Behind the Scenes (9781466882195) Read online

  At the same time as being at Stratford I was commuting to the Aldwych. I was doing The Dream and Measure for Measure at Stratford, and the TV of Major Barbara in London. We seemed to be going up and down the road from London to Stratford about three times every other day. We thought nothing of it, and there was no M40 then.

  With Raymond Mander and Joe Mitchenson

  I met Raymond Mander and Joe Mitchenson when I was at the Old Vic, and they used to take me to the Players’ Theatre and lots of First Nights. They were hugely good fun and they took me everywhere. Their house was full of theatrical treasures, and they let me hold the Order of the Elephant that William Macready wore round his neck as Hamlet in the nineteenth century, which you can see in that wonderful portrait of him. They were so sweet, and they knew absolutely everybody. I was with them the night I first met my future husband Michael: he was in Celebration at the Duchess Theatre and he came to join us in the pub afterwards in Covent Garden. It was also through them that I met the Edwardian actress Ada Reeve, who was a friend of Ray’s and Joe’s.

  With Ada Reeve

  One of the happiest times I had was at Oxford and making a friend of Frank Hauser. I did several seasons at the Playhouse for him, with great friends like James Cairncross. He was a brilliant director and I once said, ‘If Frank asked me to step in front of a bus, I’d do it.’

  Irina in Three Sisters with James Cairncross as Solyony, Oxford Playhouse, 1964

  Denholm Elliott presenting me with a BAFTA Award for Most Promising Newcomer in Four in the Morning. That was a great surprise, as I wasn’t very lucky in my early film career. I’ve still got that dress.

  Four in the Morning was shot in Deodar Road in Putney, directly under the flight path, directly next to the road bridge, directly next to the railway bridge, and opposite where they dumped the rubbish on the river. We never got a take for longer than a minute and a half. It was just after the shooting of this film that my father died. Norman Rodway came round for a cup of tea, and it was while he was there that my brother Peter rang to say Daddy had died. It was 1 December 1964.

  Jude in Four in the Morning, 1965

  Titania in A Midsummer Night’s Dream with Ian Richardson as Oberon and Ian Holm as Puck, Stratford, 1962

  What thou seest, when thou dost wake,

  Do it for thy true-love take.

  I had one happy reconciliation during the run of The Dream. Franco Zeffirelli had been furious with me for refusing to join the Old Vic American tour of Romeo and Juliet, because I went to join the RSC in Stratford instead. But now I had a letter from him, saying, ‘Seeing how clever you’ve been in Stratford I have completely forgiven you for having abandoned Juliet. You know I’ve missed you deeply, I’ve hated you immensely – now I see that altogether you were right.’

  So that was good news.

  We had rather different costumes for the film of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, or rather hardly any at all. The leaves for our costumes were picked in the morning, and we wore green welly-boots, as I was frightened of worms.

  Titania in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Kingston Rose Theatre, 2010

  When Peter Hall suggested I play Titania again forty-five years later I said to him: ‘Peter, I can’t do that again,’ and he said, ‘Of course you can.’ He set up an opening scene of the company all arriving at Court, with me as Queen Elizabeth. They designed the most wonderful ass’s head for Bottom, quite adorable.

  It was lovely working with Peter again. He is such a stickler for getting the rhythm of Shakespeare’s verse right, which is always such a great help. My grandson Sammy came to the First Night, and sat absolutely motionless throughout, as he has at every Shakespeare play from when he was very young.

  With Peter Hall in rehearsal

  Noël Coward came to see Private Lives, but thank goodness he wasn’t there on the First Night. My bracelet flew off into the audience, the lid came off the coffee-pot and Teddy put it in his top pocket; he pushed me into the top of the trolley, I couldn’t get out and he wouldn’t help me. It was the most riotous First Night I’ve ever experienced.

  Amanda in Private Lives with Edward Woodward as Elyot, Nottingham, 1965

  John Neville directed Measure for Measure and gave it a very different setting from the one at the RSC. It was in modern dress and the moated grange was now a nightclub. When I asked John, ‘How do I come into this nightclub?’ he just yelled at me, ‘The way any nun comes into a nightclub after hours.’

  Isabella in Measure for Measure with Edward Woodward as Lucio, Nottingham, 1965

  Rehearsing a dance routine for a charity fundraiser with other actresses at the London Palladium in July 1963. From left to right: Peggy Lummins, Sylvia Syms, Janette Scott, Anna Massey, Liz Fraser, Eunice Gayson, Hayley Mills, Juliet Mills, and me.

  St Joan, Nottingham, 1966

  When we were delayed in Act II at the Dress Rehearsal of St Joan I was standing in the Green Room, and I looked out of the window and saw a woman with two children and a whole lot of bags pushing a pram. I turned and looked at all this knitted chain mail on everyone and I thought, ‘Oh God, what are we doing?’

  It is at the hour, when the great bell goes after ‘God-will-save-France’: it is then that St Margaret and St Catherine and sometimes even the blessed Michael will say things that I cannot tell beforehand.

  Lika in The Promise with Ian McKellen and Ian McShane, Oxford Playhouse, 1966

  The Promise was a wonderful play, by Alexei Arbuzov, but it’s nearly three hours long with only three actors and lots of costume changes. I used to drop off to sleep when Frank Hauser was giving us notes. There was a big bed I used to curl up on and Frank would say, ‘Is she awake? Because I have a few notes.’

  Sally Bowles in Cabaret, Palace Theatre, 1968

  Hal Prince saw me in The Promise and my agent Julian Belfrage rang to say that Hal Prince wanted to see me for his production of Cabaret. I said, ‘You have to be joking.’ So Julian took me out to lunch, I bought a feather boa, drank two glasses of wine, and when I arrived at the theatre I sang from the wings. I was so frightened. Amazingly I was cast as Sally Bowles! I went for singing lessons to Gwen Catley and after she’d heard me she said, ‘Well, yes, you’re not a singer.’

  I said, ‘Well, I know.’

  ‘But I can teach you to sing in your way.’

  It was Hal who said to me, ‘Read the book Goodbye to Berlin, and read what it says about her.’ Of course, the thing about Sally Bowles is that she isn’t a singer, she’s a middle-class girl from England who’s gone out to Berlin. She can’t sing. She could never be a success.

  The musical director was going to New York while we were rehearsing and he said, ‘Is there anything you want me to bring back?’

  ‘Yes, the top note from the end of Cabaret.’

  Hal overheard me and he said, ‘If you can’t get the top note, act that you can’t get it.’ That suddenly released me. The one thing that Sally Bowles craves to be is a star, but it’s the one thing she’s not, she’s a failure.

  I loved doing it, I loved working with Hal. When I was starting rehearsals I was sitting in my agent’s garden in Primrose Hill with that beautiful actor David Hutcheson and he asked, ‘Have you had the band call yet?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘When you have it, the hair on the back of your neck will stand up.’

  He was so right, and it’s not only at the first band call, but for ever afterwards.

  During the overture, when you are standing at the back waiting to go on, it’s just so exciting.

  I loathe taking curtain calls. It embarrasses the hell out of me. I begged Hal Prince not to have one in Cabaret, because I thought it would be so wonderful to have that train going away and everyone going with it.

  Celebrating with Lila Kedrova after our First Night performance of Cabaret, 1968. Champagne is my only drink.

  Perdita in The Winter’s Tale with David Bailey as Florizel, Stratford, 1969

  Hermione with Richard Pasco as Polixe
nes

  Trevor Nunn asked me to play Hermione in The Winter’s Tale and I was very shocked. I said, ‘Good God, Trevor, all those juveniles have gone by, and it’s mothers’ parts already?’

  ‘Yes, I’m afraid it is.’

  Then about three weeks later he said, ‘Actually, how would you like to play her daughter Perdita as well?’ That had last been done in Forbes Robertson’s production with Mary Anderson. The extraordinary coincidence is that the day before Michael and I married a few years later, the critic John Trewin sent us a wedding present and inside was a picture of Mary Anderson playing Hermione. He told us, ‘What you might be interested to know is that while she was doubling Hermione and Perdita, the only person to do that before you, she got married. Not only did she get married in London, but she got married in the same little church in Hampstead that you are getting married in tomorrow.’ Michael told the story in his speech.

  I love that kind of continuity, of something being passed down, I love being able to pass something on. What upsets me about now is that I think the majority of young actors don’t really want to know our great theatre tradition. I just think how lucky to be given the chance of playing great parts that other actors before you have played. So hopefully one is carrying on a great tradition, and I’m very aware of that. I feel that so strongly because of working with Peggy Ashcroft, John Gielgud and Edith Evans. They were all in a line with earlier actors.

  During the run of Twelfth Night Roger Rees and I invented a game called ‘Ferret in the foot’, also known as ‘Badger in the boot’ or ‘Rabbit in the ruff’, which had to be indicated with the appropriate action by different members of the cast. I don’t think anyone in the audience noticed, but it was very exciting, and it didn’t half get you through that interminable last scene.

  Donald Sinden invented a wonderful piece of business on his entrance in cross-garters: he walked forward and looked at the sundial, then he looked at the sun, then he checked his watch, then he moved the sundial.

  Viola in Twelfth Night with Donald Sinden as Malvolio, Stratford, 1969

  Michael flew out to Australia when we were touring with Twelfth Night for the RSC and proposed to me in Adelaide. I said, ‘No, it’s far too romantic, with all this sun and the beaches. Ask me again one rainy night in Battersea.’ So he did, and I said ‘Yes’ this time, and we got married in the middle of winter – on 5 February 1971.

  Tina Carr was a photography student when she took all these pictures of our wedding, when my brother Peter gave me away.

  Michael seemed to think my going-away hat suited him as much as me, and I love this picture of him in it.

  Trevor Nunn gave me and Michael a lovely advance wedding present by casting us as young lovers in London Assurance. Here I am in my dressing room during the run. I had a lovely friend in Nottingham called Brian Smedley, who’s a judge, and he’d asked me to marry him. I’d said, ‘May I let you know?’ The next time I saw him I was about five months pregnant. He just put his head round the door and said, ‘I take it the answer’s no?’

  I met the actress Cathleen Nesbitt not long after I was married, at a cocktail party at the Savoy Hotel. She was so beautiful, and you can see why Rupert Brooke wrote all those letters to her.

  Portia in The Merchant of Venice with Michael Williams as Bassanio, Stratford, 1971

  Portia has a speech to Bassanio in the Caskets Scene in The Merchant of Venice:

  I speak too long, but ’tis to peise the time,

  To eke it out, and to draw it out in length,

  To stay you from election.

  One night I said, ‘To stay you from erection’, absolutely boldly and out front. Well, the wind band left the stage. My brother Jeffery, Bernard Lloyd and Peter Geddes all left. And I laughed. Michael had a great long speech as Bassanio. I’ve never seen him use his hands so much and turn his back to the audience; it was terrible.

  I had this idea of a wig with lots of curls, and John Neville came to see it. I hadn’t seen him for years, and he knocked on the door and said, ‘Hello Bubbles.’

  That’s all he said to me, and quite right too.

  After our daughter Finty was born I was prepared to give up work altogether, but Michael preferred that I didn’t. Fortunately I managed to get work in the theatre when she was tiny, so I was going to the theatre when she was going to bed, then later I did television during the day while she was at school, and had the evenings off, so I didn’t miss out on anything.

  We were in Cyprus to shoot a magazine promotion for the TV series Love in a Cold Climate. There was a wonderful pool at the Dome in Kyrenia and the sea just washed into it. This natural sea pool, with crabs rushing across the bottom, was the most conducive place for learning to swim – warm and clear and sandy on the bottom. Finty learnt to swim in just two days. She is as keen on swimming as I am and is wonderfully good at it.

  Our extended family at Charlecote, near Stratford-upon-Avon, taken when Finty was three

  It was so perfect. Michael’s parents and my ma, Michael, Finty and me – all living together in one house. My mother and Michael’s parents all got on well together, so, a couple of years after Finty was born, Mike said, ‘Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could all just live together?’ That was absolutely my idea of heaven; it’s like a Quaker community, both for bringing up a child and the whole idea of looking after your parents. It appals me more than anything else in this country how the elderly are shot off somewhere where they sit like zombies in a room, and they’re there to die.

  This is a terrible picture of my ma. Michael’s father is standing next to her. The very lifelike doll we gave Finty was called Daisy. Once, at an airport, Finty was walking along dragging Daisy by the arm and some Austrian woman came up saying, ‘It’s terrible what is happening to that baby, dragging it along the floor, it is shameful!’

  Finty was very, very cross about her first communion dress, because all the other children were got up as brides in long white dresses and veils. I found this lovely Victorian dress and I made the bonnet, and Finty never quite forgave me for the costume. I thought she looked just terrific in it.

  I have to be able to laugh in rehearsal. I don’t want to work with anybody who hasn’t got a sense of humour, it’s too boring, and that goes for directors too. It’s too tedious. There are certain aspects you have to take seriously, but the moment you start taking yourself seriously, and you can’t laugh at yourself or see the funny side of something, I think pack your bag.

  During rehearsals for Too True to be Good we all went to lunch at Joe Melia’s house in Primrose Hill, and his wife Flora had a terrible headache, so I said, ‘We all ought to go out and find a rare thing on Primrose Hill, and bring it back.’ Ian McKellen and Joe brought back a park bench.

  I adored playing alongside Donald Sinden in both London Assurance and Much Ado. He is such a funny man. I had an argument with Peggy Ashcroft about Beatrice, because I think there is tremendous melancholy in her, and she didn’t see any melancholy at all. Because Donald and I weren’t in our twenties or thirties, we made it a last-chance summer that they could possibly get together. There is something very leftover about Beatrice. As she says, ‘He played me false once.’ She actually alludes to that, so I took that as my guide, that she was hurt badly and didn’t want to go there again.

  Too True To Be Good with Joe Melia, Aldwych, 1975

  Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing with Donald Sinden as Benedick, Stratford, 1976, and in rehearsal with Donald Sinden and John Barton

  Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing with Donald Sinden as Benedick, Stratford, 1976, and in rehearsal with Donald Sinden and John Barton

  I’ve never believed that one should suspect Lady Macbeth from her first appearance in Macbeth. I don’t agree with Edith Evans that there must be a scene missing, I can’t see what it would say that isn’t already in the play. I said to Trevor Nunn one day, ‘We must do it so that any schoolchildren who come to see it and don’t know it will think that that they may not do t
he murder.’ We all take so many things for granted.

  We did it at The Other Place at Stratford, which was then just an old building with a corrugated iron roof that used to creak and groan. Trevor got the stage management to put little pieces of paper in every single chink of light there was, and as an exercise he sent Ian McKellen up some stairs and said, ‘Judi, wait at the bottom, and Ian come down the stairs, knowing there are people asleep all around you.’ That completely unblocked something for us.

  Trevor decided to do it without an interval, and we sat round in a circle on old orange-boxes, a very minimalist set, and all our costumes were very plain. On the First Night there was an unbelievable storm throughout the sleepwalking scene, which sent gusts of wind under the door so the candle flickered, so it was effects by God, really.

  We had no understudies at The Other Place, so when Roger Rees broke his ankle he had to play Malcolm in a wheelchair. At the opening of the play Susie Dury, who played one of the Witches, used to dribble slightly and drag her foot, and two of the court used to raise Duncan up and help this aged person forward. So, after Roger had come on in his wheelchair, Marie Kean, the First Witch, passed me and whispered, ‘It’s the Lourdes production!’