I don’t mind — well, not really — actors who can write a bit clogging up the arts pages, but it’s a bit rich when Michael Simkins, a nice cricket-loving chap and a good actor, gets his theatre history so woefully askew filling up theatre programmes.

In the (not many) dull moments of Piaf at the Vaudeville, I flicked idly through my programme. Not much doing, then I alighted on a lightweight, casually compiled  page-filler by Simkins.

First of all he casts unnecessary aspersions on dear old Hugh and Margaret Williams by not even acknowledging their authorship of the catchily titled Plaintiff in a Pretty Hat. He’d never heard of it. Nor had he heard of the “delightfully named Orissia Trilling” who had written a preview of the play in a back number of Theatre World.    

Orissia? Some mistake here, surely. The critic in question was Ossia Trilling, and she was a he. Indeed, Ossia was the most he-like critic ever seen on the aisle, resembling in his thrusting manner, well-scrubbed friskiness, insistent style and shiny bald head nothing so much as an erect, pink and highly expectant penis.

He got himself in everywhere, did old Ossia. He was a most persistent penetrator. I once turned up at a foreign theatre festival to hear him loudly explaining to the reception desk that, as I was unable to be there, he would be representing my then newspaper, the Financial Times. This led to a frank exchange of views, I can tell you.

And it was at some other foreign theatre festival that he set a new standard in free-loading by getting himself arrested on the airport tarmac and invited to open his suitcase, from which tumbled forth the entire bedding contents of his recently vacated hotel room.

Most of us draw the line at a few smellies and a packet of toothpicks. Ossia went for broke with the pillows and sheets, and only the size of his luggage prevented the wholesale removal of the mattresss and bedhead as well as the bathroom sink.

He was a busy bee, bossy Ossia. Polish born and London based, he was amazingly multilingual with a special knowledge of the Scandinavian theatre and an unrivalled expertise in Strindberg.

He used to advise Peter Daubeny on his World Theatre Seasons, and every year, in between his other engagements, wrote a long essay on the British and Irish and indeed European theatre for the Encyclopedia Britannica Book of the Year.

Although he died aged 81 in 1994, he was incapacitated by a stroke four years earlier. The Britannica essay became my responsibilty and remains so to this day. I try and maintain Ossia’s high standards — heaping Te Deums on Ossia, you might say — even if my bedroom habits on foreign soil leave something to be desired in the evacuation stakes.     

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 21st, 2008 at 8:59 am and is filed under Michael Coveney. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.