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Veronica Cohen Interviewed by Ruby Rushbury-Clark 23 November 2013

Veronica Cohen

ASM. Audience; Alan Bates; Bedales; ; ; Central; Donmar; drama school; TS Eliot; Edith Evans; Judy Garland; ; ; Nicholas Hytner; ; Danny Kaye; Penelope Keith; Lyons; Yvonne Mitchell; Morley College; ; ; Oxford Play House; Palladium Theatre; Sylvia Pankhurst; Joan Plowright; ; ; Frank Sinatra; Webber Douglas; West Side Story.

RRC: Would you like to start off by telling me your name and date of birth?

VC: Yes, my name is Veronica Cohen and my date of birth is the 4th of January 1939.

RRC: Can you tell me where you grew up and what it was like?

VC: I was born in , my father was in the army, so in the wartime we went to the country, when he was in the army. We came back and we moved to Richmond and I have two sisters, and they are both dead now, and one of the sisters was also in the theatre - she also went to Central and trained there. I did a few secretarial jobs when I was in that part of my youth. Then I went to drama school at the Webber Douglas - it was quite the, the training was I think terribly good. We did movement classes, we did singing classes, we did a lot of plays, we learnt how to project our voices - was terribly important. The teacher would sit at the back of the theatre and we really had to learn breathing and projection. And singing was something I excelled at - I had a good voice - and I sang a lot at Webber Douglas. And then I remember there was a call from the Palladium Theatre where Frank Sinatra was on doing his show and they rang us up and they said, ‘Could you supply a few people to come and scream at the back of the Palladium?’ so that would start everybody else screaming. So me and a few friends went and we stood at the back and we screamed at him when he came in. And that was - I remember doing that and thinking this is so funny. We didn’t get paid and my friend who did it with me said we really ought to have got paid. So that was… I then did my… at the end we all had to audition. I was in the same year as Penelope Keith and she was a bit pissed off because I got a job before her. [Laughs] Anyhow, I went up to Lincoln as an Assistant Stage Manager, I don’t think I realised what incredibly hard work I’d let myself

http://sounds.bl.uk Page 1 of 16 Theatre Archive Project in for. We stayed - I had digs - and I was in digs with three other girls. There was the one who painted the scenery and she was terribly talented and the, the other girls who had more, they were better, they were higher up the ladder than I was. I got paid £6.10 a week, which was the Equity minimum then, so you had to pay your digs out of it - I can’t remember how much the digs were, but they weren’t - you know, they were quite cheap. They weren’t all that comfortable. I remember when we used to come back from touring or the end of the week when we had to strike the set and put up the new one for the Monday play, or for the Sunday dress rehearsal. I got incredibly dirty on my arms from lifting the flats. They were very heavy and you had to do it with somebody else, but you had to be really careful of them. And I used to go back to my digs to wash and the hot water was turned off. So I didn’t have a proper bath, I think, because when I got back, being the lowest of the low, late after everybody else had come back, as I say, the water was turned off. [laughs] So I mean that I remember. I remember there was a fair amount of bitchiness. Yep, I think if you didn’t know what part you were going to play, you crossed your fingers that you were going to get a good part, but I knew being an ASM it was mostly [05:00] ‘Dinner is served’. Which… [laughs] me and a man ASM… I remember… I had to say ‘Dinner is served’ and then leave, you know, because I’d said my bit so they had to get on with it, and there was a man ASM with me and he was very daring and he was great fun and it was his turn to say ‘Dinner is served’ and he said, ‘Just watch me tonight, and I’m going to stand there until I get a laugh’ And I said ‘No Clive’, [laughs] you know, ‘What will the other actors say?’ Anyhow he said, ‘Dinner is served’ and stood there and the actors were going, ‘Get off Clive’. [laughs] And then there was a nervous, you could hear from the audience, a sort of nervousness and a titter and then another titter, and gradually everybody, you know, fell about laughing and he turned to me and said, ‘I told you I was going to do it’. [laughs] So I remember that and that stayed with me, really to this day, and it still makes me laugh when I think about him. Anyway, I think… yes, I think there were producers. I remember I had to play, I think obviously a maid, because always, always a maid and oh, I had to go downstairs and I couldn’t remember, I had to be a Norwegian maid, and I couldn’t get my accent right and the producer was getting really angry with me and he… I had to get the accent right. The person was, I said, I have to have bad intentions…’ Please stop, because it’s - I can’t remember that episode properly - so I won’t go into that. I think… I longed to get better parts. I think I really, really longed to, because when I was interviewed or auditioned I thought they were delighted and I thought they would give me better parts, but no you didn’t.

[07:35]

RRC: When you started off…

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VC: At Webber Douglas?

RRC: Well, when you decided that you wanted to go into drama - what made you decide you wanted to do that?

VC: Yes, I went to Bedales, which was quite keen the arts, and we had a drama teacher there who was so good and I did a lot of work with her and she was incredibly encouraging. I did singing, I played the flute I was in the National Youth Orchestra, so that was, I didn’t get one academic exam. I came out of school with a lot of ideas about the theatre about music about singing, and my parents were sort of, you know, there was a bit of, ‘Oh come off it, do something… do something better’. But I messed about and then I said, ‘I’m going to drama school’. I don’t know how I found Webber Douglas, I can’t remember, but I did and, oh the classes were amazing. I had a wonderful singing teacher - I think this is where I excelled, in my singing - I had a very big mezzo voice and she would encourage me. I loved singing and I was good, and to this day I can go out in the street, in Baker Street, and it’s a taxi, I can call right across the traffic and get the taxi. And my children hated it when I did that, it really embarrassed them. So singing was my, what I excelled at. I think after that, doing rep. I think not always easy being an ASM. I think then we’ll go to the crash, because this was a horrendous point in my [10:00] experience. We were at Scunthorpe and we were coming back and I was sitting in the front of the car, the minibus, because I had to learn my lines, I was learning my lines for next week, otherwise I would have sat in the back with the rest of the company. And it was at night, I remember feeling a smash, I remember being trapped in that car, I remember people incredibly kind, I remember the ambulance, or the police, cranking up the engine, I remember my feet were in… I couldn’t, I knew something had happened. So I was taken conscious to Nottingham General and with very severe leg injuries, which I still have today. I remember the company coming to visit me and they were amazing. There were letters, there were companies that were just coming to sit there, seeing was I alright, there was the director coming and being incredibly caring and all that sort of thing. So that was, that was really important. I went back, I tried to work but it was very difficult. I think that – no, it was very very hard - so I had to give it up, which was a wrench, a real, real wrench. I can’t remember what I did when I’d finished. I remember actually going in, doing voice lessons again, because I knew that this was where my talent lay, and I remember joining Morley College. I remember doing in the Morley opera group. I remember, I think this is really important and a bit I really loved from my training, was that. And I remember someone coming up to me when I first got married and saying to my - well - then my husband - ‘You must never let her stop singing, just see that she goes on.’ And I did stop. So I think we can say that’s probably the

http://sounds.bl.uk Page 3 of 16 Theatre Archive Project end of my experience. Have you got any questions you want to ask?

[12:49]

RRC: How did feel about the amount of news coverage that the accident had and did you feel like it impacted on your career? Did a lot of people, a lot of companies, now realise who you were and you were recognised because you were on the newspaper a lot?

VC: What?

RRC: Because of the newspaper coverage…

VC: Yes

RRC: How did you feel about that and did you feel that you had a lot of attention on you and a lot of other drama companies were trying to get in contact with you?

VC: Who tried to get in contact?

RRC: Well, other drama companies or…?

VC: Yes. [pause] I remember there was a programme… a programme – is there a programme now called Holby City?

RRC: Yeah.

VC: Which is about a hospital? And in those days there was a programme called Emergency Ward 10, which was the same thing and I remember somebody coming when I had a plaster and saying, ‘Do you want a part in it?’ And I didn’t, for some stupid reason. And that would have been something, I could of… So I think the coverage… I think I didn’t - I was amazed at the coverage it got. It was on was on television that night. I didn’t think I realised, just about the coverage, I don’t think I realised what it was going to do. I think had I been younger or – no, let’s face it - had I had more confidence, I would have used that to do something else, I’m sure I would have done. But I didn’t. So I think my career in the theatre, training for three years - I think I was a rep for probably a year when it happened. [15:00] I

http://sounds.bl.uk Page 4 of 16 Theatre Archive Project think there was a lot of bitchiness, a really lot of bitchiness. Don’t forget if you were, I was Assistant Stage Manager, and so I had a very bossy stage manager over me and in those days if you needed props for the… if you needed props for that week you had to go to shops, you had to go to people, you had to say ‘Could I borrow that sofa?’, you had to say, ‘Could I borrow that?’ I think didn’t we had a lot of props, we had to borrow an awful lot from the companies. The theatre company had a committee of theatre goers who befriended us, who gave us parties at Christmas, who looked after us. It was a social thing honestly, it was a social thing, and so we would go to them and we would say look, ‘Could you help us? We want this, that and that?’ or the stage managers did. And they would do this and they would lend us things and they had to be written up in the programme, you know, ‘Sofa lent by Mrs Bloggs’ Anything else you want to ask me?

[16:41]

RRC: Did you meet anyone whilst working there – you say you met Frank Sinatra was it?

VC: We didn’t meet him, we went to, we had to scream at the back of the theatre.

RRC: What was that experience like, being so close to him?

VC: [Laughs] It was wonderful! It was amazing! You felt you were part of the show. We didn’t meet him, we didn’t meet him. But I don’t know if he acknowledged us. I think - this is my thoughts - I think perhaps he would have been a bit ashamed that he had to hire screamers and that the audience wouldn’t scream without being told how to scream. I adored doing that. [pause]

[17:45]

RRC: What’s your family background, I mean was anyone in your family - have they ever worked with drama or…?

VC: Yes. I have a cousin called Yvonne Mitchell and she was a very experienced, very successful author, actress, film star, I mean she was right at the top of her career - if you look up Yvonne Mitchell. Anyhow she was a cousin of mine so [pause] I came from a very well-to-do Jewish family who were in – they started the firm called J Lyons, which had Lyons Teashops, which had Lyons tea, everything. It was a

http://sounds.bl.uk Page 5 of 16 Theatre Archive Project very important firm then. So I think I was terribly spoilt with all the - how can I put it - advantages of being brought up in this firm. [19:04] I had a sister, which was Nigella’s aunt – Vanessa was - I’m Nigella’s aunt. So, I mean my sister was - I can’t say anything about… [laughs] She was so, you know, what is the word? Precocious. I mean, she was so… sleeping around all the time [laughs], all the time. So she went to drama school, she went to Central. She then went to Oxford Playhouse and she did well there. So we were rivals about this. I mean we were really, really… she would come back she would say, ‘Well I’ve got that part’ and I’d think, uh. So that was the family background. [20:01] I can’t, I mean it was so, it was an extraordinary life. It was – you know The Hare With Amber Eyes? This book that… you know?

RRC: Yeah.

[20:22]

VC: So my background was a bit like that. I don’t think, I mean we had aunts who were [pause] - their lifestyle would make you… they didn’t work, they were given a lot of privileges, they were – we were all – there was a restaurant called the Trocadero which Lyons owned. They also owned the Cumberland Hotel, they also owned the Strand Palace Hotel and the Regent Park – the, what’s it called? The Regents something hotel. So this, the aunts were spoilt. My mother was incredibly spoilt. My father was – what do they call it now when you come back from the war? Traumatised? P? You come back from the war and you’re completely… I mean you’ve seen the most - Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Okay? So he had that. He was one of the people who discovered Belsen, so that really knocked him for six, and he worked in Lyons. He was incredibly interested in the arts, in paintings. He left me the paintings that you see in this flat which are good. He, oh he did wonderful things with Lyons with his paintings, putting them in, organising lithographs and putting them in all the shops. So I learnt – he was a lovely man he was a… He committed suicide. He, I don’t think he worked and then he… oh, this is quite difficult. He didn’t get on with my mother, she was not an easy woman. and he knew when he retired that he would have to spend all his time with her and he knew how difficult – I’m sure this is true - and he just went out and crossed the zebra crossing. So… that’s been with me… that’s been with me, you don’t lose that. I had two sisters, they both died of cancer. I had cancer two or three years ago, so I was very ill. So, I have two lovely children. I’m a carrier of cancer, so I’m worried that my children will inherit it and pass it on to their children. I don’t go to the theatre a lot now because I’m quite old and I have bad arthritis and I don’t think I could sit in a theatre without getting terribly uncomfortable. I had osteoporosis now because of my car crash, I mean it really affected the whole body. So I read a lot, I read a great deal, I

http://sounds.bl.uk Page 6 of 16 Theatre Archive Project watch television an awful lot. I watch old films, which I adore. I see a lot of television and I see it, I think, from an actress’s point of view. I will watch it and think, God that was badly done, or couldn’t you say that better or, you know, I get a lot… and from old movies, I adore.

RRC: Going back, just what you were saying about watching things on television from an actress’s point of view…

VC: Yes.

RRC: Do you find it hard to not do that, do you find it hard to [25:00] just watch it without seeing it - no?

[25:02]

VC: No. [Laughs] No. [Pause] I was watching last night - what’s it called? Shakespeare in Love - wonderful and I thought how brilliantly all the fights were done, how brilliantly all the crowd scenes were done. I thought there was nothing that… I couldn’t think that was superbly done. [25:05] Sometimes I watch the most awful stuff. I was watching - what’s it called? It’s a new thing. Something in… oh, it’s Derek Jacobi and… oh yes, something in Halifax… Marriage in Halifax? [Last Tango in Halifax] Something, and I thought this is so badly done and I thought would do it so much better. I thought they all spoke on mobile phones to each other and it was so distracting. [26:17] Yes, I learn, I watch, I try to learn from watching telly, I try to learn from watching films. Now being deaf has had an enormous impact on my life. I mean I’m very. very deaf so I have to speak to you, because I have to lip read people. I can’t go in to a restaurant because of the echo, I can’t go to a dinner party because I can’t hear the people either side of me, so I can’t. I could, but I find it difficult. I watch television with the text on it. I can’t go – I’ve lost music totally. I can’t hear music anymore, which - I can’t hear the wireless anymore, I can’t hear radio plays, I can’t hear the news, I can’t hear any of the current event programmes which I used listen to. So you’ve got to adjust. You’ve just got to adjust and it is so difficult. I’ve stopped going to the cinema because I can’t hear - this is awful - because I can’t hear what they’re saying, so I have to go to special performances for the deaf, which I’m going to go tomorrow, there’s certain cinemas that you can find out where they’re doing performances. I’m going see Gravity with stage text, text on it, next week somewhere. So I think… And obviously not being able to walk properly has had an enormous impact on my… what I’ve had to cut out of my life, but I think I make up, I read an awful lot. I will watch a great deal of current event programmes, of interviewing with people who I think will be interesting. I go to art galleries, if I can. Probably every day I used to, as much as I

http://sounds.bl.uk Page 7 of 16 Theatre Archive Project can. I went to Tate Britain yesterday. I saw an exhibition of Emily Pankhurst [Sylvia Pankhurst], her paintings – amazing! I sat down in the café with a woman and we started to talk. She was incredible. Her grandmother had been a suffragette. And I find talking to, one-to-one with people I learn so much about their lives. I mean sometimes they’re so - I swear an awful lot. I do, I do, I do. And my children can’t bear it and I went – oh, I had to have cataract done or something, you know [laughing] and they said ‘Any illnesses?’ and I almost said ‘Tourette’s’ because… [30:00] [Laughing] And I have to be so careful. I think… I swear at the telly, I swear at people. My father used to swear all the time, so I do. [Laughing] That’s part of my - I love that - I used to swear in rep, we all did and in drama school. I mean we all did, but, you know, I’ve carried it off. I think I’m 75 now and I have two lovely daughters who I see, one lives in Holland, she’s head of linguistics at Amsterdam University. She spent yesterday when she came over at the British Library doing a PhD, which she’s also doing in translations. So she encourages me when I get – I suffer from depression. When my first daughter was born I had an enormous depression and it was then when… physical treatments were abounding. I mean there were the most horrendous treatments and I had them all. I had something called insulin coma therapy, I had something called sleep treatment when they knock you out, I mean the treatments were horrendous. I stayed in one hospital for months, months. I got out and I think that has had an enormous impact on my life. I still suffer from depression. I had an unhappy marriage for 38 years. Immensely privileged, very grand, lots of posh parties, lots of - I used to call it mingling with the stars. [Laughs] We did this and this was my job. Had incredibly expensive clothes, and mingling with the stars, sitting in the royal box and doing all these things. But, I think now I’ve lost it and now I’ve left it behind. Of course I miss the, you know, the posh part, but it was so superficial and I suffered from depression then so there were bouts of being hospitalised. Oh yes, I mean that was… So I never felt normal. I always felt that my ex- husband would just say, ‘Oh yes, well I think you ought to have a spell in hospital’, so off I would go. He was very cruel that way. I see him now and I just, we tolerate each other, which is extraordinary. We’re better friends now than - he married a woman - he is 85 - and he married a woman my daughter’s age, so she’s 50. [Pause] I still have bouts of depression. I’m looked after by the Westminster health team and they come and they send somebody to talk to me every week to see I’m okay, because you tend to be very isolated if your deaf and recently I fall over a lot – I trip over - I’ve hurt myself, I trip over in the flat. So they’re going to send a team of people to see what they can do about this. Yes, I think it’s sad. I think my eyesight has got very bad, but my daughter comes over and I say, ‘God my feet hurt, oh it’s awful!’ And she said, ‘Your feet hurt now, they’re going to get better’. [35:00] I said I couldn’t walk yesterday and I was moaning, moaning at her and she said, ‘Well you can’t walk now, but you’ll be okay. Massage your feet and have a bit of physio’. And so I thought, okay, okay. ‘I’m off to the Tate, Imogen, I’m just going’. So I went to Tate Britain, had the most wonderful day, just looking at all the paintings.

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There was an exhibition called Destruction in Art – incredible. I thought the beginning was quite boring about William the Conqueror and all the other boring stuff which reminded me of school – urgh. So I went to the more modern stuff and when the suffragettes went to the National Gallery and they – was it Venus De Milo - and they slashed it, they slashed lots of paintings ,and I thought it is okay, I can understand. [laughs] And then I went to the modern part of the exhibition. Horrendous pornographic statues – God, they were awful - and they said, little notice on the wall saying yes, well they poured paint over that, and they chopped off a nipple there, and they ruined her hair-do, and there were pictures beside all the other ones of how they were ruined and I thought, I’d love to see a picture of that modern one and what you did to it, because well done. And then… I don’t know, I go to galleries and I come away and it’s like, filled a vacuum. I just adore it. I think, if somebody would say ‘What’s your most favourite thing?’ I think I would say ‘Good art lecture’ and they would say, ‘What are my… a bad thing?’ ‘A bad art lecture.’ Don’t forget, being deaf now, it’s terribly difficult. I have to go to lectures where there’s a loop system, where I can switch my hearing aids on and it goes straight through. So I went to the Australian exhibition at the Royal Academy and afterwards they said there was a lecture, I thought whoopee, £7, okay, but I’ll pay. Awful man, and he just had this microphone, oh I couldn’t lip- read, and I was – awful - and I was in the front. I thought I can’t get out, because I have to walk in the dark through all these people, and so I sat there and it was hell. So, I think now exhibitions. Music has finished, singing - I can’t hear. I go to, up the road there’s the Royal Academy of Music and they have wonderful jazz concerts, quite superb, and I go there and I always sit in the front and because I’m deaf I can get the jazz, I can get the rhythm. It is superb. I think my favourite - the timpani - watching the drums, because you can hear the drums. So I think that’s where I am now.

[39:07]

RRC: Do you think that your time working in the theatre, it’s changed your outlook on life, or do you feel that it hasn’t?

[Pause]

VC: Working in the theatre, has it changed my life? There was so many difficult things in my life that I had to overcome. And until my friend Jacqueline said, ‘Oh, they’re doing a thing at the British Library about people in the theatre’ I thought, ‘Oh yes, rep’. But talking to you now, I realise that [pause] [40:00] I used to go the theatre so much, but don’t forget now, so much has been taken away, so I’ve had to rebuild. I can’t go the theatre now unless I sit in the front. There’s something called stage text,

http://sounds.bl.uk Page 9 of 16 Theatre Archive Project which the words go up either side as they talk, not terribly satisfactory, because in stage text you don’t get the nuances, you don’t get the way an actor can form his sentences, his delivery, his quietness, his loudness, his turning around to people, his talking to people and watching their reaction. Don’t forget, all that has gone. And I think, you know, we used to go to theatre from drama school, to everything. Paul Scofield, oh… Gielgud, Olivier, all the top ones. We just used to go, and sit and learn. So gradually I have lost this. I think the theatre has become… less important because it’s been superseded by so many other things. And I still have the projection in my voice which makes me laugh, because I can get a taxi anywhere. I have a great, great friend who lives in another block and he’s very ill with cancer and he’s dying and he was in the music business, he was in the publishing business and he knew my singing teacher. He knew the songs that I learnt. There is another friend of mine and she’s 90, and she’s now very ill, and she was a singer and we meet here - when they were both well - and we all sang, really let rip and I would go over to his flat with a piano and he would play and Joan and I would sing and I have my book of songs there, Italian arias. Sometimes I just look at the book. I think the theatre has become less important. Singing I will never ever forget, ever. And my voice was very good. I was stupid, I mean I was in the Morley Opera Group. We did concerts with my teacher, with people who have - no, I mean they’ve gone, they’ve retired, they’ve died, but, we, I sang with them. So the theatre is… has receded. [Pause] Now, really.

[43:42]

[Pause]

RRC: I just want to ask one last question. Do you feel that, I mean, I know you haven’t been able to go to the theatre, do you think theatre has changed for today? Yes?

VC: Yes. I think the diction is appalling. I mean really, really bad, which makes me very angry. I think if you watch old people - I must go back to television again - but the diction on the television is so bad, actors are not taught. I was watching last night and superb diction, superb, so the theatre has changed. Obviously [45:00]… obviously… productions have changed. I mean in my day it was Terence Rattigan, it was Noel Coward, it was drawing room comedies, it was - now it has changed and I think I don’t like what it’s become. I don’t like the way they mess around with the classics. I know I should, but I don’t like the way the National treats so many plays or puts on… stuff that… I adored The History Boys, Alan Bennett, I thought it was wonderful. Now there was one which he did - what do they call Forty Years On? It was one where Gielgud was the headmaster, it was so good. I adore musicals obviously,

http://sounds.bl.uk Page 10 of 16 Theatre Archive Project absolutely wonderful. West Side Story was superb. So obviously being deaf now I can’t go to musicals. I think I decided when the theatre stopped… really using an audience as the third, you know, the actors and the audience, but now I feel a lot of it is to themselves, they talk among themselves. They don’t realise or they don’t act as if there was an audience. It’s a strange thing to say. I remember going the Royal Court an awful lot. I remember going to see the John, with, oh I think there were an incredible cast. I can’t remember names… Alan Bates, Alan Bates? Was in it… superb. Richard Pasco was… you don’t hear these actors’ names, they’ve gone. I remember being shattered when I’d seen it. I remember going to with Joan Plowright and Olivier - quite superb. I mean then you came out of the theatre and you were absolutely blown over. I think then going to the theatre did the same thing to me as art galleries and paintings do now. I remember often going home crying, or incredibly impressed, and taking a production with me in my soul, in my heart. I thought Olivier was wonderful. I like Gielgud. I know it’s not fashionable to like him. I like Redgrave. Women, women - Edith Evans. All these old people, they really know how to project, how to involve the audience in what they were saying, not just play it for themselves or play it for the director or, rethink plays that don’t need to be rethought, that don’t need to have – oh, I don’t know, people swinging from handlebars with nothing on - I mean that is prostitution of a play. I think - what’s another play I adored, which Peter Brook did - Midsummer Night’s Dream - his production . Out of this world, out of this world! Not only - I know having just said I don’t like them swinging around - but he had them doing this, [50:00] but you could also hear every single word. Do you know they are mic’d up in theatres now? Did you know that? [49:58]

RRC: Yeah.

VC: They’re mic’d up, they’re even mic’d up in the National. We were never mic’d up, ever, ever. The plays that we went to see, you know, the diction, they were never mic’d up. Admittedly, there was, I think there was – no, there were theatres the same size, I think. I think, I liked going to the Palladium and seeing oh, Judy Garland, Danny Kaye, all these people, incredibly talented. They really knew, not just sitting at the back and holding a mic and going ‘La la la’, none of that. They were - I remember Danny Kaye sitting on the front of the Palladium stage just talking. It was sensational. Everybody felt that he was talking to them. Wonderful. The Palladium was a superb place to go to. I think there were just musicals. Judy Garland was there – absolute… this was, I think, before people became icons. I think this was before the celeb culture, which I hate now. This was before, they didn’t photograph actors falling out of the car after the performance, they allowed actors to have their dignity, they treated them

http://sounds.bl.uk Page 11 of 16 Theatre Archive Project with dignity. I think now an awful lot is spoilt because of the celeb culture of the interviews of the – if you watch – yes, I’ll tell you - if you watch a theatre now, which I don’t a lot… the lighting interferes, they use the lighting as punctuations, they will flood people. If you go to the Palladium now or you – I don’t go because it’s so horrid - they have backing singers, which would never happen. They light too much so you can’t focus, you can’t see. I remember seeing Liberace – sensational, absolutely wonderful. So these are what I think of now. You asked me what I think of the theatre now. These are my memories of these very great stars. Liberace was quite wonderful; talented, funny. He didn’t flaunt his gayness, I mean he was very cheeky about it, he would say, ‘Do you like my clothes?’ and there was a pause and he would say, ‘Well you paid for them’ [Laughs] This is talent, this is what I really, really miss. I remember going round to the stage door after and getting autographs – of course I did. I remember when I was at drama school getting autographs from people, having an autograph book. This is why I don’t go, because I’ts changed, it’s become celeb. I think was superb, what a talented man. I watched the celebration of the 50 years of National – wonderful. I think the Donmar used tobe superb. I think TS Eliot was quite superb his poetry. Under Milk Wood, now we’re talking, now I really remember the greatness, the poets, the way, the diction when they were say, Under Milk Wood, or TS Eliot, you know, there was none of this messing about, the words were important, the rhyming was [55:00] important, delivery was important. The audience knew how to behave, there was no screaming and yelling, there was no mobile phones, which I find intolerable. You know, if you sit next to somebody and they’re doing that [signals using a phone] - I can’t. I find that the manner of the audience now has changed. [laughs] I find that the slovenly way of dressing is bad and it affects me, of the audience. In my day you’d dressed… I - maybe it was monied people, I don’t know, but you made an effort, you dressed you… I mean trainers weren’t thought of. You would never go to the theatre, the men would never go without a tie, and we would dress up, it was how we respected the actors. They played to us and we respected them. We didn’t clap in the middle of something and interrupt their line. We knew how to behave. The audience doesn’t know how to behave now and I think the actors don’t know how to respect audience; it’s gone, the dignity has gone. [56:37] I think Nick Hytner messes about with – I’m shattered with some of the things he does – messed about, messed about. [pause] I think the actors or the producers are always trying to find a new way of presenting a play. I don’t know about – [57:18] I think is wonderful. I think Alan Bennett in the old days was quite superb. I’m not sure about him now, no I’m not. So I think you’ve probably got what I feel now about - and you asked me has my training as an actress – yes, it’s had an impact on me, oh yes. You go into a theatre now, you see an audience with no dignity. You see the, I don’t know, I just find it’s not a peaceful - it used to be like going into a church in a way. It used to be that sort of feeling. That’s gone, that’s gone. So I think apart from being deaf, I just don’t like to be a part of that milieu anymore. Can you

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RRC: Yes, definitely.

[58:34]

VC: [Pause] I think that now, going into a library, reading quietly, being able to take in something, I think going to an art gallery where people don’t flash their mobiles, they – oh one horrible mobile at the British Lib… where was it? The British Museum, the pornographic Japanese stuff, which is a waste of time, and then they were mobile - ‘Well I’m here and guess what I’m looking at?’ I thought, I’m getting out of here, I’m getting right out of here. So I think that’s where my 75 year old feeling towards the theatre, cinema and the arts is now. Does that make sense?

RRC: Yes.

VC: Do you go to the theatre?

RRC: Yes.

VC: What have you seen?

RRC: I’ve seen the Richard II.

VC: At the National?

RRC: It was a live video [1:00:00] recording, so it was performed at the RSC and then we watched it in another cinema. Do you understand that?

VC: You see I couldn’t hear it. I’d have loved to have done it. Now what else have you seen, come on?

RRC: Titus Andronicus.

VC: Where?

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RRC: The RSC, I saw that in…

VC: Was it good?

RRC: Yeah it was amazing.

VC: Was it? You must think I’m very odd the way I’m sort of going on about all the productions?

RRC: No, not at all

VC: Don’t you?

RRC: No. No, I share some of your views about what the theatre is now and what it was.

[Pause]

VC: I think television has a lot to do with this. [pause] I think that… who’s that actor who was in something Governors? Two Governors? [One Man, Two Guvnors] Yes, you must know. He’s… in Gavin and Stacey, he wrote Gavin and Stacey. [] He’s gone to America now alas, he was superb. I think is wonderful. I didn’t go to his Hamlet because I knew I couldn’t hear, but I saw a bit of it on television. Absolutely, quite, quite superb. I’m thinking of this actor now, who really knows, comically, how to – I can’t think of his name - Something - One Man, Two Guvnors? No?

[1:02:11]

RRC: I’ve not seen it.

VC: That began at The National and that’s where – he was in History Boys too - he was wonderful. I think in History Boys was quite superb. So now… you know, I mean, do you feel what I say about the theatre now?

RRC: Yes.

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VC: I think, I know it sounds crazy, but the queues for the lavatories in the interval, you know, if you’re dying for a pee and you go out and the queues stretch right the way through the ice-creams to the bar, I just can’t do it. I mean I did the most terrible thing once, which I was bitterly ashamed of, but I went in and I said, ‘I’m terribly sorry I’ve got kidney failure’ [laughs] Now, this is the sort of thing I like doing. I mean - [laughs] where was I? Where was I? I have a stick now, because I can’t – bad arthritis - and I have a stick and I have to go by myself because people are so ashamed of me. And I was at the Tate yesterday - enormous queue for sandwiches. I thought I can’t bear it. So I said, ‘Terribly sorry, I can’t carry’. [laughs] And I do this, I do this and it’s wonderful. Sometimes I have to fall over in order to show them that I really can’t carry. [laughs] I find actually, you know, do I use my theatre training now? Yes, yes I do. If I get on the bus and I see it’s full, I just fall over [laughs] and at once I’m given a seat, at once. So of course I use it now. I fall over quite a lot on purpose. I will tell the most horrendous lies to get to the front of a queue. [laughs]. I’m not ashamed, my children if they knew - they would go bananas. I couldn’t when I was married, of course I couldn’t, because I was really held like a horse on a bridle – tight, tight, tight - so now that’s gone [1:05:00] I really enjoy it. I let rip, I swear. I think I enjoy talking to people. Sometimes, if they’re very boring, I almost hear myself, fucking awful, I can’t bear you. So, I’ve decided on my way of life now, you know. And I had cancer three years ago, very badly. So I think you think, right, I’m under starter’s orders now, I’m really going to do what I do. So I retain a bit of delinquent, I’m a delinquent inside. That’s okay, I love it. [Pause] Yes I love it. I find I talk to people. When I went to this Emily Pankhurst [Sylvia Pankhurst] it was superb. You saw, all the badges when they came out of prison, and you saw the badges. You saw the timetable, you saw how women were treated in the factories, how they were given no money over the men. I think now these are things which really hold me in a way I suppose that the theatre used to hold me. I suppose I used to go to every production, we all did obviously. I don’t think, apart from Penelope Keith, here was someone called Pinky Johnson, I think she made it. There was some… Victor Karen [ph] and he died. There was, I thought, very, very bad actor called David somebody – God, he was bad - and I went to the theatre and there he was in the production. I thought what are you doing here. And so I went around afterwards to see him and I think said ‘What a surprise!’ [laughs] ‘Goodness what a surprise to see you!’ And [laughing] he looked me as if to say, ‘Don’t be so fucking rude, I’m here and you’re not and you didn’t get a part!’ So… that’s with me.

[Pause]

RRC: Well, I just want to say thank you very much for letting me interview you.

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VC: [laughs] I hope I haven’t said too much.

RRC: Oh, it’s been a pleasure, honestly, it really has.

VC: Don’t say I said that things about Nigella’s mother. [laughs]

[1:08:30]

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