by Peter Hall
What he gave to the Royal Shakespeare Company and to me, its young founder, is incalculable. The company was callow, messy, bustling, adventurous, all over the place – and he, a man of great wisdom, decided to join the adventure. He gave me ballast and direction when it was critically needed. He spoke to a new ensemble of young actors about the European heritage, about Stanislavsky, Copeau and Brecht. He had actually known these men and worked with them. But he did not give us cold theory. Michel hated dogma. He had a deep-rooted suspicion of any method, old or new; of anything which inhibited challenge and change. He knew well how quickly yesterday’s belief becomes today’s comfortable conformity, imitated unthinkingly and without effect.
He was a superb teacher who loved the young. For him, they were instinctive and giving – ‘open’, a favourite word of his. But was this same ‘openness’, which contributed to the English admiration for amateurs and dislike of theory, often an excuse for avoiding craft? It was a danger which Michel never failed to point out. He believed, of course, in craft, in technique, but only as a means. Acting was not a trick to be learnt and then performed as a mechanical repetition; it was not imitation, but rather revelation of the whole human personality. An actor had to use acting not to hide himself, but to reveal himself.
He once sat with me at a dress rehearsal at the Aldwych, and afterwards listened to the director giving notes to the cast. He was advising the actors to go much slower, to give themselves time to think. This was disastrous advice. No actors, as they meet an audience for the first time, are thinking as quickly as the audience. It normally takes several previews to get the speed of acting up to the speed of the audience’s thought. Michel whispered to me that I would have to do something – take over, or at least help the director. I said I couldn’t do that. Michel reminded me that I had to, or else I had no right to be running a theatre. I followed his advice.
As my first Stratford season neared its end, I was struck with two considerable crises. The first concerned Harold Hobson, the drama critic of The Sunday Times. Throughout the season he had included a paragraph in every notice expressing his hostility to the projected expansion of the RSC to London, even when he was reporting favourably on what he had seen. He wrote roundly that Stratford was for Stratford and should stay there. I suffered all this for a while and then, in some anger, I wrote to the editor of The Sunday Times enclosing the notices and saying that although I respected his critic’s absolute right to like or dislike our productions, Hobson’s avowed prejudices against something that was not as yet even started might well spoil our first year at the Aldwych. I added that the whole formation of the RSC was being done without subsidy and was a considerable gamble. I asked the editor if he would in future send his second drama critic, Jack Lambert, to the Aldwych and to Stratford so that there was no danger of us being badly damaged by Hobson’s prejudices.
I must have been crazy. I have learnt the hard way that taking on the British press is a high-risk indulgence. As for arguing with critics, they always have the last word and tend to be very thin-skinned, so it is best to keep your mouth shut.
Today, I believe my action would produce editorial frenzy and righteous indignation for days on end. It is not the policy of most newspapers to admit that they are ever wrong. Then, however, attitudes must have been more gentlemanly and urbane, for my letter produced a courteous invitation from Harold Hobson to lunch at Pruniers. Over excellent fish, he said it had all been a misunderstanding; he simply enjoyed tweaking my tail. I was so serious about the move to London that a little mockery seemed in order. But if this expansion was so important, he would delay making final judgement until after December when we were due to open at the Aldwych.
I hadn’t exaggerated my anxiety to The Sunday Times editor. With no subsidy, and under-written with just the £175,000 savings, only immediate outright success at the Aldwych would enable the scheme to survive, let alone win support from the Arts Council. The gamble was nerve-wracking. Preparations went on apace. Along with three Shakespeares from Stratford and The Duchess of Malfi with Peggy, I had arranged to present a play from my Francophile past, Giraudoux’s Ondine, with Leslie in the lead, and the superb new epic that John Whiting had made from Aldous Huxley’s book The Devils of Loudun. But we needed something with real commercial power. Anouilh’s new play, Becket, was currently a sensation in Paris. In those days, he was as big a name as Tennessee Williams or Arthur Miller. I knew him quite well having already directed his Waltz of the Toreadors and Traveller Without Luggage. In the teeth of competition from Binkie Beaumont, I begged Anouilh to let me have his new play. I said I would cast Eric Porter as Becket and Peter O’Toole as Henry II. My plea was successful. Anouilh was wryness personified. I think he was amused by my audacity.
Then the second crisis hit. Sam Spiegel and David Lean decided they wanted Peter O’Toole for the film of Lawrence of Arabia. Peter admitted he had an agreement with the RSC, but said that now he couldn’t possibly do Becket, or appear in The Merchant and The Shrew when they moved to London. He merely repeated that he was going to be a movie star. This time I took the remark very seriously indeed.
Suddenly, two of our biggest hits at Stratford could not go to the Aldwych. Even worse, I was not sure I could keep Becket out of the clutches of Binkie if I couldn’t find a star comparable to O’Toole. I tried to work a compromise – a short London run of the two plays Peter was already in, and a delay of the film. Of course, it was impossible. Mega movies, with millions of dollars riding on their every movement, are not remotely concerned with the financial and artistic problems of the Royal Shakespeare Company. I learnt, too, a hard lesson. The law is not usually about right or wrong, but about having sufficient resources at the right time. Sam Spiegel invited the RSC to sue him over O’Toole’s broken contract, but we decided that we couldn’t risk the cost of a probably lengthy case. Also there was little point. If an actor doesn’t want to act for you, there’s nothing in the world you can do to make him.
After many desperate weeks, the situation was saved. Christopher Plummer, the fine Canadian actor, said he would play the King in Becket and combine it with Benedick and Richard III in the next Stratford season. I was relieved beyond measure.
Chapter Five
My home at Stratford was Avoncliffe, a beautiful Regency house made of soft Bath stone, built in 1818. It stood by the banks of the Avon and had a large garden which Leslie planted with roses and set with gravel paths and bay trees in tubs in the French manner. The garden sloped down to the river and there were views over the water to the fields on the other side. The house had once been a very minor stately home – in fact it was rumoured to be connected with the family of Lady Hamilton. But in this century it had fallen on hard times.
During the Thirties, it had been used as some kind of drama school, and had also provided dormitories for actors at the theatre. Then, after the war, it was lent as accommodation to the star of each season. In the years immediately before we moved in, it had been occupied in turn by Tony Quayle and his wife Dot Hyson, Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh, Charles Laughton, and Peggy Ashcroft. When Leslie and I lived there, Avoncliffe was companionable as well as beautiful, for the kitchen areas and the stables attached to the main building had been converted into comfortable flats for some of the company.
We decorated the house in a confusion of Gallic and English styles – Cecil Beaton meets French provincial. And I was more prosperous than before or since. My salary of £5,000 a year was worth a great deal in those days, and the house and the Spanish couple, who did the garden and looked after us, were provided free.
I had a lovely collection of adult toys. I would go to work in the summer in my little power boat. I owned, as well, an open Jaguar XK150 in British racing green with tan upholstery in which I ran up and down to London at least once a week. One night in Stratford, I found an identical car parked next to mine. It belonged to John Osborne. And I have a notion that his intense public dislike of me – though he is always extremel
y cordial in private – sprang from this encounter.I There was also the vintage Rolls-Royce which Leslie had given me on my thirtieth birthday. I drove round Warwickshire in it, sitting high, seeing over the hedges. I adored it.
I am told that I gave out at this time an aura of calm, even arrogant, confidence. In truth, I was scared to death at what I had started. The RSC grew almost daily in amazing headline-catching style. In its first five years the company developed fast and frighteningly, helped along by work which galvanised attention – the epic Wars of the Roses; Peter Brook’s Lear with Paul Scofield; Clifford Williams’s Comedy of Errors and The Representative (Rolf Hochhuth’s play claiming that Pius XII failed to intervene at the slaughter of Jews in the Holocaust); my collaboration with John Barton on Troilus and Cressida; Vanessa Redgrave’s Rosalind; David Warner’s Hamlet; Peter Brook’s Theatre of Cruelty and his staging of Peter Weiss’s Marat/Sade; and Harold Pinter’s The Collection and The Homecoming. These two productions were the start of my long friendship with him and of our fruitful work together on all his new plays over the next twenty years.
For a time, the RSC even had two London theatres – the Arts as well as the Aldwych. We took the smaller house so we could have a showcase for new talent. It was a rich harvest. David Rudkin and Henry Livings emerged as new writers; Nicol Williamson as a leading actor; Sally Jacobs as a designer; and Tony Page and David Jones as directors.
We were a ferment of activity, and despite the inevitable failures I always felt we were running with the tide. This confidence enabled me to get through nightmares like the Zeffirelli production of Othello with Gielgud, Ashcroft, Tutin and Ian Bannen. Franco had designed realistic Italian sets, more suited to Verdi than to Shakespeare, which took for ever to change. I sat with him in the auditorium one morning at 5.30, still trying unsuccessfully to get him to cut some of the scenery. We were opening that evening, and it was clear that if things were left as they were the interval was going to last some forty minutes. Franco was of the opinion that audiences wouldn’t mind the wait if what they saw finally was beautiful. I told him that nothing could be that beautiful. Also, I was desperately worried that the full sexuality Gielgud had found in previous years, in his tortured Angelo in Measure, his jealous Leontes and his questing Hamlet, were eluding him as he came to the simple naiveté of Othello. He was unhappy and uncertain, and appeared swamped in the enormous misplaced splendour of the production.
The setting was dark. Indeed, against it Gielgud’s dark face all but disappeared. On the first night, monumental stone-like pillars swayed when he leant against them. And Ian Bannen as Iago, uncertain of his lines, pluckily improvised, but to disastrous effect. It was a nightmare evening with everything going wrong – a famous catastrophe, as much talked about as our great successes.
I felt very responsible for John’s failure in the part. After all, I had listened when he and Franco had said they wanted to do the play. It had seemed to me, given the extraordinary sweetness and innocence of one side of Gielgud’s personality, that he could create the trusting Moor. But he was never the soldier: the poetry was extraordinary and the naiveté was honest; but the animal wasn’t there.
Though famous for his capacity to drop bricks and his love of gossip, I know no-one kinder, and no-one more loyal and tender. After Othello, he picked himself up and gave a beautiful performance as Gaev in Michel St Denis’s Cherry Orchard.
Some great actors have the capacity of defining a part for ever. I cannot think of Hamlet or Angelo or Leontes or Gaev, or Spooner in Pinter’s No Man’s Land, without thinking of John. In rehearsal, he is as quick as a thoroughbred horse, speeding this way, then suddenly changing direction and speeding the other. He improvises, takes risks, lives dangerously and, as he proved in the Pinter, is perfectly prepared to play a seedy, unsympathetic character. He has the quality of mercury, and his instincts and his diction are so incredibly swift that I am sure it is this, together with his timing, wit and infallible sense of rhythm, that breeds such excitement in an audience. He seems to live several points faster than ordinary human beings.
Is he easy to direct? Yes. He demands help, demands stimulation, and he leaves you exhausted. But he also leaves you feeling slightly cleverer than you know you are.
Chapter Six
By nature I am a night person, somebody who works well late at night or, indeed, can go on working right through it. But I found I could not combine that nature with running a large organisation and directing plays. So in the early Sixties I turned myself into an early-morning person, establishing at the RSC a routine which I have continued ever since.
At a quarter to six I get up and do some exercises. Then, for the first two hours of the day, I deal with the problems of yesterday – taping replies to all letters and messages. Anybody I need to speak to I can usually get easily on the phone between eight and nine. I can also cope better with crises early in the morning, and have a rule that I am not given bad news at night unless it is absolutely vital. During the rest of the morning and in the afternoon I rehearse, with only a short lunch – normally a light working meal shared with someone. And for those five or six hours of rehearsal I insist that I am not disturbed. This uninterrupted concentration on a production keeps me fresh and ready when I return to the entirely different tangles of administration. Evenings are given over to meeting people, or seeing previews, dress rehearsals or performances.
At the RSC – as later at the National Theatre – it amounted to a particularly packed day, even if I wasn’t directing (which I mostly was). Time had to be found, too, for reading scripts, searching for fresh talent by seeing the work of other theatres and other actors, and dealing with sudden shocks and alarms. The greatest need was, of course, planning for the future; ironically, this tended to be neglected because of the demands of the day, crisis management and the unexpected emergencies.
There were, as well, the Board meetings. I have always loved the politics of committees – the ebb and flow of chat, and the fact that it is possible to persuade a group to reverse completely its initial position if you put your case well at precisely the right moment. I must have spent many weeks of my life at governors’ meetings of the RSC and the NT, and on the Arts Council and its committees, and seldom found them anything but fascinating. Such gatherings are a basic form of theatre. Everybody is playing a part, and most people are saying less than they mean.
It was a hectic life. But I was happy, sometimes dangerously exhausted and often close to the edge. No-one had run a theatre company the size of the RSC before and directed plays at the same time, so I was more or less making it up as I went along. Certainly, the idea that I am power-mad has pursued me ever since. The notion stemmed from the fact that I once, in the Sixties, foolishly declared that I loved power. I said it to Peter Lewis who was writing a piece for the archetypal Sixties magazine Nova. I said it suddenly and mischievously because the question was one I was growing tired of denying. It passed into the cutting libraries and has been a ready-reference for all future interviewers.
I hope I wouldn’t be so ridiculously unguarded now. I know that I am not power-mad. I do, however, enjoy making things happen; giving a focus to a group of people and creating the conditions in which good theatre work can grow and flourish. I don’t think I am interested in power for its own sake. If I was, I would have gone into politics.
Chapter Seven
We got through the first year at the Aldwych without breaking the bank, though it took us until October 1962 to win our first small subsidy from the Arts Council. Our great gamble had paid off – grant-aided existence had begun. But in establishing ourselves, unasked, in London we had made many quiet enemies in high places. Hostility to the RSC in London was to continue from time to time for the next thirty years.
It was not clear in 1962 how the RSC would be affected by the next big change in the theatrical landscape: the coming of the National Theatre in 1963 in its temporary home at the Old Vic, under Olivier. I thought that two national companies i
n Britain, one based on Shakespeare and one based on a world repertoire drawn from Aeschylus to the present day, were exactly what was needed for the country’s theatrical health. But it was evident that the powers that be, and certainly Larry himself, were not thinking of two equal organisations at all.
Just before I became director of the RSC, Larry had asked me whether I would like to join him if he succeeded in getting the NT started. From the heights of certainty which being twenty-eight allows, I thanked him, but said I was committed to Stratford. Some months later, Arnold Goodman, acting for the National Theatre Board, called on Fordie and myself to propose an amalgamation with the National. We listened and sent him away empty-handed. He says his humiliation was so great he ought to have travelled back to London disguised as a washerwoman, like Mr Toad.
There seemed to Fordie and me, at that time, no benefit to Stratford in the idea. Indeed, it looked as if we would simply be destroying a great tradition. Much later on, when it appeared it might be of benefit to both organisations, we did try to flesh out a way of making the scheme work, but it came to nothing.
Now, in spite of rebuffs and misunderstandings, relations with Olivier continued to be personally cordial. But there was a sense that both our theatres were competing for the future, and this was much played on by the media. My passion was Shakespeare, and the RSC was where I belonged. My aim was for the RSC to be recognised and properly funded so as to be equal in resources with the NT. Larry wanted the National to be pre-eminent – to pay more, spend more and mean more. And his views were shared by many in the Establishment.
Chapter Eight
Through all the furious activity of the early Sixties, one thing constantly disturbed me: the extent to which my hectic pace was affecting my life at home.
