Joan Littlewood

by Peter Rankin

  Given Joan’s remark, it’s time to reflect on Murderous Angels. If one were to list a subject worth investigating, research, Joan’s long experience of agitprop in which history is made clear in a dance, and slides projected on to a screen, it sounds like Oh What a Lovely War. It also describes Murderous Angels but what different outcomes.

  Joan’s personality was so powerful that she could give the impression that she always knew what she was doing and that she could do everything. All you needed for a show was her. The truth, learned on this show, was not so simple.

  Her experience in Paris revealed to those who hadn’t realised, that, in order to achieve what she wanted, she needed help and lots of it, specifically protection, organization, and even guidance. At work, she could be tough and ruthless. In the case of Murderous Angels, her grit in the face of the actors’ eroded concentration, the cause of which was alcohol, drug taking and lack of employment, was enviable, frightening and heart-breaking. At organising she was not bad, but her plans were so exquisitely intricate that people who didn’t understand them could easily trample on them. A simpler plan made by someone else could be more effective.

  And so the penny drops about the division of labour between Joan and Gerry. It had come about oddly because it had come about through the lack of Gerry. This was a lesson in how an artist, even a great one, cannot do it all by him or herself.

  Coming into the echoing foyer during the early days of rehearsals, Joan used to sing: ‘Oh bury me not at the TNP.’ She nearly was.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  REDEVELOPMENT

  While Joan was away in France, Gerry had been going to his office at the Theatre Royal every day, not because he had work to do but because he had to make his presence felt. Plans for redeveloping Stratford, drawn up shortly after the war, were going ahead. It was 1971. The houses opposite the theatre entrance were coming down, as was Angel Lane. The market would be moving into a new shopping mall, when it was built. In the meantime, the land around the theatre was one big building site and, if anything, the theatre, right in the middle of it, was an inconvenience. Gerry was making his daily appearance so that no wrecking ball accidentally on purpose knocked into one of its walls.

  This was also the year Philip Hedley directed that other production of The Marie Lloyd Story, the one at Lincoln with Jean Boht as Marie. It wasn’t all he was doing. Together with Oscar Lewenstein, he was fighting at the Arts Council for the Theatre Royal to receive a proper grant and, where Gerry had been struggling, the two of them succeeded. In fairness to Gerry, he was the first to admit that dealing with the Arts Council was not his forte. As for Joan, on the rare occasions that she attended a Theatre Workshop/Arts Council meeting, she gave the representative two fingers.

  The result of Philip’s and Oscar’s efforts was that Gerry was able to announce a new season starting in 1972. With Gerry and Joan, however, it was unlikely to be plain sailing. Joan couldn’t ignore the building site. For her, the summer of 1967 flowed straight into 1971. However, the space she was dealing with was not the unofficial rubbish dump at the end of Salway Road but a much bigger one that started beneath her nose, as she looked down from the window of her office at the top of the theatre.

  Enlisting anyone who was interested, her usual way of doing things, she began to organise another playground. Thus, once more, her ability to excite people came together with the youthful enthusiasm of others. This time it was Mike McCarthy – he was thinking of becoming an actor – and Jenny King, who saw Joan’s colourful plans as a gauntlet thrown down in the face of Newham’s unexciting ones. Today, Mike looks after poets and comedians. Jenny is a theatre producer.

  ‘Oh, not more charity. I had enough of that with my old man.’ This was Gerry’s attitude to Joan’s work on the playground. What with the newly acquired grant, he had the job of dragging her into the theatre to do plays.

  Redevelopment being all around and also one of the themes of Sparrers Can’t Sing, he revived it, this time, with songs. It meant, though, that he had to find someone to write them. Photos had been appearing in newspapers of a comically forlorn figure outside the court in Bow Street with the insides of his pockets pulled out. It was Lionel Bart. He was bankrupt and it was to him Gerry turned for those songs. ‘That spell Joan put on me,’ said Lionel, ‘I have to break it.’ It’s true too. Joan had said that Twang would be the end of him and, indeed, nothing good had happened to him after that.

  He didn’t quite write the songs. He took old tunes from unperformed shows of his and put new lyrics to them. Even when drunk he could always come up with lyrics. In fact he talked in them and, annoyingly for the less talented, they were perfectly usable. The resulting show pleased Gerry because he felt it had a touch of the old Joan and also because it was a formula. Take a subject that concerns the local people – in this case, high risers versus two-up, two-downs – add songs and you will attract a local audience. The Londoners, as the show was retitled, did just that.

  Lionel was actually going to be in it, singing Joan’s favourite song, ‘Mirror Man’, but, running down a flight of stairs from the upper part of the set, he panicked, jumped and cracked his ankle. The backstage scene of him lying in the wings crying out: ‘Bring me a crutch and I’ll go on,’ while his new friend, Kirk Douglas, leant over him – Hardy to his Nelson – was a memory that could always cheer Joan up. She particularly liked the moment when the actress, Valerie Walsh, ‘Practical Val,’ she used to call her, actually went to look for a crutch.

  The show that she enjoyed the most that year, at least the rehearsing of it, was a revival of The Hostage. Ray Stark, the Hollywood producer, had been round all the people, each of whom thought they had exclusive rights to it, and bought them out. He was ready to start filming. A script had been written by John Osborne but he hadn’t got the feel of Brendan, so Joan was going to do it.

  Her idea was to build a set that wasn’t theatrical, like Sean Kenny’s original, but one that was realistic so that filming could take place on it after the show’s run. To that purpose, the director, Maurice Hatton, who had helped Joan with her Fun Palace film, brought in Tony Woolland, a set designer accustomed to doing films. As she had done for Joan on Broadway, Patience Collier came back to play Miss Gilchrist. Also taking up their old parts were James Booth and Max Shaw. It was all of this that put Joan in a good mood.

  Whereas the 1959 production had been sharp and cartoony, ‘a happy jabber of styles’ wrote Ken Tynan, this one was Chekhovian and three-dimensional. Copper-bottomed, you might say. Gerry hated it and out again came his comment, ‘The dead hand of the British film industry.’

  During the run, there were two incidental delights. Continuing Joan’s idea of rolling entertainment, Ken Campbell’s Roadshow performed outside the theatre before the main show. That was ‘Sensation Seekers’ invited to watch nails hammered up noses, Marcel Steiner’s Smallest Theatre in the World and ferrets going down Sylvester McCoy’s trousers. Ken himself was not there at the time but, years later, on hearing talk of no Fun Palace, said: ‘It doesn’t matter. The Fun Palace was wherever Joan was.’

  The second delight, though not the actors’ – they were furious – was a surprise appearance by Marty Feldman. He came on as a Russian sailor, picked up Jean Boht playing an old prostitute, flung her over his shoulder and took her to an upstairs bedroom.

  Also during the run, Ray Stark went for tea with Princess Margaret. On hearing of the proposed film, she said that it might be considered tactless, given that the Troubles in Northern Ireland, which had gone quiet in 1958, were not quiet in 1972. As it happened, the Theatre Royal had received two bomb threats, not that Ray Stark was aware of that. It was Princess Margaret’s observation that put an end to the film.

  Joan and Gerry went for a holiday, a better one this time. It was to the Camargue. Even so, Joan climbed on a horse that bolted. The two returned, Joan bubbling over with an idea for a new show: package holidays. So excited was she that she persuaded Gerry to drive straight from
the airport to Frank Norman’s place. He could write the show and Lionel Bart could write the songs. Gerry, seeing that the subject was topical and believing in package holidays because at least they got the working class out of the UK, had a huge poster put up on the underground, ‘Frank Norman and Lionel Bart together again.’ Not a word had been written. Not a tune had been hummed and neither Joan, nor Gerry, nor Frank nor Lionel had ever been on a package holiday.

  A company was quickly assembled, some old some new, and Frank came to the green room to read out twelve pages of his proposed show, O Bleedin’ Lé. There was plenty of laughter, except at a joke about turds floating in the sea and some anti-German cracks, but everyone thought those would go in the next draft. They didn’t and Frank’s script was dropped, not that he was told. Every now and again, he would appear wondering what was going on.

  What was going on was Gerry rapidly bringing in Alan Klein who had written the musical, What A Crazy World. Gerry, who had produced it, had faith in Alan who, as it turned out, had been on a package holiday. The donkey work on the show that became Costa Packet was done by him, both songs and dialogue, with Joan doing her bit as usual. Lionel, his powers of concentration badly eroded, produced one song, ‘I Want My Bed’, which came from the musical, Gulliver’s Travels, another of his unperformed works.

  The style Joan had in mind was that of the zany revues the French comedian, Robert Dhéry, used to put on. It was one of his shows that she had seen on Murderous Angels’ press night. Dhéry was the first to have monks yanked up into the air by bell ropes, not Dave Allen. It was a style that proved elusive, however, and no one involved in the show was happy with it. Nevertheless, Joan’s sleight of hand had the critics writing good reviews and, as it was a show that fitted the formula, a local audience made it a hit. Gerry was proved right.

  Joan’s idea for before the show was a tour bus that would take members of the audience around Stratford. A guide would pick out the dreariest of landmarks and talk about them as if they were of great beauty and historical importance. Although it didn’t happen, it’s worth jumping forward to what goes on nowadays: pop-up theatre, site-specific shows, plays put on in hotel bedrooms and the backs of moving vans. Joan was thinking about those 42 years ago.

  Having announced herself as good at explosions, Joan set one up: The Body Show. She saw it at the ICA and thought it would be good for Stratford. Janet Street-Porter had thought of it. The person who’d make it happen was Gordon Deighton. Joan introduced a device similar to one she had used before on The Merry Roosters’ Panto – the double booking.

  By accident, George Sewell and Victor Spinetti were booked to appear on the same evening, George to present his wrestlers, Victor to present his model girls. Neither of them was prepared to back down. They put on their shows at the same time. It worked a treat and ended up with the models intertwined with the wrestlers. A mixture of King’s Road and East End packed out the house but not before all of them had spent time in the foyer, sampling the cosmetics and scents that were on display there. It was exactly what Joan wanted.

  It was, however, for one night only. Organising explosions for several nights in a row was much harder, as Joan found out with a topical revue called Nuts.

  The idea was to have, first of all, a store of sketches rehearsed by a small group of actors. Then, each day, Joan would choose which to perform and intersperse them with hot news items and guest appearances by celebrities doing their party pieces. The news items were preferably ones that journalists were unable to get into the papers or on to television. These would be backed by pictures, recorded that day, and shown on a huge screen. It was a lot of work because you were making a new show every day. Joan had to spend most of her time on the telephone.

  The pictures on the screen were achieved by a gadget called an eidophor. This was a present from Gerry to Joan and she loved it. However, it was huge, hard to move and not easy to operate. On many nights, Nuts, which had the unknown Elaine Paige in it, went off like a damp squib.

  Joan’s happiest memory of it was Myvanwy Jenn, who had driven The Sunday Times critic, Harold Hobson, wild with her singing of ‘Keep the Home Fires Burning’ in Oh What a Lovely War, stepping on to the stage to sing ‘Vilja o Vilja’ and being immediately followed by a man leaping up to say: ‘I want to tell you why I became a communist.’ It was a perfect cut and a good example of Joan’s figure of eight.

  By giving Joan the eidophor, Gerry was going along with Nuts but, up in the green room, during a rehearsal for the sketches, he insisted that the engine of a theatre was a play. Joan said she wasn’t interested in plays. When making a remark like that, she could be so forceful that nobody would argue. John Antrobus, who was not only writing some of the sketches but appearing in them, did argue. He said that he was very interested in plays.

  Gerry had other worries. He knew that when the redevelopment of the area was complete, the theatre would be overshadowed. Bearing this in mind, he instructed an architect to come up with designs that would not only improve the theatre’s interior, but make the exterior look like The Golden Nugget in Las Vegas. Joan, as with the programme design for Mrs Wilson’s Diary, was sniffy. She needn’t have worried. The Borough of Newham was only interested in knocking the theatre down and putting a new one in an office block.

  Fed up, Gerry handed the theatre over to Ken Hill, the author of Forward Up Your End, and motored down the rivers of France to Marseilles in his new boat, the ErmeX, a patrol boat. Joan went with him. Four months later, leaving the ErmeX behind, they returned and Joan went back to working on the playground where she created a zoo and held an Easter Fair. For that, Gerry gave her a cherry tree.

  In the spring of 1975, it was time for the ErmeX to come back to the UK. Joan didn’t want to go but knowing that Gerry, on his own, was not a good idea, asked two people at the theatre if they would accompany him. They couldn’t; they were busy. Gerry went on his own. Driving the ErmeX up the Rhône from Marseilles, he didn’t feel too great and stopped off at Valence for a check-up. Keen to make progress, though, he discharged himself and carried on up the Rhône. The next day, at Vienne, he disembarked to buy petrol and provisions. Within sight of the garage, he collapsed and died. He was a few days short of his 52nd birthday.

  His prediction that he would not live to see old age had come true. Joan’s prediction that she would die shortly afterwards, though she heartily wished it would, did not come true. She had a strength that Gerry didn’t have.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  KEEPING BUSY

  As Gerry died, so did the flat at Blackheath. Only he could keep all those tops spinning. to most people this was not immediately obvious as his memorial was held in a tent in the garden. Joan wrote and directed and so elegant was the flow of it that Harold Hobson wrote a piece in The Sunday Times, almost as if it were a show.

  While it was taking place, Joan stayed in the kitchen. She had, however, made a recording of John Donne’s poem, ‘A Valediction: forbidding mourning’. This was played at the end and it brought Joan and Gerry’s relationship full circle. Donne was her favourite poet and it was a Nonesuch copy of his verse that she had given Gerry as her first present to him when he was a teenager. Although there was a touch of Agatha Christie about the reading – think of the scene in which a recording of a dead person is played – it was a reminder of how well Joan spoke verse.

  Gerry’s death knocked the wind out of Joan’s sails, knocked her sideways, knocked her flat, turned her into a shadow of her former self, turned her into a ghost, turned her into someone else. She promised herself that she would never set foot inside the Theatre Royal again, and would never direct another play.

  Right away, though, she instructed Ken Hill to do the classics. This is why she appeared to turn into someone else. The classics had not been a regular feature at Stratford East since the mid-Fifties. It was a shock. You had to understand that, just as Gerry was a shield for Joan, so were the classics and Gerry wasn’t there anymore.

&nbs
p; Some months later, Alain Guémard, the young Frenchman who’d been disappointed that Joan hadn’t done The Rabelais Show, found her a course of talks she could give in Aix-en-Provence. At least they would get her away from the flat at Blackheath which needed to be sold. She went and talked about the use of verbs, how they contained action. No sooner were these talks over, than she went on a pilgrimage to Vienne and stayed there. Gerry had died intestate, so for a while she had very little money. A cleaner at the hotel where she was staying, Odette Estève, invited her to her home.

  It was a dark, stuffy little flat that looked out on to a dirty stream at the front and a cliff face at the back. Between the flat and the stream was a narrow, twisting road where lorries changed gear and shone their headlights into the room where Joan was sleeping. Even though she had no money, there was something annoying about her punishing herself like this. Odette had to live there because she was poor. Joan, you felt, didn’t and, besides, Odette often said that her dream was to move to Grenoble. But then again, Odette provided what Joan absolutely needed, dinner cooked by someone else and a bed for the night.

  Remorse swamped her. Why had she been so selfish, so wilful? Why had she done nothing for Gerry when he had done everything for her? Why had she stayed on the playground which was only a whim, anyway? Why had she not been on the boat with him? Why wasn’t she dead? To the last one, Ken Tynan gave an answer:

  20 March 1976

  Spinetti says you are going to throw yourself into the Rhône, but I don’t believe a word of it, and in any case it would be exceedingly unfair of you: I insist that you go on suffering like everybody else. Why should you be let off school while the rest of us are kept in?