Joan Littlewood

by Peter Rankin

  The worst part of the journey still faced them, driving through the Dolomites – there was snow by then – but the old Alvis just made it. Once in England, Joan and Gerry went straight to Manchester to see a doctor Gerry trusted. The diagnosis was diabetes. Joan, knowing nothing about the condition, asked when Gerry would be better. The doctor took the easy way out and said that it would take two years. He couldn’t bring himself to tell Joan that it would last the rest of his life, and rule it too, in the sense that Gerry was not the best patient. Apart from pushing himself too much, he loved wine, and sugary things, and would suffer for it. Someone more disciplined might have fared better, but then they wouldn’t have been Gerry.

  On top of that, Joan was not the best nurse. She would flutter around in a surprisingly un-Joan-like way, constantly suggesting one thing after another, thus bringing herself very close to being told to shut up. She did at least learn to recognise hypoglycaemia which is an excellent mimic of drunkenness. The speech is slurred. The sufferer becomes quickly and heavily drowsy. She had to learn because when Gerry became depressed, he could start drinking brandy and get drunk for real.

  No longer was it only Joan who needed protection: Gerry did too. Driving across Blackheath, he saw a sign, Flat To Let. He took the flat. It was the whole of the upper floor of a large white house which was surrounded by trees and a garden wall. Inside, at one end, was a spacious living room that looked out on to the heath. The front room, Joan called it, as if the flat was a two-up, two-down. At the other end was a big kitchen from which steps led down to the garden. The whole place was called Mill House and when you approached it across the heath, it had a way of disappearing like Aladdin’s palace, which suited Joan and Gerry fine. They didn’t particularly want to be found. Two years later, Gerry’s father bought the lease.

  Perhaps it can be imagined that this flat did not have a good effect on certain members of the company, particularly as Joan – like she did with Gerry’s comfortable childhood – would play it down. That only made it worse. If you were born with not much, joined a company that was a co-operative and then saw the flat, it’s understandable that you might feel a bit narked. If you were born into a comfortable household and hadn’t had to worry much about money, you couldn’t have cared less. Still, the money Gerry had access to from his father did rankle through the years. On the other hand, if Manny hadn’t coughed up when the company was in serious trouble, it could have folded. What this emphasised, though, was the fact that there was Joan and Gerry, and then there was the company, the fulfilling of a wish that was clear in Gerry’s letters when Joan was touring Sweden.

  He made it into a lively place, though, with a tickertape, a short wave radio, duvets before everyone had them – clouds Joan called them – a pool with koi carp in it, a shower with jets that hit you from several angles, the scent of Roger et Gallet carnation soap, an Aga, a fruit juice squeezer and a huge coffee grinder. Joan, fine for adding the finishing touches, could not have created that kind of comfort and, while complaining non-stop, secretly enjoyed it. Play readings took place in the front room and many people stayed at Mill House, including Brendan Behan and Wole Soyinka, and actors who couldn’t get home after dinner. The latter would be roused in the morning by Gerry striding through the flat in a white towelling dressing gown crying out: ‘Awake and see your father hanged!’ Tom Driberg would like to have moved in. He was a lonely cove and being at Mill House gave him some family feeling.

  Downstairs, the neighbours suffered dreadfully, not from noise but from water – the washing machine, to be precise. Torrential leaks flooded their flat. Joan never saw the problem herself: ‘It’s only water,’ and she did have a baby-like love of the stuff.

  Bucharest, Warsaw, Leipzig: you can imagine the signs, as in a film, rushing by but, despite Gerry’s continuing efforts to get to them, these were not the towns Theatre Workshop made it to. Warsaw was particularly sad, given Gerry’s one-day love affair with it. On the other hand, an invitation came from Moscow, first stop Zürich.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  TO RUSSIA, TO BERLIN, TO COURT

  Joan wanted to take a new play. The company would, after all, be appearing under the banner of the World Youth Festival. Jimmie was writing something that sounded as if it might have some appeal, So Long at the Fair (not to be mistaken for the Dirk Bogarde film of the same name). Perhaps that would do.

  In the as yet unfurnished flat at Blackheath, Joan held a reading. The first scene was a monologue. A demobbed soldier, on the down escalator at an underground station, reacts to the advertisements. In the second scene, he joins his friends and goes round a fair. It was more than promising, but there was no more. Could Jimmie have it finished on time? No, he couldn’t. Another play would have to be thought of. Joan’s habit, when in a jam, was to turn to the classics. They could do Macbeth and Jimmie could play the title role. Jimmie was furious. He had never shared Joan’s love of the classics, so that was that. Not only was his play out, he was too.

  Joan, who tended to think that any project she left never happened, thought that So Long at the Fair began and ended there. It didn’t. Jimmie carried on and, years later, the Maxim Gorki Theatre in East Berlin, which Joan would soon be going to, put it on under the title, Rummelplatz. When Joan was told this, she wouldn’t believe it. Fixed in her head was the conviction that fairs looked dramatic from a distance but lost their drama on closer inspection. She had to be shown the brochure of the Maxim Gorki’s season.

  With Jimmie gone, Joan was minus a Macbeth. New to the company was Richard Harris, but he really was a raw recruit. It would mean her sitting up with him night after night, as she had done with Howard Goorney when he was playing John of Gaunt in Richard II. She couldn’t face it, and cast Glynn Edwards instead. Glynn we know nowadays as an amiable stalwart from films like Zulu and The Ipcress File. Most famous of all, is Glynn saying to George Cole: ‘Evening, Arfur,’ as the barman, Dave, at the Winchester club in the TV series Minder. He wasn’t a Macbeth. So, not the right play and not the right actor. Here was a more damaging example of pressure leading to compromise at Theatre Workshop. Glynn was slow, so slow that students in Zürich barracked him. Joan wished she’d made the effort with Richard Harris.

  At the Moscow Art Theatre, the company, instead of rejoicing at having made it there, hit up against the unexpected hierarchy Jack Evans had warned Joan of many years before. ‘Who is your leading lady?’ asked an official, wanting to put her in the star dressing room. It might as well have been the West End.

  Going even further back than Jack, Joan remembered André van Gyseghem’s prewar book about the innovative director, Okhlopkov. He had a show on: Hamlet. Joan went. Forget actors rushing past you with branches to make you think you were tobogganing downhill. This was dead conventional. Up on a proscenium arch stage was heavy scenery, a different set for every scene, actors who were too old for their parts and it was painfully slow.

  Back in London, things were ever-so-slightly perking up on the Arts Council front. A new man was at the top, Sir William Emrys Wiliams, and he was interested in Theatre Workshop. Even so, he was still asking for matching – we give you a £1,000, your local councils give you £1,000 – but, for years, Gerry had been saying this wasn’t going to happen. It happens everywhere else in Great Britain, said Sir William. Yes, but it doesn’t happen in Stratford, said Gerry. Sir William couldn’t believe it. He asked for a meeting with representatives of all the local councils to be present. They didn’t want to come: they didn’t see the point. Sir William announced that he was going to come in person. The local councils changed their minds. At the meeting, Sir William made a shaming speech about how valuable Theatre Workshop was to the East End and that, if no money was forthcoming, it would have to close. The local councils gave in and contributed a few hundred pounds each year until 1964. The Arts Council gave £1,000 a year which, by 1964, had become £3,000 a year. At that point, the English Stage Company based at the Royal Court – Oscar Lewenstein and his artist
ic director, George Devine – were receiving £20,000 a year.

  Gerry, continuing to explore every avenue, discovered that the Arts Council occasionally gave grants to writers. Very occasionally, as it happened, because there was a belief that writers should suffer until they were accepted and then, when they were accepted, they didn’t need help from the Arts Council. Gerry sent them You Won’t Always be on Top, a play set on a building site by a man who knew about building sites, Henry Chapman. A member of the Drama Panel wrote a report:

  I am sorry but I am unable to make head nor tail of this play. It seems to me to consist of a series of disjointed and more or less meaningless conversations between a set of peculiarly uninteresting workmen on a building site. It also has the disadvantage of being so abominably typed that it is almost unreadable.

  Theatre Workshop did it anyway. Another heart-sinking hour for a reader was another challenge for Joan and, though she described it as hard work, she thought it one of her best productions. John Bury, using, as he often did, the back wall of the theatre with its three arches in the brickwork, came up with a set that filled the entire stage. Because it was a building site, he was also able to give a part to his favourite toy, a cement mixer. Many of his sets benefited from that mixer because it was used to provide texture, texture being Camel’s watchword. Stephen Lewis’s first acting job was in this play. Later, he would become a writer as well. Today, he is known for pulling faces and talking in a funny voice for the television comedies, On The Buses and Last of the Summer Wine. That is not the whole story.

  Joan had actors who could do Theatre Workshop but didn’t really understand it. Some, on going away to direct, went straight back to weekly rep – learn the lines, learn the moves – and she was disappointed. One of her dreams was unrealised. Stephen had a thoughtful, schoolmasterly side to him and came nearer than most to understanding her. Even more unusual – because he had put on a show himself – he understood Gerry. Most actors, by this time, thought Gerry was just the boss who did the hiring and the firing and was always trying to save money and pay actors as little as possible. You complained to him or you complained about him. As it happened, much of the firing was done because Joan asked for it, not that actors knew. Gerry wanted her to appear to have nothing to do with that side of things. If he thought differently to her but fired the actor to please her, it was especially unpleasant for him. That is what Stephen understood.

  The critics disagreed with the Arts Council and gave You Won’t Always be on Top not bad reviews. When Gerry then sent the Arts Council a play that was properly written, had been done before but wasn’t actually much good, the result was almost predictable. And the Wind Blew by Edgard da Rocha Miranda got a grant. £100 was the sum. Its run, five weeks, allowed Joan to go to the Maxim Gorki Theatre in East Berlin to direct Jimmie’s version of Lysistrata, Operation Olive Branch. In German it was known as Unternehmung Ölzweig. Gerry put a time limit on Joan being away – he didn’t want the Arts Council hounding him about Theatre Workshop not doing anything again – and negotiated a decent fee, part of which was able go into the kitty. How did he do deals for Joan’s services, someone was curious to know: ‘I ask for the first big figure that comes into my head,’ he answered. ‘It usually works’.

  While she was away, a Yugoslav director, France Jamnik, the reason why Gerry was so keen to get to Ljubljana on that holiday, came over to direct Pirandello’s Man, Beast and Virtue. When Joan directed herself, she preferred the casting to emerge during rehearsals but, because it wasn’t going to be her directing, she cast this play in advance, and carefully, giving Richard Harris the lead. On the list that she drew up, she wrote: ‘Mickser [that was his nickname] has more talent and presence than anyone else in the company.’ Unusual circumstances had made her put on paper the kind of statement she rarely made.

  Joan always said she was very happy in East Berlin. Anything a director could want would be laid on. Wherever they rehearsed, the set would be put up, for example. The letter she wrote to Gerry at the time was more nervy. She started by saying she was worried about his problems at the theatre, to which she had contributed, she was sure, but then this was a ritual self-flagellation that she would be performing until long after his death. Second on the list was driving. ‘I wish you would promise me – and keep to it – that you will take care of yourself and please please don’t take such risks while driving. I don’t feel so bad while I am with you because I feel I can watch for both of us.’ Many bad things happened to Gerry during his lifetime but, as with other fast drivers, it wasn’t while driving.

  Joan smoked a lot. When directing, it had a particular use. The few seconds needed to take the cigarette out of the pack, strike the match and take the first puff gave her vital thinking time. At the Maxim Gorki, it wasn’t allowed: ‘I’ve found a way of smuggling 2 a morning but that’s my lot. I’m even getting used to it. I suppose it’s just as well for I was smoking far too many in London.’

  Having set the scene, she talked about work:

  Today I completed the first rough rehearsals to the end of the play. What hell this play is in any language. Also I’ve managed to make the cast accept cuts which in Germany is a major feat. They squeal like stuck pigs if you try to take one word from them and of course they all had Ewan’s inordinately long original script. Most of the week, we’ve been working in cuts, rewrites and rearrangements as well as rehearsals which is why I haven’t had much time.

  Being in East Berlin and the theatre world as well, the inevitable happened:

  They brought me straight to this hotel for lunch from the Tempelhof [airport] – and of course who should be sitting at the next table but Karl Weber [Brecht’s assistant she’d thrown out of Mother Courage rehearsals] – I pretended he didn’t exist but he had seen me first and was very embarrassed. I was with Vallentin [boss of the Maxim Gorki] and a dramaturg from our theatre. Later Camel [Joan took John Bury] came in with a little queer who does decor and, of course, Karl leapt up and greeted Camel and was very effusive to me, though as arrogant and impossible as ever, I thought. He invited me to the Schiff [Theater am Schiffbauerdamm, home of the Berliner Ensemble] but I asked Camel to fix it through our theatre, not through W. I hoped we should not see him again but we did yesterday in the local May’s [Bert and May’s in Angel Lane] called the Trichter where we eat and drink now. Camel actually mentioned me to W in conversation and I was very cross and asked Camel not to mention me to Weber. I intend to have a good row with him when I have time and perhaps start a war of the theatres here. It’s just what they need, everyone is trying so hard not to offend anybody. The Brecht theatre will be dead in 2 or 3 years, that is the general verdict. None of the “young men” are individually capable [Brecht had died the year before] – and Weigel [Helene, actress and Brecht’s wife] isn’t a producer. They are doing a year’s “homage to Brecht” and fishing out everything he ever wrote including The Private Life of the Master Race (Fear and Misery of the Third Reich) which I think is terrible and Weigel is all set to devote the rest of her life to “Homage à Brecht.”

  I must say that I am very happy here. It’s fascinating trying to do this job [Joan didn’t speak German]. I’m working much harder than I do at home at rehearsals, jumping about all over the clean stage in my new slippers. They’re wonderful to work in. They wanted to get through the play quickly. They’re dead scared about time. They usually have 15 weeks – and we go on on December 22nd. [And the Wind Blew opened on November the 12th]

  I’m afraid I have to show them far too much because it saves time on interpretation. Camel says I go too fast and try to say too much. I will be able to slow down – but not much. The soldiers scenes have been the most successful scenes so far – I’ve managed to do two decent adaptations on those. Only really good rehearsals I’ve done.

  The actors over 30 are brilliantly efficient, if they had the right incentive they would be great – the younger ones are hopeless – hopeless, untrained, egotistical, they cannot move nor speak
– of course they are much more confident and efficient than ours at home. But the older ones! How wonderful they are with the text and I can make the older ones act. I think I will be able to. Something old in them is re-awakening, something that goes back to Laban. Camel says he definitely saw one with a Theatre Workshop expression on his face working his notes in the rehearsal over coffee. Of course, as the dramaturg, Klaus, says, they think only of “the text” not the mime but he says it’s because no producers ask for movement at all. And the women!!! Ours are angels compared with them. They fight and sulk and throw temperaments if you cut a word. They fight for more words not for peace. One has been to the president of the republic merely because she doesn’t know whether or not she is to use dialect or not. Another refused to rehearse because I’d cut her lines. Lysistrata is perturbed because I don’t give her enough attention. They can’t work for more than an hour without drooping. Jesus! The dialect one is a real Carmen! [Blanck-Sichel, a German actress who was in Joan’s production of The Dutch Courtesan.] Anyway, I’ll break them in – next week.

  The decor man is an irritating little queen – but I’ve got him squashed – he tried to make “arrangements” of the actors to suit his fiddling little decor the 1st and 2nd day so I put a stop to that. There’s a hell of a lot of subjective feeling but it’s mainly because the bastards haven’t enough real problems to face . . . I would like to come back and do a real play with these actors, knowing German.

  When Joan got home, she was so fed up with the Theatre Royal and the lack of all that she had been given in East Berlin that she sacked Avis Bunnage on the spot. It happened at the start of rehearsals for La Celestina, an adaptation Joan had made, while in Germany, of Fernando da Rojas’ novel. This was the play for which she dug out Eileen Draycott, the actress who had been at Manchester Rep with her before the war. Avis turned up a little late in a playful mood. Joan didn’t see the funny side, lost her temper and out Avis went. It could have been a delayed reaction. In Joan’s mind, it could have been one of the actresses in East Berlin that she was firing.