THEATRE ARCHIVE PROJECT http://sounds.bl.uk

Gale, Peter – interview transcript

Interviewer: Halima Memoniat

3 February 2012

Peter Gale, actor, on: Frith Banbury, Ingrid Bergman, Dorothea Brooking, Byre Theatre, Fay Compton, Sir Noël Coward, Cowardy Custard, Fringe theatre, Drury Lane, Gay Hamilton, Lionel and Clarissa, Look Back in Anger; Chris Luscombe, Kenneth Moore, Albery Theatre, John Osborne, Sir , Sir ; repertory theatre, Samson Agonistes, Southwark Playhouse Theatre, television, The Winslow Boy, Yvonne Arnaud Theatre.

PG: Here we go…yes, I just had to sign my name, and I always have to think twice because my real name is Richard, but there was already a Richard Gale in the business who I worked with later – Ricky Gale, very nice actor; so I chose Peter, because I’m Richard Lionel Peter Gale, and I thought Peter Gale was alright. It’s a very common name, Peter…but anyway, but that’s immaterial.

HM: Ok, I just wanted to know how you first became involved with the theatre, as you were telling me before.

PG: Yes. Well its quite interesting because as I said, it’s as if those upstairs are watching over us all (not that I’m particularly religious) but it’s as if they always shoved me in that direction because when I was a kid I used to put on little puppet shows for children, very poor, very poor background. I was born in Slough, in terraced housing with no inside loo, an outside lavatory, no bathroom etc. But I always – it was the early days of television and I watched something called Muffin the Mule and I was enchanted by this as a child to see a lady called Annette Mills playing the piano and these little marionettes coming onto the top of her piano and she’d talk to them. And I thought ‘oh this is wonderful’ because I know these creatures aren’t really alive but somehow the way she spoke to these little creatures – little muffin, he was a mule and there was a kangaroo and all sorts; she bought them to life. And I thought this is just bewitchingly gorgeous and entertaining and fun. And I was given a muffin the mule puppet for my birthday.

HM: Aw.

PG: And, oh well, I just fell in love with him, he was my darling. I used to make a little bed for him and look after him...And so I then, emboldened by that, I started to sort of put on – oh yes my brother - he was at grammar school which was just amazing in those days. The Labour government helped a lot of poor people, you know, gave them a leg up in the world and Bob went to Bristol University which was like going to the moon to us; it was amazing. And he went to the grammar school earlier and in his carpentry class they made a marionette theatre. By sheer chance he said one day, ‘we’re going to chuck it out because it’s just wood and we’ve made it and that’s the end of the lesson, do you want it?’ and I said ‘oh yeah could you bring it home?’ he says ‘it’s a bit heavy’. This great big crate he bought it home; I think a friend of his helped him http://sounds.bl.uk Page 1 of 12 Theatre Archive Project through the streets of Slough and then every Sunday I used to put on a little puppet show I just made it up as I went along; it was a load of rubbish really. And then every Christmas or birthday I would be given a puppet, another string puppet, and that would become my little cast of characters. And it taught me at a young age the importance of a story and how...I wasn’t very good at making up...I used to look at it on television and think ‘oh that’s easy!’ it’s not easy at all. That’s why all actors need writers; anyway that’s another story. But that’s what really started me off and then my dad was a shoe shine in a hotel in and one of the customers was an ex-film star called Ben Lyon and he was – my dad was a friendly kind of guy and he chatted to everybody – and Ben said, ‘how’re the boys? How’s your son doing who likes puppets and all that?’ and he said ‘well he failed the eleven-plus’ – I failed the eleven-plus and I was sent to a secondary modern school. And he said, ‘well if he likes theatre and puppets and things why don’t you just send him to a stage school?’ and Dad said, ‘we can’t afford that, its way out of our means.’ and he said ‘no, what they do, is they do classes in the morning and then in the afternoon they do singing and dancing and acting and all sorts.’ and he said, ‘they get them professional work and the fees that they’re paid go towards paying the…’. So I didn’t get any of that money but it went straight to the school. And I did. I went there - Arts Educational it was called. I did Peter Pan; I was one of the lost boys in Peter Pan. I was in a play called The Remarkable Mr. Pennypacker and in those days I called myself Richard Peters, I think, as far as I can remember, I don’t know why I did that. Anyway, I did television. I worked with Dorothea Brooking who was a very important TV director and producer. She did a massive amount, the - what is it called? – The Secret Garden, she did; The Railway Children; I was also in the railway children...

HM: Oh you were?

PG: I was the little boy...Well they did it several times, I wasn’t in the Jenny Agutter [ph] – marvellous film – I was the boy who broke his leg in the tunnel and A Little Store, a children’s TV paly about David and Goliath, in which I was David, pretending to play a harp as I sang, while Maria Korchinska played a huge harp beautifully – off camera! It went out live. Twice! But after that I got five O-levels at that school, at Arts Educational. In fact, ironically enough that was enough to get me to my local grammar school, which I’d failed to get to when I failed the eleven-plus. So I went to the grammar school but even though I got two A- levels they weren’t the right ones to go to university. You know, in those days you had to have a language and a science or something. So somebody said that I should try for a drama college and I did – and cut a long story short – I got into Central School of Speech and Drama, which was a three year course, and I came out of that in 1962 with the gold Medal and the Ibsen Prize and I went straight into rep at St. Andrews right at the far end of the country, right up north in Scotland and it was real rep. In those days every two weeks we did a different play. We made the sets ourselves, we made the costumes sometimes, we used to go round to local houses and ask them if they had any kind of old fashioned clothes up in the attic, if it needed a ball gown or something for a girl, you know, they would come – in fact yes the evening suits for the men – I was Charles Condomine in Blithe Spirit by Noël Coward. There was a suit there, an evening suit, a gentleman’s 1930s, and I remember I spent quite a while stitching up the inside of the leg to make the trousers smaller because they were huge; so it was quite fun. I mean it was damned hard work; I couldn’t do it now, every two weeks a different show. During the summer – it was a whole year – during the summer we did several weeks of Billy Liar, a comedy, a very popular comedy then. I played Billy and a girl came over from the college in Glasgow I think it was – Glasgow. She played Liz my girlfriend and my grandmother in the same play.

HM: Oh! How did that work?

PG: She was brilliant. She put on the grey wig for the Gran and so it was twice a day, so she had to, you know, do that twice a day, two different characters. And I’m still in touch with her, Gay Hamilton her name http://sounds.bl.uk Page 2 of 12 Theatre Archive Project is. When she finished her course at Glasgow she went on to work with Stanley Kubrick; she was in Barry Lyndon. She played the girl who seduces Barry Lyndon in that wonderful scene with the cards I think they play cards together – have you ever seen it?

HM: No I haven’t.

PG: It’s quite a film. It’s an amazing film. It’s a costume drama.

HM: Okay.

PG: Ryan O’Neal plays the young man, you probably don’t know him...you’re young. But in those days he was a big star in movies. So that’s what really launched me into the theatre. But before that I’d also – when I was at drama school I could always sing – and I’d done a bit of tap-dancing as a kid. I’d had lessons as a kid. So I was able then to do pantomime and musicals. That’s been a very important thread in my career; it has been a very, very varied career indeed. I’ve spanned an awful lot. I’ve done pretty well everything. I worked once with a wonderful actress called Fay Compton who said [puts on a voice and pretends to smoke a cigarette] ‘in all my career I can honestly say there are only two things that –‘, oh yes I should explain. We were doing a play at the opening of the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre in Guilford. A play by Milton, John Milton, the poet...

HM: Oh.

PG: ...called Samson Agonistes.

HM: Okay.

PG: Which is not often performed; for a very good reason! No, it’s a wonderful piece of poetry, and but it’s pretty heavy going as a play. But anyway, Michael Redgrave wanted to do it. He started off that season at the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre with Ingrid Bergman, who I met. And he’d always wanted to play Samson in that. So I was in the Greek – the Hebrew chorus you might call it. With Fay Compton this elderly actress and she said [puts on a voice and pretends to smoke a cigarette] ‘in all my career I can honestly say that there are two things I’ve never done: circus and this’. So it’s been quite a varied career. I’ve done musicals I was in – oh I can’t remember...

HM: I understand you’ve worked with Rattigan, you were telling me...

PG: I did, yes.

HM: I’ve done Rattigan’s Deep Blue Sea.

PG: Oh yes.

HM: So maybe you could tell me a little about Terence Rattigan?

PG: Well, he’s a very fascinating writer. All careers no matter what they are – especially in the arts I suppose maybe not so much in business - I don’t know - may be the same, but they nearly all go in waves. They have their ups and they have their downs. Rattigan’s career certainly had its downs. When the sixties came in he was considered old hat and too crafted and too posh and respectable. Although it has to be said he dealt http://sounds.bl.uk Page 3 of 12 Theatre Archive Project with some very nitty-gritty subjects, and I think he’s now enjoying a revival and quite right because he touches, in a very discreet way, on extremely tough things in life. Deep Blue Sea is quite – what do you think of ?

HM: It was quite depressing.

PG: Yes. But it ends on a good note doesn’t it?

HM: Yes, there’s hope. There’s hope for the character; I think its Hester.

PG: Oh I think he’s a marvellous writer. I was in The Winslow Boy which is revived from time to time. There was a very good film recently made with that marvellous English actor playing the solicitor I think he’s wonderful…I’ve forgotten his name [Nigel Hawthorne]. But I played Dickie Winslow, the elder brother to the boy, and I remember that on the first read-through, which was on the stage of the Albery Theatre (now the Noel Coward Theatre) I think it was called or maybe it was still The New, it’s got quite a few several names; a lovely theatre. We were all sitting round in a semi-circle and there was Rattigan and we read the play, as you do, and at the end of it, Kenneth Moore was playing the solicitor and he said to Terence Rattigan [puts on a voice] “Terry all these references that the girl has to me about me being a cold fish, I think we’ll have to get rid of them wont we? Because you see my whole persona is warm and likeable and friendly and I think it sort of it just doesn’t work.” Well the whole point about the play, I would suggest, is that this icy individual comes in and he interrogates the boy, this little boy who has been accused of stealing at the school. He interviews him in a very kind of - not sadistic way exactly - but a very cold way and the boy eventually bursts into tears and says, ‘I didn’t do it, I didn’t do it!’ and he runs to his mum and everybody thinks, ‘what a horrible man’. They say, ‘well we assume you’ll be on your way now and sorry to have inconvenienced you.’ He says ‘oh no, no, no, I’ll take the case, the boy is clearly innocent’. What he did was he cross-examined the child to make sure he really was going to get at the truth and of course he did, the boy was [innocent]. It’s a very clever piece of writing that and, of course, if you take away those references to him being a cold – the actor has no journey then.

HM: It wouldn’t have the same effect.

PG: No, because later on you find out that he has a very warm heart underneath that exterior. And in fact the girl, the daughter of the house, sort of falls in love with him, as the audience does, you know, because he’s a good man. I thought - even though I was young, I was in my twenties – I thought ‘what a silly thing for an actor to’ – I know he’s a big star – you see, the problem that Kenneth Moore would’ve had was that you…big stars have to protect their image. And the wonderful thing about this thing is that Terrence Rattigan sat there and said ‘oh yes Kenny, yes of course, I’ll cut all that.’ I thought ‘my God! This great playwright is agreeing to emaciating his wonderful text’. He didn’t protest at all – ‘no, no, anything you like Kenny, yes, that’s fine’. I thought well he was a real gentleman, you know, those were the days when people, they didn’t wear jeans to rehearsal they wore suits.

HM: Oh?

PG: Well I suppose maybe the jeans were just beginning to come in, what year was this? Gosh I can’t remember the year...Anyway, it was about nineteen... I might have been about twenty eight or so or something like that, about 1970-ish. I was born in ’41; I’m seventy now so you can work that out. But it was a lovely cast; Annette Crosbie was superb as the daughter, Laurence Naismith was wonderful as the father it’s a marvellous part and he was absolutely terrific. So that was my experience with working with Rattigan. I http://sounds.bl.uk Page 4 of 12 Theatre Archive Project saw The Deep Blue Sea on television with Virginia McKenna and I wrote him a fan letter. I said, ‘you might not remember me but I watched The Deep Blue Sea’ – I’d never seen it before – and I said ‘it made me laugh’ because he’s got a lovely sense of humour. He knows that that’s a very powerful weapon as a playwright; humour. If you can make them laugh, you know, you’ve got them. I always - when I read a script I will think if there are no laughs, no humour at all even if it’s interesting, I think ‘oh God we’re in trouble’. But he did. He made me laugh and of course he made me cry. Because when Freddie walks out on her, Hester, and she says, ‘please don’t leave me, please!’ Oh God it’s heart-breaking isn’t it?

HM: Oh it is sad.

PG: And I said ‘you made me laugh and you made me cry’ and I think that’s quite an achievement. He wrote very sweetly back saying ‘of course I remember who you are, thank you for your kind -’ and I treasure that letter.

HM: Aw, that’s nice.

PG: Yes. He lived in Brighton in those days I think. I worked with some very interesting people. That season at the opening of the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre was fascinating because Ingrid Bergman later became a friend of mine. Working with Michael Redgrave my goodness he was a big star... sorry did you want me to...

HM: No that’s fine. The British Theatre programme is about theatre in 1945 to 1968.

PG: Sixty-eight.

HM: And you said you started working in ’62,

PG: Well yes, as an adult, yes.

HM: So…anything interesting happen?

PG: Well, my first job as I say was way up in the Byre Theatre at St. Andrews. But before that I had done some acting in the fifties it would be, ’53, ’54.

HM: Oh yes?

PG: That’s when I did a TV… My first real job actually was playing the little boy David. It’s interesting because they wanted a child who could sing because David soothes the King Saul - isn’t it? Is it Saul? - with his harp. He plays the harp and he sings and he calms him down. So that was quite important. I sang this little song I can still kind of remember [sings] ‘The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want’, and…so even then I was mixing the acting and the singing. And we did two performances; in those days the children’s play went out about five thirty, something like that on a Friday, I think it was, and then it was repeated on the Sunday. But it wasn’t recorded you had to do another performance, with maybe another TV crew. Who hadn’t learnt the…because they had to drag the cameras around the floor while another scene was finishing they would drag the cameras that weren’t being used to the next set. So you could hear this kind of [drags hands along table to imitate the sound being described] often. You know even on the television you could hear that something strange is going on. And so we had to do a technical rehearsal for them beforehand. So it was quite scary for the grown-ups, it didn’t bother me, but the adult actors… You get more nervous as you go along, it has to be said! So that was fascinating. And in fact I wrote to Dorothea Brooking as I then - http://sounds.bl.uk Page 5 of 12 Theatre Archive Project the next year I played the boy who breaks his leg in The Railway Children - I wrote to her. Many years later I saw The Secret Garden; I think she directed and I said ‘I just have to tell you, you probably don’t remember who I am again..’ and she wrote back and said ‘yes, of course I do remember you and what’s more...’ - although there were no stills of that first programme - The Little Stone it was called about the little boy David - she said somebody photographed the screen and she included in the letter these photographs of me as a child of twelve with a blonde wig on with a harp, and the harpist Maria Korchinska [ph], she played the harp off camera. I looked her up on the internet the other day she was a very, very important harpist, a star harpist and she played beautifully and I sang pretending to pluck these rubber strings. So that was my first introduction to performing live. I think The Railway Children was live as well although there was a little bit of telecine [ph] in that as well because they had to show the children waving at the trains, they filmed that and they could use that. That was my first introduction to being a performer. Afterwards after I became an adult actor…I can’t remember the exact sequence of events but the sixties were quite lively, I should’ve looked it up shouldn’t I have? I forget all the things that I’ve done; so much early television and theatre. Well, Guilford happened... The opening of the Yvonne Arnaud was in ’67, I think it was something like that [1965]. I can’t remember… I should’ve looked up my career shouldn’t I? The thing about the internet is that it only has film and TV listed it doesn’t give all the theatres. That was an amazing job to get... I had…Michael Redgrave…I was at drama school with Lynn Redgrave who was one of Sir Michael Redgrave’s daughters. He had two; Vanessa and Lynn and Corin was the son. Lynn and I were in Harold Pinter’s play The Birthday Party at the end of our course at – well it wasn’t quite the end – Lynn left before the end. But we did it. And I played a stout fifty year old Jewish gentleman by the name of Goldberg and I really went for it. I won’t bore you with the details but I pulled it off in an extraordinary way and of course Michael Redgrave came to see his daughter Lynn and that’s why he asked me to – oh yes! – he auditioned me for a play, an O’Neil evening that he produced with an American star-actor so I understudied in that. But when came to the opening of the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre he auditioned me for that as well and asked me to sing and I sang quite well and I landed the lead in something called Lionel and Clarissa, which is a very old, 1700s (it was written in the 18th century) by [Charles] Dibdin. It was the nearest I ever got to opera. I never sang opera but I had taken lessons and I’d studied hard. I had studied the bel canto method of singing which is basically based on common sense, looking after your voice and in all its - the whole tessitura, crescendo, decrescendo, forte and mezzo-forte and all that. My singing teacher was very elderly but she was a wonderful teacher and it’s helped me to look after my voice ever since because I’ve beaten the hell out of it in many, many shows. I’ve done revue and musicals, and that’s eight shows a week, and those days there were no microphones and I have managed my voice, looking back, extraordinarily well. People have made nice comments. So I did that…the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre opened with three productions; A Month in the Country by Turgenev with Michael Redgrave and Ingrid Bergman, Lionel and Clarissa and Samson Agonistes - extraordinary verse drama. That’s what we opened with, the season, it was that for quite a few weeks and it was a big sort of festival opening and Ingrid’s presence there was absolutely sensational, you can imagine – do you know who Ingrid Bergman is?

HM: I think, was she in Casablanca?

PG: You’re right, yes. I took my nephew to see that you know just a couple of years ago. He’d hardly ever heard of her.

HM: Oh?

PG: I spoke to one young man, I said – he said ‘I wanted to be a film director’, I said ‘oh right’ and I asked him about a film that Ingrid was in and he said ‘oh I don’t know that’ and I said ‘do you know who Ingrid Bergman is?’ and he said ‘was she a Bond girl?’! http://sounds.bl.uk Page 6 of 12 Theatre Archive Project

HM: Oh no!

PG: I said, ‘no she was a rather distinguished...’ Anyway I think she won three Oscars didn’t she? Bless her heart. I saw them. I held one of them in her flat.

HM: Wow.

PG: It was a very exciting thing to be a part of that. That was a tough sing for me that Lionel and Clarissa because it was operetta. All the dialogue was spoken and it was a very light, romantic comedy, with very good actors and I sang the romantic lead, Lionel. I’ve never been good-looking though really! But when I sort of had the wig on and all that I looked the part pretty well; he’s supposed to be a tutor anyway, he’s not supposed to be drop-dead gorgeous! That was a wonderful thing to be part of, I must say. After that I was considered for quite a lot of musicals but I wanted basically to be an actor because…to me it was slightly more interesting I suppose. The trouble in those days was that you were stuck in…people kind of ‘pigeon- holed’ you. Now I think it’s different, it’s much more healthy now. In America they just assume that an actor will probably be able to put over a number, if not sing well, because they all go to classes. Now, it’s the same here. I think young actors realise that that’s very important for a career to be able to… No-one’s honest about it and say ’no, no, I’ve got two left feet, I can’t do that’ but a lot of them do go to class and it opens up your ability to get work. It’s quite tough. I mean I’m not a star by any stretch of the imagination whatsoever but I have earned a living at acting. That’s quite an achievement looking back!

HM: Next question.

PG: Ok sweet.

HM: When we were learning about the theatre at university we were told that John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger –

PG: Hmm!

HM: And Shelagh Delaney’s A Taste of Honey –

PG: Hmm!

HM: …were really ground-breaking plays; obviously you were there when all of this was happening so what are your views on this?

PG: Oh well, I mean, Look Back in Anger. It’s difficult to imagine now; it’s weird. It was at the Royal Court which even then was at the cutting edge of drama and did some wonderful, wonderful stuff. Well, I don’t have any regrets really, but I would have loved to have worked at the Royal Court; for that reason. I used to go there as a kid, I saw The Member of the Wedding there which I absolutely adored, the young…oh I’ve forgotten the name for the moment. But I didn’t see- alas! I didn’t see Look Back in Anger. I saw that…no, I never did. I bought the book.

HM: Okay.

http://sounds.bl.uk Page 7 of 12 Theatre Archive Project PG: I bought the play. And his Inadmissible Evidence as well. I just got rid of them, I wish I had them now, probably worth something! It’s difficult to describe because they have revived it since – Look Back in Anger – but it doesn’t really revive very well. Because like a lot of things that are big in their time; they date. And that has dated in a strange...it’s not even kind of quaint now. The irony here is, of course, that Rattigan, he is dated as well but not in quite as damaging a way. I went to see Inadmissible Evidence by Osborne at the Donmar recently and it really doesn’t work at all; it’s very self-indulgent writing. It got respectable reviews, it was very well done, the leading actor was terrific – Dougie [Douglas] Hodge- he was absolutely terrific. He did it more like a stand-up comedy act which it needed, it really needed a kick up the – you know.

HM: Yes!

PG: I don’t know why Osborne’s work has dated in that way. Maybe some of the others haven’t. But at the time…I guess it’s healthy that the young have to rebel against the old, this is a very constant thread throughout history isn’t it? Throughout the animal kingdom, you know. Off with the old and on with the new and the young have to have their day, I believe that very much so. This was the new wave of writers. I didn’t really become a part of that as a youngster because I didn’t have a regional accent; I felt very envious of the actors who came from Leicester or wherever you know because they were doing plays… Although I’d come from a very working-class background I’d been taught at drama school how to ‘speak posh’ as you might say; received pronunciation, RP. Because of the way I look as well, I guess, I don’t have sort of craggy looks. It meant that I was always kind of in posh-er sort of plays and more old fashioned sorts of things really I suppose, and not so edgy and dangerous. I wish I had been. It would’ve been wonderful, because they are terrific plays!

HM: They are.

PG: So that’s what happened to me in… I was in a big musical at Drury Lane. I sang ‘Tea for Two’ at Drury Lane, which is quite a journey when you think about it. That was called No, No Nanette; it was a big hit on Broadway and they brought it over here and it was not a big hit over here, alas! But I did get to sing on stage at Drury Lane. As I say in those days there were no microphones so you had to balance, very carefully, with the orchestra which was a very difficult thing to do. I was also in one of the first, what do they call them, tribute shows or…what is it when they do compilation shows of…? We did a Noël Coward evening called Cowardy Custard. That’s how I got to meet Noël Coward briefly. That was the first of those sorts of shows where they get the material from; it can be rock bands. They’ve got them on in London now. That was the first of that sort of thing and we did Cole, it was called Cole; C-O-L-E, based on the songs of Cole Porter. Then my friend Julia McKenzie, who was in both of those with me, she did Side by Side by Sondheim and that was a huge hit because even then that would have been…what year would that be…the early seventies. Even then he was going full blast and greatly enjoyed by people, you know, very high quality song writing that is. In fact I did that at Newbury in rep. So I’ve done quite a lot of varied things…

HM: We were talking about theatre from being ‘kitchen sink’ dramas,

PG: ‘Kitchen sink’, yes.

HM: …and as time progressed they became ‘In Yer Face’ theatre as it is called! That’s what it’s called.

PG: Is it really? In your face?

HM: Yes, ‘in-yer-face’ theatre. So they’re more out there… http://sounds.bl.uk Page 8 of 12 Theatre Archive Project

PG: I’ve never really done anything like that. I guess, being the age I am it would be the younger actors maybe who would do that. I never worked with one of the…Nancy Meckler, she ran, she still runs I think, the kind of theatre that pushes the boundaries. I have done - God knows - I’ve done Fringe theatre quite a bit. Quite often there have been revivals of old-fashioned plays, I did You Can’t Take it With You by…oh gosh what’s his name? [George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart] The American…it’s a famous play. They’ve just done it up in Manchester but we did it under the arches of London Bridge Station, they’re called the Southwark Playhouse. I must tell you this story because this is the life of an actor, I tell you!

HM: Please do.

PG: We did this old-fashioned, you might say, Broadway comedy. Our director had us doing, kind of, acting exercises; to my mind we wasted an awful lot of rehearsal time, rolling about on the floor, feeling each other’s feet! Don’t ask me why, I don’t know. Improvising goodness knows what and not actually getting up on our hind legs and rehearsing the play. I’m just a grumpy old man but there you go. But we did it and we got it on. It’s a cast of about twelve so it’s quite tricky; there are twelve people on that stage at any one time. Because we hadn’t rehearsed the damned lines enough nobody often knew who was going to be speaking next. The Southwark Playhouse Theatre is underneath the arches of the old railway station; quite a good space, you know, as spaces go. One day it was my birthday, I came in, in November and one of the young lads was there at my place, my little table; you know it was a row of tables. And I thought ‘oh, he knows it’s my birthday and he’s preparing a little present for me’. I thought, ‘oh how sweet!’ and I came up and I said, ‘what are you up to?’ and he said ‘I’m clearing away the rat shit!’.

HM: Oh!

PG: Yes. Somebody had left a sandwich out there overnight and there was rat poo on the table so ‘welcome to fringe theatre acting’ is all I can say! It’s all part of the experience. The funny thing is sometimes under those sort of circumstances you have a lot more fun. The laughs we had back then; it was so funny in that room. We were all together in the same room, boys and girls, old and young! Under those circumstances it can be a lot better than if you’re doing some big multimillion [dollar] film; I made a film with Spielberg. It was a fantastic thing to be a part of – The Empire of Sun – but it wasn’t much fun really. I’m not complaining! I’d love to work with him again. He was terrific.

HM: We were learning about censorship, as well, in theatre.

PG: Censorship yes?

HM: We learnt that it was abolished in 1968.

PG: Is that when it went...yes that’s right – yes it was very important that because the most absurd things were cut weren’t they?

HM: Yes.

PG: It dates way back though. Those kind of laws hang around and people say ‘oh for goodness sake it’s about time we...’ and thank goodness they got rid of that. Although it has to be said on the other hand I think films are sometimes all the better for being censored. Some of the old... It’s very interesting, when you’re an artist...all arts work within kind of limitations and another word for that is discipline. It’s like http://sounds.bl.uk Page 9 of 12 Theatre Archive Project children; if they’re allowed to do anything they want it’s not always necessarily a good thing. Children sometime respond better to discipline because then they can push against it. It gives them something to bang their heads against! And rebel against, which is healthy. And artists, I think sometimes when they can’t depict – like in the old Hollywood films, they can’t show people jumping into bed and just tearing their clothes off each other; they have to imply that and sometimes in writing novels or whatever. They have to face the challenge of putting that across without – and that can be sometimes marvellously erotic or whatever you like. Or language! See I think, sometimes...You hear the ‘F’ word all the time these days but sometimes it can grate when you watch a drama and you think ‘oh my God are there kids in this room or in the theatre?’ Sometimes it’s just distracting. If you’re a clever writer you can get away without using any of that kind of – those ‘curse words’ as they’re called - and it can challenge you to be using language more inventively and interestingly. I think – that’s my opinion as an old man. I write myself and I really don’t like to hear...too much of that; well certainly not on the radio, I think they have to be very careful on the radio don’t they? Well anyway you’re talking about the theatre. Yes, that came in and, well, it’s like anything people sort of go for it when the rules disappear and they sort of go mad in the other direction. It’s so funny because what I did was I wrote a play that was based on the transcripts of a trial that took place at the Old Bailey in 1918. I used the actual transcripts. I invented very little dialogue because the thing itself created the most marvellous – I thought - kind of drama. Well somebody...why am I saying this? Somebody took that play over to Russia and I was asked to direct it over there...I can’t remember now why I am telling you this...it was about censorship...Anyway I went over to Russia and directed it in Russian! Not that I speak Russian, because I don’t. But they adored it because it challenged…they love anything – court cases that present a challenge, people being asked questions and having to face the truth and all that. So I put this play on… I can’t remember how this connects to censorship. Anyway, it’ll probably come to me before you finish!

HM: You can talk about something else as well if you want, like Frith Banbury?

PG: Oh yes Frith! Bless his heart. He directed The Winslow Boy and he’d already worked with Kenneth Moore so he was, you know, he knew he was dealing with a big star who was going to ‘put the bums on the seats’ as we say. So he agreed to these cuts… And he was a friend of Terrence Rattigan; he directed Rattigan’s plays. Then I did a play – I can’t remember the name of the playwright - it was called Smithereens; we did it at Windsor and Frith wanted to bring that in to the West End with Phyllis Calvert who had been a big star in the cinema. We did that in the seventies I think it was....I think so...Smithereens. He wrote some very interesting plays this playwright; I can’t remember his name []. I think he wrote a play called Absolute Hell...anyway...Yes Frith! My goodness he was a producer and a director and he was kind of Mr West End for a long time; he worked with Binkie Beaumont who had Tennent’s [H. M. Tennent] which was a production company which put on a massive amount of stuff in the West End. There again, they were considered very old-fashioned, they went out of fashion! And the new playwrights came in...

HM: What are your most positive experiences of theatre and did you have any negative experiences as well?

PG: Well I guess the only negative experiences would be feeling inadequate! I’ve always lacked confidence; friends of mine have told me that. But, the most positive thing about being an actor and working in the theatre is that it’s a celebration of life and it’s wonderful to work with other actors. I think it’s one thing that most actors say they would miss is if they gave up acting. Because when you get to my age there’s an awful lot I don’t want to do; I don’t want to tour. I suppose if I was a star maybe and offered terrific parts - some stars do tour and you go to lovely hotels - but I’m not a star. So it’s not quite as glamorous for the likes of me and I don’t want to do that anymore. And anyway I write. I’ve always written during my whole life. So the one thing I would miss would be the company of actors, because they are such fun and you’re all in the same boat together especially in the theatre. I suppose of course there are difficult people...People talk about http://sounds.bl.uk Page 10 of 12 Theatre Archive Project stars being – I’ve never really worked with a difficult star I’ve worked with some pretty good people. I think it’s usually people who are difficult simply when they’re struggling with their work and they want to do their best but then I’ve never met really a prima donna; no there was only one, an American woman, a prima donna. Oh boy! God she was awful. She played the lead part in Sunset Boulevard she took over, Betty Buckley. Not Patti LuPone who opened the role, she was wonderful. I love Patti; no, she was one of the guys! It was an American lady who came over to take over from her who was very, very on her dignity. But then she wasn’t really a big star and I think that’s why she was on her dignity so much! Generally speaking actors are terrific and very sympathetic and simpatico and you rub along and all that. Recently I was at the Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in The Merry Wives of Windsor and it was a very, very happy experience indeed, I must say. Chris Luscombe directed and he had been an actor. He was one of the best directors I’ve ever worked with. He prepared the production; he knew what it’s like to be an actor. A lot of directors, bad directors, have never acted and so they...All directors should act, early on. Michael Grandage was an actor, you see, and you draw on experience; you know about why actors feel insecure, you prepare a sort of a blueprint for them and say ‘you do what you like but you could move over to the table at that point, if you’d like, I’ve thought of that’ and ‘it might be good because the glass is there and you need to get to it’ or something like that. Chris Luscombe was very prepared and he assembled a lovely cast. It was a big success – we went to America with it and that’s kind of what I will miss, if I do retire as I probably will have to! I guess everybody has to retire sooner or later. I think you have to be philosophical about that but life is a big place and I shall do other things. I’ve written a children’s story which is being published and I’ve written a couple of plays too - which, mind you, is a very difficult thing to get things off the ground now. There’s another a difference between the sixties and today is that – for example, when I was young I was always trying to invent stuff and write plays and put things on. As I say, I did that play that was in the Fringe...where was it; the one about the court case. But I also had some ideas for a radio entertainment and one of them, my first one, was about the power of music. I put together a kind of an entertainment, like a review you might say, of music and songs and extracts of novels and plays and poems, all about the nature of music. Because it’s a very powerful thing, music, and I submitted this to the BBC. I might’ve sent it to the head of Radio 3 because Radio 3 was much more kind of...more unusual. And I got this phone call from Hallam Tennyson and said ‘I’d like you to come in and talk about...’ So I went along for an interview and I thought this is just an interview and he said ‘you do know why you’re here don’t you?’ and I said ‘well, not really!’ and he said, ‘well, we’re going to do your program’! I couldn’t believe my ears! He said ‘yes, we’ll book a studio in a couple of weeks’ time’ and that was it!

HM: Oh?

PG: He said ‘oh no it’s very entertaining. We’ll have to cut it and maybe de, de, de.’ And they made a few adjustments and they said ‘who do you think should narrate it? It needs a narrator’ and they said ‘we know Jonathan Cohen, he plays piano for [recording finishes] programmes like this which would be useful and he could narrate’. He’s known on children’s television. And so we did it! Now, I doubt very much whether that would be done now. Now there are committees that scripts have to go to, there’s the whole process, you’ve got to tick the right boxes, it’s much more difficult. So in that way I think it’s tougher.

HM: Tougher.

PG: Hmm in many ways. But I’m still plugging away and I’ve got this – two plays that I want to...There again it’s more expensive too. I devised myself a one man play about Gerard Manley Hopkins, which I did in the beginning of the eighties. Recently [laughs] to me its recent you see, you probably weren’t born then...I would book a little fringe venue and I’d go and do it. I’d either split the takings with the people running the venue like the New End Theatre but... http://sounds.bl.uk Page 11 of 12 Theatre Archive Project

[break in recording]

HM: There was a brief pause in the recording and now we’re just going to recap what we’ve said.

PG: Yes. Well we covered quite a bit. I don’t know whether you’ve got the...The one man play was quite an important part of my career in the eighties because I was interviewed by Joan Bakewell up in the Edinburgh Festival and she said, ‘why Gerard Manley Hopkins, a one man play about...’ He’s fairly obscure but he is studied for A-Level or he was then. And I said ‘he’s our first, modern, English poet.’ [Phone rings in background] [laughs] there’s a phone. And it was like a little magic carpet for me because in [recording breaks off].

[Interview length: 46:53] [Audio recording ends at: 45:50]

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