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

Simpson, Richard – interview transcript

Interviewer: Rahul Bahal

21 January 2012

Richard Simpson, actor, on: Angry Young Men, Anthony Richardson, Belgrave Theatre Coventry, Censorship, Sir Peter Hall, Harold Pinter, Jonathan Lynn, Sir , Look Back In Anger, Sir Ian McKellen, Nottingham Playhouse, Sir Trevor Nunn, PARADA, RADA, RSC, Sir Patrick Stewart, The Comedians.

RB: So how did you first get involved in drama?

RS: Well I was born in Skegness which is a seaside resort in Lincolnshire and I was a war child so there wasn’t a lot of theatre going on, obviously, except amateur work and I got it amateur at school. My father was a very good amateur actor; in fact, the night I was born he was performing in a farce called Lord Richard and The Pantry; so I was called Richard. But after the war, just immediately after the war, there was theatre in Skegness as there was in a lot of the country at that time, mainly weekly rep. When you talk about weekly rep to youngsters now they can’t believe it happened, that is a play a week. You can imagine what that was like. Plays in those days were mainly written in three acts so it was learning an act a night, and then performing in the evening. Absolutely incredible, but it was the law and there was two reps when I was still at school, at ‘Skeg’, and they wanted a young boy for a play called Frieda, so I was recruited in to that and then in my last year at school a famous Rattigan play called The Winslow Boy they wanted a young naval boy; so I did that. And then my father, God bless him, said ‘Do you really want to pursue this?’ because I was extremely shy at school I wouldn’t read aloud in the class, or anything like that. And he said ‘Do you want me to find if I can get you a drama school?’ Well drama schools in those days were, I don’t know if there were more than six, in . I mean, can you imagine how many there are now? And he wrote to Sir Kenneth Bonds who was the principal then of The Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and he said ‘He’s very young’. I was just tipping sixteen I think. ‘Bring him up let’s have a look at him’, so I was brought to London, to Gower Street, and in those days, they had a junior academy long since gone, in Highgate called Preparatory Academy to The Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, and so I took the test for RADA and to my amazement they said ‘Yes, he can go to PARADA’. Well it turned out to be a, I wouldn’t say a racket, but it was supposed to be for young people, but there were of course older people coming out of the wall so we were a mixture and the first term was pretty disastrous. I got a terrible report which I glory unto this day reading it out, you know ‘This boy resents everything he was told’. Etcetera and I wasn’t, I didn’t resent anything I was just terrified, I was coming from a provincial background into what those days was... people going into drama on the whole were upper class; the girls particularly all came from finishing schools in Switzerland you know and all spoke like that [imitates accent]. I still have a Lincolnshire accent to a certain extent, in those days you had to learn to speak ‘posh’, like I do now. Now it’s just the reversal you must keep your provincial accent and so I did that, fortunately I then had to take the test for RADA proper, which I did. Got in, but the Forces intervened and in those days we had to do National Service. So I went in the RAF, http://sounds.bl.uk Page 1 of 8 Theatre Archive Project hoping to see the world because in those days, you didn’t get anywhere, and they posted me thirty miles down the road, at Cranwell in Lincolnshire, and I spent my two years, fortunately a good drama department, I ran the drama department and then I went back to RADA and then I started my career in weekly rep at a place called Bexhill-on-Sea, in Sussex and I stayed there for I think five years not doing a play every week, because in those days you started as a stage manager as well, or an acting stage manager. Acting, they used to call it, ASM, they still use the phrase acting stage manager, and the girls would start particularly acting ASM and, of course, at the end of the sixties, I think it was, that all changed, because stage managers suddenly became technical only, which they are to this day; a different branch entirely so that opportunity young actors had to learn their trade has gone, disappeared, because that’s how you started. So yes I started in weekly rep; again, am I rambling on too much before more questions?

RB: Oh no, no, not at all. Not at all.

RS: There was an order to the theatre in the sense that you started in the theatre, you hoped to progress to a posh rep, there weren’t many of those, but say, Birmingham I think was four weekly, Liverpool was two weekly, oh yes, magnificent and then you hoped to become a West End actor so you went up the ladder as it were. Then of course, overnight, television arrived and the order was thrown out, and of course you could almost start at the top in television, not quite like you can today, you still weren’t allowed to do television unless you done so much theatre work I think. So it all changed but we were very lucky I think I was talking to a colleague only the day before yesterday and I think we had the best time of all theatre wise, probably every generation says this, but I think it’s true that we did, because as I say, there were all these theatres across the country and of course they were getting better reps then after the war. For instance I went to Coventry and that was the first theatre to be built after the war and it’s called The Belgrade Coventry, because the Belgrade citizens gave the wood for the theatre in recognition of the war effort, you know and I went there and that was three weekly, and I stayed there three years, doing not always a great play, but many splendid plays, every three weeks, which is a tremendous way of gaining experience, which the young people today just don’t have; they probably go for one play, or two and that’s it. But there we were, we were even in repertoire as opposed to repertory I mean we did, a season of seven, six plays alternating them through that period, and I did that at Nottingham Play House as well much later, and of course the directors also had terrific training for instance when I was at Coventry, this young boy came along he looked all of fourteen years old, and when he got to his feet one day we thought he was a young stage manager, apparently. We had a very vague director called Anthony Richardson, not to be confused with the film director Tony Richardson, and this young man was Trevor Nunn, and of course Anthony more or less handed the season over to him quite soon and he proved he was of course a wonderful, wonderful talent and director, and Peter Hall came over from Stratford and took him away almost overnight and the rest is history; within I think five years he was appointed to lead the Royal Shakespeare Company. But he also had to act, he also had to perform. For instance I did Twelfth Night, and I gave my Malvolio and he gave his Fabian all those years ago and when I made a big career move, across to Leicester that was very well thought of theatre then, I mean again doing a play every three weeks and the young trainee director there was a man called Richard Eyre, well you know, and he had to do some acting it’s the way you discovered if you didn’t like acting you’d better be a director. Look at him now, our juvenile actor at Coventry was Ian McKellen and so on and so on. So you’ve got this great wealth of talent and when I went to the Royal Shakespeare Company because of Trevor, bless him, in 1967, the first production Trevor ever did, a Shakespeare production, was Taming Of the Shrew and it turned out to be a wonderful production. But I was one of the oldest members, and I was then I think thirty five, but everyone in it had had wealth of experience already. They’d come from Manchester rep. Patrick, now Sir Patrick Stewart, Ben Kingsley playing a huntsman, Sir Ben Kingsley, all these people. Whereas today, you get, I gather, an incredible mixture, you get some very experienced people but, on the whole, you get people who’ve had no real experience going into these top http://sounds.bl.uk Page 2 of 8 Theatre Archive Project companies, and it shows I think technique wise, vocally. That’s one of the other great complaints these days that you can’t hear them, and in our days most theatres not like Leicester were big, were large and you just had to accommodate that size and you did. So yes, what I’m saying, I said basically the sixties/ seventies were a wonderful period, of course in the middle of all that you’ve got the revolution happening; we got a little trouble here. We got the arrival of course, of Look Back In Anger at the Royal Court, and I was doing weekly rep then and I remember when we were going to do a play called Look Back In Anger, in weekly rep, because our diet of plays in those days was basically I suppose why people were so good at them…the range was very, it wasn’t a large range you were either doing a popular, what should I say, family drama or you were doing a thriller, or you were doing, which is a lost art now not seen very often; a farce, you were very good at farce. So these came up on a regular basis, so when something unusual started to come up, like there was for The [Waltz of the]Toreadors or Look Back In Anger, it also was quite a strain on the leading man, who had to learn these enormous roles because again, in weekly rep it wasn’t a hotch-potch of ‘oh you play that this week’, ‘you play something else next week’; if you were the leading man you played the leading part, if you were the leading juvenile, you played come what may. So it was…yes the revolution started with that and bit by bit, things changed, and of course television took over gradually although still at that time you only really got the two channels haven’t you, BBC One and ITV, so you were still getting enormous audiences for those channels but it was beginning to eat into your theatre audience who were loyal, who used to come every week, or every three weeks and you became what was known as the local favourite, you know. So I spent most of my sixties, fifties, sixties, seventies in provincial or the Royal Shakespeare Company; yes so, I had almost nonstop work in that period of time which, I think you’d be very lucky to be able to do that now, very lucky. So, that’s a rambling precis of my sort of background into theatre.

RB: How many years did you act for?

RS: How many years did I act for? Well I’ve worked out, just recently as I’ve now retired, that I acted for over fifty-odd years, yes, and the only thing I can be really proud of is that I never, ever missed a performance and again that’s another attitude I find has changed totally, that people will now be off as we call it, at the drop of a hat you know. Send on the understudy - course we didn’t have understudies in provincial theatre or weekly rep there wasn’t an understudy so if you were on your deathbed, you got on and on the rare occasion that someone was so ill that they couldn’t possibly make it for a night, I’m afraid the stage manager had to get out there with a book, and read in but that was so rare; but not any longer. So yes I suppose it was a long haul and my career ended I find, I don’t know whether I find it ironic or not.

RB: Sorry, so what was your favourite role?

RS: Ah, well I say I think it did happen at Leicester of all places, and I think although it was a heck of a strain at the time, it was probably Vladimir in Waiting For Godot. Again when you think you that you were doing a play every three weeks and some very interesting plays at that time but three weeks doesn’t actually mean three weeks solid rehearsal because you’re playing another play in the evening, you’ve got matinees, so that’s only half a day, you know there’s half a day taken out for your rehearsal period so you’re really talking about two and a half weeks, and I will never forget that particular production because, for the first week, I was playing Pozzo, and the gentlemen playing Vladimir was a very well-known director now - Jonathan Lynn - who co-wrote Yes Minister and he suddenly became ill, and they said would you swap to Vladimir. You know, almost under two weeks to go [laughs], and I did and I thought it was a wonderful experience. I can’t say I understood exactly what it was all about at the time but I can only tell you that once you got out there and got on with it, it was like your life flashing by, you know, you understood instinctively that there were great moments in it and I just particularly remember one moment where he faces the young Shepard http://sounds.bl.uk Page 3 of 8 Theatre Archive Project boy and says ‘I am here’. Or something like that - ‘I am here aren’t I, I do exist don’t I’ and it was incredible experience, and so tiring because the next show, the director at the time decided he would rehearse in London, because he had a special guest actor. So can you imagine? I did that in the evening and I’m not a stay-a-bed, but I remember the taxi hooting outside my flat in Leicester to take me to the station, to come up to London to rehearse the next play, and go back, and then do Godot in the evening. So I would say on the whole that’s probably my favourite role, yes.

RB: How did you prepare for a play? Was there any special preparations you went through?

RS: No, against all the general rule of today; I’d say no. Because you just didn’t have time. I found I worked instinctively the moment. I read a script, something clicked and one went for it and the rehearsal period, of course, was so strict, like three weeks was the maximum in those days, even for a West End show, was three weeks. So you didn’t have all the six weeks to play with, and now of course, most of us senior actors who are around, we find we keep saying ‘Oh I couldn’t go in and play all those games, they all play now’. You know soul searching that goes on [laughs]. You want to get on with it, and I suppose whether it was a bad fault I don’t know, but we…instinctively got on with it and it’s rather interesting today that young actors do like all this of course, and it works to a great extent for many of them. But when they come to actually filming these days the reverse process has happened, when I did television you rehearsed like a play for three weeks, you know a rehearsal room. Now you turn up and do it on the day, rehearse, record. No rehearsal, well rehearse, run through, record. You’re supposed to turn up with your performance, there and then so you haven’t got any time, but of course you did some research if it was historically interesting, but I think some actors I really respect say the same thing ‘No why should I research into this that and the other, because what I’ve got to play is what’s on the page, what’s in that text not the background that people don’t know, well it would be nice to know, but no what I’ve got to communicate to the audience is what it says here’. And that was the rule I’d go by, yes.

RB: Did you ever meet any playwrights?

RS: Yes, and I’m going to forget all their names, isn’t that awful? I did see Pinter in rehearsal which is quite interesting. When I was at the Royal Shakespeare Company years later I went back two or three times and it was the season when the RSC - their headquarters, in the seventies and eighties, was at the Aldwych Theatre where Peter Hall had first established their London base - and we were doing a very heavy season: The Iceman Cometh for instance, famous production, and then they did two Pinter, one actors, Landscape and Silence. I wasn’t actually, it was the only time I covered, I covered one of the actors in that and so I saw Pinter at rehearsal with Peter Hall, it was very interesting, you know, and all those famous quotes about him are true you know. ‘What does this mean Harold?’, ‘Well it means what it says doesn’t it, get on with it. [Laughs] There it is, it’s on the page, play it’, ‘What about the pauses?’ ‘Well you know…it’s up to you basically’. And I remember Peter Hall came in one morning and said ‘Harold I think we’ll set this particular play in the thirties?’, ‘Yeah, why not’. [Laughs] But I always remember on the first night at the Aldwych, or maybe it was the first preview, of course I was able to sit in the circle and there was a door that led right on to the street and somehow this old tramp had got in. This ties-up with Pinter so well doesn’t it, a tramp of all things and I thought ‘Well this is rather splendid there’s this chap sitting there’, you know, well if you get to see Pinter double-bill, and they spotted him Pinter and Hall: ‘Oh get that man out of here!’; I thought ‘Oh no come on, he’s straight out of you know, your famous play for goodness sake, let him stay there’. No I saw him. Howard Brenton; we did one of his famous plays at Nottingham, the one set in the futuristic concentration camp, what’s it called? I can’t remember the name, isn’t that awful. It’s since been revived, by the, I think, the National Theatre did it and, of course, David Hare a play of his we did at Nottingham; we did http://sounds.bl.uk Page 4 of 8 Theatre Archive Project two mad pieces by the late Ken Campbell, which were extraordinary and outrageous. Oh and of course I was lucky enough to be in The Comedians, which started its round at Nottingham; in fact that’s when I eventually left Nottingham Playhouse after two and half years and that transferred to the National Theatre and led to Wyndham’s and that was a marvellous experience and when you think of the wealth of talent there in that show like Jonathan Pryce, Steven Ray, Tom Wilkinson - now look at him, an international film star isn’t he. So yes, I met them and I’m sure there must be a couple of others along the route, but yes so I met a few.

RB: Was there ever a play that stood out in your mind, during your career, that you really felt was powerful at the time?

RS: Well The Comedians was one, obviously, and Richard thought it was - Richard Eyre - thought it was a bit of a gamble. Would it attract an audience at all in Nottingham? The theme about humour of course, what is right and what is wrong in humour, how far can you push it? And much to his amazement, we were suddenly an incredible hit, and word of mouth, and of course we had playing the tutor of the comedians the old music hall comic, we had an old famous music hall comic, Jimmy Jewel, and he was, it was very interesting of course, because he was playing himself basically and I had one of the frights of my life I suppose because I didn’t understudy much, but in that I did cover him for the last two months of the run at Wyndham’s, they couldn’t find an understudy. And I was in the company anyway and I said ‘Okay, nothing will happen’. And of course he’d never been off in his life, and he was off on the penultimate evening and the house was packed with people come to see the show as it was coming on, so I was propelled on that evening and it was…I must say it was a wonderful experience actually, thank goodness I was on top of it. So I think that play stands out, oh and of course, for me, the highlight of my theatrical life, experience was the adaptation of Nicholas Nickleby - the eight and a half hour version - which I wasn’t in originally so of course I didn’t go through all the anguish of the year they took to put it together, at Stratford. And again I walked into it because suddenly a senior actor called Griffith Jones, not confused with Griff Jones; Griffith Jones couldn’t go to America because of his wife’s illness. ‘Would I take over his part?’ They were filming it, it’s on video isn’t it, at The Old Vic and they hadn’t got time to rehearse me and another lady, who was, you know, playing a much bigger part: Mrs Nickleby. So she said ‘Of course, I’ll do my usual emergency thing’. So I had this extraordinary experience of opening on Broadway, for the first preview, they called it, and they have a tradition over there where the preview is open to all actors who want to go. Well of course the place was packed out wasn’t it, absolutely packed out course they didn’t know that the two of us were new to this venture and there you are, you go in the audience, you did with that show, and mingle with the audience beforehand, saying ‘No I’m only an actor I’m going to be up there playing hundreds of parts in a few minutes time’. And I thought yes, you’re waiting for that wonderful music that Stephen Oliver composed, and you thought ‘I know I’ll go and join that big narration group at the beginning and where do we go from there, for the next eight and a half hours?’ and I joined the group, and there was this incredible reception, which stunned everyone, and we hadn’t even started and of course, when it got to the end of the first part there’s a wonderful pastiche of the poor old crumbles reparatory company attempting to do Romeo And Juliet, very badly and then they sing this wonderful Elgarian-type number you know, and of course I just found it so emotional yet they were on Broadway, singing this number and then you had an hour’s break and of course, the restaurants in New York guaranteed they would get there audience in an out within an hour, feed them and back in for part two. Which they did and it was an extraordinary experience because, theatrically, it was a wonderful concept of one set basically just all these walkways and wooden, and you ran round the circle you could walk round the front of the circle and you got to know people, and by the end of the evening, you’d made friends, all around the house, you know [laughs]. Extraordinary experience, I’ve never forgotten that and it was such a clever piece of work I suppose it was one of the highlights wasn’t it of

http://sounds.bl.uk Page 5 of 8 Theatre Archive Project the eighties and nineties, yes it was, great production. So I think I’d put that down as my great moment, and course it linked me again with Trevor Nunn. That was another of my emergency…steppings-in, yes.

RB: So what was your view on the Angry Young Men, as they were labelled?

RS: Oh, at the time of course, it rather took me aback; I suppose like I was only a youngster for goodness sake you know I was in my late twenties, thirties, but I was always a late developer. You know I thought ‘What is this thing called The Beatles?’ for instance ‘Why are we making a fuss about these?’ I remember they came to Coventry, at the big theatre, and Trevor was - Trevor Nunn - was in ecstasy about this group down the road and I was thought ‘Noisiest people I’ve known’ [Laughs]. So I suppose my reaction at the time was, ‘it’s a bit…’ Is it okay?

RB: Yes, as you were. So did you find there was a division between those who embraced Kitchen-Sink dramas and those who felt it was a move away from the upper-class?

RS: Oh yes, oh I’m sure. And that was personified very strongly, wasn't it, in the West End at that time, because the West End was under a dictatorship really of the management of the famous Binkie Beaumont and he really ran the West End with all the…family dramas, the John Gielguds and all this; very splendid actors but he was, of course, totally against all this New Wave and the backlash was unfair in some ways because one of the great sufferers for instance was Rattigan who now suddenly has been rediscovered hasn’t he? This last two years everyone is doing Rattigan, and realising what a good writer he was and also there was a great backlash against Noel Coward, ‘oh trivial you know, oh won’t touch him with a bargepole’ and then suddenly about ten, fifteen, twenty years ago I think suddenly, Coward was restored and is being resorted at this very moment and another production coming up is Hay Fever at this moment. Judi Dench in Hay Fever not long ago, brilliant, so yes there was a strong division and a lot of people got very hurt by it yes, and of course the senior actors were thrown into confusion I think and the perfect example is at the top of the profession where as you know, like I’m sure you know, went to see Look Back In Anger and said to Osborne ‘Will you write something for me?’ you know, realising you’ve got to join this band wagon. Of course he wrote The Entertainer for him and I was fortunate in seeing him in that it gave me a couple of the most marvellous theatrical moments I think I’ll ever remember in his performance; wonderful; and and the great Sir Ralph did that wonderful play, was it David Storey Home at the Royal Court? And so they…and then of course they both got into Pinter didn’t they, and so yes it slowly came about but I can imagine that a lot of people felt really cast adrift by it and the West End for a time didn’t know which way to go I don’t think. But the provincial theatre then was moving into the hands of the younger Turks, you know, the Nunn’s and the Richard Eyre’s and slowly Richard was always tapping up new authors if he could and writers and I must admit you know it’s not all a rosy picture we weren’t playing to packed houses by any means it was quite a reaction against certain plays. ‘We don’t want this sort of thing in our theatre you know…and language’. And you mentioned censorship of course; I’d forgotten how that suddenly dropped because I remember you had to do certain plays in what we call theatre clubs you had token membership, tea and sympathy, because it dealt with homosexuality vaguely: ‘Oh can’t go into that’. Theatre club, Cat On A Hot Tin Roof same thing, had to be in a theatre club, and of course, censorship was a joke I mean total joke. People got round it and what the - it was a military man it was always colonel somebody - and of course he never understood the double entendre and some of the radio programmes are a perfect example of that, Round The Horn. All those wicked double acts with Kenneth Williams…the gay couple for instance, the censor never understood you know what the jokes were and funnily enough I was in a production where we broke another taboo; moving nude on stage, was not allowed. It had to be a tableau and in my youth, of course, those tatty little reviews used to come around and there’d be an act at the end of the first half where the girls would form supposedly Classically tableau you know, but they mustn’t move http://sounds.bl.uk Page 6 of 8 Theatre Archive Project like The Windmills, the famous Windmill Theatre that ran forever. But in the sixties we did a production of Dr. Faustus at the Royal Shakespeare Company and they wanted Helen Of Troy to appear in the nude and course there was a great interest in the company, needless to say about how this would come about and they went up to London and they hired a nice girl, a showgirl, but she was a showgirl, and all she had to do was literally walk across the stage in front of the great late Eric Porter for his famous speech: ‘Is this the face that launched a thousand ships?’ I always found it rather amusing because her bottom was facing the audience at that time [laughs], but anyway of course this has never happened before, and we went to America with it and can you imagine caused quite a stir there and I used to go on immediately after that particular scene and it was very interesting on most - you arrive at a theatre on a dress rehearsal and the stage hands couldn’t believe what they were seeing you know, this girl being sprayed, and bit of sticking plaster at one vital point. And so the next night, the wings would be crowded of course with people, but it’s interesting isn’t it after about three nights it only faded away, faded away. But there was one little dramatic moment in Detroit when she was ill, and they said ‘well we haven’t got an understudy’ and Helen Mirren, Dame Helen, was a young girl then, she wasn’t in that play she was in the other play we were doing, she said ‘I’ll do it, but I won’t go on, I’ll wear a very, net thing, a gauze’. Course it was much more sexy than going on totally nude, so dear Helen Mirren went on as Helen Of Troy, yes. So yes that was one of the first breaks for censorship there yes, and suddenly of course it was a free for all wasn’t it? Especially on the other great breakthrough of course, was a great friend of mine, the late Roy Kinnear, and of course the…what was the famous radio television programme, oh broke all the taboos with David Frost on a Saturday night, how can I forget the name of it? [That Was The Week That Was].

RS: Does this go on to a disc or something eventually?

RB: There’s actually a memory card.

RS: Ah I see, ah, ah memory card right.

RB: Who were you influenced by whilst you were acting?

RS: Who was I influenced by, oh gracious, I don’t think I can answer that. I mean I was influenced by talented colleagues around me and by that I can’t - there’s no particular famous names there. I was very interested when somebody especially in my very early days in weekly rep because then you tended to go out, all guns blazing, you know, because that’s all you knew and you got to do it in a week. Then suddenly you might get someone come in for two or three plays, which was unusual because the company used to stay together for six months or a year or more and if someone were to come in who, shall we say, had a bit of class, a bit of style, a bit of underplaying, and you thought; ‘Ah that’s perhaps what I should be heading for’. And slowly I think your style changes, and you, well in my case anyway, I thought ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah I’d rather under play this than over play it’. And I learnt, I strained too hard, I’m sure, as a young man, as many of us did and so when you saw someone do that sort of performance you thought ‘Yeah, yeah’. I mean as for the greats, well I mean the greats at the time; you were…disintegrate which is rather sad. I hope I wasn’t too boring.

RB: Oh no, just a few more questions.

RS: Oh right.

RB: So do you feel that theatre has changed for better or worse?

http://sounds.bl.uk Page 7 of 8 Theatre Archive Project RS: No probably on the whole, it’s for better but that’s selective. I mean it shrunk into probably centres of excellence. So, on the whole, of course presentation and production values and all that sort of thing of course improved tremendously. I’m not sure on the whole that the all-round standard has improved, as I say. I think that’s because there’s such a mixture of experience in most companies now, when you - in the old days most people had a certain level of experience when they joined certain companies. Now you can get a lot of beginners mixed in with people who have been around a long time, and of course it’s very difficult I assume for directors to mesh this talent together; who do they spend their time with? And also, I don’t know, it’s exemplified by - I belong to an organisation at the moment, we have a new name Actors From The London Stage and they’re a very interesting group, they were formed many years ago, by a wonderful American professor called Homer Swander [ph] from Santa Barbara and he used to bring Americans over here to see shows, many years he did that. But he was also interested in his pupils and he thought one day ‘Wouldn’t it be marvellous if we could get an actor into an English literature class, to say to them, look what you have in front of you is not a piece of literature per se it’s an actor’s working script, and it does not really come to life until you speak it, or get up on your feet and do it’. And so he had this mad idea, could he get someone from the Royal Shakespeare Company to do that, and they were over there at the time and he approached the great late Ian Richardson and he panicked and said ‘Oh no, no, no. I couldn’t on my own’. But look there are five of us doing this program called The Hollow Crown by the great John Barton. He said ‘I don’t know if I’d get any money from it’. Anyway he did, and I find it ironic to this day, that the students thought it’d be a great idea and a lot of the funding came from the concert by The Beach Boys. The Beach Boys meet Shakespeare is rather interesting isn’t it? And so they started going over twice a year into universities and then about twenty five years ago, someone said ‘Look this isn’t a challenge enough why don’t we try and do an actual performance?’ They did recitals and excerpts but then: ‘let’s attempt to do a whole play, let’s do a Shakespeare, with five people and no directors’. This is the interesting thing, no director; it’s up to the five people and no support, no stage management nothing like that. And I got involved with this twenty five years ago, the reason why I’m in this place now, because I met Vivien [recording finishes].

[Audio recording ends at: 42:15] [Audio recording cuts out at: 14:15, 29:00, 36:45, 38:30, 42:15]

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