by Peter Rankin
And nothing was exactly what happened; no riots and no tear gas. Conor had met M. Antoine de Clermont-Tonnerre from the Ministry of Arts and settled everything. Jean Ruaud sat in on the conversation and, as an ex-diplomat, was deeply impressed by Conor’s performance. Clermont-Tonnerre or Cauchemar-Tonnerre (Nightmare-Thunder) as Joan called him, had said that putting the King of the Belgians in the play would cause uproar and upset French relations with Belgium. Conor answered that the only uproar was in the process of being created by M. Clermont-Tonnerre. The King of the Belgians was a small part that would, otherwise, go unremarked. If it came to it, Conor, had positively white-washed the King. End of argument. M. Clermont-Tonnerre went home.
Conor came on the first night with his wife, Maire, who was all done up for a première, though it wasn’t really one at all. Having said that it was terrific, they went off, not to be seen again.
Part Five
After this non-first night, Joan brought in Conor’s notes and addenda. They were all fiddly bits which the actors didn’t appreciate at all. It showed that Conor really had no sense of theatre. For example, there was a little scene where Tshombé announced on the radio: ‘The battle for Elizabethville continues!’ followed by a direct cut to the other side of the stage where a girl came wafting on at a cocktail party. Conor wanted to put in a few words of explanation after ‘continues!’ which ruined the cut. Another load of freshly Roneo-ed sheets lay scattered on the green room floor.
At Stratford East during runs, Joan had warm-ups every evening. If she was not there, somebody else, like the musical director, would take them. When scenes became bad she rehearsed them during the afternoon, sometimes swapping actors around in their parts. This prevented boredom and over-confidence and kept the blood circulating.
At the TNP, although the show was officially open, the critics weren’t coming for another week – and therefore it was a good opportunity to do some polishing. Joan rehearsed with Wole and Nidal during the day but two actors also in the scene, Marcelline (who was playing Lumumba’s wife) and Sidiki (who was playing a house boy), didn’t turn up, thus ruining the evening’s performance because they were not in the know. Joan screamed at Marcelline: ‘You’re paid to come, so come. If you don’t, I’ll cut the role.’ Marcelline took it very coolly. She came the next day but, by then, she was fed up because she thought that Wole and Nidal were arranging things behind her back. Sidiki was also of this opinion.
Hervé blustered. He didn’t like being ordered into rehearsals after the show was open. ‘If you ask us nicely, perhaps we’ll come but you must realise you only have the right to call us twice a week and only then for cast changes or pulling the show up, not for script changes. We don’t want any more. We’re just beginning to get relaxed and secure in our roles!’ ‘But I don’t want them to be relaxed and secure,’ said Joan. ‘That’s what I always try to avoid. They are babies. The script changes are minute but Hervé goes off the deep end.’
Gerry asked Jean Ruaud whether it was true about only rehearsing twice a week after the opening. ‘Not at all,’ was the answer. ‘Until the critics come, you can rehearse them full-time.’ Fernand Ghiot and another actor said they had work elsewhere. All Joan could do was rehearse the members of the black company who turned up but even Georges Anderson, who admitted that rehearsals were badly needed, arrived late the following day. Most of the work had to be done in notes.
Joan had been writing notes for some time, in fact ever since the run-throughs started. She did them during the show, a couple of words per page, without looking down. Then at night or the next morning she wrote them out ready for the typist who, when she had finished, would pin them up on a board. As the typist also had to translate, this didn’t work so well. Joan’s notes could be very tough but at the same time, lively and amusing; for example, a note to Nidal: ‘You sound as if you’re wanking a snail.’ This one didn’t have to be translated as Nidal’s English was very good. The rest did and how cold and cruel they looked typed out in humourless French.
One day, Hélène Legrand, a black actress, came rushing into the middle of a rehearsal saying that she wouldn’t be publicly insulted. The note on the board said: ‘Don’t come on like a stupid, boring actress.’ Joan was very annoyed with the translator/typist. It should have been a private note. ‘I wouldn’t write that on the general notes for Jean-Pierre Aumont, so Hélène shouldn’t be treated differently.’ And it is true that Joan did present her notes in different ways. Some were put in envelopes and this one should have been.
Unable to rehearse, Joan carried on writing notes furiously. Every morning at the Louisiane, there she’d be in her little room, sitting on the floor or on the bed, cross-legged and rather bad-tempered. Gerry would be there too, unable to leave his chair for fear of disturbing the notes which covered every part of the floor. He was desperate to take Joan out but there never seemed to be any time.
To make matters worse, Tom Driberg flew in. Joan would dearly have liked to spend time with him but there were always those wretched notes.
It got very bad one morning. Tom was downstairs in his room waiting to be taken out. Joan was sitting in her pyjamas with acres of notes to do and Gerry was shifting around restlessly:
Leave me alone, Gerry. Take Tom out. You don’t need me. You’re old enough to go out on your own. I can’t work with you brooding there. You’re too big for this room. Get another room. If you’d just leave me alone, I’ll get through much quicker.
At about lunchtime, Joan agreed to go out. Tom was sitting down in the hall his impatience aggravated by having recently trapped his foot in a lift door. ‘She said she’d be free all day. I suppose this is the penalty for being acquainted with genius.’
Joan came down. It was a dull day. Gerry drove out to the Bois de Boulogne. All the way there, Joan wanted to stop at the first café available but Gerry was looking for better things. ‘What’s that?’ said Joan pointing at a huge posh joint by a lake. It turned out to be a banqueting hall that you hired. ‘Well, at least give me my attaché case, so I can get on with my notes while you drive.’
Because of the panic, they ate at Le Grand Cascade, a lone building in the Bois de Boulogne with a huge fan-shaped glass cover to the entrance. It was beautiful, dull and expensive; not at all what Gerry had in mind but panic really had taken hold. All through the meal, Joan was desperate to get away but when she went to fetch her coat, Gerry, slightly drunk, was arguing over the bill. ‘He’s making a complete fool of himself,’ she said, pacing up and down the vestibule absolutely livid.
‘Have you noticed the doorman?’ asked Tom. ‘He’s rather nice.’
Nobody, apart from Tom, was in the mood for looking at doormen.
‘But you should. You should look carefully at everybody you see.’
‘You drunken lout,’ shouted Joan. Gerry had just come from paying the bill, ‘I’m going to be late for rehearsal. I’ll never go out with you again.’
Gerry drove rapidly through the Bois de Boulogne. ‘You know I like to be at rehearsals a quarter of an hour early,’ said Joan, ‘I need time to change my shoes and get myself in the right frame of mind. I’m supposed to be sacking half the black company for turning up late and here I am, late myself.’
Gerry pointed out, quite reasonably, that none of the cast would be there on time as they never had been. Joan realised the truth of this and became a little quieter. ‘But there’s a whole pile of notes that have to be translated before this evening.’ She’d started again. Tom, who had no interest in the matter, tried to soothe her but he soothed irritatingly because he was not involved, nor did he care.
When they arrived at the theatre, they were five minutes late and Gerry was proved right. Not a single member of the company was there. In the evening, Joan was, once more, quite calm.
Over dinner, Joan gave Tom the King of the Belgians story for the papers. He was thrilled but the following day, the story was already in The Times. Conor had put it there: such a disappointment and
it was only The Times Diary. Tom could have got a much better spread in the Evening Standard. At the end of Conor’s piece, it said that the Belgians had warned the French government not to put in the King but when the Belgian embassy was contacted, it claimed it hadn’t said a word. Conor also proudly stated that M. Clermont-Tonnerre had asked him to treat the incident as if it hadn’t occurred. He of course had answered no.
It was time for publicity, the ordinary kind. Newspapers wanted to do pre-opening stories while TV and radio wanted to do interviews. Jean-Pierre Aumont was very conscientious and did several articles and interviews, thus helping to make up for the lack of stories from Joan. Others who helped out were Wole, John Wells, Lydia Ewandé (who would eventually go to work with Peter Brook), and Hélène Legrand: a good little team that could be switched on to any spare reporter hanging about the theatre.
Philippe Mulon, the stage manager, would occasionally stun the company by announcing the presence of a TV film crew in the middle of a difficult rehearsal, prompting Joan to say that the TNP paid more attention to publicity than to the actual show. A compromise was reached. Filming could take place in the green room. The Echos Noirs suddenly came very much to the fore by doing half their cabaret act for the cameras. Little did the film crew know that none of these songs were in the show.
One Figaro Littéraire journalist managed to sneak into the theatre for ten minutes before being thrown out. Out of his short stay, he made a half-page spread.
The press night, which was not the critics’ night but the night the press took photos, was great fun. The actors, cheered by the clicking and flashing all along the front, gave a very respectable performance. For once, there seemed to be some hope for the show. Jean-Pierre was floating in the clouds. He had a handful of monologues downstage centre and so it was very easy for him to pose and lengthen any speech if he thought that the cameramen had missed an angle.
One line, ‘Mort, je t’attends avec impatience’ (Death I await you with impatience), which he normally threw away, suddenly became three times as long. ‘Mort (click, click, click, flash) je t’attends . . . (flash, flash, click) avec impatience.’ It is a line any actor would be tempted to make the most of but the way Jean-Pieere had slid elegantly over it had been so admirable in its restraint. Henceforth, he stretched it out every night to the point that anyone watching would think he’d never finish.
Until the last, Joan was still making alterations but only through the notes, so one evening, Fernand Ghiot received a note saying that Jacques Baillon would be coming on with him as the aide to the Russian ambassador. Joan had found that Fernand’s ambassador had become slow and unfunny. He needed a boost. Jacques went on, paced up and down, looked critically at Lumumba’s house and added weight to Fernand’s official statements with the occasional ‘Da, da,’ or ‘Nyet, nyet.’ It was outrageous because Fernand didn’t know he was going to do it, but it was extremely funny.
Come the interval, Fernand was standing outside Joan’s room. She hadn’t arrived yet. When she did, he was off: ‘If Jacques Baillon comes on stage one more time . . .’ Joan answered him good-humouredly but then suddenly Gerry’s voice raised itself above both of them. ‘How dare you speak to Joan like that. How dare you!’ And roaring like a lion, he chased after Fernand who was by then moving quite rapidly and calling for the police. Joan dragged Gerry into her room. ‘Gerry, you mustn’t get yourself worked up like that. It’s not worth it.’ She sat him down and smoothed his brow. ‘It’s been like this all the time we’ve been here, nothing but rudenesss.’ She was delighted.
From the tone of Fernand’s voice, it sounded like he would leave if Jacques went on stage again. In fact, he was merely trying to announce that he would be resuming his Russian accent, which Joan had told him to stop doing because he was sounding so artifical. At the end of the show, Joan found Jacques in the green room. With a mischievous smile, she shook his hand. He apologised for what he had done but it really had livened up a dull scene. It might have been even livelier if Fernand had hit Jacques, which is what he’d nearly done as they left the stage together.
The next day, Fernand was still there. Jacques apologised to him and remained in the scene. Joan explained to Fernand that if he had bothered to study a real Russian for his accent instead of doing a comic opera generalisation, maybe he would have been allowed to keep it.
Tuesday night, the night the critics were coming, arrived. During the afternoon, Joan worked as usual, knowing that she would not be seeing the show in the evening. Gerry, who had been wanting to get her away from the TNP ever since the onset of her bronchitis, had booked tickets, to cheer her up, for Robert Dhéry’s latest musical, Vos Gueules les Mouettes! (Shut up, you Seagulls!).
At 7.30 p.m. it was time for Gerry’s high tea but Joan spent ages going round the dressing rooms giving personal notes. It was goodbye but she couldn’t say it because the cast was expecting her to be there.
Five to eight and she and Gerry were leaving the theatre when she bumped into an actor, Guy Michel, dolled up in a dark suit and carrying a bunch of flowers. ‘Isn’t it ridiculous? I’ve heard of flowers for a leading lady but somebody has sent some to me! And I don’t know who it is. You’re not going, are you?’
‘No, no,’ answered Joan, ‘just for something to eat.’ She walked on. ‘The lies I have to tell.’
Out in the Trocadéro, Joan caught sight of an old friend, Claude Plançon, who used to be the boss of the Théâtre des Nations at which Theatre Workshop had enjoyed so much success. ‘If only we’d had Claude on this job, then we’d have been all right,’ Joan had sighed during rehearsals. Well, there he was, a tired, hollow-cheeked little man. Joan and he embraced. ‘I never go out to the theatre these days,’ he said, ‘but I’ve come out for you.’ Again, she said that she would be there after the show, this time, genuinely wanting to be. ‘Doesn’t he look ill?’ she remarked as she and Gerry continued on their way.
Back at the theatre, Wole announced that he was going to make Lumumba severe. What could that mean? The show wasn’t very good that night. It was flaccid, but the big disaster was Wole.
Conor, in his original version, had explicitly shown that Patrice Lumumba was having an affair with his secretary. However, after the objection from the black company Joan had shaken things up. She introduced Pauline Lumumba, his wife, who was never in the play. ‘I’m sure Patrice could cope with two women. Wole can.’ And so, during Wole’s three weeks of rehearsal, Joan built up the Lumumba household. Sidiki was the servant. Nidal was the secretary, Salma, and Hélène Legrand was Pauline’s companion, while Denis Fleurot, another Hammamet student, played the baby, wailing quite convincingly behind a screen. It was all jolly and cosy. It was also supposed to be sexy with Wole hugging his wife one second and goosing his secretary the next.
When the Russian ambassador arrived, Patrice pretended to be asleep and snored. Nidal fluttered around trying to keep a serious face and wake him. As she faced the ambassador, earnestly pointing out that the prime minister was exhausted by the crisis, Patrice was tickling her bottom with his toe. That Tuesday night, when the Russian ambassador was announced, Wole walked off the stage. There was a long pause during which nothing happened and then he walked on again from behind the screen, wearing a respectable grey jacket. It was boring; all the fun had gone.
That night after the Robert Dhéry show, Joan and Gerry went to the brasserie, La Coupole, on the Left Bank. There, Joan heard what Wole had done. She was very angry. ‘And on the first night too. I don’t know what’s come over Wole since he was in prison. He used to be such fun. And now, he’s so puritanical, the hypocrite.’ She gave instructions that he should go back to what was rehearsed. ‘He’s not allowed to change the production,’ said Gerry. ‘If he doesn’t,’ continued Joan, ‘it means he’s just another unruly spade.’
The next day, Joan visited a few art galleries and then, together with Gerry, caught a flight to London.
The reviews were not good. Fortunately for Jean-Pierre
, he came out of it well. ‘A splendidly sober and dignified perfomance but he has not the text to get his teeth into.’ So, it was with a certain amount of equanimity he was able to say: ‘I knew it all along. We should have had someone like Jean-Paul Sartre.’ Well, whatever people thought about Sartre as a writer, it was difficult to see him sitting in on improvisations and going off to write material based on what he saw.
Some of the reviews were plain chauvinistic like: ‘So Georges Wilson decides to have a season of modern plays but why couldn’t he choose a French one?’ It was almost enough to make one feel sorry for Wilson.
Colette Aubriant, the green-lidded publicity lady, sat in her office surrounded by papers. ‘Jamais au TNP un spectacle aussi médiocre,’ said one. It got rather boring after that. ‘What was it like for Tom Paine?’ (the previous show) asked an actor, ‘Oh, much worse,’ said Colette. ‘You were lucky to get off so lightly. Last night you had a curtain-call. Tom Paine was whistled off the stage.’
Wole, though asked, did not go back to what was rehearsed and the scene remained dull. Paul Bonifas, towards the end of the run, fell ill and was replaced by Philippe Léotard. It all happened so quickly that, for his first performance, Philippe had to go on with the book. It was a Sunday matinee and the company’s spirits were low. They had been for some time. But then, who should come round afterwards but the grande dame of the French theatre, Edwige Feuillère. In a natty grey suit, looking not at all the grande dame, she went round every dressing room and complimented every actor. Whether she meant it or not was, by then, irrelevant. She was a tonic, no, a glass of champagne. You wished she could have been there every night.
Murderous Angels brought Joan to a point where she found herself saying something no one had heard her say before. It happened one evening, late in the rehearsal period, when Gerry was driving her back to the Louisiane. ‘Everything I have done away from you has failed,’ she said. ‘The film, Twang, and now this.’ To that, she added the unrealised Fun Palace of which she said: ‘I suppose all I can do is grow a show.’