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.
…we were very keen indeed to see the companion piece for this Edward Bond revival, Saved. I’m not sure how Bobbie managed to score tickets for this, but she must have found a way. Perhaps we queued up for the release of top notch cheap seats on the day, but I do recall that, once again, we were in excellent seats near the front and utterly absorbed by being there.
I waxed lyrical about the stellar cast in the piece about The Pope’s Wedding. Same cast for Saved, but different director – Danny Boyle no less.
And when I say “stellar cast” I really do mean stellar cast: Peter Lovstrom, Adrian Dunbar, Mark Wingett, Tony Rohr, Peter-Hugo Daly, Lesley Manville, June Watson, Gary Oldman, Joanne Whalley, Gerard Horan…
To cut a long story short, we were blown away again. It is a truly shocking paly – no less shocking for knowing in advance what is coming in the ultraviolent ending.
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:
My recollection of this evening is thin to say the least. My guess is that it was an impromptu works outing, the diary simply reading:
Work busy – went to NT in evening with party
I am pretty sure we didn’t see a show. Danton’s Death was showing at the Olivier at that time but I’m pretty sure I didn’t see that and in any case I don’t think they even put the show on that Wednesday evening.
I am similarly sure that I didn’t see the production of The Caucasian Chalk Circle at the Cottesloe back then. My Cottesloe days were still way ahead of me.
In any case, had I seen a play I am sure I’d have at least noted what we saw – I was already enough of a theatre freak for that. So we didn’t see a play.
Newman Harris had a fair smattering of luvvie clients so I suspect that we were invited along to help mop up, hospitality-wise…certainly not to help mop up the Lyttelton Theatre itself, I’d have remembered that better.
…except some of the more senior folk might well have joined us midweek – Stanley Bloom even, possibly, as he had taken over a chunk of Harry Newman’s luvvie portfolio.
In our first term at Keele, Simon Jacobs and I signed up for a drama workshop thing, run by Brian Rawlins. Brian helped make drama great fun and gave us a great deal of freedom to do what we wanted to do in this extra-curricular group.
I’m not entirely sure who else was part of the group, other than Jonathan (Jon) Rees whose name helpfully appears in my diary and on the single relic I have from the experience.
That first term of ours also coincided with a big debacle over Princess Margaret’s invitation (or lack of invitation) to the students’ union ball. We decided to parody that debacle with a piece of street theatre as our contribution to the debate and as the culmination of our term’s drama work-shopping spree.
My memory of the whole thing is fairly hazy, but the diary and relic provide some help. Here are the relevant extracts from the diary:
11 November – decided to write play
13 November – met Simon and Jonathan in evening to write play
18 November – drama rehearsal good fun
25 November – rehearsed skit in evening – good fun
2 December – easyish evening – drama rehearsal
…and there the references cease. I know the intention was to perform the skit in front of the union on the day of the ball, but my diary is entirely silent on the matter so I wonder whether our skit was scuppered at the last minute. Simon might remember and I am due to see him very soon indeed at the time of writing (April 2016) and so shall update if his memory adds anything to the pile.
Meanwhile it seems from the relic that it was Jon who preserved a copy of (most of) the script and ensured that I had a copy in my memory box. The hand-written skit itself looks like Simon’s writing if my memory serves.
It reads as juvenilia, which is what it is – heck we were all just 18 at the time – but looking back I think we were quite plucky in our first term tackling this particular political debacle head on in this way.
Anyway, here’s the script. You can drill into the pages to make them bigger/legible size. Unlike my handwriting, this stuff is actually legible. I should add that the character Katy is Katy Turner, the President of the student’s union that year, Mike is Mike Stevens, the Union Secretary that year.
Billington On Pigs Thu, Feb 18, 1988 – 21 · The Guardian (London, Greater London, England) · Newspapers.com
Ratcliffe On Pigs Sun, Feb 21, 1988 – 24 · The Observer (London, Greater London, England) · Newspapers.com
