MY TEENAGE HERO 1960, but He Endearingly “I’Ll Make You Had Attended the Place
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SIR ARNOLD WESKER 1932-2016 the likes of establishment SIT UP AND figures Malcolm Muggeridge, Marghanita DO SOMETHING Laski and Alan Bullock. What a hero he was. Two of those who had contact with Arnold We sought out his plays, Wesker and his work tell us why he was such and read them avidly. a significant figure At the great Habonim Camp in Brittany in the JESSICA RAINE summer of 1959, we staged Actor who played Beatie in Donmar a performance of Roots in Warehouse production of Roots, 2013 the marquee. A year later, On first reading Roots, I felt an en route for Israel aboard Mike Leigh immediate familiarity with the world the SS Artzah, one of the directing, 1966 Arnold was portraying. Having rusting hulks that had run grown up on a farm in the deepest the gauntlet of the British countryside, I felt a huge affinity only a few years earlier, crammed with When we won the Palme d’Or at with Beatie and her mother, Mrs survivors, we argued about the relative Cannes for Secrets And Lies, his heartfelt Bryant. The fact that Arnold grew merits of Chicken Soup with Barley and letter of congratulation lamented wistfully up in Hackney is testament to his I’m Talking about Jerusalem. and rather movingly that writing and extraordinary writing skills. At one point, Arnold was invited to directing movies is what he had always Playing Beatie was exhausting, I come and talk to us at a Habonim holiday dreamed of doing, and that although have never or since played a character seminar somewhere in Berkshire, but he was delighted for me, he was also a who talks so much, and was relentlessly he cancelled at the last minute. Years little jealous. I think he adopted a kind of passionate without having the later, when I recalled this to him, he was paternal attitude to me in a way, which knowledge to back up her arguments NEW WHAT’S adamant that this couldn’t have happened was always charming, never patronising. ... until that incredible final speech – he always honoured his commitments, In fact, my long association with the when she truly finds her voice. and never let anyone down. This was London Film School – as student, tutor and I am very proud of our Donmar true, of course: he was diligent in his Chairman – owes something to Arnold: the production. I remember director James unselfish attentiveness to all and sundry. first I ever knew of it was from the Penguin MacDonald telling us not to hurry, to (Plainly, something had edition of his plays, take our time with the dialogue and WHAT’S NEW WHAT’S detained him back in which reported that he acting the housework and this lent the MY TEENAGE HERO 1960, but he endearingly “I’ll make you had attended the place. production its slow burn that left many insisted that the story was chopped liver, And it was only when he quite teary. The nostalgia, along with Director Mike Leigh was in his teens when the work of Arnold Wesker, implausible!) died that I learned that a call to socialism, was a heady mix. A who died in April, blasted through the cultural scene of the 1950s. Here The second time I we can walk and it was one of his tutors, loving cry to the apathetic to sit up and Leigh remembers the thrill of seeing a former East End Jewish boy take didn’t meet Arnold was in Lindsay Anderson, who do something. 1965. I was the assistant chew the fat” first brought his writing on the establishment and inspire a generation director at the new to the attention of the JANET LEVIN Midlands Arts Centre in Birmingham. Royal Court Theatre, and that Arnold’s son CEO and founder of JR magazine Arnold had by now started his inspired Lindsay is named after the director. Arnold Wesker was one of the earliest f you were a nice Jewish boy born is a splendid evocation of the Jewish We were in the youth group Habonim. Centre 42, and it was natural that he We saw each other in London supporters of Jewish Renaissance in the 1940s, and you weren’t called East End in the 30s and 40s. As to my We were chaverim. We were budding should visit us in Birmingham. I was occasionally, and after he moved to Hove when we began in 2001, immediately Isomething Old Testament, like Michael, own dealings with him, nothing can be socialists. We took part collectively in beside myself with excitement. At last with Dusty we carried on our intermittent accepting the invitation to join our David or Jonathan, you’d be Anthony, usefully reported here. the CND Aldermaston March. We went I was to meet my hero. But the (now correspondence until he became too ill. He Editorial Advisory Board. While he Leslie, Geoffrey, or even Barry. Half a But back in 1959, although we were hiking and camping, and we sang folk long-deceased) director of the Centre, was constructively critical of my ‘Jewish’ could not be enticed from his Welsh generation earlier, the fashion had been aware of Pinter and Kops, it was Arnold songs. Our parents despaired of us and a buffoon who would have denied both play, Two Thousand Years, at the National retreat to come to meetings, he was the likes of Harold, Bernard or Arnold, of Wesker who most came to our attention, called us ‘schlochs’ because we wore his undoubted conservatism and his Theatre, and when the same theatre generous with his advice and praise, all of which there was an abundance. and with whom we immediately identified. open-neck shirts and polo-neck pullovers antisemitism, suddenly and perversely announced my next play there, Grief, he emailing: “I keep meeting people So imagine how exciting it was, for and sandals, and the girls banned me from coming anywhere complained, somewhat petulantly, that I who enthuse about JR for both its the tiny handful of us who were among us didn’t wear near the meeting with Arnold, on was obviously unaware that he had written design and content. And I’m full of concerned with such esoteric things as make-up. And while our pain of the sack. a one-woman opera with the same title, admiration every quarter.” culture, to discover, in the late 1950s, that ‘respectable’ well-groomed It wasn’t until the early 90s that which had been performed once in Japan. Wesker was a hero of mine not one, but three young London East End contemporaries sat flirting I got to know Arnold. This began at a Then we disagreed over my support for the at the end of the 50s, when I was Jewish working-class dramatists had burst in fashionable coffee Dramatists’ Seminar organised by David ban on Israeli theatre company Habimah’s rebelling against what I saw was the onto the scene – a Harold, a Bernard and bars, we debated serious Edgar at Birmingham University, and visit to London. conventional life of north-west London. an Arnold. issues like the bomb and soon developed into a relationship by But the overriding thing about Arnold Like Beatie in Roots, I then had to In time, I would come to know all capital punishment – and correspondence. From time to time he was that one could never be angry or reiterate the words of radical boyfriends three writers personally, although none of of course, the kibbutz, and would exhort me to go and stay with him irritated with him. Because whatever the before I could find my own expression. them intimately. Of the trio, only Harold whether to go on aliyah. at his home in Hay-on-Wye – the National issue was, you always knew that for him, In my invitation to Arnold to join our Pinter was actually an influence on my Then, suddenly, on Portrait Gallery picture of him at his it came from the heart; he was always board, I wrote “you were an icon of my own work (the first play I ever directed the BBC TV Brains Trust, desk (left) was taken there. “I’ll make motivated by that same honest, pure youth”. “What do I have to do to be was The Caretaker at RADA in 1962), and Chicken Soup: Danny Webb there was Arnold Wesker, you chopped liver, and we can go on long passion we’d all been so inspired by back your icon now?” was the unexpected over the years he was always positive and (Harry Kahn) and Samantha ex-member of Habonim, walks and chew the fat”, he once wrote. in the late 1950s. and delightful reply. My 17-year-old self supportive. Spiro (Sarah Kahn), wearing his polo-neck and To my regret, things somehow always Arnold Wesker was a great writer and would never believed that I would be Bernard Kops’ first volume of Royal Court Theatre 2011 his CND badge, and being got in the way, and I never took up his a lovely guy. It was a privilege to know engaging in a flirtatious correspondence autobiography, The World Is A Wedding, cheeky in our own lingo to JOHAN PERSSON - WWW.NPG.ORG.UK; LONDON GALLERY PORTRAIT MARK GERSON, NATIONAL invitation. him, but I wish I’d known him better. n with such a seminal figure. 8 JEWISHRENAISSANCE.ORG.UK JULY 2016 JULY 2016 JEWISHRENAISSANCE.ORG.UK 9.