Joan Littlewood Read online

  Joan Littlewood: Dreams and Realities

  PETER RAN KIN

  Joan Littlewood:

  Dreams and Realities

  The Official Biography

  First published in 2014 by Oberon Books Ltd

  521 Caledonian Road, London N7 9RH

  Tel: +44 (0) 20 7607 3637 / Fax: +44 (0) 20 7607 3629

  e-mail: [email protected]

  www.oberonbooks.com

  Copyright © Peter Rankin, 2014

  Peter Rankin is hereby identified as author of this work in accordance with section 77 of the

  Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. The author has asserted his moral rights.

  All images courtesy of Joan Littlewood’s Archive and/or Theatre Royal Stratford East. Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and to obtain their permission for the use of copyright material. The publisher apologises for any errors or omissions and would be grateful if notified of any corrections that should be incorporated in future reprints or editions of this book.

  You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or binding or by any means (print, electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  PB ISBN: 978-1-78319-084-3

  EPUB ISBN: 978-1-78319-583-1

  Front and back cover images courtesy of Theatre Royal Stratford East.

  Printed, bound and converted

  by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY.

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  To bossy women without whom I would have done even less

  CONTENTS

  Illustrations

  Acknowledgements

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE: A SPARK

  CHAPTER TWO: THE SPARK CATCHES FIRE

  CHAPTER THREE: TIME TO GET OUT

  CHAPTER FOUR: A BREATH OF FRESH AIR

  CHAPTER FIVE: OUT OF THE ASHES

  CHAPTER SIX: TROUBLE

  CHAPTER SEVEN: THEATRE WORKSHOP SETS OFF

  CHAPTER EIGHT: BUT HOW TO KEEP GOING?

  CHAPTER NINE: A HOME FOR A WHILE

  CHAPTER TEN: GERMANY SHOWS UP THE CRACKS

  CHAPTER ELEVEN: OUT AND ABOUT IN EUROPE

  CHAPTER TWELVE: KEEPING THE HOME FIRES BURNING

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN: COMING IN TO LAND

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN: A BASE AT LAST

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN: END OF/BEGINNING OF AN ERA?

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN: TO RUSSIA, TO BERLIN, TO COURT

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: SHELAGH

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: SUCCESS, FOR WHAT IT’S WORTH

  CHAPTER NINETEEN: AN OLD DREAM REVIVED, OR JUST BUGGERING ABOUT?

  CHAPTER TWENTY: OH WHAT A LOVELY WAR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: AN INVITATION TO EDINBURGH

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: TUNIS AND TWANG

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: TUNIS PART TWO, INDIA PART ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR: THE FUN PALACE COMES TO STRATFORD EAST

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE: THE SUMMER OF ’67

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX: A THROWAWAY BECOMES A HIT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN: JOAN LOOKS BACK

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT: THE NUTTERS MAKE A FILM

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE: REACTING TO THE TIMES: RONAN POINT, BUBBLE CITY & INDIA PART TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY: BARRAULT? THE THÉTRE NATIONAL POPULAIRE? + POWER CUTS

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE: MURDEROUS ANGELS

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO: REDEVELOPMENT

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE: KEEPING BUSY

  POSTSCRIPT

  Bibliography

  Index

  Illustrations

  Joan’s first school and in her words, the best.

  The portrait ‘Nick’ painted of Joan.

  For the Spanish Civil War;

  Joan in her radio days.

  Kristin Lind as Lysistrata.

  John Bury (Camel) pointing.

  The Travellers. Ewan MacColl (Jimmie Miller) in the background wearing glasses, Harry H Corbett clutching a briefcase, Avis Bunnage, eying a soldier;

  Uranium 235. Gerry as Energy.

  Theatre Workshop in Czechoslovakia;

  Twelfth Night. John Blanshard, Avis Bunnage, Harry H Corbett (Theatre Royal Stratford East).

  The Alchemist (Theatre Royal Stratford East);

  The Dutch Courtesan. Howard Goorney with slashed sleeves (Theatre Royal Stratford East).

  Amphitryon 38 (Theatre Royal Stratford East);

  Red Roses for Me. Avis Bunnage on the left, Margaret Greenwood with the basket (Theatre Royal Stratford East).

  Arden of Faversham. Israel Price, Barbara Brown, Howard Goorney (Theatre Royal Stratford East);

  The Good Soldier Schweik. Harry H Corbett, George A Cooper, Barry Clayton (Theatre Royal Stratford East).

  Arden of Faversham. George A Cooper kneeling, Barbara Brown, Maxwell Shaw, Harry H Corbett (Theatre Royal Stratford East);

  The Good Soldier Schweik. Maxwell Shaw in bed furthest left, Howard Goorney next to him, George A Cooper, fourth bed in, Gerard Dynevor next to him and John Blanshard next to Gerard (Theatre Royal Stratford East).

  The Prince and the Pauper (Theatre Royal Stratford East);

  Volpone. Barry Clayton, George A Cooper, Maxwell Shaw (Theatre Royal Stratford East).

  Volpone (Theatre Royal Stratford East);

  The Midwife (Haben) Avis Bunnage, kneeling (Theatre Royal Stratford East).

  Mother Courage with Joan as Mother Courage, Barbara Brown, in cart (Taw and Torridge Festival, Devon);

  Joan and Gerry, Paris Festival of International Drama.

  The Sheepwell. Howard Goorney in the middle (Theatre Royal Stratford East);

  Edward II. Peter Smallwood in the centre (Theatre Royal Stratford East).

  Edward II. Peter Smallwood, Maxwell Shaw (Theatre Royal Stratford East);

  The Quare Fellow. Glynn Edwards, second from left, Brian Murphy, fourth from left (Theatre Royal Stratford East).

  You Won’t Always be on Top. Stephen Lewis, Dudley Sutton, Brian Murphy, Murray Melvin, Richard Harris holding can, George Eugeniou (Theatre Royal Stratford East);

  Unternehmung Ölzweig (Operation Olive Branch) (Maxim Gorki Theatre, East Berlin).

  The Maxim Gorki Theatre welcomes Joan and Camel at Berlin’s Tempelhof airport;

  The Hostage. Glynn Edwards, Murray Melvin, Margaret Greenwood standing on stair, Eileen Kennally, Robin Chapman, James Booth, Celia Salkeld (Theatre Royal Stratford East).

  A Taste of Honey. Avis Bunnage, Murray Melvin, John Bay, Frances Cuka (Theatre Royal Stratford East);

  Brendan Behan on Sean Kenny’s set for The Hostage.

  James Booth, Roy Barnett, Frank Norman, Lionel Bart, Dudley Sutton looking at script of Fings Ain’t Wot They Used T’Be;

  Joan directing The Hostage at the Wyndham’s Theatre.

  Fings Ain’t Wot They Used T’Be. Miriam Karlin, Paddy Joyce, Glynn Edwards, Edward Caddick (Garrick Theatre);

  Every Man in his Humour. Griffith Davies, Michael Forrest, Roy Kinnear, Claire Neilson, Brian Murphy, Maurice Good, Ann Beach, Sean Lynch (Theatre Royal Stratford East).

  Fings Ain’t Wot They Used T’Be. Edward Caddick, Toni Palmer (Garrick Theatre);

  Joan rehearsing at the Theatre Royal Stratford East.

  Jo
an on the stage set of Sparrers Can’t Sing (Theatre Royal Stratford East).

  Sparrers Can’t Sing. Griffith Davies, Barbara Ferris (Theatre Royal Stratford East);

  Sparrers Can’t Sing. Murray Melvin, Frank Coda, Sean Lynch, Bettina Dickson, Brian Murphy, Bob Grant, Barbara Ferris, Amelia Bayntun, Fanny Carby, Griffith Davies, Barbara Ferris (Theatre Royal Stratford East).

  Oh What a Lovely War. Myvanwy Jenn, Larry Dann, second soldier from the left, Brian Murphy, third soldier from the left. (Wyndham’s Theatre);

  Victor Spinetti, furthest left, George Sewell, fifth from left, Myvanwy Jenn (Wyndham’s Theatre).

  Cedric Price’s plan for the Fun Palace;

  Oh What a Lovely War. Victor Spinetti, George Sewell, Murray Melvin, and Brian Murphy behind him (Wyndham’s Theatre).

  Gerry in his office at the Theatre Royal Stratford East.

  Shy Joan, adventurous Gerry in New York for Oh What a Lovely War;

  Mrs Wilson’s Diary. Myvanwy Jenn, Sandra Caron (Theatre Royal Stratford East).

  Gerry, Joan, Maxwell Shaw, filming in India;

  The Marie Lloyd Story. Gaye Brown, Avis Bunnage, Maxwell Shaw, Valerie Walsh (Theatre Royal Stratford East).

  Conor Cruise O’Brien in the rehearsal room at the Théâtre National Populaire for his play, Murderous Angels.

  Joan rehearsing Murderous Angels.

  Joan in the bar of the Theatre Royal Stratford East;

  Ken Hill, Joan and Gerry celebrating twenty years of Theatre Workshop at the Theatre Royal Stratford East;

  Lionel Bart, Joan and Peter Rankin rehearsing The Londoners at the Theatre Royal Stratford East.

  Joan and Guv.

  Presenting Bubble City.

  Acknowledgements

  Philip Hedley and Kerry Michael for getting it going; Jenny King and Emma Jackson for keeping it going; my mother, Gaye Brown, aunt Cecilia, Richenda Carey and Joan Gilbert for general bullying; Peter Everett and Janey Preger for access to BBC archive material and stories of Manchester; Oberon Books for patience.

  PROLOGUE

  In 1963, aged sixteen, I was taken by my father to see Oh What a Lovely War, Theatre Workshop’s musical entertainment about the First World War. Even by that early age, the magnetism of the company’s name and its director, Joan Littlewood, had been drawing me towards it. Aged eleven and stuck at boarding school, I had read a review of Fings Ain’t Wot They Used T’Be and, among the stuffy pages of The Illustrated London News, the company still looked a jolly lot. Two and a half years later, in 1961, a news item on the TV announced Joan Littlewood’s departure from Theatre Workshop, and you didn’t normally see stories about theatre directors on the TV news.

  When, in the spring of 1963, she returned, there she was on TV again. Huw Wheldon was interviewing her for the BBC arts programme, Monitor. Her laughing eyes and warm voice, mocking the formality of a television interview, held me. How would this warmth and mockery translate into a show? That night at the theatre, I was to begin finding out.

  On came a jaunty pierrot dressed in black and white, the actor Victor Spinetti. He was the master of ceremonies and he talked to us, really talked to us, so it wasn’t embarrassing. When the right moment came, he summoned the company to start the show.

  To set the scene, it sang a cheerful song of the period and then, in little scenes interspersed with more songs, explained how the war started. All this happened in a quick, tumbling way that left you almost breathless. It was, at one and the same time, childishly simple, easy to understand and funny. When the band vamped away in preparation for the song ‘I’ll Make a Man of You’ and the actress, Avis Bunnage, walked on in a glittering black gown to eye the audience evilly, it turned daring.

  As the pierrots continued to sing and dance, the number of deaths at the various battles began to run across an electronic newspanel at the back of the stage. The audience gasped but, despite things getting worse, it did not sink into depression. It was angry, perhaps; glad to be informed, that’s for sure.

  Some weeks later, Theatre Workshop announced The Merry Roosters’ Panto. It was to be performed at matinees during Oh What a Lovely War’s run at the Wyndham’s Theatre. I rushed to it and there they were again: Victor Spinetti, Avis Bunnage and the actor who had been Field Marshal Haig, George Sewell. This time, Victor Spinetti was Eartha, a bossy Ugly Sister. Avis Bunnage was the Fairy Godmother, and George Sewell was Baron Hardup. Dumpy, the downtrodden Ugly Sister who was forever having her ears boxed by Eartha, was played by the actor who had been Sir John French, Brian Murphy.

  Those Merry Roosters had a job to do the show, though, because the manager of the theatre, Mr Redsocks, would have none of it. He wanted an uplifting afternoon of Welsh recorder music, so the audience had to shout: ‘Redsocks!’ whenever he appeared in order to warn the pierrots. Big Gerry Raffles, in a top hat, frock coat and, of course, red socks, played him. By then, I already knew that he really was the manager of Theatre Workshop. It was the jolliest show I had ever seen.

  Although I was watching as a naïve and protected teenager, I had already been to see lots of theatre. Among other things, I had seen John Gielgud in Peter Brook’s production of The Tempest at Drury Lane; John Osborne’s Luther at the Royal Court; Shakespeare’s York and Lancaster plays turned into The Wars of the Roses, at Stratford-upon-Avon; Noël Coward’s Hay Fever at the National Theatre; and, at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art’s new theatre in Logan Place, Peter Brook’s Theatre of Cruelty. Oh What a Lovely War was different. Despite the horror of what we were told, a warmth I had never felt before spread out into the auditorium. How this was achieved, what Theatre Workshop was, who Joan Littlewood and Gerry Raffles were, I didn’t know, but those two performances were the trigger to finding out and it happened sooner rather than later; in fact only a few months later.

  In the spring of 1964, Joan Littlewood, wanting money for her latest project, The Fun Palace, was set to direct a series of commercials for eggs. When my father, who was the agency producer but no longer in the family home, told me, I didn’t hang about. On a dull Sunday afternoon, never having been to the East End before, I set off for a two-up, two-down in Plaistow where rehearsals were taking place before the shoot.

  Because they had breaks, the actors were easy to talk to – that’s Avis Bunnage and George Sewell again, and their stories were smashing – but I could not talk to Joan Littlewood. In that two-up, two-down, she was up and I was down, so I merely watched her appear each morning in her black-and-white-checked raincoat and was thrilled by that alone. When at last I had the opportunity to speak up, I told her I was theatre mad. ‘Don’t get stage-struck,’ she said, the eyes still laughing, the voice still warm, ‘Get science-struck.’

  Fortunately my experience of science at school was enough for me to state with conviction that I was no good at it. Right then and there, and why, I still don’t know, Joan gave me the date and place of the first day’s rehearsal for Henry IV, her adaptation of Shakespeare’s two Henrys, which she was taking to the Edinburgh Festival. I ran up the street, my feet not touching the ground. As starry eyed as that sounds, I am still grateful for that sensation because it doesn’t happen again, whatever exciting things come in later life.

  I went to the Henry IV rehearsals. I went to Edinburgh and the next year, while still at school, I watched Joan rehearsing the most notorious flop of the twentieth century, Lionel Bart’s Robin Hood musical, Twang.

  When I left school, with only a note from Joan saying I could come if I was invisible, I went to the Theatre Royal Stratford East, the home of Theatre Workshop. There, having not been all that invisible, as Joan put me on the stage, I got my first job. In this way, my growing up was combined with learning about Joan and Gerry and their theatre. First Joan, and later Gerry – I didn’t like him much to start with – became my theatre parents. With Joan, I watched her disciplined imagination at work and thus was inoculated against what went on in other theatres, where actors learned lines, directors gave moves and that
was it. With Gerry, I listened. He had a handful of principles about writing and theatre. They weren’t complicated but he was strict about them and that could be painful. Yet, even with this knowledge, and despite having my own play directed by Joan in 1973, I was still only at the beginning because, for those ten years, I thought that she, with her overwhelming personality and phenomenal gift for theatre, was Theatre Workshop all by herself. I was wrong.

  In 1975, Gerry Raffles, who was not only the manager of Theatre Workshop but Joan’s old man – he of the disobedient hair and deep, merry laugh, eight years her junior – died. He was 51. Immediately after his death, I pulled away from Joan because she was behaving oddly, not like herself at all, or so I thought. This was because I had only known her as a unit with Gerry, so much so that, despite their constant arguing, I hadn’t noticed there was a unit in the first place. Joan alone was different. That was something else I had to learn. Some months later, I came together with her again and, ten years later, she set to work on her autobiography. By then she was living in my flat and so was able to draw me in.

  At the other side of London, where, in a house all by herself, lived her half-sister Betty, was a small room filled with rows of box files. Joan had put them there but she needed to refresh her memory or perhaps find out what she herself had not known. They contained the daily dealings of Theatre Workshop, the important and the unimportant, that Gerry had carefully saved from just before the Second World War until his death. It was the kind of stuff Joan had not really been involved with because she had been busy with her actors, exactly as Gerry had intended.

  Day after day, I went to 29 Stockwell Green where, as I put each letter into chronological order, I could feel the power of a gradually building narrative. Gerry had left a message in a bottle. In it were the knockings on doors, the bills that could not be paid, the arguments with both Arts Council and commercial managements that had been part of the fabric of Theatre Workshop. They gave a context to the hits. Among them were letters from the young Gerry written to Joan in the late Forties and early Fifties when they were apart. They contained clues which I didn’t pick up on at once but that, later, would reinforce my understanding of what Gerry wanted for Theatre Workshop. As most of this had happened during my lifetime, I felt as if I had stepped back into a parallel life, one that was all the more fascinating because it was so different from my own.