Kean As Mustard
Hot stuff from Antony Sher as Edmund Kean at the Apollo, telling no less than the truth with his line, “There’s no one here I don’t really know.” The first night crowd includes many of Tony and partner Greg Doran’s nearest and dearest, marshalled to their seats by press agent Peter Thompson sucking white wine through a straw and producer Thelma Holt, resplendent as ever in black Issie Miyaki.
Cameron Mackintosh’s right hand man Nick Allott is cheerfully drawing attention to himself on crutches having recently fallen down a ski slope and buggered his shoulder, his leg and most of his ribs. In the interval, Peter Hall reminds me of how Alan Badel,who played Kean thirty-five years ago, would imperiously regard anyone else on the stage with him as if to say, “How dare you stand up here next to me, what makes you think you are good enough?”
Sir Peter is about to rehearse Pygmalion for his Theatre Royal, Bath, annual summer season and is still bemused by the fact that Shaw allowed Gabriel Pascal to give his film version a happy ending. “Why do you think he did?” I ask. “Money, probably,” says Sir Peter. “I don’t believe it,” I reply, “do people ever really do things just for money?” Sir Peter roars with laughter, but I don’t understand why.
Then a large Falstaffian man in a Garrick club bow tie heaves into view. It’s jolly John Avery, vintner extraordinaire and proud father of the actor, Alex Avery, playing the Prince of Wales. I tell Dad that I hope there is no replay of the rejection scene — “Fall to thy prayers, old man” — at the party afterwards or indeed later in life back home in Bristol. The scene has already been touched on in the play’s first act. It returns in the second.
But I doubt if John Avery has ever been spurned by anyone other than Andrew Lloyd Webber, whose cellar he used to stock in the early days of the maestro’s Sydmonton Festival. “It was Sydmonton that got Alex keen on theatre,” says John, promising to update me soon on current stocks of his delicious green label vintage champage. I just wish I could afford to buy some.
