THEATRE ARCHIVE PROJECT http://sounds.bl.uk Anne Piper – interview transcript Interviewer: Kate Dorney 12 March 2005 Novelist and playwright, on Look Back in Anger, George Devine,the Royal Court in the 50s and 60, Oklahoma!, Bertolt Brecht. KD: Anne I wonder if you could tell me about your experiences right at the beginning of the Royal Court? AP: Well, in 1956 we were living at number 7 Lower Mall, which is just by Hammersmith Bridge, and the Devines, George, Sophie and their daughter Harriet, were living at number 9. So was Tony Richardson who had a flat there, and I think about the same time Peter Gill became a lodger of the Devines. But the time I remember best at the beginning was that the English Stage company had started with a flourish at the Royal Court with two plays by well-known writers, The Mulberry Bush and The Crucible and I remember it as during the run of the blank verse play Don Juan but in fact I seem to have got my memories wrong because that played after Look Back in Anger . Anyway, there was something very dull playing at the Royal Court, perhaps it was only The Mulberry Bush [ laughs ], and Sophie Devine came round and said the play was going very badly, nobody was buying any tickets and would we, the Pipers, buy tickets? I think she would have given us free tickets actually, to go to the theatre and cause a disturbance of some sort so they could at least get into the Evening Standard and cause trouble. The idea was that we should go and stand up in the middle of the play and say 'This is rubbish' or 'How disgusting!' or something and walk out really obviously. Then it would all be reported and people would buy tickets and go to the Royal Court. However, very soon after that, Look Back in Anger was put on which I went to with Wayland Young and as Wayland said at the time, 'This is a different voice. We're hearing something new'. The whole scene changed, everybody hurried to see it, I think it was Ken Tynan wasn't it, who first wrote about it and got it enthusiastic about it? KD: 'I couldn't love anyone who didn't love Look Back in Anger .' AP [ Laughs ] and so there was no need for our disturbance. KD: Did you enjoy the play? AP: Oh yes, very much. http://sounds.bl.uk Page 1 of 18 Theatre Archive Project KD: Did you feel that it was speaking on behalf of, as Tynan says very famously, a new voice speaking on behalf of a new generation? AP: Yes. The trouble was I was already 10 years older than that generation (I was 18 when the war started) and so it certainly wasn't speaking for me, and it certainly wasn't speaking for women. I mean, poor Mary Ure at the ironing board got no chance to speak for women, so I think that at the beginning I was rather struck by the enormous self-pity that was expressed by a man throughout. And in any case I thought that Alan Bates was a much more attractive character than Jimmy Porter. KD: I've always thought that. AP: And in fact I've forgotten the name of the actor who was playing Jimmy Porter. KD: Kenneth Haigh. AP: Kenneth Haigh, of course, he was the first one wasn't he? So from there then the Court became famous as a place for writers to send their plays and the next thing that happened was that George Devine and Tony Richardson asked me if I would be the first Reader for the Royal Court because they'd been sent 600 scripts and they thought they could manage perfectly well between them but in fact they couldn't. I mean they were producing and directing plays at the same time so I started to be the Court Reader and I used to go round and collect the scripts, I got paid 5 shillings a script, and at intervals when I accumulated enough scripts I took a piece of paper round and somebody gave me some money and I returned them all again. KD: Were you asked to do that because you were a novelist? AP: I was a novelist yes. I'd already had 8 novels published, but I hadn't had any plays done. There were two telly plays in the early 60s but I hadn't had any plays then it was because I'd written novels and because I lived almost next door. Although I had to go into the Royal Court to pick them up, I didn't collect them from number 9. It was quite a journey, although of course you could park in Sloane Square, there were no parking meters then. I used to drive up in my sports car with the roof down, collect the scripts and drive back again. KD: How wonderful! And did you read anything exciting which sticks in your mind? AP: I think I must have done it for two or three years and there were only two plays of interest the entire time. One was by Wole Soyinka, the poet who afterwards became one of the Royal Court Writers, and Doris Lessing, who was in any case well-known as a playwright, and she did send in a very interesting play which was done, first of all on a Sunday night, and later was done in the West End. http://sounds.bl.uk Page 2 of 18 Theatre Archive Project KD: So did you have any guidelines? Were you supposed to read each play and write a synopsis? AP: Well they said, 'don't read the handwritten ones, you needn't worry about them' and 'you needn't read the ones who send a little picture of how they want the stage to look'. 'If anyone's sent in a little picture of 2 sofas is bound to be not worth having', 'or anyone who uses green ink'. KD: That's incredible! You'd think in a writer's theatre they'd really want the writer to have an idea. It's always struck me as odd that you would want people who were not playwrights to write plays for the theatre. AP: Yes it certainly was. That's how the Writers Group began. They found that all these plays that began to come in were far too wordy and not really enough action, but it was rather later than that. It was about 2 years on I think that Bill Gaskill decided that the writers needed to be loosened up or able to write more active pieces. Not long speeches where they treasured every word. KD: That's ironic again, when you consider Look Back in Anger . AP: Which is full of long speeches! Yes. KD: So had you submitted work to the Court during this period? Is this why you were involved in the Writer's Group? AP: No. I didn't actually write a play until after I'd been coming to the Writer's Group and in fact been taking part in these improvisations for quite a while, and had also been to America. I think it was the autumn of 1958, I dare say Bill's [referring to William Gaskill's A Sense of Direction ) got the date when he decided to pull the writers together and certainly I was at the first meeting which he had in the theatre and all the writers that he thought were promising were there. But I think I was there at the time because I was their Reader, because I didn't write my play ( The Man-Eaters ) until the autumn of 1958 and it was done at the Bristol Old Vic in the autumn of 59. KD: And it wasn't produced by Binkie Beaumont in the end? AP: No my agent sent it to West End impresario Binkie Beaumont and he was very interested in it because there were 6 women's parts and only 1 man's part. And he gave some money to Bristol Old Vic, (I think he gave them £200 or some princely sum), and they would produce it in Bristol and see how it went. It was given a 3 week run at the Royal Theatre Bristol and Binkie Beaumont came down with his friend (John Perry) to see it, and they said it was very good and they'd enjoyed it very much and that the women were very good, but that they could not imagine that they could cast a man, there was http://sounds.bl.uk Page 3 of 18 Theatre Archive Project only 1 man in the play and he'd have to be a star, and he had a very bad time in the play. He ended up being not the villain, but the rather feeble character that these six women turned on and he didn't think he'd persuade anyone to do it. He did persuade one man who was already earmarked to do a run of My Fair Lady in Australia, he was going out to do that anyway so he was prepared to spend three weeks in Bristol being got at, but I don't think he realised how bad his showing was going to be until he got to act it. He saw that he had quite a big part and quite a lot to say and he didn't realise what an idiot he was left looking when the play ended.