Earlier this week I wrote an obituary of the voice coach Ian Adam who seems to have been friends with everyone in the London theatre. Anyone who writes anything in newspapers knows when an article has made a special impact, and this was one of those occasions. Not becuase of anything I said, necessarily, but because of the memories the piece evoked.

Ian Adam, whom I never met, was a life-enhancer in the sense that he got the best out of people and helped them make the most of themselves. Only nurses and teachers probably do anything that is more worthwhile or admirable. Adam not only helped out Michael Crawford and Maureen Lipman, he also had time for Clive James, the Duchess of York and Princess Diana’s bodyguard.

All his teaching was based on breathing exercises. I have a hunch that almost all of us could have our lives, our postures and our general well-being improved by going to a good voice coach. The late Jack Tinker’s former partner Adrian Morris wrote to me to say that when Jack was hired to perform his party piece, “Alice Blue Gown” on a charity telethon, he booked in for a few sessions with Adam. “An old peeled wall of a performance,” says Adrian, “was transformed into something like a beautiful fresco.”

(more…)

(more…)

I’ve been to a marvellous party. They were all there: stars, directors, alumni, and Christopher Biggins. The occasion was the launch of David Conville’s splendid history of the Open Air Theatre to mark its 75th anniversary — published by Oberon Books, all proceeds to the New Shakespeare Company — in the picnic area alongside the Robert Atkins studio.

Atkins was the director who famously told actors, when in doubt, to go down stage and “do a little dance.” His partner in the 1933 first full season was the impresario (and sometime critic) Sydney Carroll who, having covered the stage with springy turf from a firm in Surrey, proudly proclaimed at the first night curtain, surrounded by the cast, “that every sod on this stage comes from Richmond.”

Every sod imaginable turned up at lunchtime today. Biggins fitted us all in before high-tailing it to Cameron Mackintosh’s new boat for the summer. Anthony Andrews darted in to join his wife, Simpson’s heiress Georgina, who mistakenly congratulated me on giving hubbie a rave for his perf in The Letter. Celia Imrie looked radiant, stunning Gabrielle Drake tactfully fragile (I have to be careful here; Gabby once accused me of reviewing her appearance, not her performance, but we’ve made it up since), Louise Gold resplendent in a copper-laced green top and Jonathan Cecil the absolute epitome of an upper class act on a summer’s day. I wore shorts and a T-shirt, but that was because I was honouring the theatre and its environment by jogging there from my home twenty minutes away.

(more…)

Well, it’s not very important, but the row about the critical fraternity of “dead white men” rumbles on, with Nicholas Hytner rueing his remarks on the subject in today’s Observer, explaining that the dead white men of the literary world — the titans of the canon of Western literature in American academic-speak — are the people he needs to keep alive, and praising the expertise and experience of Michael Billington, Benedict Nightingale and John Peter (whose combined age is over 200 years!). Oh dear, what a climb down. “They don’t like it up ‘em, sir,” as Clive Dunn used to say in Dad’s Army, but I’m sorry to see Hytner caving in so feebly. Perhaps the board got on his back.

(more…)

The RSC’s King Lear and The Seagull open at last to the critics in Stratford-upon-Avon, so I drive up in the morning on the M1, leaving for the Warwick road after Watford Gap. The journey takes two hours door to door, which is not too bad. Stratford never really changes, but the Courtyard is a triumphant new success as the company’s permanent home until the re-built Royal Shakespeare Theatre opens in three years’ time.

No time for lunch before we plunge into King Lear at 1pm. Trevor Nunn’s production clears up a couple of points Shakespeare carelessly omitted to clarify: Lear’s poor Fool is hanged on stage by the revolting soldiers after the prophecy speech; and Kent’s final journey, “shortly to go,” is an exit line to suicide.

Ian McKellen does indeed strip off in the hovel to reveal what Germaine Greer termed (and she should know) “his impressive genitalia,” though I doubt if Sir Ian is thrilled by the warning posted to patrons in the foyer about “brief nudity.” It’s a whopper, ladies, even if one or two of my boastful colleagues muttered that things had not turned out quite so long as they had been led to expect. The shows themselves certainly are: three and a half hours for Lear — though after the opening funereally slow procession, the speaking is quite quick and agile throughout; and not far short of the same for The Seagull.

(more…)

“If in doubt, blame the critics”. It’s a good old showbiz maxim. But it’s somewhat surprising to see it lately pursued by Nicholas Hytner, the much-acclaimed director of the National Theatre. His comment that too many critics were “dead white males” who displayed a misogynist attitude to women directors provoked a tremendous storm; and, although I took Nick’s views with a pinch of salt, I found the Guardian arts website filled with an alarming number of blogs demanding my head on a platter.

Over the years, I’ve got used to outraged commercial producers attacking the critics. Sometimes it isn’t even producers but PRs. There was an hilarious example after a flop musical called Bernadette, when the show’s publicist blamed our negative reviews on our sexual preferences and the fact many of us were accompanied by “young boys”. The reality was that many critics took their offspring to the first night simply because their wives refused to go! My favourite story came after the first night of the original Andrew Lloyd Webber-Alan Ayckbourn musical Jeeves, when the sainted Eric Thompson, who directed it, was asked on TV if the critics killed the show. “No,” said Thompson with refreshing honesty. “The show killed the show.”

(more…)