Joan Littlewood

by Peter Rankin

  At the same time, Joan, constantly on the lookout for useful people, found Nelson Illingworth, a singer and voice teacher. He was brought up in Australia, which would have recommended him to Joan right away. There was less chance of him being in thrall to the south of England middle-class way of speaking. In a letter to Joan, he complained about a badly spoken radio production of Romeo and Juliet. Nelson liked good vowel sounds; so did Joan.

  In London, he was the artistic director of an evening theatre school, Labour Stage. On the team of teachers were poet and friend of Jimmie, John Pudney, set designer Jocelyn Herbert (who was to make her mark at the Royal Court Theatre), and composer Alan Bush, who was not a ‘Thirties communist’ because he stayed a communist all his life. It’s an indication that after the war there was something in the air, a desire – that was not just Theatre Workshop’s – to make art improve people’s lives. The question however remained for Labour Stage, as well as Joan and Jimmie: how exactly?

  By teaching Theatre Workshop actors to use their bodies and their voices properly, both Jean Newlove and Nelson Illingworth were helping to realise one of Joan’s most important dreams: training. When talking of Bertolt Brecht Joan said: ‘He uses ready-mades,’ actors who come with their box of tricks which Brecht could drop into his productions. Joan wanted to actually make her actors, or be the one who released their talent.

  At least she knew there had to be talent to start with. Before the 1945 auditions she wrote, in another dig at Jimmie, that she was fed up with Communist Party and left-wing types who’d been in pre-war Theatre Union. She wanted ‘TALENT who’d train to make the finest theatre in the world.’

  Jimmie was not too keen on Nelson Illingworth, in part because he came from opera, which he regarded as the wrong way to use the voice, but also because Illingworth favoured Gerry. Joan and Gerry happy together was anathema to him, or so Joan thought, and this despite their own relationship long being over. She was particularly annoyed by Jimmie when he said that Laban thought Gerry was best for shifting pianos.

  In search of talent, she wrote a letter – another example of her doing the unexpected – to Kenneth Barnes, not only director of RADA in 1945 but director of RADA during the time when she was there, the time she had so hated. Had he any useful students? She was hoping for men. He wrote back, starting ‘Dear Joan Littlewood,’ as if he had no idea who she was and went on, never referring to her time there, to say that all his young men were busy during the holidays but there was one young woman who was free. She didn’t get the job.

  This idea of training, Joan’s way of training, was one of the first steps in a dance of dysfunction that Theatre Workshop and the Arts Council would keep up for many years. Instead of one dancer drawing a foot back as the other dancer put a foot forward, both dancers would stub each other’s toes. One dancer, instead of supporting the other, would let go. That’s how it went.

  Step one had been Joan writing to Michael Macowan thinking that an innovative new company would be perfect for support. Step two was Macowan not seeing Theatre Workshop’s shows but proposing a touring rep quickly rehearsing established plays. Step three was Joan rejecting that.

  Step four was Arts Council Manchester Representative, Jo Hodgkinson, going to see a show but finding no one there. Theatre Workshop’s performance had been cancelled. Hodgkinson had given no warning of going but the cancellation gave a bad impression.

  Step five, and when he finally did see a performance, he was delighted in the presence of the actors but then went away and said something different to Michael Macowan. He said that some of them would have to be replaced, while the rest would have to re-train. Re-train to do what, wondered Joan, stabbed in the back. Her actors were very well trained, she thought.

  When Jo Hodgkinson appeared that time, the rest of the company may have been uncertain about him but Joan was quite certain. She didn’t like him and walked away. Step six.

  You’d have thought, after his betrayal, no one would have spoken to him again, but that applied only to Joan. She could walk away from the unpleasant; the others couldn’t. One or more of them still had to sort the problem out. In this case, it was Gerry and Howard. As business managers – they were sharing the job now – they couldn’t afford to break off relations with the Arts Council. They didn’t have the luxury. They had to keep asking.

  There was another visit from the Arts Council but Pearl Turner, the company’s best female singer and one of the two narrators in Johnny Noble was off sick that night. Joan had to go on instead but couldn’t sing. Jimmie Miller never quite forgave Pearl for that.

  And so it went on. As late as the 1960s, Theatre Workshop would be uneasily corresponding with Jo Hodgkinson, by then Drama Director and based in London.

  But then again, so continued the strokes of luck that, perhaps, were not really strokes of luck. St John’s Hall, Middlesbrough, didn’t sound promising but no sooner had the company unloaded its gear than coffee appeared, quite an improvement on being yapped at by a little dog. The hot drink, so very much needed, had been made by Mrs Ruth Pennyman. A few weeks earlier, she had seen the company perform Don Perlimplin at the People’s Theatre in Newcastle and, unlike Kendal, had fallen for it. But, as so often with people who took to Theatre Workshop, she was both inclined their way politically and theatre mad.

  Coffee was just the beginning of what she went on to provide for the company. A few miles outside Middlesbrough was her home where she lived with her husband, Colonel Pennyman, and it was there that she invited Joan and her actors to come and eat and sleep. Ormesby Hall was its name, a large house set in its own grounds.

  That night, the company sat in the dining room at a long table with Ruth Pennyman at one end and the colonel at the other. Rationing still had another eight years to go, but no peculiar substitutes were served. Dinner was proper soup and proper fish. Joan, who delighted in anything done well, talked happily to Mrs Pennyman about Lorca. Some of the others, while grateful to find themselves in this oasis of hospitality, wondered if they were in the right place for a company that was supposed to be bringing theatre to the people. It felt a bit feudal. Gerry, still aligning himself with the working class, as he had done when swearing a lot among miners, stood up, went over to the fireplace, and scraped his fishbones into the flames. The colonel looked on with equanimity, almost as if he knew what the future held.

  CHAPTER NINE

  A HOME FOR A WHILE

  Theatre Workshop toured as much as it could and the going was intense; a night here, a night there, sometimes. However, gaps were unavoidable and the solution turned out to be Ormesby Hall. Ruth Pennyman, fascinated by the exercises she saw Joan set in Middlesbrough, invited the company to give summer courses. So Jimmie would give lectures on agitprop and the history of drama, while Joan would say to those gathered: ‘Go out of the room and come back in, remembering exactly what you did the first time.’ It was one of the exercises she used to sharpen observation. She may not have wanted to be a teacher in a formal way; informally, she never stopped.

  The important side of Gerry – swearing and scraping, was that really working-class behaviour? – came quickly to the fore. Theatre Workshop, lacking support from conventional sources, had to make friends as it went along and accept what they had to offer. He knew it, and he could see that the protection Ormesby Hall gave was good for Joan. So much so, that when he was worried Colonel Pennyman might turf them out, he persuaded pretty, fair-haired Pearl Turner to go for a walk with the colonel in order to find out if they could stay. Pearl knew what Gerry was up to and did not feel entirely comfortable with it. However, aware that it was for the company’s sake, she went for that walk. Nothing bad happened, chiefly because Colonel Pennyman also knew what Gerry was up to and had already decided to say yes.

  When Pearl returned with the news, she watched as Gerry turned away from her, picked Joan up and whirled her round. In that moment, she saw, without realising, which way the land would lie for Theatre Workshop.

  Rudol
f Laban once warned Joan that ambition would take her actors and motherhood would take her actresses. Pearl had a man in her life who wanted her to pay attention to him, not Theatre Workshop. She left soon afterwards. Joan never thought anyone was as good as her at singing the female narrator in Johnny Noble.

  However, as one talent left, so another arrived. At the start of a summer course, five pounds and five shillings, Joan noticed a new student, a young sailor still in uniform, lying on the floor as part of a relaxation exercise. ‘Imagine you’re on a sandy beach on a sunny day with the sea lapping at the shore a few feet away.’ Joan often used that when it was cold and there was no money to turn the heating on. Would this young man be able to control his large frame, Joan wondered, as Rosalie Williams told him that he could stand up and do some dancing. No not really, but he tried and he didn’t chuck the course. First thing each morning, there he was and, for that matter, there he stayed, because he joined Theatre Workshop.

  He had to act. Everybody had to, but he wasn’t very good at it. Clear speaking and communication were not his strong points. David Scase was better at that. If anything, this young man was quite hard to understand. He wore a beard and through it came a woffle-woffle sound. Nobody could penetrate it except for Gerry. It was something to do with their mutual interest in the lighting board. As this ex-Fleet Air Arm lieutenant had trained as a chemist, he knew nothing about lighting compared to Gerry, but that is where his talent began to emerge.

  His name was John Bury. After he mentioned his nickname, ‘Camel’, that he’d been given at school because there were three Johns, nobody called him John. From thereon in, he was Camel. Why he was called that in the first place, nobody seemed to know. Joan’s sister, Betty, said it was because he kept getting the hump which made everyone laugh, except for Joan who was rather annoyed.

  Talking with Camel, Gerry, who had a strong voice, would pick up the impenetrable woffle-woffle sound. It was a bond, as they became the firmest of friends. Joan, seeing something she couldn’t be part of, would tease Gerry by imitating the two together. It didn’t make any difference because, at every mention of Camel’s name, Gerry’s eyes would go soft. Joan would tease Gerry about that as well.

  Alf Smith, the company’s first electrician, didn’t stay and, in time, Camel took over lighting. He was particularly happy working with Johnny Noble’s black background. The pure nothing it provided was perfect for making the company’s few lights do exactly what he wanted them to. Design, for which he would become famous, was yet to come.

  Ormesby Hall’s lack of pressure led to a delirious evening which was Joan’s happiest memory of the place. Bill Davidson, having been the duty plongeur, which meant that he’d just done the washing up, Joan preferring the Zola-esque French word, returned to the assembled actors pretending to be a film director. With a biscuit tin as a camera, he shouted directions and got everybody to act in his gangster movie. It went all over the house and lasted for hours. Pure invention, no inhibitions, no critics, it was exactly what suited Joan. No critics? Two ladies, total strangers, appeared during this improvisation. Bill, switching from gangster movie to science fiction – the film for the next night – threatened them with his killer ray gun. It was only a torch but the two ladies were not the kind to understand. They ran for it; they were from the Arts Council.

  While the company was at Ormesby Hall having a good time but not actually performing, Mike Thompson, he of the ‘piddling’ dates, achieved one good thing: an invitation to perform Uranium 235 in Hanwell. It didn’t sound much but it was Theatre Workshop’s first date down south. Howard saw it as an opportunity to invite Labour MPs, Labour being in goverment at the time. Perhaps they would embarrass the Arts Council into support. Joan, who had no reason to believe that Labour was any more helpful than the Tories, didn’t particularly want to go. She was keen not to interrupt rehearsals for Jimmie’s new version of Lysistrata, Operation Olive Branch. It was a valid argument – Joan always had a valid argument – but anyone who knew her, knew that London equalled pressure and judgment which she feared. They went.

  Labour MPs turned up all right: Nye Bevan, Tom Driberg, Benn Levy, Ian Mikardo and Alf Robens among them and, as a result, Joan, Gerry and Howard were invited to the House of Commons for lunch. Everyone appeared to be delighted. Howard rang Michael Macowan. They were not delighted, he told Howard, and not a penny was forthcoming.

  Only one of the MPs didn’t leave things as they were: Tom Driberg. He was fascinated by Theatre Workshop. As he was also a well-known journalist, it was suggested that, before Operation Olive Branch went out on the road, he should come up and see it at Ormesby, and he agreed.

  The company was back there in the middle of rehearsals when, out of the blue, appeared two quite unfamiliar figures. Where was James Miller? The two figures were plain clothes policemen.

  Rumour had it that they were after the wrong James Miller or even that someone had shopped him, but either way, the game was up. Jimmie was arrested for desertion. Fallout made it worse. Though Jimmie and Joan were no longer together, they were still married, while the woman he was with, Jean Newlove, was obviously not his wife. Inside the company, it couldn’t have been more ordinary. Looked at from outside, in late Forties England, it was messy.

  Even inside the company, there was a problem. Many didn’t know about Jimmie’s wartime jaunt and Joan, sounding calm and reasonable but not feeling it, had to tell them. She had to tell Colonel Pennyman too. As it happened, his reaction was not at all judgmental. That was a relief.

  It wasn’t for long, though. Operation Olive Branch was about to open and Jimmie was playing the leading part. A young man, not long in the company and not long out of the forces, had to take over. Ben Ellis was his name and just before the first performance, he became psychotic. While serving in the army, he had been left for dead under a pile of bodies and the effect was lingering. At that moment, Tom Driberg appeared.

  Two cracking good stories confronted him but he kept quiet, tough for him, the hardened journalist. Instead, for some days, he watched Ben perform in the evening – the first night was thrilling – and check into hospital after the performance. Gradually he got better, if less exciting. At all times, Gerry remained attentive and gentle, which Ben acknowledged when writing to Joan some months later. By then, he was back to normal, complaining, like the others, about Mike Thompson’s desperate bookings.

  Tom Driberg used to say that what you don’t want to get into the newspapers is called news; what you do is called publicity. For Reynolds News, known as the voice of the Labour Party, he wrote:

  I have never come across any community, religious or political, or any group of stage people, so free as they are from personal pettiness. They are completely and unselfishly single-minded. In fact, they illustrated for me the meaning of the Gospel text, ‘If thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light’. [Matthew 6.22]

  From that moment onwards, while longing for scandal to write about and sometimes not being able to resist, he remained onside. It helped that he fancied Gerry.

  So there, despite everything, was Operation Olive Branch up and running, when news came that Freddie Piffard had organised a tour of West Germany. Freddie Piffard was a friend of David Scase – they’d met at the BBC – and now he was on the committee that chose entertainment for the British forces abroad. Such a fan of Theatre Workshop, he was already on its board of directors – yes, it did have one; Hugh MacDiarmid was on it too – and now he had come good. Of course the company would go but it was a wrench because Jimmie was still in prison. Joan, though Mrs Miller only in name, felt that she had to stay.

  CHAPTER TEN

  GERMANY SHOWS UP THE CRACKS

  With Joan and her company separated, communication had to be by letter. Most of them were from Gerry to Joan. His description of the company’s behaviour in Germany backs what Tom Driberg wrote. While young British soldiers strutted around, triumphant, Theatre Workshop wanted to learn. Many British people used thei
r cigarette rations for tips and favours. Theatre Workshop gave their cigarettes away. Germans, interested in theatre, thought it was the nicest company they had ever met.

  However, behind this united front of good manners, there was unhappiness. Travelling in Germany was informative but the tour was not a success: most of the soldiers were in no mood for Uranium 235. Audiences, along the way, dwindled and those that did appear could be tough. Gerry, playing the part of Energy, strong and handsome but with few clothes on, had to suffer cracks about ‘poofs’. For David Scase it was:

  David: You can’t kill us.

  Voice from audience: I could.

  David: Can you give me something . . .

  Voice from audience: Yes, potassium cyanide.

  Big Boss: In a few minutes the audience will leave the theatre.

  Voice from audience: We’re going now.

  It made the actors think. Some decided that, when they got home, they’d leave. Others wanted re-organisation, Gerry, chief among the latter:

  I think that the only possible factor which will stop us being a great popular theatre within the next ten years is Jimmie. I come more and more to the conclusion that his overall influence is directly opposed to the creation of the sort of theatre that you and most of us want. And soon you will have to realise it or another five years of your life will have been wasted.

  Even Freddie Piffard, who had set the tour up, wrote, ‘Why talk of a popular theatre and play Jimmie?’

  From the other side, Joan had Jimmie writing to her saying: ‘Rosalie and Kristin are limited’ and then of Rosalie, alone – this, after their long affair – ‘Replace Rosalie with Billie Whitelaw’. Billie Whitlelaw, whom Joan knew from radio, had done a thrilling audition but her mother wasn’t having it. Her daughter could earn better money carrying on in radio. Jimmie didn’t stop. He was writing a play: