One more festive Friday
It is sometimes said of a certain kind of celebrity that he, she, or Biggins, would turn up for the opening of an envelope. The Press conference equivalent was the sparse turn-out of hacks for the announcement on Friday afternoon of a performance at the Fortune Theatre later this year of The Woman in Black — for one week only…in Japanese!
Director Robin Herford, who has been associated with the play since its premiere in 1992, stated categorically that he was a firm believer in the extending of international links. And that was as good as it got.
To be fair — just for a change, and against my better judgement — several of us had been lured thither by canny PR Ben Chamberlain with the promise of a plateful of sushi to soak up the champagne across the road at The Stage’s annual party in the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane.
But producers Peter Wilson and Kenny Wax may be on to something. After all, the Japanese community in London is certain to turn out in droves in September to see two very well known Tokyo actors and share their penchant with us for ghost stories.
And it was a pleasant lacuna in a hectic day that saw many of us decamp to Waterloo and debouch at Kingston later in the afternoon to catch the gala night opening of The Rose in Kingston and Peter Hall’s production of Uncle Vanya.
The Stage party was marked by the Oh-Yez town crier introducing the editor and getting his name wrong. “Pray silence,” he belched, “for Mr Martin Attwood.” Brian Attwood took the slight with good humour and was no doubt relieved that the man in red did not then declare that a new song would be sung by “Mr Mike Atherton.” Instead, Miss Julie Atherton delivered a rather nice sentimental ditty about children and Christmas, which put us in the mood for the pantomime season.
Donald Sinden said he had been talking to a jolly nice woman called Rosemary Squire; who was she? I explained that she was President of the Society of London Theatres and head of the Ambassador Theatre Group. Jolly good thing, we agreed, that the town crier had not been compelled to introduce her as — who knows — William Squire or Dorothy Squires.
Rosemary, of course, was honoured with an OBE — “One Boiled Egg,” says Ken Dodd — in the recent honours list. Similarly decorated Ian Talbot joined the Drury Lane throng en route to his opening on Monday as Michael Ball’s husband in Hairspray.
Who else did I find? Delightful Anne Reid, fresh from her success the previous night in Lucinda Coxon’s Happy Now? at the National. Anne said she read three pages of the script and wanted to do the play even before she got to her character’s scenes. She also told me she came from a family of journalists. Her grandfather wrote a column on the Bolton Evening News and her brother, Colin Reid, was a great name of yesteryear on the Daily Mail.
Then, bizarrely, I was introduced to Abi Titmuss who is famous for having had sex with someone or other and is about to appear in a play. She, too, was delightful, if a little over-groomed. She was shunted round the room by busy-bee PR Daniel Bee.
This was the sort of celebrity outing the party usually avoids, as backroom boys and regional theatre bigwigs mingle happily with off-duty stars and managers. Timothy West was beaming benignly and applauding the speeches by slapping his own forehead with the hand that wasn’t holding a glass. Andre Ptzasynski, head honcho at the Really Useful, eschewed the bubbly in favour of a good looking bottle of dry white that materialised for him on the bar. And Josie Rourke of the Bush shone serenely in the corner.
There was no escaping industry icons at the Rose, either. I travelled down on the same train as Jonathan Pryce, Kate Fahy and Tim Pigott-Smith, and returned to Waterloo with Nicholas Wright and David Lan. And the Rose audience was stiff with big names: the two Nicks, Hytner and Starr, Richard Eyre, Christopher Morahan and Anna Carteret, Maria Ewing, Bill Paterson and Hildegard Bechtler, Alan Strachan and Nigel Williams. In the middle of all this it was a relief to watch a few good actors doing their stuff on the stage, instead of being obliged to make small talk while trying to remember what you last said about them in a review.
I always admire actors and directors who behave civilly towards journalists when they may have good reason not to. But I don’t mind a bit of rough handling, within reason. Stephen Unwin, the new artistic director of the Rose, lost no time in steaming up to me to complain cheerfully about something sceptical I’d written about the whole Rose project. I’m already missing Peter Hall’s inimitable brand of charm, discretion and courtesy.