by Peter Hall
When I met Leslie in 1956, I was the fashionable young director of Waiting for Godot. She was recently divorced and, on one of her periodic rejections of Hollywood, eager to develop herself as a stage actress in Europe. We were very attracted to each other – and we were very proud of each other. There was a delight between us that seemed unquenchable. We raced around the world listening to music, looking at pictures, seeing films, going to the theatre. At the beginning, and for several years, our marriage was an enchantment. To the outsider, it must have looked like a fairy story. We were young, successful, madly in love, and quickly had our two beautiful children, Christopher and Jenny.
But, as Leslie had foreseen, Stratford changed all that. It revealed terrible flaws in our relationship. I became a man possessed, working so hard that I had little to offer her. The RSC came before everything else. Leslie, for her part, may have been extraordinarily famous but, like many actors, she was very insecure. Only sporadically did she believe in herself, and was repeatedly torn, wondering whether her career lay in the movies or in the theatre. Or whether the happiest kind of life for her was being a wife and mother.
Her French father, a wise and witty pharmacist, was from the Parisian haute bourgeoisie. A grandfather had been Mayor of Paris. Her American mother, who had the charm and eccentricity of a Tennessee Williams character about to disintegrate, took to her bed the day the Germans invaded Paris and stayed there until the war ended.
She had been a dancer, a talent her daughter inherited. At fifteen Leslie was already in the Champs Élyseés Ballet, learning from Jean Cocteau, Jean Babilée, Roland Petit and Zizi Jeanmaire. Although Leslie’s education was patchy because she spent all her formative years exercising at the barre, she learnt much from the extraordinary eruption of post-war talent in the Parisian theatre and ballet. She was still only a teenager when Gene Kelly took her from the ballet company and groomed her for stardom in Hollywood. There she made An American in Paris and Lili in quick succession.
I was captivated by Lili some years before we actually met. I saw the film on a wet afternoon in Exeter where I was on tour with the Elizabethan Theatre Company’s Twelfth Night. Tony Church claims that after the film my comment was: ‘Imagine that lovely girl being married to Spam.’ Leslie was then the wife of George Hormell, heir to the pressed-meat millions.
At heart she despised much of Hollywood. She had the discipline and dedication of the ballet dancer – always wanting to learn, always wanting to improve herself. Understandably, she felt she needed to maintain her position as an international film star. So one week she would decide to go back to the States and do whatever the studio said; the next she would affirm that she was a European and decide to make a career there, giving up Hollywood altogether. It was a place that bred insecurity — indeed thrived upon it – using its contract actors as expendable commodities that were only promoted if their last picture did well. They were forgotten if it did badly. For a short period, Leslie tried to live in Stratford and be just Mrs Hall. But she could not deny her talent nor her ambition. Why should she?
Her French accent was an added difficulty, because it limited what she could do in British theatre. After Giraudoux’s Ondine at the Aldwych, in the RSC’s first year there, she had wanted to play Titania. But I, perhaps mistakenly, was against it.
My tiredness, her anxieties and our perpetual separations chipped the marriage away. We both had affairs. By 1962, there wasn’t much left but resentment – made worse because we remembered how wonderfully it had all started. My mother observed the tensions from a distance and sniffed. She had always suspected it would end in tears. I should, she said, have thought of that before.
In 1963, in the midst of this worst unhappiness of my life, I began work on The Wars of the Roses. It was the most ambitious and difficult project of my career. It was also the beginning of an even bigger plan: to perform all Shakespeare’s histories in 1964, the quatercentenary of his birth. Ever since I had been appointed to Stratford, people had been asking me what I was going to do for the 400th birthday. For some time I had replied that I would leave on the 399th.
The Wars of the Roses was the overall name that I gave to a trilogy of plays adapted from Shakespeare’s three parts of Henry VI and his Richard III. The four plays became three because I felt (wrongly I think now) that the action of the three Henry VI plays was too protracted. I had longed to present them as an epic sequence ever since I had realised their narrative muscularity when Douglas Seale produced them at Birmingham in the Fifties.
My first choice as director was Peter Brook, sticking to my principle that you should always aim higher than yourself. He said that they were not for him; they would take him three years, and their content was too nakedly political to interest him at the moment. He said I should do them myself. For once, I was relieved that his answer was no.
So John Barton and I set to work to prepare a text, compressing and shaping the four plays into three. We had some ten months to achieve the whole thing before rehearsals started. We cut and patched and clarified with a will. We quickly found, however, that we needed some linking passages to keep the story in focus. Most of them came from Edward Hall’s chronicles – a Tudor history which had been Shakespeare’s main source book. But a few we wrote ourselves. John became brilliant at composing Shakespearean pastiche, and I tried my hand as well. Indeed, we discovered an aptitude for writing early Shakespearean blank verse that grew wildly over-exuberant; and in our zeal to show clearly what Shakespeare meant, we put many new words into his text. One speech was considered so central to the production’s meaning by the programme editor, John Goodwin, that he printed it in full. It was a speech John Barton and I had written. It was hastily removed.
I blush at our frenzy of adaptation in the light of the present fashion for authenticity: for the earliest, purest texts, for performances on original instruments, for editions from original manuscripts. When our final version of The Wars of the Roses was published, we confessed what we had done. Was it as reprehensible as Nahum Tate’s happy ending to King Lear or Dr Bowdler’s cleaned-up Shakespeare? I think it was, even though, before rehearsal, I removed a lot more of our rewrites. They had helped us understand and clarify, but I felt they had to be few and far between, especially under the watchful eye of Peggy Ashcroft.
Interpreters of Shakespeare have a tendency to feel they are giving him a helping hand to meet their audience. For instance, the texts of Olivier’s films were, in my view, dreadfully insensitive. They patronised Shakespeare in the hope of speaking to the cinema public of the Forties. Garrick and Irving were also keen adaptors of the Bard in order to engage their audience.
Another reason for tampering with the words was the star consciousness of the actor-manager. Irving’s Hamlet ended with Horatio saying:
Good night, sweet prince,
And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!
Whilst I behind remain to tell a tale
Which shall hereafter make the hearers pale.
At this point the curtain descended. Irving was not going to be upstaged by Fortinbras. It is not recorded who wrote the last two lines.
The Wars of the Roses was bred of its time. John Barton and I aimed for a lean, quick rendering that concentrated on the story. We wanted to reveal the political ironies which are at the heart of any power struggle at any time. Hypocrisy and cant were as common on the lips of politicians in Tudor England as they are on television during modern British elections. Nonetheless, our adaptation, though well-intentioned, was indeed wrong-headed. It is true that in the end most of our work amounted to cuts rather than rewrites; but these were so heavy they amounted to rewrites. Once you start monkeying with original texts, either as a translator or an adaptor, you start to put on the creative cloak yourself. And it soon becomes easy to believe that you have a right to ‘improve’ Shakespeare, reorchestrate Mozart, or cut Wagner. You haven’t. Most of the cutting and editing and rewriting of the classics occurs because we don’t understand what
the original is doing or – even more likely – are incapable of realising it. As a young man I didn’t know it is better to work a little harder and a little longer than to cut; that the author often doesn’t need help.
Finally, of course, whatever is done to the great masterpieces only makes the adaptors look silly. We are not, after all, defacing the ‘Mona Lisa’ for all time. The original is still there, mocking our inability to realise it as it stands.
We began working with the actors on The Wars of the Roses and everything seemed set for the creation of something special. I journeyed down to Stratford by train on the morning of our first rehearsal having been the previous night at the opening of an Aldwych production. It was a fine spring day and I was avidly reading Jan Kott’s book, Shakespeare Our Contemporary. His thesis was simple: that Shakespeare is the mirror of our own age as he has been the mirror for every other; but we have to make sure we are alert to the new images that can express him. Among other matters, Kott was writing about the power politics of Shakespeare’s history plays and how they illuminated the world of the Iron Curtain and totalitarian communism. It was fascinating.
But since it was afterwards sometimes reported that The Wars of the Roses was actually born out of the influence of the book, I think I should record that by the time I read it the production, in its intentions, political thrust and design, was already established. All Kott said was in the air then; it was the very stuff of the Sixties.
John Bury had designed a massive arena of steel in which these clashing abrasive plays could come to life. Not only did it look ominous and magnificent, it sounded right. In the great battle scenes, the swords rang as they were scraped across the metal floor. In Richard III, the tyrant’s soldiers wore steel soles on their boots so that the inhuman tramp of authority was heard throughout the theatre.
Peggy Ashcroft was to be Margaret of Anjou, at that time one of the great undiscovered parts in classic drama: at the start, a beautiful young French princess of seventeen and by the end of the trilogy a mad old crone in her late seventies. A miraculous new young actor, David Warner, was cast as Henry VI (when we opened his reception by the audience was as thunderous as O’Toole’s Shylock). Other brilliant new talents in the plays, all soon to be stars of the RSC, were Ian Holm as Richard Crookback, Janet Suzman as Joan of Arc, and Roy Dotrice as King Edward. The more mature section of the company included Donald Sinden as York and Brewster Mason as Warwick, both of them, in the event, superb.
The three plays had to be staged in three months. It looked possible but was an enormous task. And we all knew what a target we would be if we failed.
Two weeks into rehearsal I broke down. My body was host to every passing psychosomatic disease: upset stomach, roaring sinuses, terrible headaches and, above all, an overwhelming tiredness. I had fits of weeping. Once more, I thought of suicide. I lay in bed in a darkened room, clearly in the grip of a serious breakdown. I was told not to work for at least six months, and that if I didn’t improve, a little electric shock treatment might be prescribed – an alarming suggestion that I rejected right away.
What was actually wrong with me? Part of it, I am sure, was fear. I felt as frightened as a child, sometimes to the point of panic. Our second Stratford season had been rather shaky, especially at the start. Money worries were threatening the future of the company. The disintegration of my marriage was wrenching me apart – I was in a turmoil not knowing whether I wanted it to end or not, though I knew in my heart of hearts that it was past. Physically, mentally and emotionally, I had reached my lowest ebb. I was not ready to meet the greatest challenge of my professional life. Like a child who doesn’t want to take the exam because he fears he will fail, I collapsed.
For some days I lay in bed at Avoncliffe in despair. At the theatre, John Barton was staunch, rehearsing the scenes over and over, attempting to keep a sense of purpose alive. Leslie, at home, tried to make me think positively. Then Peter Brook flew over from Paris. He told me to get back to work. This was against the doctor’s advice. Leslie and Peggy supported Peter; they said that if I didn’t, I might lose my nerve for ever. My three friends probably saved my career; they certainly saved my immediate sanity. Two weeks later, side by side with John, I began the mighty task again. Dr Theatre is very potent.
It was, however, an uphill struggle all the way. I have never been so miserable in my life as when we were creating The Wars of the Roses. I continued to have every minor ailment known to man and often felt wretched. But if I had not gone back, I don’t think I would have directed again.
As it was, the production turned into an astonishing success. The RSC was crowned. The Wars of the Roses established, as nothing else had, the style and purpose of the company. Suddenly, we had done all that we had aimed to do – and more. We were told that by stressing the ironies of politics, the realities of power and the ordinary fallibility of kings, and by moving away from abstractions and generalities, we were truly post-Brechtian. Certainly, we were very much a company of the Sixties – asking questions rather than expecting answers.
What we did came out of the most rigorous scrutiny (the Leavis word) of each scene. What was it for? What did it mean? And how could it be expressed to a modern audience? With this came ferocious study not just of the meaning of the text but of its form and how it should be spoken. Our concentration on text throughout the early years of the RSC went virtually unnoticed. But we had captured the public imagination, and our triumph flared all over the press. The Sunday Times went most satisfyingly over the top with an ecstatic article headed ‘The Greatest Theatrical Feat of the Century’.
The trilogy moved to the Aldwych and was televised. On a few days at Stratford, and later at the Aldwych, we played all three parts in one day: epic playgoing new to our audiences. The ancient Greek example was reborn.
In 1964 – the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s birth – we revived The Wars of the Roses at Stratford and added to them Richard II, the two Henry IV plays and Henry V. Given all together, these revealed a great chronological sweep of bloodstained English history, from Bolingbroke’s usurpation of the throne to Richard III’s death at Bosworth Field. The plays had never been done as a sequence. And I would never have come through the effort of putting them on without the help of committed colleagues – principally John Barton, but also Peter Wood and Clifford Williams. The company of actors, led by Peggy Ashcroft and Ian Holm, had made something live that had never lived before.
I learnt several lessons from The Wars of the Roses. One was that there is never a good time to do your best or most demanding work. You don’t have to be happy; you don’t even have to feel well. You just have to do it to your limit and hope for the best. I also learnt that, whatever the challenge, it is vital to recognise where that limit is – to know when you’re getting too close to the edge. My refusal to admit that I was so near disaster was the principal reason for my collapse. Once I recognised it, I was able to go on.
My debt to Peter Brook is enormous. He is the best friend in the world if you are in trouble – but it has to be disastrous trouble. Then he will drop everything to help. I would never go to him because of a small crisis: he would not be bothered with it.
He doesn’t see everything in the theatre but he has an extraordinary instinct for what is important; he has always been ahead, finding new ways with work of extreme intensity and clarity.
In the immediate post-war years he made magic, returning the theatre to a place of fantasy and delight after the drabness of the war. In those years, Oliver Messel designed for him stages of delicate beauty. Later, his productions of Measure for Measure and The Winter’s Tale illuminated Gielgud’s romantic soul with pain and passion. And as a piece of astonishing total theatre – Peter not only directed but designed the set and composed the music – the Titus Andronicus he did at Stratford, with Olivier in the name part, brought the harshness of Seneca into a Shakespeare rarity. His great productions for me at the RSC – especially of King Lear and Marat/Sade – set
paths for the future.
At his Paris centre, his vision of a multiracial theatre has been wonderfully realised. But why, oh why, couldn’t it have been in Britain? Two of the greatest directors of my time, he and Joan Littlewood, have both left the British theatre and gone abroad – Joan to retire and Peter to start again. Peter should have been given a theatre in this country to work out his genius. Alas, the British never subsidise people: they subsidise institutions. They suspect the artist.
Chapter Nine
In the early Sixties, I could not have been more successful professionally. At home, everything was in tatters. My marriage to Leslie had reached its lowest ebb. And on her return from filming in Los Angeles, we went on a brief holiday to Morocco in a last desperate effort to try and repair some of the damage done by our constant separations. It did the opposite. There was clearly a huge gulf between us. After a couple of days, Leslie told me she was in love with Warren Beatty and had decided to leave me and go back to Hollywood. She didn’t, however, wish to disrupt the lives of the children and suggested that they live with me in Stratford with their nanny and Jay, our Scottish housekeeper, and come to her for holidays. I was devastated – but chiefly for Christopher and Jenny who trusted and loved us. I didn’t blame Leslie; I didn’t even blame Warren Beatty. He was just the catalyst for a split that had long been inevitable.
Leslie left for Hollywood immediately and the situation rapidly became front-page news. It was my first experience of being ‘door-stepped’, which meant seeing a posse of bored and frozen journalists permanently stationed outside the house waiting for statements I was not prepared to give. I went on with my work at the theatre and gave thanks that I was so busy.
After six or seven weeks, I had a phone call from Leslie telling me she was flying to England in two days to pick up the children. She had decided it was wrong for them to be away from their mother, and would therefore bring them up in Los Angeles. I said I didn’t want that.
