go no further. Her thick, sensible green school knickers had descended, and securely cuffed her ankles! Fortunately the nearest mum sitting at the side of the hall leant out and retrieved the knickers, and we proceeded to proceed. In the afternoon, as usual, we had the afternoon off, so it was home for tea and Welsh-cakes.
This year March the First, as those of you living in the UK will well remember, came in that week when somehow the jet-stream went into reverse and we had blizzards from Siberia. Recently members of my family have become forest folk, living amongst the ancient trees of Epping, where Tudors once hunted deer – and on the saint’s day I went out to visit. The newest edition to our family is a glorious Anglo-French infant called Célestine. My first grand-child – well technically my step-grand-child, since her dad is my stepson Tom – has brought untold joy to these bleak winter days, and Marie her mum cooked a special Franco-Welsh lunch: Coquilles Saint David – scallop shells bearing curls of leek under crunchy toasted cheese – scrumptious! 
After lunch we wandered amongst the forest snows, and watched Celestine’s young neighbours whizzing by on toboggans. A few weeks late, but I can’t resist calling the pics we took A Child’s Christmas in Epping….
Apart from lakes and snows, since this is the TYA blog I dare say I should report back on matters theatrical. Well – I have a new party of lovely New Yorkers to show around the London scene, and the high-spots so far this season have included a truly scary performance as a mass-murderer by Jason Watkins in Briony Lavery’s “Frozen” at the Haymarket. I reckon to know a bit about acting, and I was right up at the back of the circle – but suddenly I realised this quiet, still, creepy character was making me really frightened. Here’s an actor whose joyous comic skills in W1A had me chortling helplessly week on week, now making the proverbial hairs stand on end – with absolutely no resort to sound effects, wigs or mechanical devices of any sort! Great stuff, sir.
There’s anarchic fun to be savoured in Napoleon Disrobed, now at the Arcola, then due on tour at Birmingham Rep and at the Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough. The company presenting is Told by An Idiot, and features an inspired double-act between artistic director Paul Hunter and the gloriously talented Ayesha Antoine. The production is steered by none other than Kathryn Hunter, whose colossal reputation is linked of course with Complicité, a major influence on this company.
Don’t go expecting a history lesson – in fact don’t go expecting anything – just go along and enjoy the free-wheeling energy, an evening of sheer comic skill and imagination unleashed. My American students had a terrific time, and adored every minute – and some of them promptly booked for a return visit!
Some of London’s more adventurous creators are currently finding willing and productive out-of-town partners – perhaps reflecting efforts by the Arts Council to redress the oft-bemoaned imbalance between the capital and the regions? Napoleon Disrobed is a joint venture between the Told by an Idiot company and Plymouth Theatre Royal. Meanwhile, the Park Theatre Finsbury Park has got together with the Simple8 Company and the Royal and Derngate Theatre in Northampton to bring us a cracking stage version of A Passage to 
India, with fine ensemble work including a lovely performance by Liz Crowther as Mrs Moore, the role which brought Peggy Ashcroft an Oscar in the film version back in ’84
And talking of the Oscars, some of us old RADA tutors basked in a little reflected glory when one of our grads was nominated this year. For The Shape of Water Sally Hawkins – already a Golden Globe winner in 2009 – was, along with the rest of the field, clearly not in with a chance against Frances Dormand in the current climate, but now Sally’s on Hollywood’s radar who knows ? It’s a joy to watch people we knew as eager youngsters coming into their own as uniquely engaging, significant and mature artists. For instance, I’ve loved watching Tom Burke’s one-legged TV gumshoe in “Strike”, and this week I saw Ben Whishaw as a riveting, tortured Brutus in “Julius Caesar” at the Bridge Theatre. With me was my friend and TYA colleague Lois Baxter who was one of the RADA audition team who gave Ben his place at Gower St, so we shared a sense of quiet satisfaction – and then an unplanned bonus of a joyful, welcoming hug from Ben in the bar after the show!
The new Bridge Theatre would have gladdened the heart of Stephen Joseph (see last two blogs) in an arresting location opposite the Tower of London – this picture taken as I crossed Tower Bridge en route to the show – the theatre is just out of frame to the left of the Shard.
Nicholas Hytner’s bold new venue is currently in full “in-the-round” configuration, for a zappy modern dress Shakespeare production, in which some of the 900-strong audience can choose to participate in “promenade”, as though they were Roman citizens following the action of “Julius Caesar” on foot within the large central arena. The night we were there this produced an unexpected, unfortunate effect. I was sitting near one of the auditorium doors, and as the show progressed I watched a number of young people being carried or escorted out, one after another, by theatre attendants – youngsters clearly in states of distress and/or illness. At first I thought this was part of the action, and that these were actors, but no, these were audience members, and they were being carried off during the battle scenes – when, this being a modern-dress production – there were lots of flashes and bangs and simulated rifle-fire, inevitably over and around the “promenade” section of the audience. After the show one of my NYU students remarked “Too much gunfire for an American audience…” And then I thought – what if some of the audience were young Americans involved in some way with one of those appalling school shootings? A grim thought, one perhaps to give pause to directors planning simulated violence in this kind of staging.
But to a more up-lifting Spring-like image – the Swifts of Walthamstow Marshes. Part of the rejuvenation of the old Engine House on the Wetlands is the reconstruction of its big chimney as a potential nesting-place for bats – and for swifts, who spend their summers in the marshes before heading off to Africa for the winter. To encourage these welcome temporary immigrants three of my Waterside neighbours, Teresa, Linda and Liz, have joined with other locals to knit an entire flock of swifts! The fruits of their labours are on show at the Mill, Coppermill Lane until mid-April. What a creative tribe now dwells in Walthamstow – see in the background the famous Walthamstow bird-murals – no wonder it’s just been appointed the London Borough of Culture!
Show-biz post-script: There are some of the Great whose passing we can’t ignore. I saw Ken Dodd “live” twice – once at the height of his legendary sold-out run at the London Palladium – a breath-taking, unstoppable phenomenon – steaming through at at least 150 gags an hour, unlike anything before or since – and many years later, at a Sunday-night show at Bath Theatre Royal. Very slightly slower, but still unstoppable – once he was onstage even if you wanted to you couldn’t get him off! This was Ken at 10.45, having been on stage since 8: “I just had a message – the car-park over the road closes at 11.30. I tell you what – we’ll all go over there together at half-past and if they’re closing we’ll duff ’em up…”
OK here’s a challenge: what one-liner might Doddy have come up with at the Pearly Gates when he looked round to see Stephen Hawking arriving just behind him? All good, respectful and suitably plumptious gags accepted.
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Links:
THE CENTURY THEATRE
http://www.centurytheatre.co.uk/
THE THEATRE BY THE LAKE
https://www.theatrebythelake.com/
UPFRONT GALLERY AND PUPPET THEATRE
http://www.up-front.com/puppet_theatre.html
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
https://www.toldbyanidiot.org/productions/napoleon-disrobed/
PARK THEATRE
https://www.parktheatre.co.uk/
SWIFTS AT THE MILL
So here’s your starter for ten – of what is this a photograph? An over-fed earth-worm? A leather Roman U-bend? Part of a musical squeeze-box? Believe it or not, this is a Significant Theatrical Relic. Were you to hasten to Gough Square, off Fleet Street in London – as did I with my friend Mr Burt on Saturday last – you would find it amongst other fine mementos at the home of the late Dr Samuel Johnson. This is nothing other than the puffer David Garrick used to powder his wig before stepping out onto the Drury Lane stage, to wrench cheers and tears from his adoring public, the greatest star of 18th century England.
Davey Garrick and Sam Johnson were both products of the East Midlands, and travelled together from Lichfield to London to seek their fortunes. Throughout their days as eventual stars respectively of the theatrical and literary worlds they stayed firm friends, and now the curators of the Samuel Johnson Museum have marked the three hundredth anniversary of Garrick’s birth with a special exhibition, pulling together items from Lichfield, from the Garrick Club and other sources, and it’s a treat.
As a bonus, if you time your visit well, you may also witness there a show called appropriately “Star!” by the theatre company Palimpsest, in which the personable and talented RADAgrad Nicholas Barber (Rex Fairbrother to “Archers” fans) delivers an engaging solo performance as the young Garrick, on the threshold of greatness and aching with love for a beautiful dancer called La Violetta.
Pictures from the Exhibition:
The young David Garrick, and (right) his first serious girl-friend and co-star Peg Woffington. Below he can be seen in married bliss with his adored dancer, whose real name was Eva-Marie. She was to outlive him by forty years.
Each generation of British theatre-folk has its Great Actors, from Burbage on, each age declaring that “naturalism” in acting has at last been achieved – a fascinating subject, one I’m rather given to expounding on over a glass or two, so be warned. Garrick especially was praised for his “realistic” capturing of emotional moments, reducing entire audiences to sobbing wrecks. But even then technology helped – he apparently had in his make-up box a mechanical “fright-wig”, which would allow – at the moment of encountering his father’s ghost – Hamlet’s hair suddenly to stand on end! I’ve no doubt that somewhere is a lost appendix to Stanislavsky’s “An Actor Prepares” with the heading “Your Wig: an essential aid to Emotional Memory…”
So if you’re in London, go to Gough Square and find out about one of the all-time great double-acts – Sam and Davey – there’s a link below.
I think I mentioned last time events commemorating another great theatrical original, Stephen Joseph, at the theatre bearing his name at Scarborough. There was another in early November at Manchester University, where I was lucky enough to be a student of his in the formative days of Britain’s first university degree course purely in drama, and subsequently – along with several other graduating students – an actor in his company at the Scarborough Library Theatre-in-the-Round. Sadly Stephen was taken off by cancer while still in his forties, in 1967.
Two old friends from those Manchester days, the designer Alistair Livingstone and Professor Tony Jackson organised with others two remarkable days of events, where people from all over the world gathered to salute Stephen’s contribution to the present shape of Western theatre, and indeed to the present shape of many theatre buildings, as the champion of liberating play-makers from the polite constraints of the proscenium arch, opening the way to all kinds of creative spaces, from the smallest studio to the grandest modern arena, and to all kinds of creative thinking amongst practitioners of all stripes.
Stories, pictures and videos were swapped amongst a remarkably mixed bunch of actors, academics, architects, directors, designers, technicians and writers of plays, films and books. Some of us were given a chance to share with the current students a little of what we’d learned, and to watch them exploring with directors the possibilities SJ had opened up all those years ago.
These events at Manchester and Scarborough were unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. Many of us hadn’t met each other for more than half a century, and wouldn’t have done if Alistair and a few others hadn’t chosen to make them happen. We all knew we had been profoundly influenced by this extraordinary man, but it wasn’t until now that we realised that we were part of a unique, unintended fellowship.
Now there is a rapidly expanding Facebook presence, and work is under way to develop a brand-new Stephen Joseph Association. Old friendships have been re-kindled, sadness shared over the inevitable loss through the years of much-loved comrades, and new friendships generated. The links are below.
Back in London there are so many places reflecting the pioneering work done back in the 60s and 70s out there in the regions by Stephen and other directors who seized the times as they were a-changing – at Stoke, at Scarborough, in Manchester, Nottingham, at Glasgow, and of course Edinburgh from whence flows still the annual stream of Festival-fired fringe work. 
A direct link to all that in London is the PleasanceTheatre and Bar near King’s Cross – the “London branch” of a key Edinburgh venue, where last week I saw the sparky five-strong Cyphers company deliver a merry staging of “Northanger Abbey”. 
Over in west London at the Bush – once a pub theatre, now a handsome two-auditoria venue in a restored public library – the director of the Sheffield Crucible Rob Hastie has just given us a sharp insight into a same-sex relationship in crisis in “Kith and Kin”. 
And south of the river at Southwark Playhouse Hannah Chissick – until recently the director at Harrogate – fired up a zingy account of Brecht’s “Mother Courage” with the huge, startling talent of Josie Lawrence at its core.
All three shows presented in open, unadorned staging – actors and audience combining to explore lively, potent ideas in a simple shared space. I reckon Stephen would have loved them all.
And towards the end of November I was back on the road to North Yorkshire. The most celebrated of Stephen’s theatrical descendants is of course Sir Alan Ayckbourn, and seven years on from a production of his terrific farce “Taking Steps” I directed at Shanghai Theatre Academy, that school has found the funding for a project to make Mandarin translations of more of his plays available for study and performance in China. Ayckbourn in China? But surely he’s so English? All I can tell you is “Taking Steps” went down a treat – people are people, and China is changing so quickly – theirs is a society with lots of businesses small and large, with more and more middle-class preoccupations, dealing with much the same bewildering relationship quirks as folk in Godalming or East Grinstead. With this in mind meetings were arranged to take place in Scarborough between Sir Alan and a deputation from Shanghai, led by the energetic and engaging Professor William Sun. I was asked to take part in the discussions, which were fun and positive, and all we can say at this stage is that they may start to bear fruit in Shanghai some time late in 2018. Watch this space for updates.
It’s always special to visit the Yorkshire coast: here’s a picture of a November dawn from my window at the Crown Spa Hotel, on the Scarborough South Cliff.
Wherever you are – may you and yours have a Very Merry Christmas.
Links:
David Garrick & Dr Johnson: https://www.drjohnsonshouse.org/index.html
Stephen Joseph Legacy Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/713828718814959/
Stephen Joseph Association: http://www.stephenjosephassociation.org/
Books about Stephen: STEPHEN JOSEPH: THEATRE PIONEER & PROVOCATEUR by Paul Elsam
THE FULL ROUND by Terry Lane
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Now then – we’ve survived Hamlet’s girl-friend, we been battered by Brian – is that it for storms for now? The sky curdled, winds whipped up white horses on the reservoir, it felt like the End of the World, but the Four Horsemen failed to appear. The US President went back to tweeting childish nonsense, the weird Korean carried on piling up bombs and rockets and Mrs May and her futile band carried on squirming and simpering in Brussels. So let’s us just carry on with our humdrum, sometimes happy, sometimes even creative lives – maybe we’ll all last just a little longer.
Far from Trump, far from cataracts and hurricanoes: donkey rides at the South bay, Scarborough
An early creative inspiration for many of us in the theatre world was a remarkable man called Stephen Joseph.There’s a theatre named after him in Scarborough, where I’m sure most of you know Alan Ayckbourn has over several decades created many famous plays. It’s an unavoidable signpost to one’s age to note that that, as a former student of Stephen’s at Manchester University, I was part of a gathering to mark fifty years since he died of cancer. We new graduates cut our teeth as professional actors in Stephen Joseph’s company at the Theatre-in-the-Round in Scarborough Library, the fore-runner of what is now the Stephen Joseph Theatre, the splendidly revived and refurbished Odeon Cinema next to the railway station. A key event that season was the production of a new play called “Meet My Father”, directed by Stephen Joseph with one of our fellow grads George Taylor (later George Taylor PhD, Senior Lecturer.) The play had been written by a former actor in Stephen’s company working at that time for BBC radio, with a brief to create a “well-made play”, something which for a 1960s “new-wave” writer rather went against the grain.
The play was staged, a West End producer came to see it – and thus Alan Ayckbourn’s first major commercial hit came about, when it appeared in London under the title “Relatively Speaking”. It starred Celia Johnson, Michael Hordern Richard Briers and Jennifer Hilary. The Scarborough production had featured David Jarrett and Peter King in the male roles, with two fresh-faced Manchester grads, Joanna Tope and Catherine Naish in the female parts. It is wondrous to report that both these terrific ladies – fresh of face as ever – were at our gathering, and here they are with Sir Alan – plus the original poster.
Alan, of course continues to expand his amazing catalogue of work. During the weekend I at last caught up with his revival of “Taking Steps” – the play which for me resonates with memories of Shanghai (see previous blog-posts) – and his latest comedy for the Scarborough company, “A Brief History of Women”. This is the writer the Guardian once called Britain’s leading feminist playwright, and he’s not lost an ounce of his touch in creating deft comic situations and lovely real characters – gifts for actors, female and male. Another extraordinary piece “The Divide” opens at the Old Vic in London on February 1st.
Here’s one of our occasional contributions to the pub quiz: which play first produced at Scarborough has generated the most income world-wide? Here’s a clue – it wasn’t written by Alan Ayckbourn. One of our Manchester grads, Terry Wilton, has become the third of my friends to appear in the West End production of “The Woman in Black”, adapted by Stephen Mallatrat from Susan Hill’s novel, first directed at Scarborough by Robin Herford in 1987 – and repeatedly revived for packed audiences by Robin ever since all over the world.
It’s a great ghost story – a brilliant conjunction of economical writing, neat direction and terrific acting. If you haven’t seen it and you’re in London – why not go tonight? ’tis Hallowe’en after all. It’s at the Fortune Theatre. Be sure to book a seat on the aisle…
Elsewhere in London, I’ve clocked a few shows these last weeks in the course of my duties looking after NYU students. Perhaps the most striking was the high-octane children’s theatre troupe Les Enfants Terribles at Wilton’s Music Hall (no relation to Terry, right) the deliciously re-instated Victorian venue near Tower Bridge.
The combination of atmospheric venue, cleverly-wrought and manipulated puppets in dark, crunchy story-lines works a treat – although I have one note for all actors who find it necessary to use microphones – please don’t shout! To tell one of the stories the company had managed to engage Dame Judi Dench in an audio-recording, which they and their puppets illustrated in actions. I so wanted to plead with them to listen and learn from her crystal-clear, unforced, beautifully-paced delivery. Guys, let the audience come to you – fun though your show is, if you shout into your throat-mikes after a while we all stop listening!
Another interesting event has been watching Juliet Stevenson in “Wings” at the Young Vic. Now this was written as a radio play, and is the story of a female stroke-victim who, before being struck down with illness, had been a noted aviatrix. To make it theatrical, the director hit on the idea of the character delivering parts of the play while floating above the stage in a wired harness, to invoke her life as a flyer.
Juliet Stevenson is of course brilliant, and manages to rivet the audience’s attention to her character’s lines and the unusual staging with breathtaking skill, both interpretive and physical, gliding elegantly some ten feet or so above the transverse stage.
Alas, the night we were there these exertions brought on a nose-bleed, and Juliet had to leave the stage for very nearly half an hour. But the audience took it well, we all chatted while she recovered, she played the part superbly when she came back, and earned a rapturous standing ovation.
Pictures: The Telegraph
Meanwhile at home in the marshes, our habitat has hit the news.
The Guardian ran a major feature on the opening to the public of “Europe’s Biggest Urban Wetland “. And you’ve been arriving in your hundreds, with your buggies, your bikes and your running-shoes. And of course you’re welcome, very welcome – but please, please this isn’t a park!! It’s a wild-life preserve, and the birds and the animals and the fish aren’t used to hundreds of people making loud noises and leaving empty beer-bottles and allowing their kids to throw stones into the water. The site managers haven’t yet got all the signage in place – there are bits where there are good reasons for you not to run or cycle – but please read and observe what signs there are. It’s an amazing environment – just enjoy it slowly, and peacefully.
And finally. Some of you who are very old may remember there once was a young actor called Ellis Jones who sometimes appeared on the TV. I just came across a blog-site with the encouraging by-line of “Character Actors Who Are Still With Us”. Still with you folks, living and thriving in the Wetlands…
http://familiar-unknown.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/ellis-jones.html
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If you’ve been paying attention, you’ll know the early summer found me teaching screen-acting on the Pacific ocean, climbing volcanoes in Hawaii, declining offers of plastic Jesus statues in Mexico, celebrating Shakespeare in Wales, and glorying in the magic of Merseyside.
Since then I’ve been admiring sculptures by Miró in sight of the Mediterranean, watering pots and plants in rural Aquitaine, gulping at the terrifying power of the Catholic church, and revelling in Toulouse-Lautrec’s dazzling sketches of Parisian show-biz.
Oh, I meant to tell you about Wilfred Owen. We need briefly to return to the South Bank. Of the Mersey.
Philip Larkin, as I noted in my Hull notes, is splendidly remembered at Hull Paragon and London King’s Cross railway stations (Blog post May 12 2017) Larkin wrote major poems while working as the University Librarian in Hull, and observed that
…life was never better than
In nineteen sixty-three
(Though just too late for me) –
Between the end of the “Chatterley” ban*
And the Beatles’ first LP.
The Beatles, themselves of course considerable poets, had mates in Liverpool who created the famous “Mersey Sound” 
paperback in 1967 – and one of its authors, Brian Patten, included a verse tribute to Wilfred Owen, the great World War One soldier/writer who had lived and worked in Birkenhead. It’s called “Sleep Now” and there’s a manuscript copy of it in “The Wilfred Owen Story” – a genuine community project put together and staffed by local people in an empty shop. If you’re lucky enough to find yourself in Birkenhead, go and check it out, along with the salvaged German U-boat and the world’s first public park.
But to return to Europe. As the pound slithered downwards, and Mrs May’s bunch of shabby clowns smiled, floundered and smiled again, I had one question: would you shake hands on a deal with someone who grins as relentlessly as David Davis? It becomes increasingly clear our country will soon be plunging over a sharp, steep and unforgiving cliff-edge. But for now my lovely friends with homes across the water remain calm, generous and welcoming. Last year Kate and Doug, my friends at Cap d’Antibes, introduced me to local treasure-troves of works by Picasso and Fernand Léger.
This year saw a visit to the remarkable Fondation Maeght – works by Miró, Calder and Giacometti, in a steep, wooded 
garden high above Antibes at St Paul de Vence. Well actually, all the Giacomettis were away at a big retrospective in London, but it was still a terrific place to visit, and it’s the perfect environment really to experience the fun and surprise of Miró’s and Calder’s peculiar visions. 
Meanwhile, down on the Azure Coast, ” le stand-up paddling” seemed all the rage, and while wandering in Nice I was led to the Ultimate Sweet Shop.
It’s a sparkling corner of Europe, and easy to see why the glitterati have flocked there since the 1920s, since Gerald and Sara Murphy provided a haven for Scott and Zelda, for Pablo and Ernest. And for two summers now Doug and Kate have provided a haven for Jones.
While I was there, the news broke in London about Shakespeare’s Globe. Michelle Terry to take over as Artistic Director next year! Regular readers will know Michelle has featured before in this blog, as a former student from RADA days of whom we are all repeatedly proud. Great acting performances at Stratford, in the West End, at Regent’s Park (a brisk and utterly convincing Henry V last summer) at the Globe itself, sharp comedy-writing for television, enterprising projects with young people, highly praised workshops with students – for goodness sake, Miche, just to list it all is exhausting – and of course a few short months ago she changed step just for a minute or two to produce a baby…Only a few weeks since you may recall I walked away from the Globe’s latest “Romeo and Juliet” in near-despair at the crass and clumsy direction. A New Dawn on the South Bank in 2018 – a defiant bright light by the Thames as Brexit shadows spread from the Channel. I fear poverty, I fear pestilence as our NHS dwindles, but all may not yet be lost while our theatre shines. (Photo – BBC News)
Inspired by this cheering news, I returned home from Antibes and mowed the lawn. We who dwell by the waters of Walthamstow are apprehensive. There is a new Wetlands project, opening up the banks and groves beyond our garden fences to you, the public. Now of course you are welcome – we are happy to share our trees and waterways, our sunsets, our egrets and cormorants. But plans are afoot to fund this venture by renting out the newly-refurbished old Engine House for parties and weddings, and a seven-day licence has been applied for, for alcohol and music till midnight. We are nervous of this, and so are the cormorants, the egrets, not to mention the swans. There is a Licensing Hearing at the Town Hall this week, at which if given the chance I will speak.
Having cut the grass, I re-packed my bag and headed for Stansted, from thence by Ryan Air to Toulouse and a train to Albi. There to be collected by car by my friend Jenny, who has an enchanted sprawl of a farmhouse in the hills of the Tarn region, close by the border of the ancient kingdom of Aquitaine, which I was visiting for the first time.
This isn’t glamour, it’s beauty. Valleys filled each morning with white mist, slow rivers in deep wooded ravines, ancient stone-built villages and hamlets, hot sun, cool rain, clouds and rainbows. In return for a little token help with watering geraniums, Jenny fed me, nourished me with tales of adventures around the globe, introduced me to her scattered community of warm and friendly friends – and found time to show me some of the region’s rich and sometimes disturbing history.
How much did they teach you at a school about the Albigensian Heresy? Quite – well to be honest I’d only vaguely heard of it, and I did A-level European History. It’s yet another uplifting tale of the benefits of organised religion, as exemplified by the frequent terrorist horrors of our own day. Back in the 13th century it seems folk in south-west France developed a taste for some of the Eastern strands of belief brought back by crusaders, which focussed in a group called the Cathars, and two of the major towns where they gathered were Toulouse and Albi. As far as I can make out their belief system was fairly esoteric, but included an opinion that much of the Catholic Church was misguided and corrupt. Now the Pope didn’t take kindly to this, and ordered an event called the Albigensian Crusade, giving licence to war-like nobility from elsewhere in France to commit massacre (and incidentally build up their own landowning portfolios). Thousands of people were slaughtered, the Inquisition was established and given full reign – and a massive new cathedral erected at Albi. It’s still there, and boy does it make a point: don’t mess with the Church, guys – we’re big, and we have God on Our Side.
Fortunately for us, in more tolerant times the bishop’s palace attached to this huge church (said to be the largest red-brick building in the world) has been turned into a museum housing works by Albi’s most celebrated secular son – Henri Toulouse Lautrec.
The collection is wondrous – full of zest and compassion, instantly evoking the backstage powder, perfume and sweat of glamorous fin-de-siècle Paris, the world-weary putains and their eccentric patrons, the sassy dancers and actors. Talking of which, it seems the theatre scene right now is thriving in France, generously subsidised, but only for the moment – the word is M. Macron may reign in the subsidies tout-de-suite. At Albi in the evening Jen and I came across a troupe performing an open-air show in one of the bishop’s palace gardens, a farce with masks, full of merry energy, albeit mildly bewildering.
Another by-product of the Albigensian unrest was the creation of a network of fortified hill-towns, the bastides. A fine example is the town of Cordes-sur-Ciel, which I spent a happy afternoon exploring while Jen was in a yoga class. There are steep shady narrow streets with wide views of the surrounding country, some terrific medieval buildings and a stone-pillared covered market-place. There’s a deep, deep well and if you pay 50 cents you can switch on a light and look all the way down. Here’s someone getting full value.
Another attraction of Cordes-sur-Ciel is a fine modern theatre nearby, the Théâtre le Colombier, at which The Friends of English Theatre (a group including several very distinguished members of our trade who live in those parts) present each year six one-off shows imported from the UK. Suffice for now to say that, as you might expect, there have been conversations….
Now once more I’m back in London, and the autumn theatre-going is under way, sometimes with American students sometimes not. Perhaps my senses have been over-fed with European delights, but nothing so far has sparked much excitement. Tonight it’s to the Gielgud to see Jez Butterwoth’s “The Ferryman” and expectations run high.
A bonus for Europe this month is the return to Greece of a much-loved and admired colleague, Andrew Visnevski, who after decades of bringing wit, wisdom and unique insight to countless students at RADA has left to share more time with his partner Colin at their olive grove in the Peloponnese. He generously treated Alex McPherson, Diana Fraser and me to a slap-up Greek farewell supper in Charlotte St last week, at which several toasts demanded several glasses. Back at home I was looking after a set of masks Alex had designed for a production of “The Cunning Little Vixen”. When I woke up the next morning, the masks had mysteriously colonised my bedroom window-ledge…
* The Chatterley ban? Oh dear I suppose there’s a lot of you don’t know what that was. Look it up. The revolution it sparked was not quite Albigensian, but it made quite an impact, especially amongst the wives and servants of the more genteel English classes.
(Click on any of the names picked out in red in the text to be taken to the relevant web-site)
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Some of us have long suspected that Shakespeare was Welsh. The writings John Milton called “native woodnotes wild” surely sprang from a land of song, of hills, trees, and tumbling streams – a prodigious infant perhaps spirited by some hobgoblin down the drover roads to Stratford, to be left as a changeling in the home of a slumbering glove-maker? Who knows….silly speculation of course – and God knows there’s no shortage of that when it comes to Will and his world – but there’s no denying his stuff sits well amongst those hills, and among the native multitude of poets, singers and actors.
Some twenty years ago two theatre folk, Sue Best and Philip Bowen set out to provide a haven for Shakespeare’s plays on a small farm amongst the green slopes of mid-Wales. Their creation, the Willow Globe, gives focus to The Shakespeare Link – a project you can read about below, and allows actors a rare space to spin those amazing words, those breathtaking ideas and stories, for increasing numbers of locals and visitors.
Last weekend found me there, in the land of my fathers catching up with Philip – an actor of distinction, with whom I gleefully shared a stage in Scotland some decades since, and had lost touch with until a mutual friend, Alison Skilbeck, took her show “The Power Behind the Crone” to the Willow Globe, and put us back in contact.
On Saturday Phil and Sue played host to one of Shakespeare’s more troubled couples, the Macbeths, by arrangement with a theatre company called The Factory.
Thi
s professional group has existed for over ten years, meets on a weekly basis in London, and workshops major plays in an unusual way. As I understand it, each part is learned by several actors, irrespective of gender, and for each performance the roles are played by different combinations of performers, each cast bringing a entirely new take on the way the story is told. A 20-odd strong Factory troupe had arrived by bus and car on Saturday morning, had dress-rehearsed in the afternoon – and then gone on to perform in the evening with completely different casting from the afternoon rehearsal!
On this occasion, for the first half of “Macbeth” the genders were reversed, the Thane played by a woman, the Lady by a man. They were both excellent actors, and we the audience went along with it all, the story unfolding clearly and arrestingly. Come the interval, it was rather wonderful to see the recently-succeeded King of Scotland chatting with audience members while clutching her recently-arrived baby to her breast….Overall it was hugely enjoyable – a big audience drawn from far and wide, the first half of the show played in the open-air theatre (which is contained within a copse of willow trees) and the second half by candle-light in the yellow open marquee beside the farmhouse. It was truly refreshing, because this was genuine, spontaneous creativity – nobody was making a big deal about the gender-swap, for instance – they just asked us to suspend our disbelief while they, a troupe of actors, acted out a story. Just as actors have always done, sometimes with all-male casts, sometimes all-female and sometimes mixed, sometimes with masks or face-paint or wigs, each and every show displaying and sharing a talent to pretend.
One of the current Factory team, the brilliantly multi-skilled Caroline Kilpatrick, is one of our Radagrads, and she’s going to keep in touch about future projects – I will report back.
My companion this trip was my old pal Robin who, when Phil and I worked all those years ago at the Pitlochry Festival Theatre, was our company stage manager – so this was a glorious reunion, and we left on the Sunday vowing to return soon, as Phil and Sue settled to planning the next Shakespeare link…
And so in bright sunshine the Cherry Red Motor carried us north, following the River Wye along the English border, then along the River Severn, then crossing the River Vyrnwy – stunning border country.
Did I mention the Land of My Fathers? (For non-Celts, that’s the English name of the Welsh national anthem).We were were driving through a village right on the border, when the place-name I’d just read suddenly lurched from the back of my brain to the front – Llanymynech. Llanymynech! You have to pronounce it carefully, and don’t try while drinking, it can be disastrous. It’s a quiet, unpretentious village, with a canal, a small heritage museum, and not a lot else – but it’s where my ancestors lived, and I’d never been there! My sister Olive in her role as family historian has visited and told me about it, so when I spotted the canal-side information centre I immediately hauled over. There outside by the water was a lady singing folk-songs, and inside another lady serving coffee and information. “Is this your first time in Llanymynech?” says she “Yes”, says I, “But my ancestors came from here – it’s not easy to identify individuals – mostly they were called Bill Jones”. “Ah yes, that can be a problem for me too, I’m called Davies… ”
Visitors Centre Lllanymynech – for pronunciation guide see bottom of this entry.
Then from the land of my fathers to Robin’s roots. After years of globe-trotting my pal has returned to his home town Birkenhead, on the southern flank of Merseyside, and has taken a fine apartment in a lovely Georgian Square. Useful fact for the pub quiz : it seems there are more surviving Georgian houses on Merseyside than in either Bath or Bristol. These of course grew with the wealth rolling in when Liverpool was the great gateway of empire, a constant reminder of the days of cotton and slavery, the wicked triangle of trade which swelled our country’s coffers. But once built, Merseyside spawned some good and wonderful things – amazing buildings, pioneering social reform, and of course a rich vein of art, poetry, plays and music.
Victoria monument and Town Hall, Birkenhead
Everywhere there are reminders of the Beatles – here’s a plaque on the side of what was the Majestic Cinema, Birkenhead, now a Chinese restaurant, and around Mathew St over the river in Liverpool city centre there’s an entire post-Beatles industry, the site of the Cavern Club a scouse answer to Gracelands – plastic and nylon mementos by the score, t-shirts, wigs, guitars, the lot.
But there are other things Merseyside gave the world – its first truly public park, the first steel-framed “skyscraper”, the first mail trains – between Liverpool and Manchester in the 1830s – plus the first transatlantic mail ships, started by Samuel Cunard, in 1840. Some years later Robin joined the Cunard company as a teenage crew-member, and has heady tales of trips in and out of New York in the late 1950s.
On Wednesday last we took the colourful Ferry ‘cross the Mersey. Robin said the first person to sing the song would be heaved overboard – in fact the recorded commentary on the loudspeakers inevitably started with Gerry Marsden singing his 1964 hit, tho’ only about 15 seconds’ worth, probably to limit royalty payments.
The sun shone again as we walked down the gangplank at the Liverpool Pier Head, past the life-size statues of the Fab Four, and up the hill to the Cunard building, where we looked in at the old booking hall where thousands bought their tickets to the New World. Then to th
e elegant Oriel Chambers, built in 1864 by an architect with the oddly-familiar name of Peter Ellis. This was the first building with a metal frame from which were suspended outer walls of steel-framed glass – opening the door to the creation of thousands of “sky-scrapers” throughout the world.
Close by in Water Street is another elegant building, the former HQ of Martin’s Bank – cue for another pub quiz moment. Did you know that in Word War 2 the bulk of the UK’s gold reserves were moved from London to the vault of Martin’s Bank in Liverpool? Robin reckons there were 3 frigates on permanent stand-by in the estuary in case of German invasion, one for the King, one for the rest of the royal family, and the third for the gold bullion – all to be whisked off to Canada.
Another first, echoing the city’s close ties with Ireland, were the sermons preached in each other’s cathedrals by bishops Warlock and Sheppard, Catholic and Anglican leaders who did so much to heal their communities after the Toxte
th riots and the football stadium disasters of the 1980s, and indeed helped pave the way for the Good Friday Agreement 
. The two cathedrals, at either end of Hope St, are both extraordinary modern buildings, one by Frederick Gibberd, the other by Giles Gilbert Scott. If you’re in Liverpool let me know which you prefer…
Enough already – look at the time – and I haven’t even mentioned Wilfred Owen. I’ll write more about Merseyside poetry and plays next time.
After April’s visit to Humberside (see the blog before last) it was grand to visit the “book-end” estuary, 107 miles down the M62 – and compare two rich cultures, one rooted in fishing, the other in cotton, both indelibly linked to our economy’s seminal, shameful profits from human bondage.
And now I’m off to Europe….as you know this blog tries to avoid politics, but…oh dear, oh dear what are we doing…?
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Read about THE SHAKESPEARE LINK here: http://www.shakespearelink.co.uk/about/
Llanymynech pronuciation guide:
“Ll” at the beginning – start to make a noise like a WW2 fighter plane, but only for about one second, and merge it into the normal pronunciation of the letters “la” as in “lad”
The two “y”s are pronounced like the “u” in “gut”, the “e” is short like in “get”
In this word you begin and finish with more or less the same sound – the “ch” is like a short guttural burst of a Messershmitt fighter engine, but unlike the “L” sound at the start , it stays open. Try not to spray the person you are talking to.
