Interviews

Actor. Agents; Birmingham Rep.; censorship; Covent Garden; Equity; finding jobs; Fings Aint Wot They USed T'Be; working in Ireland; Keswick Century Theatre; Harold Pinter; The Homecoming; regional theatre; Royal Shakespeare Company; Shakespeare; Spotlight; television; working in London.

Conducted by Kate McNiven

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Interview continued...

KM: And if they want a character they go through it?

Yes it’s quite advanced now, internets and all sorts of things, but it’s still this big book. You could ring up Spotlight and say ‘Are there any interviews?’ Because directors used to come into town and take a room in Spotlight and interview actors for a season of plays they were doing wherever you like, Great Yarmouth, Shrewsbury, Birmingham, wherever. They said, ‘There’s a man been on the phone from Dublin, he’s looking for a man who’s recently played Sir Toby Belch in Twelfth Night’ and it so happened that I… I kind of missed a bit out, you see, because in the meantime I had been to Sunderland to the Empire Theatre to appear in the first North Eastern Shakespeare Festival in the Sunderland Empire. There was a man in Sunderland by the name of Len Harper who was a councillor and he was dynamite! Dynamite! He cared about the theatre and he wanted that theatre working, he wanted to get things going there really well - it kept blowing hot and cold in Sunderland theatre-wise. Anyway, so I’d been up there and I’d played Sir Toby Belch and that was with director George Harland who I later worked for in Farnham.

So, coming back to London after that, I had spoken to Spotlight and they had said there was this man in London [ed ?Dublin] looking for someone to play Sir Toby Belch because his Toby Belch walked out and they opened next Wednesday. So I was given this number to ring, I rang this man in London he said ‘You’ve played the part yes? Marvellous. Well let’s see what time is it now? Take the 10 o’clock flight from Heathrow and I’ll meet you at Dublin airport, and spend the night with myself and my family and tomorrow morning we’ll audition you on the stage’ Audition me on the stage? I don’t know about that, but it was open air. So I did that I flew to Dublin, I had to borrow £15 off the lady whose flat I was painting, she happened to be OK, she had a few bob, Maria, bless her. So I flew to Dublin and I was met and spent the night on the floor of this man’s house, he had lots and lots of children. Next morning we went down to the Open Air Theatre at Blackrock, Dublin, just outside Dublin and I did a few speeches for him and he said ‘That’s it, that’s it, they’re fine, and they’re fine.’ So we started to rehearse straight away having had a bit of breakfast and the rest of the cast came drifting in. They hadn’t opened yet but this was maybe Friday or Saturday and they were opening on the Wednesday, so there was the whole thing to do. And, as it happened I knew the role you see, because I’d played it in Sunderland, so it wasn’t difficult to slip into it.

I stayed on that occasion with an Aunty figure - my own mother was Irish, she had friends in Dublin, and there was this lady that had a big house and lots of people lived in it, and we used to call her Aunty; she wasn’t really an aunty, she was just a friend of a friend of a friend. So I stayed there and was well looked after by her in my little room. After the first week we realised something was going wrong, yes it was £12 the airfare - this £12 keeps coming up doesn’t it! - it was £12 to fly to Dublin in those days, and the man gave me a cheque for the £12 and I put it in the bank and after a few days it bounced, so I thought ‘Oh my goodness, what’s going on here? The man’s cheques are bouncing! Are we safe, will we get paid?’.  We got paid the first week, and then we were told that there was some difficulty about whether or not we’d be paid. There were some rumours going around that the man had run out of money and cheques were bouncing here there and everywhere; he used to take us out for meals and we always went to a different restaurant. It was open air and it used to rain a lot, of course when it really rained you couldn’t do the show, and there was a train that ran past right by the side of it, it was on a lake, beautiful spot, Blackrock park, but when the train went past we’d freeze until the train had gone, then start again. Anyway, sure enough, the company went broke. The poor man, he tried to burn down the marquee where all the costumes were in the hope of getting a big insurance deal. but the marquee was so wet it wouldn’t burn, it just burned a little bit up it. So I was marooned in Dublin, because every pound meant something, so if you were working for someone who couldn’t pay you…

KM: You couldn’t afford the flight back.

TR: Especially since the cheque they’d given me had bounced, although he probably gave me the £12 with an apology I’m sure, but now it was £15 I’m earning - it had gone up to £15 now - didn’t materialise at the end of the second week, so I was kind of stranded at my auntie’s, not that she would worry. By chance someone heard that there was an English actor in town, and they were looking for an English actor to do a Liverpudlian part in a new play there in Dublin with all these Irish actors, and one thing led to another and I auditioned: the man came round to my auntie’s one morning and asked me to come in, and was very impressed with the way I read the part. He and his brother gave me the part, they were called the Dowling brothers; Jack Dowling and Vincent Dowling, and Vincent Dowling later became very important in my life in America. And I think I got paid £25!

KM: A lot more than £12!

TR: Yes and a lot more than £15! So I recovered my situation, and it was a great success.  There was a chance that it might transfer to London, which would have been wonderful, but it didn’t happen. And another little snippet: while I was over there in Dublin there was a director called Frank Dermody, well known Irish director, wanted me to join the Abbey Theatre to come to England in an Irish play to play the English corporal The Plough and the Stars. But the head of the Abbey Theatre wouldn’t hear of me doing it because I wasn’t properly Irish, although my mother was from Dublin.

KM: Did you mention that?

TR: Oh I’m sure I did, yeah, because it was in the papers. But it was just as well, because there were 59 in the cast and I was just the sole non-Irish person and I had this great big leading role, the fact that my mother was Irish forgave me everything so I got on well with them, everything was alright. So eventually I had the boat fare back to London because of this new show. So, we’re back in London now.

KM: What year do you think we’re in now?

TR: We’re definitely in ’63 because that play was called, the Irish play, the new one it was called Let Freedom Ring and it was by Donagh MacDonagh who was a Justice of the Peace, and it was a celebration of the founding of the Trades Union movement in Ireland. And the character I played was Jim Larkin who was the founder, who used to go out onto the streets and scream and shout at the workers but who was actually from Liverpool, Liverpool-Irish, that’s why they wanted someone with an English kind of sound, from Liverpool. So that was 1963.

One thing I have missed out somewhere along the way was that there was a tour set up from London to go around the country for six months, and I got a part in that it was a sort of musical play originally directed by Joan Littlewood, Fings Ain’t Wot They Used T'Be by Frank Norman and music by Lionel Bart.

KM: Do you sing as well?

TR: Yeah I had to sing a bit in that but then we all has to a bit not posh singing but chorus. We did that we went to Bournemouth, Blackpool, Birmingham, Coventry, Bath, Bristol, all over the place for six months, and that was basically changing every week, so you’d finish on Saturday night, and early Sunday morning you’d be packing your bag and be out down the railway station and going off to Blackpool from Bournemouth, arrive in Blackpool 4 o’clock in the afternoon, straight down the theatre, get your dressing room, wash your socks out, wash your this out and that out…it was quite hectic but it was a nice company we kind of got on well.

[Here the tape cut out.]

Interview continued...

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