by Peter Hall
In time I began to understand more and more the nature of Shakespearean speech. I had learnt much from the textual analysis of Leavis; and much from Dadie, who had an instinctive understanding of breathing and form. In my early years in the profession, I worked with Edith Evans. She passed on to me the verse techniques that had been taught to her by William Poel, the great revolutionary director whose work had inspired the Marlowe Society when it was founded in the early 1900s. He reinstated the fleet ideals of Elizabethan speech and ousted the slow romantic rhetoric of the late Victorians. He believed that his way was Kean’s way and even Garrick’s way. The need to speak the speech trippingly on the tongue, combining a sense of form with a keen emotion, goes back all the way to the sixteenth century.
The rules of Shakespearean verse can be learnt in three hours. But then the actor must make them his, and apply them in his own way. The essence is to speak the lines rather than the individual words. The five-beat iambic line is the unit of communication. By the way he structures his lines, Shakespeare tells the actor when to go fast, when to go slow; where to come in on cue, where to pause. If you observe what he wrote, the scenes orchestrate themselves, their literal and emotional meaning is released and easily communicated to the audience. But, as in music, you must learn the notes correctly before you start to express the emotion. All this began to excite me at Cambridge. I already knew that you should never, never take a breath on the middle of a Shakespeare line, even if there is a full stop. You breathe on the end of the lines, often with tiny top-up gulps, so that the lungs are acting like the store of air in bagpipes – breath is always available to control the line and form it. And so the line is preserved.
I went several times to Stratford to see the 1951 History Cycle – Tony Quayle’s greatest achievement – with Michael Redgrave as Richard II and Hotspur, Alan Badel as Poins and Justice Shallow, and Quayle himself as Falstaff. Above all, there was Richard Burton as Prince Hal and Henry V. Every generation has its new actor, somebody who redefines to his own age what acting is all about. He is usually thought of as more ‘real’ than the previous generation, who suddenly appear old-fashioned and stagy. Richard Burton in 1951 was, for me and countless others, that new actor. He spoke ‘true’; but he still spoke Shakespeare. The critics at the time were greatly struck by his charisma and his obvious star quality. But many were disappointed by his understatement, his ‘throwaway’ naturalness. As members of the previous generation, they found him deficient in rhetoric. They were both right and wrong; they were not judging him by the emotional tastes of the new generation, but by the standards of Gielgud and Olivier. I noticed exactly the same response to Gerard Philippe a few years later in France. His performances in Richard II and Le Cid enraged the French critics. But neither he nor Burton denied the form; they simply adjusted the emotion, so that the rhetoric seemed less. Philippe was the new voice. Today, he and Burton would seem artificial.
My trips to Stratford owed much to Michael Birkett, a colleague in the Cambridge drama groups, and a hugely generous and enthusiastic spirit who was determined to have a career in the arts. He had a magnificent set of rooms in Trinity Great Court, and a car which would speed three or four of us from Cambridge to Warwickshire. We passed the journey doing bad imitations of Harry Andrews, the definitive Henry IV. Michael is still a loved friend.
I went on learning about Shakespeare: the Globe Theatre and the articulation of the plays; how scene must follow scene like a well-cut film, slow scene following fast scene, lyrical scene following violent scene. The stage must never be allowed to go cold. I had seen a London production of Richard II with Alec Guinness in the title role. It had a plain wooden set by Michael Warre which became everything and everywhere. This was a revelation to me. The set was like a mask and took on all the various moods of Shakespeare’s text. Tanya Moiseiwitsch’s great design for the Stratford Histories did the same. I read more of Granville Barker. I read Ronald Watkins’s books about plain stage Shakespeare – especially Moonlight At The Globe. I began to dream of a plain stage and a fluent succession of contrasting scenes. I had still not directed a Shakespeare play; I had still not directed anything.
As my second year at university ended, theatre began to take over my life. The Marlowe Society presented Romeo and Juliet at the Arts Theatre as part of the Cambridge summer festival. John Barton played Mercutio; I played Tybalt. We rehearsed throughout the long vacation. I loved the control and precision of fencing. John and I devised the most impossibly dangerous (and long) rapier and dagger fight. It stole all the notices and was much praised, but I suspect that it brought the play to a complete halt. As the Prince of Cats I wore too much chrome make-up and had a very flat voice. But the performance worked. I was a success.
Even better, I started to direct, co-staging The Browning Version with John Barton. At last I found myself analysing the acting process. John was much more experienced than I, but from the first we were good for each other. He pushed me to be more precise; I urged him to be less dogmatic. I still love the play; perhaps it is Rattigan’s finest. It never manipulates its characters and it is economical and heart-breaking.
Romeo and Juliet was transferred to the old Scala Theatre, London, for a fortnight’s run and then went on to the Phoenix for a further two weeks. Winston Churchill came to see us and, after the performance, we were presented (one has to use the royal word) to the great man. He was, I suppose, nearly eighty. He gazed at us vaguely and cherubically. It was very awkward. He smiled and said nothing except a mumbled thank you. He seemed disappointingly old.
That undergraduate summer in London was a heady time. We were amazed to find ourselves playing in the West End. Those of us with professional ambitions joined Equity immediately (there was no closed shop in those days). There were perpetual parties and chattering that went on all night. And there were girls. A tiny house in Tryon Street in Chelsea which belonged to Judy Birdwood, the Marlowe Society’s motherly wardrobe mistress, was where a group of us were allowed to doss down. A theatre company can, at its best and however briefly, become a Utopia in which everyone works and lives and believes together. We achieved such unity that summer, despite a little quarrelling and bitching, and a great deal of falling in and out of love.
Chapter Twelve
Just before we left for London, the ADC committee had noticed to its surprise that it was booked to present an independent production by P. R. F. Hall as the first play of the coming autumn term. They called me in to ask if it was me and what I intended to do. They had a say in the choice of play, since it would affect their share of the box office. I was, like all my contemporaries, keen on modern French drama – particularly of the more perfumed kind. I proposed The Infernal Machine by Jean Cocteau and The Master of Santiago by Henri de Montherlant. Fortunately, the committee didn’t think much of either choice; and I doubt if I made the case strongly, as I had at this stage no idea where the money was going to come from to mount the production. I had one more suggestion: Point of Departure, a translation by Lucienne Hill of Anouilh’s Euridice. To my surprise, the committee agreed enthusiastically.
I had seen the play the year before in London at the Duke of York’s, with Dirk Bogarde and Mai Zetterling. It seems manipulative now, but at the time I thought that the theatre had at last caught up with the French cinema and all those moody Jean Gabin films. It was funny and haunting and sexy; and it gave a director ample opportunity to show his surrealistic paces.
I collected a cast as fine as Cambridge could offer, including one of the most original actors, amateur or professional, that I have ever worked with – Donald Bevis. He was a French don at King’s and his acting had a quality which marks all great actors – surprising and unpredictable timing. He never said a line as you expected it.
I hustled to find money for the production. I had no resources and no prospect of an overdraft. Two of my teachers from the Perse, John Tanfield and Cecil Crouch, came to my rescue, and jointly lent me eighty pounds – a great deal of money in t
hose days and a sum that I am sure they could ill afford.
There is always a tang of expectation in the air at the start of the new university year – especially if it is your third and last. Students in their third year inherit the world. I was as happy as I have ever been when I came back from the vacation. I was lucky enough to have rooms in the roof of the central court of St Catharine’s, looking out towards King’s Parade. I had installed my only precious possession – a 1793 Broadwood fortepiano which I had found mouldering in an old piano shop some months before and had recklessly bought for the idiotically high price of forty pounds. I still have it. It belongs to that brief period when the English could do no wrong in furniture design, architecture or the perfect turn of a sentence. And it has the sound that Mozart heard for his piano sonatas.
Best of all, I was about to rehearse Point of Departure. Becoming a director was a deeply pleasurable physical experience – like being dropped into a warm pool and finding I could swim. I had never felt that life was so easy, so relaxed, so assured. Thus must a duck take to water. I knew I had much to learn, but the practised amateur actors in the large cast supported me and seemed pleased at the help I could offer. I quickly forged the group into a company. The play was a success with the public and the university reviewers. John Tanfield and Cecil Crouch got their money back.
It was at this time I discovered, at last, that I could direct. My relief was acute and produced tears. I remember precisely the moment that I knew: we were rehearsing in a large room in the Bull Hostel, an annexe of St Catharine’s which had formerly been a seedy hotel. The gas fire popped and the traffic on King’s Parade went by the windows. We were in our third day of work and were trying to define a particular scene’s purpose in the pattern of the play. The analytical training I had received in the English faculty was proving useful – I was asking the right questions. In addition, I now understood something about actors, something about teaching and something about leading a group. I was on my way.
There is no accepted way to become a director. You have to believe that you can do it, and by training in other disciplines, by practice and watching others, you become what you have it in you to be. You can learn how to break down a scene into units, you can learn how to stage, how to light, how to help actors create a character. But no amount of learning will make a director, any more than intensive training will make a conductor. During my career, I have been the impresario – or producer, to use the American term – for the greatest directors in the English-speaking theatre, from Peter Brook to Franco Zeffirelli. I have watched them all at work. My conclusion is that there are as many ways of directing as there are people. I have seen bad directors talk obvious sense to actors and achieve appalling results. I have seen good directors utter palpable nonsense and provoke brilliance.
A director must like actors and they must trust him. He must not abuse his power, for even the greatest actor – even Laurence Olivier – can have his confidence badly damaged for days by an unguarded remark. Directors should guard against their subjective reactions leading them into expressing their own fantasies about a play. An author should be present at the rehearsals of a new play and should collaborate fully with the director. If the director is working on a classic, he has to try to understand the author’s intentions and express them in a way that a modern audience can understand. His work with the designer is crucial; no production ever survived a set which had an atmosphere at odds with what the production was trying to say.
The director provokes the talent around him to give of its best; and then he edits what has been created so that the production makes a coherent statement. This is the moment when his personal stamp is visible, when the concept of the production is defined. The director is the leader of a group who are on a journey to discover the play; neither he nor the group members know necessarily where that journey will lead them. To start out rehearsing with a concept which is imposed inhibits creation and prevents discovery. A good rehearsal has the excitement of the unexpected.
All the director’s decisions have to be endorsed by the actors, since they have to recreate the play with conviction at every performance. He is part guide, part philosopher, part friend; he is also part conspirator, part psychiatrist, part actor, part scholar, part musician, part editor, part guru, part politician, part lover. He is occasionally part servant. He has to wear a different mask to satisfy the needs of many different people. He should not be a liar but sometimes he cannot tell all of the truth; confidence is too frail to withstand it. He has to nurture with the care of a good teacher, and reassure with the love of a good parent. It is a job of great power and influence, and can easily breed megalomaniacs and manipulators. It tempts the weak to be cruel to the insecure or the inexperienced.
Success is transitory; and finally only attractive because it means that this time the director hasn’t failed. I personally don’t do it for success, nor for money, nor for the audiences. Nor do I do it for the critics. I don’t even do it for the playwrights – though of course I like it when Harold Pinter or Samuel Beckett or Tennessee Williams praise me for realising their play; it makes me feel fulfilled. But my chief satisfaction is the special time in every rehearsal period when the group becomes collectively inspired. The actors, the director and everyone concerned take strength from each other and, by working together, make themselves better, more perceptive and more talented than any of them knew they had it in them to be. It is a sensation that is very near ecstasy. With luck, it happens two or three times in every production.
Chapter Thirteen
John Whiting’s Saint’s Day was my next production at Cambridge. I had seen it in London in 1951 and responded to its haunting, apocalyptic power. It had the excitement of being a contemporary play – it defined the mood of the late Forties. For my revival – the first since its premiere – several national critics trooped down to Cambridge to argue once more in their reviews what John Whiting actually meant. In those days of the well-made play, critics expected simple statements, not ambiguity or contradictions. I learnt for the first time that controversy doesn’t always stimulate: it can quite easily frighten people away. The play was a box-office failure (the loss borne by the society – University Actors – not, thank goodness, by generous schoolmasters); but it started a friendship with John Whiting which lasted until his death in the mid Sixties. He was a cryptic, kindly man with a passion for the theatre and for Byron. He had a blazing wit he too often buried in his work in tortured ambiguities. He was an actor, like many of the new dramatists – Ustinov, Pinter, Osborne – and he knew his craft. But it wasn’t quite his time, though Saint’s Day and Rodney Ackland’s The Pink Room are in my view the only two plays which express the exhausted, chaotic atmosphere of the immediate post-war period. Failure affected John deeply. He became one of those obscure yet prosperous people who doctor other writers’ film scripts. He gave up the theatre.
I contrived to get him back in the early Sixties. First, I went to Hollywood and saw Aldous Huxley. He was virtually blind and only distantly interested in what I wanted – the rights to adapt his book, The Devils of Loudun, into a play. After a lot of discussion he agreed, and I sent the book to John. I told him that Dorothy Tutin and Richard Johnson, on the strength of reading it, had already agreed to appear in the main parts. I also said that we were starting rehearsals in six months with Peter Wood directing and Sean Kenny designing. It was to be the first new play commissioned by the Royal Shakespeare Company for the Aldwych Theatre. The plan worked. The Devils was a success and John began writing again for the theatre.
The third play I tried to direct at Cambridge was an undoubted masterpiece – Uncle Vanya. My production was certainly not extraordinary but I felt I had uncovered something fundamental about Chekhov. His characters dramatise the essential selfishness of human beings. They are all monuments of egocentricity. A character announces that he is contemplating suicide. The person to whom this alarming news is addressed takes no notice, merely observing that it
is time for lunch. This inability to sympathise or even notice other people’s problems is the essence of Chekhov’s comedy. It makes his characters funny, anarchic and bracingly unsentimental. The English tend to temporise this selfishness with good manners and gentility; this blunts the edge and makes the cruelty less comic.
A director is privileged for a time to live inside the head of the genius he is serving. I may well not be capable of understanding all that I find, but while I am examining every detail of the masterpiece I am staging, I feel very close to Mozart, to Wagner or to Shakespeare. To direct a work is a far more searching experience than simply studying it or going to a performance. My definition of paradise is to be always rehearsing: a Shakespeare play, followed by a Mozart opera.
After Uncle Vanya, I wrote a long and careful letter to Dadie. I asked him what hopes I had of being a professional director. He replied with a terse postcard. ‘My advice to those wanting to enter the theatre is the same as the advice Mr Punch gave to those contemplating matrimony: Don’t.’ But I would not be put off. I went to his rooms and had a long talk with him. I was so persistent he offered to try to get me an assistant stage manager’s job with H. M. Tennent. Remembering that Peter Wood was still stuck at the Apollo Theatre after three years, I politely refused. He was, I think, amazed at my arrogance; and I was very frightened at what I had done. Though I was now the proud possessor of a batch of good national reviews, and in John Whiting had a professional friend and supporter, these would hardly win me a life in the theatre.