A superb run of seeing amazing productions started to break down just a little with this one.
Again a Saturday evening, again with Bobbie. My log says the production was good. It also says:
Suzan Sylvester was indisposed that day, so we saw Michelle Evans understudy the lead
Tis pity that, as I think Suzan Sylvester must have been a very good Annabella opposite Rupert Graves as Giovanni. I do remember Bobbie and I feeling that the understudy did well, though.
Not one of Eugene O’Neill’s greatest plays, but my log suggests that Bobbie and I both found this production very good…
…and why shouldn’t we. Vanessa Redgrave & Timothy Dalton, with support from Amanda Boxer, Malcolm Tierney and several other good names. David Thacker directed it.
This was, in fact, a West End transfer of a much-lauded Young Vic production; the UK premier of this play. Bobbie and I couldn’t get in at the Young Vic but got in early during the transfer, so saw the original Young Vic cast/production.
Bobbie and I were on a bit of a roll, theatre-wise, at the start of that year, seeing some great productions. This was certainly one of them.
Lindsay Duncan was a most memorable Maggie The Cat and Ian Charleson was superb as Brick; tragically Charleson died just a couple of years after this production. The cast also included Eric Porter, Alison Steadman, Henry Goodman…plus many other fine performers. Howard Davies directed.
The Lyttelton is not my favourite place for this sort of play, but somehow this one seemed to work in that space. I seem to recall it received superb notices and for good reason.
Michael Billington loved this production – his review clipped below:
There’s little on-line about this particular production, given its antiquity, but if you have no idea even what the piece looks/feels like, here is a clip of Paul Newman and Elisabeth Taylor from the 1950’s film version:
…while the following clip is from a subsequent National theatre production of Cat:
https://youtu.be/GobBM0Tt0j4
Anyway, the Lindsay Duncan & Ian Charleson version will live long in my memory. Bobbie’s too, I’ll guess. I’d better ask her.
I rated this play/production superb in my log – I remember it well and fondly.
Jim Broadbent and Linda Bassett were both outstanding – I think this might have been the first time I saw either of them in the theatre and it was, I think, my first experience of seeing an Athol Fugard play performed. If so, it was the first of many in all three cases.
The play is about a Russian soldier hiding in a pig sty for many years after the war and possible recriminations for his desertion are over. No doubt it is meant to be a parable with relevance to the Afrikaner position in South Africa.
Frankly, I found it hard to engage too deeply with the parable at the time, but did think it was an interesting and entertaining play, especially in the hands of the talented cast.
Unusually for productions that please me so much, Fugard himself directed this one – I’m not keen on the idea of playwrights directing their own work and usually detect some untrammelled egotism in such productions, but I think Fugard might be an exception to the “don’t direct your own plays” rule of thumb.
Did Bobbie enjoy this one as much as I did? I think so, at the time, but whether it stuck so long in her memory as it did mine is a question I’ll have to ask her.
I’ve either mislaid or never had the programme for this one, sadly, so I needed to do a bit of on-line searching.
The log makes it clear that i went to see this play with Bobbie and that we both thought it was “really good”.
I do remember enjoying it and I especially remember an early scene in which Maggie Smith, as a tour guide, starts making up the history when her memory fails her and/or the reality doesn’t seem interesting enough.
These days I quite often hear the Lord’s tour guides explaining the history of real tennis to a tour group while I play. Sometimes they are pretty accurate and sometimes they indeed dwell into fiction. On one recent occasion (February 2019) they told the group that the charming woman I was playing against, whose handicap is some 10 points less impressive than my modest handicap, is a former open champion and one of the finest players in the world. We both lifted our performances a little to try and impress.
“Fantasy floods in where fact leaves a vacuum”, as Lettice puts it in the play, Lettice and Lovage, which is the very thing I am digressing away from writing about here.
Apparently it opened in October 1987 so we got in fairly early in its long West End run. It was at the Globe Theatre – i.e. the West End Globe, not the Shakespeare facsimile thing that didn’t yet exist in 1988…obvs.
By all accounts it was a big hit – hence the long run and subsequent Broadway run too.
Maggie Smith was terrific as was Margaret Tyzack as her foil/nemesis. I don’t in truth remember what the supporting cast was like – probably just fine. Michael Blakemore directed it, which is usually a very good sign.
By all accounts, including his own, Shaffer wrote the Lettice part with Maggie Smith in mind, which makes sense:
I recall that the play was both funny and thought-provoking about issues of conservation, history and the grey areas between historical fact and fiction.
What is it about visits to theatres named Theatre Royal with Bobbie Scully, I wondered?
My log records the following from our 1986 visit to the Theatre Royal Haymarket:
This production was notable for the overlapping dialog to speed it up. Despite that mercy, we attended on one of the hottest days of the year and the air conditioning was poor or non existent. Quite literally, a fight broke out in the audience (just in front of us) at one point. Luvvie rage?
Ah yes, I remember it well.
I liked Jonathan Miller’s idea to use overlapping dialogue. While Long Day’s Journey is regarded as a great play, it is normally incredibly long for a play in which pretty much nothing happens. The overlapping dialogue shortens the play a fair bit. Further, it added a sense of realism to the drama. A family pretty much at war with itself probably would comprise people speaking a lot without really listening to anything the others are saying.
This was a Broadway production on transfer to the West End – the Haymarket was doing quite a few of those back then.
Jack Lemmon played the lead in this production and I thought he was very good.
A young unknown (to us) named Kevin Spacey played James Jr – I thought he overacted a fair bit, but then what do I know. In fairness, when Janie and I saw him 10-12 years later play the lead, Hicky, in The Iceman Cometh, I felt he had come on leaps and bounds as an actor.
As for the heat and the poor air conditioning and the flight – that for sure is my most abiding memory of the Long Day’s Journey evening.
The fight broke out towards the end of the interval. I think someone simply stepped on someone’s foot while trying to get back to their seat. So much so normal in those poorly designed, ludicrously-expensive-yet-space-restricted-seats in theatres housed in illustrious 19th century buildings such as the Theatre Royal Haymarket.
I seem to recall that both of the combatants were Americans. Perhaps the stomper was belatedly or insufficiently apologetic to the stompee, but anyway they actually stood there fighting for a while.
I especially remember a rather camp usher rushing to the end of the offending row, waving his arms and shouting,
Stop it! Stop it at once! Please stop fighting!…
…as if arm waving and pleas were likely to stop a couple of audience rage pugilists at that stage of the dispute.
I don’t suppose the fight lasted all that long, nor was anyone seriosuly hurt. Nor did either of the antagonists refuse to sit close to the other once they had calmed down – I think they were only two or three seats away from each other. Far enough, I suppose.
I do recall Bobbie and I deciding that the fight was the most action-packed dramatic incident of the evening. Long Day’s Journey is, in truth, a play in which almost nothing happens.
I had logged this incorrectly as 4 August but actually we went 16 August.
My diary also reminds me that Bobbie and I went to Inigo Jones for a pre-theatre meal, which I describe as:
…fab nouvelle cuisine meal.
Remember Inigo Jones restaurant in Covent Garden? Remember nouvelle cuisine?
I also note that we…
…had coffee at Swiss…
…[i..e. The Swiss Centre] after the show.
Bobbie might now remember some or all about the evening, but last time I asked (17 February 2020) she drew a blank, other than remembering having seen this production with me.
A moment in my personal history on that visit to London; my first visit to The Royal Court Theatre.
I was blown away by this production – Bobbie and I returned in the new year to see Saved as well, which was being performed in rep along with The Pope’s Wedding. After that, I returned to The Royal Court many, many times. Most recently at the time of writing (forty years on), strangely, as a facilitator for the Royal Court rather than as an audience member. A strange but true story:
But returning to The Pope’s Wedding, I am sure I have Bobbie to thank for seeking out the opportunity to see that production. She was doing her Bar pupillage in London by then and had no doubt spotted a review and/or an advert for the production. I think we got in on some sort of special deal, which possibly involved queueing up for “on the day” tickets. What I do recall is that we saw both The Pope’s Wedding and Saved from the best seats in the house for very modest ticket prices.
The Royal Court has benefitted from this “drug pusher style sales technique” for many decades since; I got addicted to watching theatre from the best seats not any old seats. In fact, many other theatres have benefitted from The Royal Court’s foresight at snaring potential theatre addicts young.
I quite often say “what a cast” in my theatre visit write ups, but on this occasion I think that phrase deserves a shout: WHAT A CAST!
Tony Rohr, Adrian Dunbar, Mark Wingett, Peter Lovstrom, Joanne Whalley (prior to her becoming Joanne Whalley Kilmer), Gerard Horan, Lesley Manville, Peter-Hugo Daly and Gary Oldman – directed by Max Stafford Clark. Here is a link to the Theatricalia entry for this production.
Have I mentioned that I was blown away by this production? (Yes you have, let the reader see what some real experts say – ed).
Returning to that weekend, the diary reminds me that we went to The Mayflower (Chinese restaurant on Shaftesbury Avenue) after the theatre – one of those places that we knew would still be open at that hour. I’m guessing that we had fancied trying The Swiss Centre but were too late for that, hence we returned the next day to take lunch there.
One habit that I think we started that Pope’s Wedding & Mayflower evening, which we/I continued for several years after, was to pick up the Sunday papers on Saturday night and start reading them on the Night Bus home if in town at that late hour on a Saturday.
I remember back then thinking that this weekend was the height of sophistication which, for the 22 year old me, it probably was, at that time.
The Theatre Royal Hanley wanted to encourage Keele University students to attend their theatre. They offered me a pair of free tickets to see any show I fancied over the summer. I was a new Student Union sabbatical and it was a new (or I should say revived) venue. I suppose they thought people like me might have some influence over the “yoof” audience.
I spotted what looked like quite an interesting play – with Tom Conti in it if I’m not mistaken, which I thought Bobbie and I would both enjoy when she was up for a long weekend at the end of August/start of September.
Problem was, I chose the Sunday evening (probably because we were otherwise engaged on both the Friday and Saturday evenings) and failed to check whether the Sunday evening show was the same show as the Monday to Saturday show.
It wasn’t.
You cannot blame the box office – they had been instructed to issue me with comps for whatever evening I chose…and I chose the Sunday evening.
The Life And Music Of Rodgers And Hammerstein. I am 95% sure that the show we saw was Hella Toros and her ensemble. A grande dame by 1984, widow of John McLaren, who had been in the original cast productions of Rodgers and Hammerstein shows in the 1950s…
…here’s how she looked and sounded in 1940, before sadness and illness struck her life for some while:
Correction: it wasn’t Helen Toros’s ensemble, it was the Newcastle Amateur Operatic Chorus. The following clipping from the Evening Sentinel confirms why/how I got the “They’re Playing Our Song” offer (Peta Toppano and Barry Quinn, not Tom Conti) confused with Rodgers and Hammerstein, plus confirms exactly who performed:
It was the most stilted show imaginable. Imagine a heavy European accent dramatically stating
Rodgers and Hammerstein, the most wonderful musicals in the whole world…
…I bet she said that about all the composers of such works in all of her shows…
…Ivor Novello – the most wonderful writer of musical shows in history…Sigmund Romberg, the most exquisite operettas ever written…
Between numbers, Hella gave us bits of her life story tentatively connected to Rodgers and Hammerstein. Her late husband’s involvement in the original stage productions of the musicals was bigged up to the extent that one might have imagined that John and Hella were round Oscar and Richard’s places all the time back in the 1950s.
In short, Bobbie and I had turned up at the theatre expecting to see “our sort of play” and found ourselves instead watching a static recital of songs from musicals, delivered in an exceptionally old-fashioned style.
The audience was almost as stilted as the performances. Not that everyone in the audience was about three times our age. Dear me no. Some of them were at least four times our age.
Bobbie and I didn’t know where to look. Actually we did…not at each other, lest the giggles get the better of us.
To be fair, we mostly won the struggle to keep straight faces for most of the first half of the recital…
…until the rather elderly and minimally mobile grande dame of the show, Hella Toros, attempted to sing Happy Talk with appropriate movements…lifted from the movie…
…our struggle with retaining our composure was lost. For good.
We felt we owed it to the audience, who were, after all, our elders and betters, to withdraw during the interval, ahead of the second half of the show, rather than inflict the inevitable giggly disturbances on the audience throughout the second half.
The exact nature of the Hanley-based Indian meal we devoured in place of the second half of the show is lost in the mists of time. It was probably quite good food and reasonably priced – there were some decent Indian restaurants in the Potteries by then.
Is it possible that, but for my choice of night/wrong show error, I might have been able to influence the student body to frequent the Theatre Royal Hanley and helped turn around the disaster-prone institution? Unlikely.
On reflection, Bobbie & I probably shouldn’t go to any theatre with “Theatre Royal” in its name…I recall a peculiarly incident-rich visit to the Theatre Royal Haymarket with Bobbie to see Long Day’s Journey Into the Night. There’ll be a link here once I have written that one up.
I was keen to see this production of the Rivals, as I had read good things about it. Mum and dad were quite easily persuaded.
I remember it as a very good production and a very successful night out.
Going to The National became a very regular thing for me as the years went on, but this was a big night out for Mum and Dad – it might be the only time they ever went to The National.
Fabulous cast – Michael Horden, Fiona Shaw, Geraldine McEwan, Edward Petherbridge and many others. Peter Wood directed it. Here is the Theatricalia entry. Tim Curry was famously in this production as Acres, but had moved on by the time we got there in September. Barrie Rutter was an excellent replacement.
Below is John Barber’s rave review in The Telegraph:
Tis Pity Radcliffe Sun, Mar 6, 1988 – 40 · The Observer (London, Greater London, England) · Newspapers.com
Tis Pity Billimgton Sat, Mar 5, 1988 – 16 · The Guardian (London, Greater London, England) · Newspapers.com
