Hi Nick, bye Ned
News reaches me that Nicholas de Jongh’s long-simmering play about John Gielgud being caught with his trousers down in the famous cottaging case of 1953 is soon to reach the stage, probably at the Finborough Arms in Earls Court. Critics who write plays do so at their peril, of course. But de Jongh has long laboured quietly behind the scenes trying to get this play on, as has my old friend, and his contemporary, Peter Ansorge, with his drama about the philosopher/critics Hannah Arendt and Martin Heidegger.
Ansorge, too, sees some light at the end of the tunnel with interest in his play emanating from Alan Rickman. Some critics started as playwrights – Jeremy Kingston, Garry O’Connor and Frank Marcus spring to mind.
Some critics have even become playwrights, Shaw the most famous example. Irving Wardle is another one-off predecessor, perhaps to old Nick; he wrote a lovely play about sexual induction, rather kinky it was, too, called The Houseboy.
No-one has moved so silkily between so many showbusiness disciplines as the late lamented Ned Sherrin. There have been some lovely stories emerging since his death on Monday (a big memorial service will be announced soon) but a surprisingly constant theme has been the old flaneur’s unexpected kindness.
Once you got through to him, he could indeed be the soul of merriment and generosity but he was good at playing a double game, too. When I wrote my book about Maggie Smith, he entertained me for a couple of hours with stories of the great actress and their early days in
Oxford revues together (Maggie was town, he was gown).
A couple of months after publication, he kindly invited me on to a chat panel he was chairing at the Edinburgh Festival. He made a few obliging remarks about the book and then launched into a series of devastatingly funny stories about Dame Maggie that I had never heard before.
The audience obviously deduced that he knew a lot more about Maggie Smith than I did and that my book was therefore somehow incomplete, or wanting in total authenticity. Nice one, Ned: brilliant!
My favourite new story was the one about Maggie being hit hard across the chops by Olivier during the senate scene in Othello. So hard and vengeful was the blow one day – the two of them didn’t really get on all that well, and Maggie had given up a glittering West End career to join the NT under the great man – that the graceful Desdemona was laid low, fully unconscious on the stage floor and had to be transported gingerly to the wings.
As she came round, Maggie blinked, cleared her throat and said, “That’s the first time I’ve seen f-ing stars at the National Theatre….”