Despite its somewhat makeshift quality, a low roof and a homemade stage, the experiment of playing in the Empress Hotel in Peterborough worked quite well. Finally we had air conditioning in at least one of our theatres. There was the little matter of our overdraft, but by and large we had a thriving enterprise if not a thriving business. In four summers we had presented forty-two plays, eleven of which I directed and two I acted in. And I was just twenty-three.
How does a director in Canada duplicate that experience now? And I was only just beginning; British rep was next.
British Rep
Chesterfield
I had the good fortune to spend roughly three seasons directing in British rep. What is British rep, you ask. First of all, it is not, nor never was, ‘rep.’ How it got to be so named I have often wondered, but never discovered. The correct name for the rep theatres would be ‘stock.’ A repertory company, such as the National Theatre of Great Britain, or Stratford, Ontario, has a repertory of plays available at all times, presenting them in some alternating schedule. A stock company has only one play available at a time which is presented from its stock of scenery and actors. So British rep is really British stock. But now it is neither; it is but a shadow of its former self. When I graduated from LAMDA there were at least forty rep theatres in the country. Each theatre presented a series of plays throughout most of the year, in some cases for the full fifty-two weeks of the year. The theatre companies themselves ranged from weekly rep with a new production every week, to the rare company that did a new play every month. Some prestigious companies were fortnightly like the Glasgow Citizens Theatre, some three-weekly like the Sheffield Rep, but many were weekly, mounting a new play every week just as we had done in our first years in summer stock. By and large, actors were not jobbed in; they came for the season or at least part of the season. Many did not maintain a home in London; when booked for a season they gave up their London flats and moved to the new location. An itinerant life, maybe, but regular employment that many actors would envy today.
When I left Britain in 1965, rep theatres were flourishing. When I returned in the 1990s, they were gone. In spirit if not in name. The British actor David Bickerstaff invited me to Scotland for an X-Files convention in 2000. He had worked in the modern Dundee Rep, the theatre that I ran in 1963. But unlike my era, he did not move to Dundee for a year; he jobbed in for a few weeks. The theatre does not run a continuous season, but mounts a few productions of its own and brings in outside productions and touring shows during the rest of the year.
But in 1962, with the British rep system in full bloom, I arrived in September, along with a company of English actors, none of whom I knew, in the Midlands town of Chesterfield, Derbyshire, to begin my stint as Associate Director of the Civic Theatre. I am grateful to the flamboyant director of the theatre, Anthony Cornish, for taking a chance on me. After all, he had never seen my work, only read my résumé and met me in an interview, and I was, after all, just twenty-three. And here I was about to direct roughly half the productions in his fall season. At that time, the company divided its year into two seasons, a fall season from September to January and a shorter spring season in March and April. In the intervening period, the venue hosted community theatre and touring shows, a season I was subsequently hired to manage. The long-range plan was that I would return to Canada after the spring season, run the Straw Hat Players again, and return to Chesterfield for the next fall season. Of course none of this happened.
The theatre itself, renovated in its present form in 1904, was a large gilt-trimmed traditional proscenium theatre with both a fly gallery and a balcony with seats that ran down the side of the house. Showing its Victorian roots, it was at once too large for a rep theatre, but better equipped than most with a proper prompt corner on stage left. The fall season was weekly and included some pretty standard British comedies and thrillers; a nice American play, His and Hers, which I directed (and, as was often the case, fell in love with the leading lady); one Shakespeare, Much Ado about Nothing, in which I played Don John; and a pantomime at Christmas, Robinson Crusoe, in which I played the Cannibal King.
But as usual one of the first orders of business was to find a place to live. Like the actors, I was now an itinerant homeless person travelling with only a few personal belongings. Whatever else I owned was stored in the family home in Canada. Digs, as they are known in Britain, certainly weren’t fancy, but then neither was the weekly paycheck — well, even that wasn’t a check but cash in a small brown envelope. I settled on a small flat over a podiatrist’s office. It had a bedroom and a tiny living room stuffed with a faded couch and chair and an electric grill for heat. What it lacked was an en suite. Well, a toilet, actually. Not only was the toilet shared, it was outside. And it was your basic two-hole. To get to it one had to pass through the doctor’s waiting room. Even this I could have managed. The real crunch came later in the season after I had made a few friends of the opposite gender. My podiatrist landlord was concerned that his patients would be offended by a woman passing through the waiting room and going up to my flat. Middle-class morality was quite stern in 1962. I was not to have female guests. For a while I took to smuggling them in and out. Fortunately, after Christmas my wage was increased and I was able to get a flat with its own entrance and bathroom.
I must have done pretty well; my contract was extended to include the spring season, and when Tony decided not to stay for the next season, he proposed that I take over the theatre.
My start though was not propitious. The lead in my first production was an old rep actor — well, he might have been forty — who had been working in rep all his adult life. He got by with a lot of tricks he had mastered over the years. Early in rehearsal I heard myself saying to him that he seemed to be ‘acting,’ that he was letting his mannerisms get in the way of finding the truth of the scene. Well, Bill, were you not listening when Michael MacOwan told you not to challenge the work method of experienced actors, that what you can say to students is different from what you can say to professionals? At that moment I lost the confidence of that actor for the season and he continued to trot out his repertoire of facial gestures to the delight of the audience, I have to admit. I was right about his acting, but then I was not his acting teacher but his director. I had to learn new ways to lead actors to truth. Michael Elliott with Maggie Smith was an object lesson. Directing her in Miss Julie at the National Theatre, he never said to her, ‘You are mugging, you are relying on your tricks, you are hiding behind your mannerisms.’ He said those things to me, but not to her. With her he just patiently took away each trick until she had to face the truth. Of course, he had three months to rehearse. I had one week.
On the personal side I was messing up my life once again. When I returned to England after the summer, Carolyn and I were still an item. But, as I have said, I have a weakness for leading ladies and when Irene Inescort played the lead in His and Hers I was in trouble again. She was my first experience with an ‘older woman.’ She was thirty-two. But she was not what we would now think of as thirty-two. She didn’t jog and go to the gym. She smoked a ton, read a lot, and hardly ever slept. Dark, somewhat mysterious, intelligent, she looked terrific in the fishnet tights of the Principal Boy. She was also a very good actress. Her talent demanded better from the profession than she got. Perhaps she stayed in rep too long. It was easy for some actors in that time to go from season to season in rep and never present themselves to the London theatre scene or the world of film and television. At any rate, we became friends and would often walk home together, sometimes stopping for a drink at my flat. One night I took matters in hand and kissed her good night. Her reaction? “Well, finally!” I’ve always been a touch reticent.
The final production of the fall season was the pantomime, Robinson Crusoe. What is a pantomime, you ask. What is a pantomime, I asked. I thought pantomime meant a play without words. How wrong can you be? The British pantomime has a long history that continues to this day. There are very set
traditions that audiences expect. The hidden racism, sexism, and imperialism are lovingly overlooked. The central character, a youth, is always played by a woman, known as Principal Boy. Among other requirements for the role are great legs in fishnet tights. Principal Girl is also played by a woman, appealing to our lesbian fantasies perhaps. The evil king always appears from stage left and Goodness from stage right. The central older female character, the Dame, is always played by a man. A highlight is the kitchen scene where the Dame and his/her sidekick make a mess of cooking something. Near the end of the show is the traditional singalong, a necessary interlude as the actors all need to change into their fanciest frocks for the “Walk Down,” which as far as I could tell was only a curtain call in fancy dress.
Anyway, in the midst of all this, while playing the Cannibal King, I fell in love with the Principal Boy with her great legs and sexual experience, and Carolyn, who was also in the production, was unfortunately cast aside though I’m glad to say we are friends to this day. I got what was coming to me, however. Did I mention that Irene was married? They had long been separated; it seemed a strange relationship; he was involved in some odd cult if I remember correctly. It wasn’t long after the fall season ended that Irene wrote me my “Dear John” letter. She was going back to her husband and this strange world he lived in.
Another curious tradition of the British theatre, or of the Chesterfield theatre at any rate, was that the director or the manager, dressed in a dinner jacket (or tux as Americans would say), would stand at the exit of the theatre and say “Good night” to each and every individual patron. This became my duty when I became the manager. I can still feel the pain in my cheeks from the forced smile one needed to maintain for twenty minutes or so as the audience filed out. But my mask must have failed me on the night after I got the letter from Irene. “You look like you lost your best friend,” one of the patrons said to me on leaving. Yes, I guess I had.
Still life had to go on. I had my new flat, more modern and brighter, with its own indoor toilet. Now that the company had disbanded for the winter and I was managing the theatre I began to make more friends in the community itself. At the time I had no idea that women found men in suits attractive, and men in dinner jackets even more so. And I was wearing one every night. Once again my new flat was a walkup with an interior staircase. This time the ground floor flat was occupied by a young couple. From time to time I would run into the wife and we would chat for a few minutes. A true working-class couple, they had never been to London, a mere fifty miles away. The husband’s main preoccupation seemed to be pigeons, but she had wider interests. Nothing new in that I suppose, but she seemed to appreciate that she could talk to me about things she couldn’t talk to her husband about. One day when I mentioned that I was going to a nearby city to see a play she asked to come along; her husband was doing something else that night. Fair and soft-figured, she was young and quite pretty and one thing led to another. By the time we got home things had become quite steamy between us. Her husband being still out she came up to my flat. Why did we not lock the door at the bottom of the interior staircase? Were we innocent of what we were about to do? Did we really think we were going to drink tea? Soon enough we were in the bedroom. Soon enough our clothes were off, and soon enough we were in the bed. And soon enough there was a knock at the door downstairs. Frozen in place, we heard the door open, her husband call up, and his footsteps on the stairs. In seconds he was at the bedroom door where we were naked in the bed together. We pleaded with him to let us get dressed and we would talk in the living room. The discussion was brief. Soon enough he was punching me before dragging his wife downstairs. God knows what he did to her.
In the midst of all this I had a curious telegram from Canada. When I opened it there were only three words: “Where are you?” So how did this person know where to send it if they didn’t know where I was? It was from my mother, ironic as ever. In the days before email and Facebook and texting we were supposed to write letters, but it was awfully easy to procrastinate. For me, at any rate. I don’t suppose I had communicated with my mother for months. That may seem strange nowadays when it seems most twenty-four-year-olds are still living with their mothers. To rectify the situation I placed a rare and challenging transatlantic phone call. When my mother answered I remember being shocked by her Canadian accent. My assimilation into British society must have been going well. There was no alarm; she just wanted to know how I was doing.
One of the events in the theatre that winter was a one-act play festival, which I was asked to adjudicate. There were two evenings of three plays each, the usual collection of well meaning but not inspiring amateur presentations about which I had to struggle to say something positive. The sixth and final item on the second night was Act Five from A Merchant of Venice. Given the work up to that point, I dreaded what would happen with Shakespeare. I was sure it would be awful. What would I say? The curtain went up — yes, this theatre had a curtain, perhaps I forgot to mention that — to reveal a cast of children between the ages of twelve and fifteen. Now I was really fearful. No sooner was the first line spoken when my fear abated. By the time a few more lines of crystal clear Shakespearean verse were rendered I was in awe. The children were amazing. It was one of the clearest, most touching presentations of Shakespeare I have ever seen. Later I was to meet the high school teacher responsible for this miracle. What a talent. What a shame her work was not seen more widely.
Yet if we think about it, should we be surprised by such an event? It is thought by some critics and directors, me for one, that one of the reasons for Shakespeare’s soaring greatness was that he lived in two worlds at once, the medieval and the modern, the preliterate and the literate, the nonlineal and the lineal. To the medieval and preliterate mind the universe is of a piece, interconnected and whole. The killing of a king, for instance, shatters the entire system so that, as in Macbeth, for example, the horses eat each other. To the modern print-altered mind — if we are to believe Marshall McLuhan — the universe is made up of discrete events that influence each other but can be considered separately. Man was released, for better or worse, from his environment. Man’s power to understand, manipulate, and study the world was hugely advanced. Shakespeare understood both these worlds; he lived on the cusp of change. He could mine the rich medieval world for its imagery and symbolism and simultaneously reveal it through a modern objective lens. So what does all this have to do with children playing Shakespeare? Is it possible that if children are given the tools, as these children clearly were, their understanding of Shakespeare might actually be greater than that of a modern adult, in that they themselves are on the cusp of change from primitive, for want of a better word, to modern? Might they have an instinct for the material that we adults have to grapple with intellectually? Might it also be that while their language instinct is open and pliable they can adapt to Shakespeare’s language with a facility denied to their elders, just as they could learn a foreign language with a part of the brain closed to an adult? Is one of the reasons British actors are more successful with Shakespeare than their North American colleagues the fact that they have more exposure to Shakespeare in their formative years?
All of this is interesting speculation, but we had a season to prepare. Tony had decided that instead of doing weekly rep in the spring season, we would mount a true repertory season. We would present five plays, alternating them through the season. The potential advantages were twofold: towards the end of the season we could do more performances of successful shows and, hopefully, we could find more rehearsal time for each play, the continuing challenge for stock companies of the time. One huge disadvantage would only become apparent later. No potboilers for me in this season. I was to direct William Gibson’s Two for the Seesaw and Arnold Wesker’s Roots.
Tony and I headed to London to audition actors for parts that had not yet been cast. I had arranged for one pretty good Canadian actor to play in Two for the Seesaw, Donald Sutherland. Coming in to see us for th
e other role was another Canadian and one of my favourite actresses from Toronto, Jackie Burroughs. We had cast Jackie in summer stock based on seeing her one and only previous play, a Trinity College production at Hart House directed by Herbert Whittaker, when she really didn’t know if she wanted to be an actress or not. She had lost interest in acting yet again and was working in a low-rent restaurant in Soho when Sutherland saw her and suggested she talk to us about Chesterfield. We cast her in the season and she went on to a marvellous career, largely in Canada, winning tons of awards as a film and television star. Jackie was perfect casting for both Two for the Seesaw and the Joan Plowright character in Roots. When I walked her downstairs after her audition she gave me this very friendly hug and kiss, well, more than friendly actually. Only later did I realize it was a ‘promise.’ Jackie was a short, slim, red-haired pixie, full of energy and generous to a fault. Later she was to get heavily involved in the Sixties, marry one of the Lovin’ Spoonfuls, and, in the words of one CBC director, “never got out.” Be that as it may she was to play the lead for me years later in my first major radio drama, George Bernard Shaw’s Man and Superman.
With a cast like that, how could you lose? There was one major flaw in Tony’s plan for a repertory season. Normally a theatre has at least one ‘dark’ night, a day that can be used for set up and technical rehearsal for the next play. In Tony’s new scheme the first play opened normally at the beginning of the week but the second play, my Two for the Seesaw, opened on Thursday of the first week even though the first play had played on Wednesday. In other words, there was one day to strike the set of the first play, set up the set for my play, light it, and run technical and dress rehearsal. Someone was dreaming in Technicolor. Perhaps they thought Two for the Seesaw was a simple show; it had only two characters and one set. I guess they hadn’t read the news story describing how the touring production that came to Toronto had a crew of forty. The fact is, the play has tons of prop changes, to say nothing of sound and light cues. Perhaps I was remiss in not warning Tony of the challenges. In any event the play did open, sort of. Opening night was a catalogue of disasters, missing props, missing sound cues. The proverbial rug was truly pulled from these wonderful actors.
Where There's Smoke...: Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man, a Memoir Page 13