Joan Littlewood

by Peter Rankin

  At the end of the rehearsal, Jean-Pierre called out: ‘Diallo,’ probably because he’d forgotten James’s name and then went up to him. It was kiss and make up time. Wasn’t it sweet? Or rather: ‘Comme c’est attendrissant,’ as Bonham said about the two of them in the play.

  Joan quietly promised that this little contretemps would not be the end of it. ‘Nine days after the play opens, he’ll destroy Jean-Pierre,’ she predicted. ‘James is so rotted inside, after the first night, he won’t care about his own performance. We’ll have to start looking around for a replacement.’

  In the last week of rehearsal, there were run-throughs nearly every night. These were important in order to seal the joins between scenes. Joan didn’t like dropping curtains, having blackouts or shifting huge blocks of scenery. Instead she preferred ‘liaisons’ and interludes during which the actors, in the course of the action, shifted the few props that were on the stage. This gave a carousel effect. As one scene ended at one side of the stage, another actor would be coming on starting the next scene at the other side. It took ages to explain to actors that they needn’t wait till everybody else was off before coming in. At the TNP, the stage was so wide a person could finish his last speech and then take about fifteen seconds to get off. Therefore, it was much better to let the actor in the following scene start speaking the moment the actor onstage finished. In this way cross cuts and dissolves could be achieved as well as the carousel effect. Actually Joan did it in her own little theatre. It was not just a question of the TNP. Of course, it did mean that the actors had to keep their wits about them and know the show inside out. There were members of the black company, particularly les Echos Noirs, who never learned their exits and entrances. They just followed the others or got pushed on by an actor who did know.

  This was also technique week, technique for the actors and for the scénographie, which was the posh new word for design. The actors’ technique consisted mainly of learning to hold conversations looking straight at the audience and not at the fellow actor. At the TNP, if you turned sideways, you were inaudible to half the house, despite le renforcing amplification system. This problem was easy enough for Jean-Pierre to surmount because Hammarskjöld was rather stand-offish and, in any case, preferred to indulge in monologues with God. It meant he could do a Hamlet downstage. Paul Bonifas, on the other hand, couldn’t or wouldn’t get the hang of it at all. He was the old actor playing Baron D’Auge. It seemed that he had worked mainly in films or little theatres and so preferred a more intimate style. In his first scene he interrogated a black priest. Joan felt he would be much stronger if he just stared out into the blue and asked the questions but old Paul insisted on turning to look at the priest. Joan, in fact, was right. By giving to the priest, Paul weakened himself.

  Distances were difficult to judge on the TNP stage. Only someone out front could do it. Onstage you could be diagonally six foot in front of another actor, yet for the audience, you would appear to be standing next to him. Actors were reluctant to take Joan’s word on trust when she spaced them out. They felt so awkward. Conversely, she couldn’t understand why they always clung together and seemed so stupid when directed to stand apart.

  She hated this positioning period. She felt that if actors’ minds and bodies were working properly they should be capable of shifting themselves but often a scene would come to a halt and an actor, like Gérard Lorin would wail: ‘Where do I go now?’ Wearily but effortlessly, Joan would direct him from the stalls. ‘Walk over to Jean Mondain, look over your shoulder, circle round Jean. Jean circle round Gérard and walk côté jardin (stage right) together, both looking over your shoulders.’ No good. He hadn’t a clue.

  Often towards the end of a rehearsal period with things getting difficult, Joan’s weak chest would play up and she would get bronchitis. At the TNP there was no exception but this time, there was no comforting Gerry to bring her those glasses of hot milk which she would hide behind the proscenium arch. This time she just had a temperature of over a hundred. Even so, with other things on her mind, she dashed up on to the stage and whisked through the movement herself. A beautiful piece of choreography, she was literally doing it in her sleep. Gérard, his forehead screwed up, concentrated as best he could. Still, he mucked it up. Joan pushed him through it. ‘You know how I enjoy this sort of thing,’ she muttered as she climbed off the stage.

  That weekend, Gerry came over with medicine to keep Joan going but he wasn’t happy.

  Next came the scénographie, the design. The slides came. The film came and so did the closed-circuit TV man. Miraculous. And the film was not bad.

  For some weeks, an old man had been pottering around the auditorium, sometimes sitting in on rehearsals, but nobody knew who he was. Eventually Joan turned to him and asked politely. He was the coordinator of the slides and film. No one at the TNP had bothered to introduce him. Well, there he was at his Waterloo and it was a losing battle from the start. Not a single slide came on at the right moment, while snatches of lively film would whirr on to the screens in the middle of an intimate conversation. Night after night, it was the same. Not a jot of improvement. The poor man had no sense of the show or of timing in general. He sat at the back tearing his hair out, panicking, and pushing the wrong buttons – frenzy. Apart from that, there were Marcel D’Orval, Hervé Sand and Jean Mondain who had to time speeches precisely to film and they weren’t getting much opportunity to rehearse. Funnily enough when they did do it, Marcel D’Orval was by far and away the best, and he was the oldest.

  It was an important scene in which he, as Rajat Asdal, an intermediary, speaks to Hammarskjöld on the telephone begging him to let the UN troops intervene and save Lumumba’s life. Hammarskjöld says: ‘No,’ and it’s one of the biggest decisions in the play. In writing it, Conor had muffed the whole thing by not putting Hammarskjöld on the stage. So Joan simply put him on film. You had four close-ups of Jean-Pierre turning round looking heaven-ward and finally walking off; very effective, but Marcel had to time his telephone conversation to finish with Hammarskjöld’s face leaving the screen. Amazingly he got it right and never lost it. As it happens, Jean-Pierre had asked him to come in during the filming to say the words while he reacted in close-up. It seemed a bit starry of him to ask an actor to come trailing in on a Saturday afternoon, only to feed him and not be in the film himself, but it paid off.

  Jean Mondain, after panicking at first, easily got his right. He thought he wouldn’t fit his words in but it was merely a question of starting the film a sentence later and all was well. Hervé Sand detested having the film because he thought it detracted from the actors. He was quite right; it dominated entirely, but variety was much needed. Hervé did not appreciate this and took any slip-up in the film as an opportunity to walk off the stage or play the rest of the scene in a flat voice.

  The weekend before the opening arrived and the coordinator man was still no use. What could be done? The actors were becoming impatient. They knew what they were doing but the slides and film were chaotic, not to mention the closed-circuit TV which was utterly hopeless and had to be scrapped. It needed special lighting and a far too expensive camera.

  Guy Hodgkinson had wanted to sack the coordinator man much earlier. Mark Pritchard had thought he might improve but by then it was too late. Ruaud and Savaron, head of lighting, were called in. Savaron blamed the equipment but everyone knew it wasn’t simply that. Joan snapped his head off but obliquely by saying that slides belonged to YOUNG people not OLD fuddy-duddies with no sense of rhythm. Needless to say, Savaron was an old man. Who could do the job? Joan suggested Fabrice Méchin, an assistant, who had been dragged off the show halfway through rehearsals to work on a play in the Salle Gémier. Ruaud said that Maurice Fourt, head electrician, would do it aided by some young man who was unknown to the company. OK, said Joan and Gerry but he had better be good. And indeed they both were good. The next show was technically spot on. It was the actors who were off. If only the TNP had given them Maurice Fourt in th
e first place.

  Marcel D’Orval was the first to start learning his lines. He’d known them for weeks. Paul Bonifas was the last to start. He had maintained that he was good and quick but the show was getting closer and closer to its first public performance and he hardly knew a word. What’s more, when he looked up from the text, he forgot all Joan’s direction. In the end, she told him to get a move on and learn his lines. He was quite insulted: nobody had ever told him that before. Over the next weekend, he did mug up but even after that, it was agony to watch him. He kept tripping over his words and clutching his head. It looked as if he wouldn’t make it to the first night.

  Despite all those run-throughs, the scene change interludes were still very slow. Granted, many actors had quick changes but there did seem to be time. Anyone going backstage and looking into the wings during a performance, would be confronted with this scene: actors chatting audibly, smoking and leaning against the projection towers, making the pictures on the screen wobble. When they had quick changes, they merely dawdled off the stage and climbed at a leisurely pace into their clothes. The quick change girls weren’t helping at all, nor were the TNP scene shifters. They stood there getting in the way. It was chaos, and Alain Wendling had said that all was fine.

  When Philippe Mulon was informed of this, he and the quick change girls felt insulted, but the next run-through was much quicker. Even so, however good the quick change girls became, a lot still depended on the actors. Quick change is really a way of thinking, a style of show, as at Danny La Rue’s. ‘No,’ Jean Mondain would say, ‘I haven’t time to change my trousers.’ He had minutes. It seemed that the actors thought it was humiliating to change costume and character quickly. They liked one grand role and no doubling.

  A telegram arrived. Conor Cruise O’Brien was coming back for what he thought was the first night. Actually it wasn’t because the TNP’s custom was to open for a week and then have the critics, so there was no proper première. Nevertheless, O’Brien was coming. Joan wrote a memo to Georges Wilson:

  J.L. to G.W.

  WELL, THIS TERRIBLE EXPERIENCE DRAWS TO ITS CLOSE, SO DO I. CONOR CRUISE O’BRIEN ARRIVES TODAY TO SEE HIS PLAY. IT WOULD HELP ME GREATLY IF HE SAT WITH YOU TONIGHT. IT WOULD HELP ME VERY MUCH IF IT WASN’T TOO NEAR ME AS I HAVE TO CONCENTRATE ON A DOZEN PROBLEMS AT ONCE. IF YOU COULD GIVE YOUR NOTES TO ME* NOT TO THE ACTORS IT WOULD PREVENT THE COLLAPSE OF WHAT LITTLE MORALE THE COMPANY HAS. I’M AFRAID THEY ARE THE MOST INSECURE PEOPLE I’VE EVER WORKED WITH. IT’S A GREAT SHAME THAT THE PLAY WAS SO DIFFICULT TO CRACK.

  AS EVER JL

  *PREFERABLY LATE TONIGHT OR TOMORROW BEFORE THE AFTERNOON’S FILAGE [run-through]. THERE IS A TREMENDOUS LOT OF WORK TO DO ON THE TECHNICAL SIDE YET.

  In Conor Cruise’s telegram, he asked, as usual, for hotel arrangements to be made and implied that he wanted to be met at the airport. He always sent his telegrams to Joan as if she were head of administration. The first telegram was acted on. The second one disappeared. Still, come the run-through, there he was with Georges Wilson and the two sat well apart from Joan. The first act didn’t go too badly. Conor took notes in a little book.

  During the interval he talked to Georges Wilson. It must have been an odd conversation because Wilson knew almost nothing about the show and couldn’t admit to having been thrown out of the theatre.

  When Conor wasn’t looking, Philippe Léotard asked Wilson what he thought of the show. ‘Don’t ask me,’ he said, ‘Do your own cooking.’

  After the performance, John Wells could be seen standing with Conor in the auditorium. They both looked severe. John asked for a script. As it happened, there were none, so to speak, because there were only individual scenes in different files. It would have been handy and not all that dishonest to tell Conor there was nothing for him to see. Nevertheless one was pieced together and given to him. He asked to have dinner with Joan. She said yes, at the same time arranging for John and Wole to be there too.

  By then, Joan regretted having involved Conor and his play at all. She would have preferred to have devised a ‘Let’s Go Congo’ show using research alone but, as she put it: ‘We had to have Conor because he was the only one actually there.’ Indeed his factual book To Katanga and Back had been very helpful, more help to Joan than the play.

  At dinner, Conor was in an extremely good mood. He’d only wanted to look at the script to check the French. Apart from that, he liked the production. ‘It’s going fine, you old playbreaker,’ he said. In a way, what else could he do? It wasn’t his play but, on the other hand, it was obviously much better because it was quicker, livelier and more opened out. How could you say no to that? Also you had Wole sitting there, kindly taking the blame for all alterations, knowing that Conor had entrusted the script to him on his previous visit and professed to respect him.

  The day after the first performance, Jean Ruaud and Georges Wilson appeared clutching each other like a nervous double act not quite sure whether to go onstage or not. Approaching the first person he saw, Wilson asked: ‘Is Joan here? It’s very urgent we see her. Tell her it’s nothing to do with, uh, what happened.’ The two withdrew.

  Joan did go and see them. The government, it seemed, was not too happy about the King of the Belgians appearing as a character in the play. Georges Wilson told her that he liked to keep in with the government because it was dangling a carrot in front of him: a large sum of money for improving the theatre. ‘Et je suis putain. What do you say “strumpet”?’ ‘Putain will do,’ answered Joan.

  To be precise, the government was anxious about the King in the prologue rather than in his other scene. So, could Joan just alter the prologue? Joan, for the time being, did nothing but when she found Conor in the restaurant that night, she told him about it to take his mind off criticising the play. It worked. ‘Not a word will I have changed. Take out the King of the Belgians and they can take the whole play off.’

  Joan implied that she could safely leave all that in Conor’s hands and off he went to chat with John Wells and Wole Soyinka. What fun he was having; all that scandal. Until now, his productions round the world had created no stir at all. John came over to Joan’s table. He was thrilled too. Taking the play off with lots of publicity would suit him perfectly. He could get back to London and carry on with his writing.

  It was the strangest scene at the Muniche, the late-night restaurant in the rue de Buci where Joan and Gerry ate. Helpfully, it was round the corner from the Louisiane. Many actors from other shows ate there too, including Delphine Seyrig and Sami Frey. That night, Wole, John and Nidal sat at one table, Joan and Gerry at another and, my goodness, there was Ruaud with his wife at another. Conor was somewhere between the three. He went to Ruaud and told him that he would withdraw the play if anything happened to the King of the Belgians. Ruaud came over to Joan’s table. Was he shocked? No. He agreed, of course. It looked as if he would enjoy the publicity too. For the rest of the evening, these characters moved from table to table, getting more and more excited. At 2.30 a.m., they went home feeling extremely pleased with themselves. Actually, John and Wole went off for a drink, which left Wole with a terrible headache when he came to work in the morning.

  The next day, Joan was in a totally different mood:

  I’m not going to close the play to please publicity seekers like John and Conor. There are the actors to consider. I don’t want Jean Mondain or Hervé Sand or anyone to be out of work. The King of the Belgians is not that important. It’s a subsidiary role, not worth taking a stand over.

  In point of fact, Jean Mondain and the rest of the cast were already paid up to the end of the month, so, in a way, they would not have lost out but Joan didn’t know that. In any case her tradition was, ‘The show must go on.’

  Overnight, she had devised a gag. Jacques Baillon, another of her Hammamet students, who was playing the King of the Belgians, would step forward and announce himself as the Comte de Guyot, aide to the King, and apologise for the absence of His Majesty. ‘He’s gone to a confe
rence at the Ministry of Culture but never mind. I write all his speeches anyway.’

  Joan was quite pleased with that because she thought it would make a big stir without taking the play off. She asked Jacques to come and see her as soon as possible. When he came, he was thrilled because it gave him the chance to clown about, rather than limit himself to the sepulchral booby he was playing. He would rehearse the prologue in the evening just before the show.

  By now the stage had been reached where Joan knew that if the show was to go ahead with the King of the Belgians still in it, the government would take it off. A tricky situation because, conversely, if Conor did not have his way, he would take it off. Joan steered through the day rehearsing other things.

  When it was time for the evening rehearsal Jacques David and Hervé Sand were having none of Joan’s new idea. They wanted to keep the King of the Belgians and they didn’t like the Comte de Guyot. They didn’t believe that leaving the King in the show would really close them down because they didn’t believe Georges Wilson was telling the truth.

  ‘Have you been shown an actual letter from the government?’

  ‘No,’ said Joan.

  ‘Well, there probably isn’t one. Georges Wilson’s just frightened.’

  The freshly Roneo-ed Comte de Guyot scripts were left strewn on the stage – and the company went out for a snack. Hervé and Jacques came up behind Joan. ‘We’ve been to admin. There has been a letter.’ Joan cursed. ‘I knew I should have rehearsed that scene. You shouldn’t trust actors to know things like that.’

  She wanted to go back and rehearse. Gerry said that it was too late and that they might as well eat. The two sat in a café but didn’t eat much. John Wells came over. Jacques Baillon came over. ‘We do? We don’t?’ Fernand Ghiot came over and started talking about the suit he was going to wear. All of them went back to the theatre. It really was too late; there was nothing anyone could do.