Where There's Smoke...: Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man, a Memoir (15 page)

What now? Once again I would apply for the top job. This time the job stayed open. Jack did leave and joined the contract department of the BBC. Why would you do that when you could run a major rep company? Jack had five young children and wanted the job security, an almost laughable concept now, but quite realistic then. And so I did indeed take over. The theatre would now be run by its Artistic Director rather than its manager, or so I thought.

I had ambitious plans. The Board was onside for a major upgrade of the interior design of the theatre; supervised by a local architect, the theatre was redesigned in reds and blacks, a bold look that made the auditorium feel more like a theatre. But more important for my personal goals, we expanded the artistic philosophy I had worked towards in the fall. I wanted to create a true ensemble with shared goals, dynamic interplay on stage, and artistic growth for each actor in a resident company. We made a good start before external forces interfered. I instituted classes before rehearsals, in movement, voice, and improvisation. I invited Kristin Linklater — before she conquered North America — to work with the company for a week. The improv classes were designed to get the actors really talking to each other and working off each other. Under the pressures of the season not all the class work survived, but the intention of the work did. Most of the company remained with us. Pamela and Brian left. Irene — yes that Irene — joined us early in the winter.

Our first production,
A Man for All Seasons
, was a highlight for me. I wonder if it was as good as I remember. Maybe. Clive Graham played Sir Thomas More with great dignity, supported by Susan Williamson and Hannah Gordon as mother and daughter. Maurice Podbrey was the Common Man and young Brian Cox made a strong presence in a smaller role. Roper was played by Jeremy Clyde, who would go on to fame and fortune as half of
Chad and Jeremy.
Possibly most interesting of all, though, was David Calderisi as Cromwell, a part Bolt, the author, himself described as thankless. Cromwell is the villain of the piece, but on the first day of rehearsal as I was giving some character ideas and described him as such, David stopped me. I wanted David, who was aquiline and athletic, to use those qualities to create a clear and dangerous presence. David resisted. He didn’t want to play a villain. He had been reading Machiavelli — as had Cromwell — and wanted to play him as a positive force, to really get behind his point of view. The result was dynamic and thrilling. Instead of a play about a hero destroyed by evil forces, it became a conflict of world views and power. The climactic scene of the play is the trial of More prosecuted by Cromwell. Clive and David played the scene with such commitment, such determination to win, I never knew from night to night who would be the victor. Of course, More’s head would fall every night, but who would win the audience sympathy? An object lesson. Play to win. Whether hero or villain.

Mulder, watch out. Here comes the Smoking Man.

Now that the theatre would be run by a director rather than a manager, I needed to engage someone to be the manager. And here I managed to make two mistakes in one. At the time in Canada, the term Artistic Director clearly denoted the person at the helm of a theatre, the person to whom everyone else reports, including a general manager. Even in Canada now, that delineation is no longer clear and we have titles like CEO or Managing Producer or Artistic Managing Director. Anxious to have the artistic title, prestigious in my mind at least, I gave myself the title of Artistic Director. I was happy that the new manager would call himself — yes, him, I don’t think any women applied — Manager. Busy as I was both overseeing the renovations and mounting our opening production,
A Man for All Seasons
, I did not pay close attention to the preparing of the theatre program. I was somewhat taken aback when I did see it and saw that while indeed I did have top billing, our new manager was now General Manager and in type as prominent as mine. I didn’t think too much of it at the time. Perhaps I should have.

My other error was choice. I engaged David S., let’s just call him that. A red-haired red-faced charmer, I had first met David when we both applied to direct the theatre at Carlyle. He got that job. Perhaps I should have paid closer attention as to why, several months later, he was again job hunting. But his résumé was good, our meeting productive and congenial, and so began a series of poor appointments I would make over the next several years, possibly affecting my future in a number of ways. My appointments weren’t all bad; I did make some good ones. Indeed it is surprising how much David S. looked like Christopher Banks, my general manager for three years at Lennoxville and one of my better appointments, as a more honest and loyal colleague would be hard to find.

But there was little time to ‘watch my back’; I had a season to be getting on with and goals to achieve. I gave Maurice his first directing assignment, the farce
Simple Spymen,
which he handled well, his work with Brian Rix in London standing him in good stead. We followed that with
The Rainmaker,
with Sutherland originally cast in the Burt Lancaster role. Sutherland’s size and innocence would have been wonderful in the part, but unfortunately yet another film opportunity intervened. David Calderisi stepped in and did a workmanlike job in the part for which he was not a natural.

We followed
Rainmaker
with my wonderful production of
Uncle Vanya
. Maurice played Vanya, exploiting his bear-like charm; Clive was Astrov, exploiting his pride and good looks; Susan Williamson was a wonderful Sonya; and Calderisi was a splendidly pompous, self-centred egotist as Soliony. Well, I thought the production was wonderful. We truly revealed the underlying pain of the characters, captured the mood, the rhythm, and music of the piece. The audience was a touch restless; the review was mixed. At the time one could only put this reaction down to the lack of sophistication of the audience. We knew we had hit a home run. Hmm.

Many months later I saw the National Theatre production of
Uncle Vanya
at the Old Vic. I had seen their first iteration of this production on the arena stage at Chichester. The cast included Laurence Olivier as Astrov, Michael Redgrave as Vanya, and Joan Plowright as Sonya. What I remember most about the Chichester production were the tears flowing down Redgrave’s face during Sonya’s final speech. He was in shadow and facing upstage; probably only a sliver of the audience could see him, yet he was giving himself totally to the moment and to the other actor. But it was the remount at the Old Vic that finally clarified Norman Ayrton’s comment to us at LAMDA about wearing our hearts on our sleeves in
The Three Sisters
. What an arrogant young man I must have been. As I watched these A-list actors race through the first scene, I smugly commented to myself that they certainly don’t get this scene, not going at that speed. Oh, a moment. Oh, maybe they did get it. But then they were charging off into the next scene. Well, they might have got the first scene, but they are lost in this one. Oh, maybe not. Another moment. And so it went, each scene carrying us along, revealing itself briefly, and on to the next until by the end of the play the entire audience was in tears, including me. What did I learn? If you telegraph to the audience that something sad is about to happen they will protect themselves. If you want them to be moved you have to surprise them. If you play the problem, as we would later learn to say, you will bore them. If you play the actions that are fighting the problem, you will draw them in.

We followed
Uncle Vanya
with some pretty good productions:
Pygmalion
,
Picnic
— Maurice was wonderful as the lonely bachelor —
The Rehearsal
, and we had an exciting production of
The Caretaker
with David Calderisi and Dan MacDonald underway when everything came tumbling down, literally.

But first some background. Which may or may not be relevant. A few days earlier I was in my office, the dingy backstage affair that formerly I had shared with Jack, when the secretary, Bunty, appeared at the door. Bunty was the middle-aged woman who had been Jack’s secretary and whose Dundee accent had been almost unintelligible to me at first. This shy, almost retiring, woman had the unexpected hobby of target-shooting and had won many awards for her marksmanship. Her office was at the front of the theatre next to the manager’s while mine was backstage. Fiercely loyal, yet terribly concerned to be respectful of her position, she appeared uncharacteristically awkward as she stood in my door. I invited her in. What she had to tell me was clearly difficult and she apologized for not speaking to me sooner. In short, she had two things to tell me about David S. Through lunches and private meetings it appeared that he was promoting himself with the chairman of the Board at my expense. At the same time he was neglecting the job he was supposed to be doing; she had numerous examples, including finding long overdue bills at the bottom of a drawer. Torn between conflicting loyalties she had finally decided that her overall loyalty was to me.

Now what? I was not prepared for a political battle and clearly I had been blindsided. What were the issues, I wondered, that had been presented to the Chairman in David S.’s favour? Attendance was good, reviews were good, but still it could be argued that the season was not sufficiently popular. Had I overreached with Chekhov, Shaw, and Anouilh? Was I pursuing goals the Board did not share? I phoned the chairman, George Geddes, not a man I had ever been relaxed with, and arranged a meeting for late afternoon the coming Saturday.

Saturday came. We had an excellent rehearsal of
The Caretaker
in the morning, then broke for lunch before the matinee of
The Rehearsal
in the afternoon. I was scheduled to meet Geddes at 5 p.m. Some of us went for lunch at the Chrome Rail as we often did on a Saturday when we were feeling flush, payday being Friday. After lunch I started the drive back to the theatre, but the roads were blocked. One of the actresses saw my car and, tears streaming down her face, called out, “The theatre is on fire!” And so it was. Smoke and fire engines were everywhere. I ditched my car and forced my way through the crowd of onlookers. The theatre was ablaze, beyond hope of saving, my dreams for now — up in smoke.

Fortunately no one was hurt, the company being on lunch, and being Saturday the building underneath was unoccupied. When the smoke settled the building was completely destroyed, save for the pictures of the acting company which were somehow, ironically and heroically, still standing in the wreckage of the foyer.

Needless to say, my meeting with the Chairman did not happen. Had I been blindsided again or was the fire purely coincidental? How it started was never determined. Would David S. have gone so far as to burn down the theatre to forward his ambitions or perhaps to protect himself? Certainly Bunty had given me considerable evidence of his basic incompetence. Is this conspiracy thinking? After all, coincidences do happen. Or am I not being paranoid enough? He burned the theatre down just to get me.

At heart, I really think it was just bad luck. But one can’t help wondering. The aftermath certainly played out in David S.’s favour. Although we were able to get a temporary location for a few weeks in a local movie theatre, the Board cancelled the production of
The Caretaker,
deeming it insufficiently commercial. We did go ahead with a rather dull production of a rather dull play that was current at the time,
The Aspern Papers
, which Maurice directed. After that we mounted two productions in a tent in a local park. We planned an outdoor production of
Macbeth
on the facade of Glamis Castle itself. A theatrical extravaganza, we had lined up local cavalry and pipe bands, a tent in case it rained, and Calderisi to play the Thane. But just before firm commitments had to be made, the Board cancelled the project. And then they cancelled me.

In its wisdom, the Board decided they needed someone with “more experience” and guess who that turned out to be. Any details I gave them now suggesting David S.’s lack of competence would only be seen as sour grapes. My dreams for a new kind of theatre were, quite literally, in ashes.

In the arrogance of youth had I been too ambitious? Had I tried to create a theatre appropriate perhaps for a large urban centre, but not really what was wanted in a small provincial town? Were we just not good enough? Or in my enthusiasm to create theatre had I blindly ignored politics? Whatever the reasons, the loss of the theatre was a huge setback, both to my prospects and my confidence. What was I to do? Where was I to live? Not only had I lost a terrific creative opportunity, I had lost the opportunity to work in the only town in Britain with a theatre and access to skiing. Now that really hurt. And Veronica lived in Dundee. The situation was truly bleak.

Nothing for it, back to London.

While I wasn’t finished with British rep, London would be my base for the next two years and a few months. Once again a place to live had to be found, a task complicated by lack of funds on the one hand and marriage on the other. Veronica and I were to be married in December.

Ever since that first fateful lunch a trajectory had been laid down leading eventually to a wedding. True, Veronica went off to Zermatt for six months while I was in Dundee, but I visited, along with her parents I have to add, at Christmas. Typhoid struck the resort soon after and Veronica was sent home in quarantine to be visited only by those with typhoid vaccinations, which I soon acquired. For the life of me I cannot recall when we finally had sex though I confess I do remember that while Veronica was in Zermatt an attractive, upper middle class, blonde woman, Allison, would come by my apartment from time to time. Right up until two weeks before her wedding. I sometimes wonder how that marriage worked out.

For Veronica and me I located a tiny flat on the fifth floor of an old house in Notting Hill Gate. Red, everything about the flat seemed to be red, but at least the bedspread was white. A cozy hideaway, it had a tiny living room with a double bed at one end, the usual electric fire, and a bathtub in the kitchen. The shared bathroom was down a half flight of stairs, but at least it was indoors. Nothing like five flights of stairs to keep one in good shape in those days before one went to a gym. Going for a run would have been equally weird in 1963. The parks that are now full of joggers were then full of lovers, many young people having nowhere else to go.

Veronica still lived with her parents in Monifieth, a few miles east of Dundee. Her parents, Bill and Wilna, shared a large well maintained house with their two children — Roderick was younger than Veronica and often away at school — and four dogs, or was it five? Bill owned and managed a large department store in Dundee, but as I have mentioned elsewhere would not flaunt his success by driving an expensive car, though his Sunbeam Rapier was tons of fun to drive. I spent many happy hours in their warm, inviting home — Sunday lunches of roast mutton in the renovated kitchen, walks on the beach along the Tay, endless games of bridge, tea in the afternoon, gin early evening, Scotch after dinner — and all of us smoking except Bill, who had to quit because of circulation issues. Trim and distinguished, Bill returned to smoking a few years later, which probably contributed to his premature death. Wilna, who never did quit smoking, was also severely overweight, both factors likely influencing her early demise as well.

Now that I was in London and Veronica still in Scotland, the overnight train from London to Dundee became a regular part of my life. I’m still haunted by the sound of trains at night, the rolling of the wheels, the creaking of the cars, and the long forlorn whistle. British trains were divided into tiny compartments, each with an upper and lower berth, and toilet down the hall. Travelling alone, the only certainty about one’s companion would be his gender. I shared one trip with a small wizened Scot, well into his bottle that he had brought with him. We got to talking, with some difficulty, both the accent and the inebriation creating challenges for me. When it got around to my being in the theatre, his eyes lit up, “Now that
Hamlet
, tha’s a good play, eh?” Since it had become clear by now that his education level was limited I was surprised he’d even heard of
Hamlet
. “Wha’s it aboot?” he demanded to know. I considered giving him a short summary but, what the heck, we have a long train ride, I’ll tell him the story. So I started at the beginning with the sentinels on the wall waiting for Horatio. He was riveted. When I was about halfway through, possibly around the play within a play, he asked me to stop. He had “tae piss.” “Dinna forget where y’are,” he demanded. As soon as he returned I continued to the end of the play. I told him only the plot, no character description, no exploration of theme, certainly no poetry, and he was spellbound. We forget how good Shakespeare’s plots are; we’ve come to know them so well. But does my companion’s reaction tell us something about Shakespeare’s audiences? Here is a person, quite possibly illiterate or nearly so, lacking any overlays to understanding that sophisticated education might give him, completely taken by the simple, direct story. That’s as close as I have ever come to imagining how an audience in the pit at the Globe might have appreciated a Shakespeare play in his time.

Being back in London had its compensations; there was some remarkable theatre to be seen:
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf
with Uta Hagen and Arthur Hill; Michel Saint-Denis’ production of
The Cherry Orchard
with Peggy Ashcroft, John Gielgud, Roy Dotrice, Dorothy Tutin, and the young Judi Dench as Anya; Anna Massey in
The Miracle Worker
; and Joan Littlewood’s original creation of
Oh, What a Lovely War!

All very well, but what about making a living? Getting a day job didn’t occur to me. Not yet anyway. Fortunately Michael MacOwan at LAMDA came to my rescue, and though I didn’t know it at the time, I would begin a whole new career. I returned to LAMDA now as an instructor. I did some scenes with first year students; I don’t think Michael was too thrilled with that. I hadn’t yet learned the best way to work with beginning students. He seemed happier with my rehearsal class which followed and it appeared he would have more work for me after the Christmas break. The clouds were lifting, my marriage was approaching, and I was more or less earning a living in what was more or less my chosen profession.

If my first wedding was a good time, my second was a real blast. Veronica and I had a real church wedding, morning coat and all. My parents came over from Canada and Maurice Podbrey came up from London to be my best man. Veronica gave the minister strict instructions; she was not going to say “love, honour, and obey.” I think she changed it to “love, honour, and respect,” but on the day, the minister dried. He knew he wasn’t supposed to say “obey,” but he had no idea what he should say. Finally, he gave up and said “obey.” What could Veronica do? Her “Don’t push me, Daddy” had already echoed through the church before her entrance. Could she risk another embarrassment? She had to agree to obey me. It hardly mattered. She was never inclined to obey anyone, nor was I ever inclined to ask her to. The future problems in our marriage were of a different nature. The reception that followed was terrific, my speech was a hit, and soon we headed off for our honeymoon in St. Moritz, Switzerland. Was it here that the trouble started? Instead of spending our wedding night in a lovely Swiss hotel, we spent it in an airport waiting room, one leg of our flight having been postponed. Once we finally got to our destination, skiing and sex kept us pretty happy for the two weeks, even if conversation at meals was a bit halting.

Once back in England in our tiny Notting Hill flat, another setback. No, Michael MacOwan didn’t have any work for me this term, had I been counting on it? Since Veronica had not yet found work in her publishing field, she donned her new fur coat — a wedding present — and we both signed on at the Labour Exchange. A somewhat humbling experience, but at least in those more enlightened times we were not expected to look for any old job, but only to pursue work in our own field. The Toronto actor Louis Negin is reported to have listed his occupation as “shepherd.” Darned if he could get much work herding sheep in downtown Toronto. Truth to tell, we weren’t on the dole all that long. Veronica soon found work with a prominent women’s magazine and freelance opportunities started to roll in for me.

The next two years are something of a blurr. I did do more work at LAMDA, first a rehearsal class of
Romeo and Juliet
in their exciting new theatre and then a production of
Two Stars for Comfort
by John Mortimer, which Mortimer himself came to — his daughter was in it — and told me he thought my production better than the recent West End production, something I should have remembered when I fell under the spell of the director of that production, Michael Elliott, at the National Theatre a year later. I started to teach at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, at that time a second tier drama school whose principal felt I was an upgrade to his faculty. Later I would direct a production of Chekhov’s
Ivanov
for him. I was an assistant director of
The Easter Man
, a play by Evan Hunter that started in Birmingham and transferred to the West End for a too brief run. The cast featured a young Ian McShane. One night during rehearsals he and his wife/girlfriend invited me to crash with them rather than travel home. I was startled to discover that crashing with them meant sharing their bed. But, alas, that’s all it meant. I guess in the early sixties we were all chums together.

Other directing assignments came my way. I began a year-long relationship with the Colchester Repertory Theatre, a fortnightly company within an hour’s commute from London. I directed many productions there including
Look Back in Anger
,
The Corn Is Green
,
The Reluctant Debutante
,
The Fourposter
, and
Macbeth
with David Calderisi. And I finally directed a pantomime,
Aladdin
, with Bernard Hopkins as Aladdin. I don’t remember why the role wasn’t played by a woman in this case. A baby-faced ingenue, Bernard went on to become a stalwart member of Canada’s Stratford Festival company. As I have said, pantomime is full of strange traditions, one of which turned out to be that one should never say the last line of the piece until opening night — “don’t ring down the curtain until you have rung it up.” Right up until the final dress rehearsal, Bernard would not say the last two lines. A pretty crummy tradition in my opinion; on opening night he totally flubbed the final speech.

Prior to the pantomime I directed a production of
Treasure Island,
also at Colchester. David Forder, the theatre’s director, gave me the playscript that had been used at the Belgrade Theatre in Coventry where he used to work. I’m not sure if we had trouble getting scripts or if he wanted me to see this highly annotated text. It was full of music cues; it seemed the whole production had been one long music cue. I wasn’t having any of that and pared the music down to selected moments that could enhance the action. Who was this director who drowned his production in music? A young chap named Trevor Nunn. Ever hear of the all-music drama
Les Miz
?

And then there was the haunting presence of Michel Saint-Denis. And the mystery of how some mortals become gods. Saint-Denis was a French director and teacher who made a name for himself in France in the thirties and was invited to establish training schools in England, becoming director of the Old Vic Theatre and School after the war, where he directed an iconic production of
Oedipus Rex
with Laurence Olivier. He left the Old Vic in 1951 to head the Centre Dramatique de l’Est but returned in 1961 to work with Peter Hall at the Royal Shakespeare Company, where he directed the previously mentioned production of
The Cherry Orchard
. With a cast like that how could one lose? While the production was praised in the press, it was perhaps better not to ask the cast their impressions of their director. The usually positive Judi Dench was treated as his whipping boy and even John Gielgud is reported to have said that Saint-Denis was “too set.”

Nothing would shake the mystique surrounding Saint-Denis, however. And if the Brits were in awe of him, imagine how the colonials in Canada fawned over him. He became a consultant to various companies and schools, but notably to the Canadians who founded the National Theatre School of Canada. Was it a good thing to have a consultant who made his reputation in the thirties in France advise on the founding of a school in Canada in the sixties? The man was such an icon no one has ever asked the question so far as I know.

At any rate I was to fall into his sphere for the first time — Canada’s National Theatre School would come later — when I was engaged along with three other ‘young Turks’ to direct in the studio of the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford in the fall of 1964. Peter Hall’s company, now playing in both Stratford and London, was challenging Olivier’s recently established National Theatre for cultural supremacy in Britain. In keeping with Hall’s artistic ambition, at the end of each season, after all the plays had opened, Saint-Denis would run something called “the flare-up,” a series of workshops, rehearsal productions, and related activities designed to enrich the company, particularly those who might not have been fully challenged during the regular season. Among other things I did an experimental improvisation exercise we called “pop drama” — this in the days of pop art — where the actors riffed on randomly selected news stories I would give them, and I directed the second act of
The Three Sisters
. John Barton ran the program this year in the absence of Saint-Denis who had other commitments. Nonetheless, the great man did arrive in time to view our work and share his wisdom. In a French accent, of course. One story goes that when giving a criticism he told the actress she did not have the
réalité
. When the person beside him said, “Michel, it’s reality,” he is said to have replied, “I know.” So maybe it’s the accent that gives one iconic status? Telling an actor she is not real would not otherwise seem very insightful. But perhaps I am just bitter for reasons that will become clear later.

In the meantime it was a real treat to get to know the young John Barton. John was the company’s dramaturge and had been largely responsible for the conflation of five Shakespeare plays into Peter Hall’s dynamic three part
Wars of the Roses
. His skill with Shakespeare’s language was such that he could write linking passages with no one aware of the difference. Where did Shakespeare stop and Barton begin? No one could tell.