Interviews

Actor. Amateur drama; actors; John Bury; George Cooper; critics; ensemble; Equity; lighting; Joan Littlewood; Ewan MacColl, New Theatre, Cardiff; props; productions; realism; The Red Megaphones; Red Roses for Me; rehearsal method; Royal Court Theatre; scenery; the search for a permanent home; Harry Secombe; Swedish tour; television; theatre-going; Theatre Workshop; touring; Uranium 235; wages; West End transfers.

Interviewed by Kate Harris on 20/09/07

Theatre Workshop drawings by Harry Greene

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Interview continued...

KH: You’ve mentioned to me in the past on the phone and things, about Ewan MacColl and the Red Megaphones.

HG: Yes.

KH: Did you feel that had much of an impact on what you were doing with Theatre Workshop?

HG: Yes. Yes. The Red Megaphones of course, that was the beginning of Theatre Workshop’s history. But that was in the thirties. And then right throughout the forties this ambitious – which I’ve just talked about – this ambitious production style, that emerged - or began to emerge – during the forties. It was a political group really, led by Ewan MacColl and Joan, and they evolved this sort of nucleus of an idea. But then again, through the fifties, I mean at the beginning of the fifties, we’d began to finesse that style and develop it somewhat.
Interestingly - with Joan’s help you know - I also developed a realistic approach to staging. When I mentioned Uranium 235 and the black velvet drape surround, that gave a setting for the public to be involved, not just in listening or communicating, but in their imagination as well, because they imagined a scene. If it was a scene of scientists, highlighted [by lighting] then as the scientist was talking – Max [Niels] Bohr or one of those people, he was then either in his laboratory or declaiming something to a meeting of scientists in a hall – the imagination had to be brought in. However, now Joan wanted, not just realism on the stage, but she wanted realism in settings.
And the first one that I did was Paradise Street, yes, and that was in 1953 [1951]. So we were developing this idea of what Ewan and Joan had done with the Red Megaphones. Mind, they often had to work on a play on – flat top, flat deck lorries. I’ve seen pictures of them, often Ewan gave us talks on all that. But this staging that I was talking about, I introduced a light aggregate cement coating to the sets in street scenes.
So [at] Theatre Royal, Stratford, great vast stage, the back wall of the stage was brickwork. Nobody had ever used it. So I said to Joan… Joan give me a little sketch, which I’ve still got: I’ll show you later, my notebooks, and her little sketches of things in the notebook.
Harry's drawing of Richard II set
Harry's drawing of reusable set blocks

Anyway, she said [as she sketched] – ‘these are the acting areas, those are lighting areas, now I want a set.’. So for this particular play, all I did was one flat, as we call it, in perspective. From the proscenium arch, you had this one flat at an angle from the proscenium arch, at about 30 degrees back to the back wall. So you saw part of the back wall, but this flat was probably about 15 feet high at the proscenium arch end, and going back to about 10 feet. Built, as it were in perspective, which gave the effect from the stalls, or from the auditorium, that you were looking at a long street. And then I cut into the flat doorways – all in perspective – and one window each. And then we laid the flat on stage, painted it with what was then called Unibond, which is a very strong adhesive, and then sprinkled sand on it, and then aggregate – like pebbles. So we created what looked like a real wall. That was allowed to dry over night, and propped up and then braces on the back. And it looked, with the lighting on it, like a real street, similar to the back wall of the theatre. And with Camel’s lighting…[wow]! Camel as we called him -  John Bury, you might have heard him being called Camel?

KH: Yes, a few people have said that to me.

HG: Oh yes. Then with his clever lighting – oh, we used the lamp that I’d made in Manchester incidentally, in the street scene. There’s a photograph of that street scene with my lamp in it, and with the set. And immediately we began to get people interested. People like Harold Hobson and so on, critics who came, right from the beginning. They were enamoured of it, but they couldn’t help us to get damned audiences, you know! We weren’t getting what Joan had planned all her life. You know, working class people, ordinary people, who didn’t have a chance to go to the theatre… or the theatre wasn’t taken them, or it wasn’t presented in an acceptable way to them. But we were getting the bourgeoisie I suppose. Anyway, they were appreciative and there were reviews of … not just the play but of my sets that I began to get. And this was quite exciting.
Another thing I did - a story about Epping Forest, I’ll tell you later. Went to Epping Forest to get trees, dug up the roots – we were lucky we weren’t caught! - but one particular time we were, and I’ll tell you later about that.

KH: OK.

HG: Anyway, yes we dug up these trees, and then got some barrels from the local brewery, and filled them with earth, and put the trees in with the roots and watered them everyday, so we had live trees for the whole of a particular production.

KH: How amazing!

HG: So Red Roses for Me for example, if you’ve seen any photographs of it, you’ll see when the photographs were taken first day, or forty days later, the trees were beautifully in leaf right throughout. And then I hid the barrels behind low walls, which I designed and built and constructed. So I worked not only closely with Joan - who did little sketches first of all - also with John Bury. And then, funnily enough Joan… Joan knew art; she’d studied art as you probably know, she exploited her knowledge of art by referring to classical paintings for costumes and ideas for stage settings.
Funny you know, I used to stare at this funny, old, little lady, clamping around sometimes in something like bedroom slippers, and I wondered at this gifted woman. And I wondered to myself often, ‘why the hell aren’t you inspired to dress better?!’. [Laughter] I thought to myself, ‘you look like a bag woman, or like an old tramp with that stupid, sailor’s battered cap on!’. But you see, it didn’t matter, because often she’d wear that comic hat, and waddle in and say, ‘Hey, ho, my hearties.’ and come in as a character – she was a comic, she really was a comic at heart.

KH: You mentioned working alongside John Bury, did you have any other help backstage?

HG: No, no, no. No, a short answer to that is no! Everybody, you see, did two or three jobs. And they were - or became - experts. Can you imagine Harry Corbett coming as a prop boy? You know, Steptoe guy. He was a prop boy. And George Cooper assisted John Bury incidentally with lighting. And the lovely Frank Elliott – a very, very clever actor – he assisted me on design and the practical side of things. And then there was the lovely Barbara Young – she’s on television a lot isn’t she, lately, Barbara Young. And Margaret Bury who started E15 Theatre. They were great at props, acquisitions, and arranging hospitality for us when we were on tour. And then Howard Goorney, he assisted Gerry in the office work and administration. Shirley Jones  - the late Shirley Jones now - Mrs George Cooper, a wonderful designer… she trained as a designer, and in art. And Josephine, Josephine Wilkinson – I still see her. They did wonders in the wardrobe department. And then the wonderful David Scase, you know that great name at the Library Theatre, Manchester. I assisted him as well. But then everybody you see, because it was a group theatre, everybody appeared on stage. All directed by Joan, who devised, wrote, edited and in inverted commas, ‘produced’. That was it. She was the boss!  [Laughs]

KH: Could I just ask what Ewan MacColl’s role was in the company, because he obviously wrote quite a few of the plays?

HG: Oh he acted as well. Oh yes… First of all he was the inspiration [for Joan]… Ewan was already doing plays, Red Megaphones, writing, playing in them, and was very, very active… he was active in politics. And very, very strong. He was a party member, as Joan became. And he was the catalyst, as one should say, for everything that happened after they met. Because Joan met Ewan of course in 1934… I don’t know whether it was Stockton or Manchester, one of those areas any way. And then they worked together, she was working in radio as well, in Manchester. Ewan and she set up… after the war they set up, in 1945 [Theatre Workshop] – oh no, it was before that, it was about 1943/44, because people were coming back from the war, some with injuries and so on. Some hadn’t been… Anyway they started the company – Theatre Workshop Company – and began then in the late forties to use the knowledge that they had, and the stories that they had devised, to portray ordinary human beings in theatrical terms, onstage, doing what ordinary people were doing, but also that they could aspire to – both artistically and politically. I think that sums it up.

KH: That’s great, yes. That’s really interesting.

HG: And then of course that went on to become the company that toured in South Wales, when I met them, when I first saw them in 1950.

CD2

KH: To come back to your experiences, after you’d done the tour in Sweden – which was obviously a fantastic experience – when you came back was it quite difficult to kind of come back to the audiences in the UK?

HG: Well yes. There was no money. That was the most important thing, because one needed to feed oneself and so on. And keep the company going. You’re talking about Manchester now?

KH: Yes, when you came back after Sweden.

HG: Oh yes, yes. Well we went back to Manchester poor of course, then we were preparing for a tour. We were actually doing little local tours to keep us going. We were preparing for this tour of the North East and Scotland. But in the house, it was jolly. And Joan was a great, great motivator. Gerry was a great big, you know, six foot two, lumbering sort of… like a great big bear. And when he hugged you, you really felt it! But he meant it. [sings] ‘So you felt it, he meant, it was great…’ [Laughs] You can make a song about him, about her. They were a great couple.
Anyway, Joan used to post these rotas in the narrow passageway of 177A Oxford Road, so that members free from her schedule for a short while could go out and shop, and then do the cooking. And they’d shop with a small sum from Gerry. But you know, when I got there I was really staggered, because there was no subsidy, there were no savings. So we had to depend on money taken at the box office – that’s a laugh, it was the chair at the door of the church hall or the miners’ institute! - but anyway, it was pooled, and that was used for all essentials.
Mind, as a set designer and constructor, there was often nothing left for paint or nails, so I had to go and cadge. Now, living like this could have been a frightening prospect. But I found out you see, when you talk to people, and you’re living with them, you found out that your feelings were the same as most of those other recruits, as it were. Then you discovered people like Joby Blanshard who’d lived… they’d travelled… Harry Corbett, had been in the Navy. George Cooper had been in the army in India, and we’d all sort of… we’d lived. So guess what, we were tactically trained. We were expert Kate, at getting whatever was needed to survive. I’d better leave it at that, eh? [Laughter]

Interview continued...

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