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...

TR: OK, well, we are back from Dublin. What's the next step? I will hop about.

Once again, on this information, this scene, there was a very well known club called the Buckstone Club which is named after a famous actor from some 200 years ago - he used to work in the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. And actors used to gather there for drinks and meals and whatever. Royal Shakespeare boys used to come down after their show, and they kept telling me about this part that they were all auditioning for. And the Royal Shakespeare Company could not put their finger on anyone who was exactly right for the part. It turned out to be a Harold Pinter play called The Homecoming, and they described the part to me as a boxer and filled out the details, you know, and… I remember the late Michael Williams, who was married to Dame Judi Dench. He explained all about the role to me, and I rang up Gillian Diamond who was the Head of Casting Department at the RSC. I said to her ‘I hear you are having trouble casting this part, which Peter Hall is going to direct, and I think I could do it. Can I come and see you?’

She said ‘Yes, of course, can you do some Harold Pinter?’ I said: ‘No, I've never done a Pinter play. But I tell you what, I have just done a John Osborne play called Epitaph for George Dylan. I will come in and pretend Harold Pinter has written this part. You know, do a speech as if Harold Pinter had written it.’ She thought that was very amusing. She agreed to see me and I went along and met her. Then I went in to see Peter Hall and Harold Pinter at the next audition. In fact, I did three or even four auditions in all. I thought it was a genuine knock out competition but we started off with five or six people, and then it was down to three, and the next time it went up to eight. I thought ‘this is not on’. I said to them ‘Look, I have been here three times, and I am very pleased to have been here, but I would rather not have to come back again’. Harold was very sympathetic and he said ‘Peter Hall is going home to read the play again. We will know by Monday one way or other and let you know’.

By Monday, they’d decided they wanted me in the part. That was really good. At the time, I did not really know, to be honest, how important a matter it was, how important Pinter was as a writer, how important it was for my career to be involved in a production of this stature. In effect, I joined the RSC and I had to resign my position in Harry Secombe's musical, which they were not very happy about. I was on a particular contract. I was able to give my notice in. That was alright.

And that led then to very advanced things, like working with actors Paul Rogers and Ian Holm and Vivien Merchant, Michael Bryant and John Normington, all well-established, big names. We rehearsed in Stratford and finally opened - we went straight to the provinces which is the interesting thing; rather than open in London we opened in Cardiff, the New Theatre in Cardiff. Lots of people walked out of the play in Cardiff, there were plenty of empty seats due to the nature of the play.  Then we played Cambridge, Brighton and then we played Sunderland, and then the play was put to sleep, as we say, set aside, whilst other works by the RSC commenced, such as Henry V.  But although the reviews of The Homecoming were not particularly good - a lot of reviewers did not quite understand the piece, but that was par for the course anyway as far as Pinter was concerned - it was judged to be a success and we went to Broadway, New York. We opened there and received lots of poor reviews. But we won four Tony Awards, so that brought the punters in and we ran for six months before we were replaced by essentially an American cast. I came back to England…We are kind of getting off the regional thing again...

One of the things I was going to say which doesn't happen now, a bit of a lost art, but in earlier times, you had your make-up box. You learned how to make up by trial and error, watching the bloke next to you, watching the old actors make up and you learned how to use this 'Leichner' stuff, and, you know, you took a certain pride in making yourself up into a different character; learning to wear a moustache or a beard or something like that, putting on false eyebrows. Nowadays, of course, the whole lighting systems have changed. They used to always light you from below, the light came up and sparkled off your face. But now they light you from above and a whole different process is adopted. Indeed, in some regional theatres nowadays, leaping forward to present time (which was a gradual process) you would suddenly find that you would have a make up artist who would be in charge of telling you how to make up, even make you up. Then the designers would decide whether you would have a wig or whether you were bald or wear a bald patch. But before, all those years back, up to 68, whatever, you made your own way in that direction and it was really up to you to present something to the director. Incidentally, the director was often mostly called the producer at that time. Not quite sure when the terminology changed. The man who directed the play was always known as the producer. Of course there is a different connotation now, the producer nowadays is someone who collects all the money and makes the show possible.

[Bit missed on tape]

TR:  I came back home from New York on the Queen Mary and then had thirteen months out of work, having thought I was a great success on Broadway.  Then I got this break in television with a leading role. Jimmy Ormerod, Lancashire or Yorkshire gentleman directed, with Gordon Rollings and Nyree Dawn Porter, the famous New Zealand actress, so that was a breakthrough. But unfortunately it went out on ITV when everyone was watching BBC. No one really saw full coverage of my performance which was quite good, I remember thinking. Now, we’re almost up to ’68, shall I continue?

KM: Yes I’m interested in your other work with Peter Hall and the cross-over period from the lifting of the ban on censorship.

TR: I did not work with Peter Hall [again] for nearly 10 years. There were lots of things in the Homecoming that had to be withdrawn, like we could only say the word ‘Christ’ once, I think they objected to the word ‘Christ’ altogether, but in the final analysis we were allowed to say ‘Christ’ once, I think.

KM: Did you, as an actor, notice when they abolished censorship, was there an obvious change?

TR: It was not the sort of thing actors would notice too much, more something for the writers. They would have thought, ‘That's great, we can do what we like now’, and presumably they did. No it did not, essentially, affect the actors as such.

KM: What do you think made Peter Hall such a successful director?

TR: I think one of the great fortés of Peter Hall is initial casting of the piece. I am sure that he knows the depth of each actor and how he commits to a role. He allows the actor a lot of freedom, personal input, into the roles, because he believes in their past, all the roles in which they have built their experience. He knows that eventually they will fall into a kind of creative pattern. Sometimes, just occasionally, that doesn't work. I am sure he would agree with that. I am thinking of a production of The Cherry Orchard which we all did, which had so many stars in it, the thing just disappeared. It was all kind of counter-productive, not judged to be a success.

KM: What are the differences between theatre now and then?

TR: I don’t think there are essentially any differences once you got the part. I think there are a lot of the younger people, quite rightly coming into the theatre, who are often steeped in Academy, from Universities; they lack a lot of experience. They tend to intellectualise the theatre. I had an occasion not too long ago, I was doing a Pinter play, the director had us all sitting round reading the script for 60% of the time, absolutely abominable set of circumstances, caused me to lose my temper a few times very badly, first time I can remember in my career. Essentially you have to get up on your feet and start to play around, rather than sitting down and deciding what each line means. At least 60% round the table with the script. It wasn't helpful. No point analysing Pinter anyway. He clearly was not of that opinion and he was wrong. [the director]

KM: It’s interesting you say ‘No point analysing Pinter’, as there is a debate between those who feel he should be analysed, and those who don’t. Pinter has always famously said his plays shouldn’t be over analysed, what do you think?

TR: No point analysing Pinter - the text is there. You work out the text, you say the text, there is no point analysing, no benefit from analysing, you play what's there, play the pauses, you got to play the silences, I recently did The Birthday Party in the United States and it was directed by a lady, as it happens, she was just unfortunately so out of touch with the directing of Pinter plays that it was a great failure and, well, it made me very irritable that people can just mess things up, which on this occasion was the case. Don't mess about with Pinter!

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