Joan Littlewood

by Peter Rankin

  Joan had talked about the Fun Palace, not long before, when she had been interviewed by Huw Wheldon on television. She described it as a place where you could be show-offy or shy, learn, or be entertained, all at the same time. So, this drinks do was ‘Edinburgh gets a foretaste’, courtesy of Bill McLennan. It turned into another press conference. Joan, caught on the hop, but not showing it, spoke about the future, how marvellous it was going to be with all the advances in science that would improve everyone’s lives. Gerry Raffles, who usually went everywhere with Joan, was not there.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  TUNIS AND TWANG

  Tunisia’s president, Habib Bourguiba, keen to impress the outside world, took the advice of his adviser, Lebanese-born, Manchester-raised, Cecil Hourani, and let him start an international drama course in Hammamet. After Oh What a Lovely War’s run at the Broadhurst Theatre on Broadway, that’s where Joan and Gerry went. It was the summer of 1965. Before going, Gerry went on a crash Berlitz course in Arabic. When he arrived in Tunisia, he was delighted. In the summer sun, his diabetes was less vicious, his body needing to make less effort to heat itself. Joan was able to overcome her dislike of heat by working in the early morning and in the evening, which was how things were done in Tunisia anyway.

  Peter Brook was there too. Joan warned him off her students. She thought his seriousness might bring them down when she was trying to build them up. ‘Peter’s an intellectual,’ she said, ‘I’m not. Before he starts anything, he has to find a new influence.’ She then went on to list them: Jan Kott, Antonin Artaud, Jerzy Grotowsky, Chinese theatre. ‘He got one over me, though,’ said Joan, ‘he could eat a sheep’s eye.’

  ‘Build them up’, meant Joan using her long experience of making her Theatre Workshop actors feel good about themselves. She wanted them to be strong in the face of that daunting but bogus edifice constructed of directors from Oxbridge and actors who, at drama school, she remembered, had learned a posh accent but little else. In Tunisia, it was a question of drawing French-influenced Arab students away from the Comédie-Française and encouraging them to rediscover their own way of telling a story.

  Una Collins, who worked with Joan in Hammamet, said that Peter Brook was not only respectful of Joan but intrigued by the way she worked. Another of his influences, in later years, was Berber storytelling and, as Joan would try to do, he assembled in Paris a group of actors from different countries.

  Because Joan considered lectures a waste of time, ‘In one ear, out the other,’ she spent that summer getting the students on to their feet to make them use their heads and their bodies. All round, it was a dream come true because Gerry loved it as well. Given what happened that autumn, it was a dream Joan and Gerry were only too happy to return to, the following year.

  Back in London (still in 1965), Lionel Bart, riding high on the success of four musicals in a row, announced his latest show, Twang. James Booth and Barbara Windsor were to star. Oliver Messel was to design and Joan was to direct.

  Late that summer, Joan, back from Hammamet, could be seen in Shaftesbury Avenue, her skin lightly tanned, her hair a sophisticated red, wearing round her neck a black velvet ribbon tied in a bow. If you had a sensitive nose, you might also have noticed a waft of Balmain’s scent, Jolie Madame. Typical of where she was, the West End, it was here that she bumped into Noël Coward who actually said: ‘At last we meet.’

  For those few moments, these two who seemed to come from such different worlds, amused each other no end, but then they didn’t come from different worlds. Both were born in south London. Both hated it and both escaped by catching the number 88 bus: Coward to stage school, Joan to the Tate Gallery.

  Shaftesbury Avenue, Noël Coward, Jolie Madame, it was all so not Joan; and then there was Oliver Messel. Here, working with her, was this designer who, before the Second World War, had made his name creating masks for Diaghilev and an all-white bedroom for CB Cochran’s English-language version of La Belle Hélène. Nothing could have been further from John Bury and his cement mixer or, for that matter, Sean Kenny, the designer you’d expect for Twang – he being Lionel’s soul mate, and whose set for Joan’s production of The Hostage had launched his career. Oliver Messel did painted backcloths and gauzes, pretty-pretty stuff. Joan, when questioned about him, answered: ‘He’s the one I get on with best. I’ve always had a soft spot for nymphs and gazebos. Sean Kenny’s cantilevered gantries aren’t right.’

  Rehearsals started at the Four Feathers Boys’ Club off the Edgware Road. The front hall was lined with photos of Oliver Messel’s model and the various scene changes. They did not have the ‘Oh yes!’ effect of John Bury’s clean and daring catwalk for 1964’s Edinburgh Henry IV. They looked muddly.

  Joan and her actors were already shut up in their room when a large, long car drew up and out jumped Lionel Bart wearing a chalk-striped suit and a trilby hat. As he walked into the rehearsal room, Joan was merrily listing all the people who go into making an American musical: someone to come up with the story, someone to write the dialogue, someone to write the lyrics, someone to write the tunes, someone to arrange the dance music and someone to arrange the song music. ‘Which am I?’ she wondered as Paddy Stone, the choreographer, taught the dancers the title number in the room above. Thump! Thump! Thump! ‘Ter-wang!’

  The script, which nobody seemed to be looking at, was bound like a screenplay and, inside, the lyrics were typed in capitals, all very professional. It was never seen again. Most of the people in that room were more fascinated by the razzmatazz of getting on a big new musical.

  The idea of Twang was to take a sexy, irreverent look at the Robin Hood legend. There was going to be a naughty song about chastity belts and a naughty bubble bath scene. The influences were American musicals like Roman Scandals and Dubarry was a Lady, which had characters going into the past but talking in present-day slang, usually with breathtaking filthiness. Twang’s characters, though, were already in the past. Parisian nightclubs like the Lido and the Casino de Paris did something similar. However, those nightspots had only one spectacular scene that needed no plot, which is significant, given what was to follow.

  The writer was an American, Harvey Orkin. He’d been a resident wit on the TV satire programme, Not so Much a Programme, More a Way of Life, the kind of person who didn’t need a script because he could be funny spontaneously. As Joan talked, he seemed to be relaxed and amused by what was going on around him. No pens emerged from his pockets. No paper appeared to be about his person. He was not seen opening a script and, after a while, he was not seen at all.

  Most of the actors had worked with Joan before. There, again, was George Cooper and Howard Goorney. George was Friar Tuck. Howard, Sir Guy of Gisborne. Frank Coda, no doubt there for his bel canto voice, was doing bits and bobs. Prince John was Maxwell Shaw and the Sheriff of Nottingham was Bob Grant. Bob’s carrying corncrake voice made him seem quite the old-fashioned actor but he was also the actor who had won Best Performance in Paris as Kitely in Everyman in his Humour five years earlier.

  Kent Baker who was playing Mutch the Miller’s Son, Elric Hooper who was going to be Alan-a-Dale and Philip Newman, who was going to be an invented character, Roger the Ugly, had been on the European tour of Oh What a Lovely War. So, Joan had got much of her own way. Even Ronnie Corbett who was a newcomer, had, like Barbara Windsor, worked in cabaret with Danny La Rue.

  The only complete newcomers were big Bernard Bresslaw who was going to be Little John and Toni Eden who was going to be Maid Marian.

  Bernard Bresslaw brought something of a name too. He’d got it from a popular TV sitcom called The Army Game which had given him a catchphrase: ‘I only arsked.’ When young, he had been with Unity Theatre where the teenaged Lionel had started out.

  Toni Eden was there for her voice. The fun female character was Maid Marian’s gurgly, bubbly, best friend, Delphina, another invented character, and that was Barbara. What with being in Fings and the Sparrers film, she had fortunately made a name for
herself, as had James Booth. He too had been in Fings and Sparrers and an amusing couple they made, he tall and rangy, she, small and luscious. The fact that they had both started out with Joan, become stars and had worked together before couldn’t have been more encouraging. There, painlessly, was the draw you had to have for a commercial show. One way and another, the cast seemed both up to the job and Joan-friendly.

  The dancers were different. They had been chosen by Paddy Stone and were there to do exactly as he told them. What tough choreographers got up to with their dancers was something Joan knew little about. Theatre Workshop meant 15 to 20 actors and that was it. No one went off into other rooms, there to have no contact with her.

  Most days, these dancers were seen trooping upstairs to be tortured by Paddy who could be heard yelling at them savagely. It didn’t help that some accident or palsy had left his mouth in a permanent sneer. He was there because he was regarded as the top British – he was actually Canadian – choreographer of the time. Ken Tynan, the theatre critic, had written that his dances for Lionel’s Maggie May were the next best thing to Jerome Robbins’ choreography for West Side Story. In England, in the mid-Sixties, that was some compliment.

  Paddy’s dancers were divided into tall girls, showgirls, and little dancers, chorines. The showgirls could dance a bit but were mostly there to look stately. The chorines were there to be jazzy and brilliant. At all times these dancers seemed self-contained in a world of their own. While they worked, there was never anything on their faces, neither happiness nor misery. The dazzling all-purpose smile of the professional dancer would only be switched on when it was needed.

  Why was Joan directing Twang and allowing herself to get into this unusual situation? The answer is simple. It was the Fun Palace again. She wanted money for it and, anyway, Lionel was an old friend, going back to the days of Fings Ain’t Wot They Used T’Be. As it has a bearing on what was to happen on Twang it’s worth remembering how things had been in those days.

  Not only was Lionel brought in on Fings, he was brought in on a unique working style. He just had to watch, get an idea, nip up to the green room and, not long afterwards, come down again with a song. It might not have been quite the one Joan was expecting but in no time she’d find a place for it.

  This sounds delightfully casual but perhaps it wasn’t. Perhaps it was simply a very good way of working that had been evolved by Joan over a long period of time. Lionel was lucky. It suited him perfectly. He didn’t have to be alone in a room facing a blank piece of paper. He just had to react. ‘I get ideas like a flashbulb going off,’ he used to say, and that was true. His was not a long-haul brain. Somebody else had to do that kind of thinking. Not for many years was Lionel to work in that happy way again.

  After Fings had come Oliver! which Joan had not wanted to direct. ‘All those children running round the theatre.’ If you look at the show, you’ll notice that the structure follows the David Lean film. The filleting, in other words, had already been done. Chances are, Lionel never read the Dickens. He didn’t have the patience.

  Oliver!, as we know, was a huge success and it projected Lionel into a class of his own. It also led him to enter what he described as: ‘My flash git period.’ Everything was what he wanted and everything was what he got.

  Blitz, based on his childhood memories of the Second World War, had some good tunes but a soapy plot. Joan had turned it down. The critics didn’t think much of it either but were impressed by Sean Kenny’s sets. Its run was respectable and so, to a lesser extent, was that of his next show, Maggie May – Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene relocated to Liverpool – written by the highly professional Alun Owen. That’s where Paddy Stone came in.

  Since Lionel’s Stratford East days, six years had passed and he was a changed man. His undoubted talent for song, combined with his immense success made him think that he could, and should, be on top of and in control of everything. That is a hard person to work with, and the one with whom Joan now had to work.

  Still, there, starting out was a jolly Theatre Workshop bunch of actors, with plenty of rehearsal time, some good tunes and Joan who had the reputation for being able to make something out of nothing.

  What was in that professional-looking script, though? Fings may have been slight but there was something in it that was good and true. Twang was another matter. If you were to have turned the pages, you would have found a childishness that took your breath away.

  As the dancers carried on thumping in other rooms, Joan, often without Lionel, worked quietly and patiently with her actors. For example, she might hit on a scene with a gap in it. There would be an A and an E but no B, C, and D. Quickly Joan listed a series of subjects to which she gave concise and memorable titles, then chucked them at Little John and Will Scarlett. Bernard Bresslaw and Ronnie Corbett, who was playing Will, stored the titles in their heads and then ad libbed their way through, carrying it off with remarkable élan. After all, neither was accustomed to working with Joan but what they said made sense, stuck to the point and was even entertaining. All they had to do was run through it a couple of times and it was fixed in their heads. Hey presto, a nice little scene.

  If anything, Joan was introducing a sweetness to the show, not sticky but fresh. Most sweet of all was a tiny chance encounter between Delphina and Alan-a-Dale. Suddenly, as the two talked, they realised they fancied each other and became shy teenagers who could speak only haltingly. A laughter of joyful recognition bubbled up. Joan was weaving a golden tissue of gossamer lightness while, thump, thump, ‘Who’s the beautiful baby?’ or rather:

  WHO’S THE BEAUTFUL BABY?

  WHOSE ARE THE TWO EYES OF BLUE?

  . . . came yowling from somewhere else. One song did chime with what Joan was doing, ‘You Can’t Catch Me’. You think Robin’s going to be defiant in the face of the Sheriff, but no. It’s a wistful song that reveals a will-o’-the-wisp side to Robin when it comes to romance. This was a good example of Lionel not doing the obvious. James Booth didn’t go away to sing it. He did it right there in front of Joan and it worked.

  Rehearsals for the actors soon left the Boys’ Club so, one dark afternoon, you could climb the stairs to a library in Gower Street hearing, as you went, a raised voice. ‘I fink,’ Lionel was flashbulbing, ‘I fink Robin should come on on a fork lift truck.’ There followed a tiny pause of irritation among the actors. It sounded like this was just one in a long list of unhelpful suggestions. ‘That’s a marvellous idea, Li,’ said Joan. ‘Unfortunately my brain’s slower than yours. It’s going to take me a while to get there.’ Lionel turned and left. Toni Eden flicked two fingers at his departing back.

  Joan shrugged and carried on trying to get Robin on in a way that was at least human but it was hard to concentrate and soon she let the actors go. As they went their way, she opened a black attaché case, her ‘James Bond’, took out a piece of paper and, using the case as a desk, started to scribble. ‘I’ve got to explain to Lionel. I’ve got to explain why I’m right.’ This was the first sign among the company that there was a problem. Even so, a few minutes later, when an assistant asked her what she would be doing the next day, Joan gaily answered: ‘King Lear with Marlene Dietrich and John Gielgud. Marlene will be Lear, Gielgud will be Goneril.’

  The note Joan sent to Lionel was not the last. There were others, not written in her charming handwriting. They were typed by a secretary and didn’t pull punches. The most important was the one in which she told Lionel that, talented as he was, he could not do structure and had to leave that to others. Throughout her life, Joan wrote many notes. Most were a form of entertainment but some denoted the chilling of a relationship, a distancing. They acted both as a weapon and a shield. Joan could attack without the pain of facing the attacked.

  The Shaftesbury Theatre, formerly the Prince’s, where Twang, after try-outs in Manchester and Birmingham, was going to have its West End run, became dark, so Joan was able to rehearse in the right space. However, it was not a perfect theatre. The au
ditorium was big but the stage, disproportionately shallow.

  On to it came Oliver Messel’s sets. He had been inspired by jewel-like miniatures in a very old Bible: big people, little castles, that sort of thing; amusing but less so in three dimensions with real human beings. If anything, it was ever-so-slightly clodhopping. Getting from one scene to another did not delight. Changes had to be hidden by frontcloths, an old-fashioned device. And who, in the 1960s, had got rid of this clumsiness? Why, John Bury and Sean Kenny.

  Oliver Messel, himself, only appeared once and it was not in the auditorium. Joan was in a corridor backstage, looking for a lavatory, when, all of a sudden, a dazzling white raincoat, made of a fabric both expensive and mysterious, bustled towards her. Above the coat, lustrous dark eyes made themselves very round. White teeth shone against a Caribbean tan. Deep brown hair gleamed. He wasn’t young but, by God, he was well preserved. Joan and he exchanged conspiratorial smiles and, as suddenly as he came, he was gone, but it was as if a sea breeze had blown a cloud away.

  Alone, Joan and her actors wove delicately for days and days. When she was at this kind of work, it seemed like it could happily go on forever. In Hammamet, it did but in England, an audience soon had to be faced.

  There was a costume parade. This is when the actors put on their costumes and come onstage under some lighting for the director to look at and make comments. Joan enjoyed it. She’d take a hat from one character and give it to another, turn a cloak inside out and declare it a vast improvement. In this way, she broke up hard-edged perfection and made the costumes look as if they belonged to the actor.