Writer's Luck

by David Lodge

  It was unusual to send an author on a book tour with a paperback edition of a novel, but I had not been invited to America for Viking’s publication of the hardback in August 1989, and they wanted to exploit its very favourable reception, beginning on the front page of the New York Sunday Times Book Review and maintained in nearly every other major newspaper and magazine. There are two kinds of American book tour: one, which I never experienced, gives the author a bundle of travel tickets and three-star hotel vouchers and sends him or her off, often unaccompanied, on a long circuit of provincial cities to speak to journalists and radio interviewers who probably haven’t read the writer’s book. The other kind, which I was fortunate to enjoy, has more select itineraries, provides a driver to meet you at each destination and ferry you to your engagements, and accommodates you in first class hotels. My programme was a mixture of radio, TV and press interviews, bookshop readings and signings, and lectures. I had a lecture called ‘Novel, Stageplay, Screenplay: Three Ways of Telling a Story’, which served very well for this purpose. In New York I met Paul Slovak for the first time, a tall, quietly spoken man who impressed me with his calm efficiency and the absence of bullshit from his conversation. He and several of his colleagues took me to a fabulous dinner in a private room at the Trattoria Dell’Arte on Seventh Avenue after my lecture at the New York Public Library, and put me in a cab to take me back to my hotel afterwards. While the cab was halted at a red light two gaudily dressed and giggling prostitutes opened the car door, climbed into the back seat and tried to persuade me to take them wherever I was going. Even the cab driver was taken aback by their effrontery, and threatened to summon a cop, upon which they debouched and disappeared into the night.

  Paul told me that Viking were very pleased with the feedback from my tour and were going to reward me with an upgrade to Business Class for the flight home from Boston, the last point of my tour. There I caught up with Cambridge friends and had dinner with Bob Brustein, who was looking forward to putting on The Writing Game at the ART in March, and wanted me to come out for the later stages of rehearsals. ART would pay my expenses, and he had a friend with a spare room in a house near the theatre where I could stay. I was glad to agree: the chance of seeing another professional production of my play was irresistible, and with luck it might lead to an off-Broadway production in New York. I went home to find that Nathan Joseph was no nearer to getting a viable cast in place for a London production, but that did not bother me, as I wanted to concentrate on Paradise News and finish it by the end of February 1991, in time for publication in the autumn of that year.

  I met that deadline, and on 10th March I returned to Cambridge Mass., to see the final week of rehearsals, the previews and the first night of The Writing Game. It was directed by Michael Bloom, who had experience of directing British plays in major American theatres and also teaches and writes about drama. Phone calls we exchanged suggested that we would get on well together, which proved to be the case. My plane arrived in Boston at 1.30 p.m. local time and I was anxious to get to the theatre immediately as I knew there was a rehearsal that afternoon. It was my misfortune to draw in the taxi-rank lottery a small, sallow-faced, rather despondent young driver, crouched behind the wheel of an enormous estate car. He set off hesitantly and immediately lost his way inside the airport. He was communicating with his control all the time in a foreign language, which I thought was probably Russian, though I could only understand words like ‘Harvard Square’ as we roamed around the airport’s perimeter, ending up in dead ends beside derelict warehouses. When I protested he apologised and said I was his first fare, and he wouldn’t charge me for the detour. Eventually I told him to take me back to the terminal to get another cab, but this accidentally led him to the airport’s exit and he delivered me eventually to the theatre. As I paid him off I said, ‘I hope you don’t expect a tip,’ and he seemed grateful to receive any money at all. It made a good story to amuse Michael Bloom and the cast when I found them in the basement rehearsal room of the Loeb Theater. I was soon immersed in the same kind of experience, though shorter in duration, as I had had at the Rep: camaraderie and conflict, tensions and tantrums, inquests and rewrites.

  The principal actors were David Margulies as Leo and Christine Estabrook as Maude. Both had impressive CVs which would be further enhanced in the future by performances in theatre, TV and film. David was probably best known for his role in Ghostbusters, and Christine later appeared in hugely popular series like Mad Men. She was an engaging, effervescent actress with a gift for comedy who led the production in that direction, teasing Margulies’s rather dour Leo, playfully pinching him, throwing things at him, etc. At first I was disconcerted by this performance but I gradually warmed to it. She did what I called the Shower Scene at the end of Act One almost as farce, by making Maude get drunk during the conversation with Leo before she goes up the spiral staircase to the attic bedroom, which is open to the audience’s view. There she made a hilariously bungled attempt to change into a dressing gown before her shower, followed by a controlled sliding fall down the staircase which I watched at a dress rehearsal with tears of laughter running down my cheeks.

  There was a danger that this take on the play would distract attention from its more serious content to do with writing as a vocation and profession, and the kinds of stress it produces, which make Penny at the end of the play tell Leo that the experience of the course has cured her of any wish to become a writer. But it was hard to object to this interpretation of the play when its audience was obviously having such a good time, as they were at the second preview. The first one had been badly affected by the collapse, in the first scene, of a member of the audience in the front row who had to be carried out while the cast stumbled through their lines, and they never entirely recovered their poise. But the second preview went like a dream and Michael and I kept exchanging glances of amazed delight as the audience rocked with laughter at everything that was designed to be funny, and seemed to understand and appreciate every literary reference. I guessed there were a lot of people from Harvard and other universities in the area present.

  The official opening night went almost as well, though the audience was more mixed, and different sections laughed at different things at first. David Margulies told me later that the actors had to work hard to unify them, but they succeeded sufficiently for the evening to be declared by Bob Brustein and others ‘a triumph’. Several people came up to me after the final curtain to say that it was the best thing the ART had done in years. Overall I thought it was a more successful production than the Rep’s, inasmuch as it continuously amused and engaged its audience whereas in Birmingham there were always flat spots, though not in the same places.

  The next day was a Sunday, when there were two performances, a matinee and another in the evening, a common practice in America. I did not attend either of them as there was a party for me in the late afternoon and early evening at the Fangers’ house. Bob Brustein came to it and reiterated his satisfaction at the way the play had been received. I said I had been delighted it had gone so well, but recalled my experience at Birmingham, of a euphoric preview followed by a very mixed set of reviews of the Press Night performance. He said, ‘That can happen, of course, because reviewers hate intelligent plays.’ I had heard from several sources that the Globe had been giving ART productions a hard time lately, and when I mentioned this, Bob admitted that there was some truth in it, but said, ‘I have a feeling that Kevin Kelly will like this one.’ Kevin Kelly was the chief drama critic of the Boston Globe, which has a large circulation in the state and some influence as far away as New York. He had interviewed me in advance of the first night by telephone and sounded friendly enough, so I hoped Bob’s prediction would be fulfilled.

  I had arranged to meet Michael Bloom for breakfast at the Au Bon Pain café at nine o’clock next morning, and picked up a copy of the Boston Globe in Harvard Square on my way. Standing on the sidewalk, I opened the paper and soon found Kelly’s review, headed ‘An
Unamusing Writing Game’. It was hardly necessary to read any further. Kelly was complimentary about Christine Estabrook, but otherwise was entirely negative about both the play and the production. I found Michael in the café gloomily perusing this humourless dismissal of a show that had consumed so many hours of our lives and hugely entertained its audience. Michael gave me some background to the Globe’s vendetta against the ART which he had not revealed before, perhaps to avoid depressing me, namely that it had been provoked by an article Bob had imprudently published in the New Republic some time in the past, criticising the newspaper for its cultural coverage in general and its theatre reviewing in particular. Later that day I learned that another local paper, The Phoenix, carried an enthusiastic review, but the only one that might have had some useful influence on the play’s future was a stinker.

  It was a downbeat conclusion to my visit, but by now I was inured to such disappointments. I had enjoyed my involvement in the production and my faith in the play was unshaken. As I returned to England Nathan Joseph left to see it at the ART, and I called him as soon as he got back. I had anticipated that he might have reservations about the style of the production, but I was taken aback by the vehemence of his reaction. In a word, he hated it. He thought the ART had turned a witty, intelligent play into something like a Ray Cooney farce, and took particular exception to Christine Estabrook’s performance. He grudgingly conceded that she had done Maude’s reading well, and said that all three readings had been excellent because the actors had to rely on the words alone to make their effects without added business. He also agreed that there was an energy about the production that we would do well to incorporate in the Rep’s, if and when it transferred to London. He had sent the play to Prunella Scales, and she had expressed an interest in playing the part of Maude if the actor cast as Leo was someone she would be happy to work with. This was an exciting prospect for me as she was an actress I adored, and I had enjoyed a very successful collaboration with her and her husband Timothy West, when they performed a set of readings about travel which I compiled and compèred for the Birmingham Literary Festival a few years earlier. We entertained them at our house, and afterwards Pru sent us a thank-you note with a red rose named after her which we planted in our front garden, where it still blooms every year. It was through that connection that we got Tim West to do the voice of Maude’s husband in The Writing Game at the Rep. But once again the search for a suitable American or plausible British actor for Leo proved immensely difficult, with hopes being raised and dashed in a familiar rhythm. Eventually Nathan gave up and pulled out. ‘I’m sad and frustrated about it,’ he wrote to me in June, ‘but finally I think it’s the only sensible decision.’ I too felt sad, for he was a sympathetic, intelligent and fundamentally decent man whom I had enjoyed working with, but I was not surprised. He wanted to take out an option on my next play, but since it didn’t exist except as a vague idea in my head, I thought that would be premature. Some weeks later I had a postcard from Prunella Scales: ‘Very sorry INDEED that a Leo was not forthcoming … Do hope we work together ONE of these days.’ Alas, that never happened.

  I had one more opportunity to test The Writing Game on an audience. I had been invited to do something in August at the 1991 Edinburgh Literary Festival, which is part of the larger festival and takes place under canvas in Charlotte Square. I didn’t want to talk about Paradise News as it wouldn’t be published till the end of September, so I suggested an edited reading of my play, if possible by actors from the Birmingham Rep production. The festival organisers were receptive to the idea, Susie Penhaligon and Lou Hirsch were available and willing, so it was scheduled for a session in the Spiegeltent, an antique marquee imported from Germany which serves as a café-bar and auditorium for performance events, seating about 300. I was to act as presenter, summarising the action of the scenes that were omitted and describing stage directions where relevant. The only scenes to be read were those between Leo and Maude and Leo and Penny, Susie doing the latter role with a Cornish accent. I sent them marked-up copies of the text just published by Secker, and we had one rehearsal in the afternoon before the evening performance, which was sold out. It went extremely well, and once again demonstrated the play’s capacity to engage and amuse an audience. We got a lot of applause at the end and some interesting questions. Lou and Susie were delighted with the event and we celebrated afterwards with supper at an Italian restaurant. The next day I bumped into Susie in the Bookstore tent, and chatted with her for a while. In a slightly embarrassed way she confided that she had been writing poetry for years, and a friend had suggested she should ask my advice about getting it published. I said I would be glad to get a poetry editor to look at her work, but warned her about the pain of rejection. She took the point and admitted she had written the poems mainly for herself and that they were ‘very private’. I never heard from her subsequently, but it was poignant to discover so late in the day that she had concealed this personal stake in the subject matter of The Writing Game. Her impassioned delivery of Maude’s speech in Act One, scene 3 about how writing courses can help people who keep novels they have written in drawers, afraid to show them to anyone, suddenly acquired a new significance.

  I was shocked and sympathetic when Susie told me that, after she had paid for childcare for her son and frequent travel between London and Birmingham, her participation in The Writing Game had left her out of pocket. She had certainly given her all to my play, and I was very grateful to her, but we might easily have had a bigger star. Early in the process of casting Maude the script had been sent speculatively to an actress, X, well known for her role in a very popular TV sitcom, who had also made her mark in the theatre and feature films. Early in 1990, on my return from a trip abroad, I received a phone call from John Adams. ‘Good news,’ he said. ‘X is very interested and I think we can get her if we want her. I’m meeting her in London tomorrow. Her agent said can you come too, but I think it’s best if I meet her on my own this time, because she’s talking about possible rewrites and perhaps it would be better if I find out what she wants, or what she’s proposing, so that you don’t have to react instantly.’ As I was still new to this business, and unfortunately had seen very little of X’s work and therefore did not fully appreciate what an asset she would be, I deferred to John’s advice, which was quite wrong. I gathered later from his account of the meeting that he didn’t get on terribly well with X. She didn’t, in fact, have any demands for revision except a tentative suggestion for an extra scene between Maude and Penny; but after being evasive for a week or so her agent told the Rep that she had decided to withdraw. She sent a letter to me saying she had always admired my books and enjoyed reading the play, but for reasons she wouldn’t bother me with she’d decided not to do it. I had little doubt that John was one of the reasons. As time went on X’s career on stage and screen became more and more distinguished, and she is now a Dame. I often think that the fortunes of The Writing Game might have been very different if I had accompanied John to that meeting in London and taken advantage of X’s familiarity with my work to persuade her. She would have shone in the part of Maude and, paired with a male leading actor of equivalent status, greatly increased the chances of a London transfer. A golden opportunity had been missed; but I did not reproach John for his misjudgement. He had given my play its first professional production, and I would always be grateful to him for that.

  I had other interesting projects in hand in the summer of 1991. One was preparation for the publication of Paradise News in September, which included some filming for an edition of The South Bank Show, the flagship of ITV’s arts programming, presented by Melvyn Bragg, which usually profiled the life and work of a single person. He had wanted to do one in 1988 tied to Nice Work, but that book was published before the programme began its autumn season, so it was postponed till my next novel was out. Melvyn came to Birmingham to interview me, and invited Malcolm to join us, and a conversation was filmed in our sitting room. There was also some filmi
ng in Brockley, in and around the house where I grew up, which caused a stir among the neighbours and gave Dad an opportunity to boast about his TV experience to the very amiable production team. After the programme was broadcast in September he wrote to me: ‘It was a magnificent show in my opinion, and a very happy experience for me to sit and watch it, and I shall never forget it.’ For me there were some cringe-making moments when viewing it, but I was pleased that it gave him such pleasure.

  There was another event around this time which greatly assisted me to keep in regular contact with Dad. I was coming to London frequently on literary or theatrical business now, and it was tiring to go there and back on the same day, especially at a time when the rail service between Birmingham and London was notoriously prone to breakdowns and delays. I sometimes stayed overnight at a hotel, or the Groucho Club, which I had joined after investing in some shares when the project was first launched in the mid-eighties, but that required travelling with pyjamas and other accessories. I was always welcome to stay overnight with Dad in Brockley, where I could have stored such things, but it was a tedious extra journey to make, and I didn’t find my old bed and bedroom very comfortable, so I developed the habit of meeting Dad for lunch when I was in town at the BFI’s cafeteria on the south bank of the Thames, which he could get to from Brockley by bus with his senior citizen’s pass. He always liked to be beside ‘the River’ as he referred to it, as if there were only one, and enjoyed these excursions. To have chosen a posher restaurant would only have worried him with the prices on the menu, irrespective of my ability and willingness to pay them.