Joe wrote this piece for a retrospect of Drama at Stowe in The Stoic’s September 1999 issue. Extracts about Joe from other articles in the series are posted on this site under the ‘Tributes and Memories’ link.
A Spot or Two of Time Regained
There are in our existence spots of time
Which with distinct pre-eminence retain
A fructifying virtue, whence, depressed
By trivial occupations and the sound
Of ordinary intercourse, our minds
(Especially to the imaginative power)
Are nourished, and invisibly repaired.
Wordsworth, The Prelude (1799 version)
Looking back over that famously “foreign country”, the past is like trying to read a map under flashing strobe lighting: certain quite arbitrary scenes stand out with startling vividness in a landscape otherwise at best jumbled, at worst misleadingly obscure. This may be what Wordsworth had in mind with his “spots in time” and Joyce with his “epiphanies” and Proust with his “unconscious memory”. It is some of these moments in my long association with amateur drama that I shall try to capture. Whether they bear any relation to things as they really happened is more problematic.
The village of St. David’s in remotest Pembrokeshire was in the ‘30s when I grew up there a sort of unreformed Barchesfer-on-Sea. In the little Church primary school they decided – it must have been about 1934 – to celebrate St. David’s Day by putting on a play about the life of the Saint. All I remember of the event is that I, aged about 6, kitted out with a broom-stick crozier, a paper mitre and a cope confected by my mother from a green baize table-cloth and all copied from an engraving of William of Wykeham that hung in our dining-room, played the part of the rather ungracious saint. The only line I remember speaking is,
Bydded i chwi oll eich taro gan dwymyn
(may you all be struck with the plague).
Whether the production was a success or not I don’t recall, but the experience seems to have put me off acting for some fourteen years. My next epiphany sees me as an RAF National Serviceman playing a part – I can’t now remember which – in Emlyn Williams’ The Late Christopher Bean, produced in the NAAFI by a friendly Marxist NCO. Then Cambridge, where I had a very active time for four years, playing minor lords and serving-men, and sometimes reasonably serious parts in every society that the University had to offer, and there were many in that drama-besotted period. My high-spot was probably to produce the future novelist and critic Frederic Raphael as Samson in (of all things) Milton’s Samson Agonistes in St. John’s Chapel, where the orchestrated screams of a posse of Girton girls accompanied by a fearsome discord on the organ brought the Temple of Dagon and almost the Chapel crashing to the ground. Even then things didn’t altogether go well. We had a production of Patrick Hamilton’s Rope, which the Cambridge Mummers took to Cheltenham College, with me as the sinister Rupert, only to find that the Headmaster had forbidden all but the Sixth Form to attend, they apparently being the only ones not open to suggestion of motiveless murder. Such were the susceptibilities of those days.
Then in 1954 came Stowe. I was lucky enough to arrive at a time when the Headmaster, Eric Reynolds, was, as George Clarke has mentioned, rather more benevolently inclined towards the theatre than was usual in those days. Slowe already had a couple of thriving troupes: the Congreve Club under the enthusiastic leadership of its founder, Peter Dams (though the name is puzzling in that it wasn’t, as far as I couid see, a club – at least it wasn’t in my time – and never put on a play by Congreve). In the other corner, and at that time in slight opposition, was the Historians’ Play, which meant Shakespeare outside the Queen’s Temple at the end of each Summer Term. The difference in style and ethos of these two groups has already been amply illustrated by other contributors, so I shall not elaborate. Peter was eager to hand on the Congreve to somebody else, and that somebody happened to be me, who was then and for some years to become a sort of a theatre maniac. Surprising as it may seem now, nobody at that time time appeared to want to do the job; so for the next twenty years I became an immoveable object, increasingly helped and challenged by bright young colleagues with flair and enthusiasm for acting and producing – later more pretentiously known as “directing” – plays.
Peter Dams and I collaborated on several occasions. I appeared in a very minor part in his production of The Beggar’s Opera – in which David Rowe.Beddoe was a dashing and mellifluous Macheath – afid in Masefield’s Good Friday, and he was a notable Firs in Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard which, I did with David Temple. He was also the narrator in probably the most elaborate of the productions I did with D.T., The Royal Hunt of the Sun, which was to celebrate Stowe’s 50th Anniversary, with every conceivable technical and theatrical device: it was technologically our Star Wars.
Bill and Patience McElwee were great friends of mine and I owe them endless hospitality and my most happy early memories of Stowe. They made life for me in those days not only bearable but hilarious. When invited I used occasionally to turn up as a spectator at their rehearsals – themselves, dramatic events – and Bill and I, neither of us averse to a spot of theatrical aggro, used to agree to put up with each others conflicting methods. When he left for Sandhurst he bequeathed to me his (as I remember already cast but not rehearsed) Twelfth Night. I remember a peculiarly dramatic performance of Julius Caesar, when the lightning played through the nearby trees; Shakespeare never had it so good. I seem also to recollect Lady Macbeth in (I think) Corps boots, but then again they could have been Wellies. There was, as Piers Plowrighl suggests, a good deal of tumbling around in Elizabethan kit, and everybody hugely enjoyed themselves.
Education is a notoriously tricky concept: it seems (with boys, at any rate) to be best acquired unawares and I think, in retrospect, that the curious status that drama had in schools at that time, in that it was no part of the curriculum and even thought in some quarters to be a hindrance to one’s chances of success – unlike sport, music and art, which were rightly treated as respectably academic and/or health-giving – enticed unsuspecting pupils into a highly educational pursuit which, had it not been considered slightly outré, they would, with good old-fashioned schoolboy bloody-mindedness, have shunned. I remember being agreeably surprised when a duo of ”difficult” subjects, whose housemaster had to agonise over before allowing them to perform very minor non-speaking parts in the School Play, came up after about a week of rehearsal and said, “Would you like a wine-gum?” I took that as a significant indication of good-will. Their housemaster later freely admitted that both boys had never been so well-behaved in the House, Negatives are impossible to prove, but I can’t offhand think of a single instance when it could be shown that taking part in a play had made any change, except possibly for the better, in academic matters. I remember that Peter Yapp (Peter Phillips as he was then) would, without his parents’ sensible decision, have been prevented from taking the exacting part of the twins in Anouilh’s Ring Round The Moon on the grounds that the best he could expect was an Exhibition ia History at Trinity, Cambridge. He acted brilliantly on the Saturday, was whisked off to Cambridge on the Sunday, took his exams on the Monday, and… (but you are way ahead of me!). I’m sure that there were other significant but less startling results.
Oddly enough, personally I didn’t think of the plays at that time as being educational (otherwise than to myself) except when I was trying to make a plea to higher authority. Now I’m convinced that this rather duplicitous special pleading was no more than the truth. From what I remember from my reading of Murder in the Cathedral, the Catholic Church rightly regards martyrdom as a reward not a goal. There are some ways in which education is equally elusive. It has become fashionable to talk about Education in triplicate, as though “What I tell you three times is true”, or as though it can be collected like air miles. As Brook Williams and Piers Plowright suggest, it is possible to enter fully into a profound play such as Pirandello’s Henry IV and give superb performances, as they did, without being able to give simple answers to the complex questions the play raises. Which is better informed? the actor who portrays Hamlet’s uncertainties, or the woman in Thurber’s story The Macbeth Murder Mystery who, having explained Macbeth under the illusion that it’s a second-rate whodunit, intends to go off and solve Hamlet. Education, it seems to me, is rather a matter of apprehending the right questions, and not in accepting other people’s: answers, however apparently well-informed.
Having taught English, French and German Literature for thirty-five years to sixth-formers, I am totally convinced that, however hard one tries in class, the experience of impersonating a character on stage gives one a far profounder understanding than even the most careful reading. This is an enriching experience shared by all the cast in different degrees, and doesn’t necessarily work only with the “great classics”. Oddly enough, though, I’ve found that with, say, Shakespeare and Ibsen, one doesn’t tire of the play even after long and often exhausting rehearsal: rehearsal is in fact a cruel searcher-out of the quality of a text.
Still, school drama has its perils. I remember that when the Roxburgh Hall opened (I suspect George Clarke is being too charitable in fathering the name “Roxy” on me – I think it was, as usual, ANON) I was unwise enough to kick off with lonesco’s The Bald Prima Donna which I’d seen during its Mousetrap-length run in Paris. We’d practised for weeks holding the long, long pauses, only to find that not only did a respected colleague refuse to review it for The Stoic, but the powers that were jumped to the conclusion thai the cast had forgotten their lines. I was under threat of losing my drama job, and only reprieved by my successor’s crying off. We all thought the play was very funny and hadn’t any (or very little) intention of causing shock. However, one of my “spots of time” is of Michael Lewis playing the maid in a greenish make-up, rushing to the front of the stage and confiding to the audience, ”This morning I bought a chamber-pot,” Perhaps it was that that did it. The “orgasm” line in N.F.Simpson’s One Way Pendulum also caused trouble. The cast, on orders from above, omitted the word at dress-rehearsal, but the temptation was too much on the night. In Arnold Wesker’s Chips With Everything too the delicate euphemism “bloody”, which the author had substituted for the more usual F… word to which Wesker, as well as I, had become over-accustomed during our National Service in similar circumstances, caused a frisson in some sections of the audience, even, I gathered at the time, to the extent that some wives were hustled from the auditorium by solicitous husbands. How times have changed! not necessarily for the better. Drama has always liked to shock the audience, but it’s getting increasingly difficult. I remember an Old Stoic saying to me as we watched an enormous queue for Rosemary’s Baby, “It isn’t the film that frightens me: it’s the audience.”
There had, of course, been a number of notable productions before the Congreve Club and even perhaps the Historians’ Play came into existence. Charles Spencer’s production of Milton’s Comus, done, I think beside the Worthies on – or even over – the Styx, is only one of several that had been much admired and talked about, and the number of Old Stoics who made a name for themselves on the stage and screen, and in show-biz generally, testify to a tolerancc at least towards plays; David Niven is only one — though an early and prominent one – of many. Perhaps it’s the dramatic landscape of Stowe that helps. The Congreve Club in my time used the inside of the Queen’s Temple {The Caine Mutiny), the space between the cedar and Stowe Church (A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Tempest), the Marble Hall (Othello) and, in the wake of the Historians, the Queen’s Temple portico and steps (Twelfth Night). One of Peter Dams’ most attractive and evocative events was the Midsummer Madness, an informal afternoon entertainment of readings, music and one-acters (Drinkwater’s X = 0 was a favourite; but also Fry’s A Phoenix Too Frequent and J.O. Francis’ Birds of a Feather, a Welsh frolic featuring David Rowe-Beddoe, Brook Williams and me.) This was on the lawn beside the Temple of Ancient Virtue late in the summer term – the grass I seem to remember had to be specially scythed for the occasion, I think by Peter Dams himself, but this perhaps is too pastoral to be true.
By the way, my apparent addiction to incense was not the result of religious fervour, or even (pace David Temple) an act of aggression against the audience, but a sort of olfactory version of the dry ice that was so popular at that time and also, in the open air, a powerful defence against gnats and midges. I admit that it had its disadvantages, particularly painful to those wearing contact lenses (I wonder whether the Pope is aware of this). Although all this happened a long time ago, it isn’t as far back as the Crusades, and this may be an appropriate moment to make a retrospective apology to any sufferers who still harbour a grudge. Anyway, it wasn’t, as far as I can cecall, a very frequent feature of productions. I had always hoped to do a performance of Love’s Labours Lost in front of the Temple of Venus, but even the most powerful resin would not have stopped the mosquitoes who infest (or infested) the Eleven Acre Lake from making a hearty meal of the audience, and the project had to be dropped. Just as well probably, though tough on the mosquitoes.
House Plays have been mentioned by John Hunt and David Temple, and they were always very entertaining. Some Houses had specialities – I think particularly of Brian Gibson’s Grenville thrillers and David Brown’s Cobham houseroom romps. Some productions produced remarkable moments such as “Windy Dick’s” shattering appearance as the Pirate King in the Pirates of Pemance. Often they reached real heights of excellence, as for example in David Temple’s Bruce/Temple’s joint production of The Teahouse of the August Moon, Peter Dams’ Trial By Jury and The Two Bouquets with Walpole and perhaps especially for its power and expertise Brian Stephan’s production of Charles Morgan’s The River Line with Chandos. I much enjoyed doing plays with Bruce, especially in their old Houseroom (now the Music Room) and, in collaboration with George Clarke, Farquhar’s The Beaux’ Stratagem and among others Stoppard’s The Real Inspector Hound and Shaffer’s Black Comedy with Chandos.
The Junior Congreve did some fine work with David Temple. This was altogether a most profitable experiment, giving juniors a chance to play major parts in their first years. Perhaps our most enjoyable venture was the series of staff plays. Schoolmasters have to be natural actors in order to survive, and of course pupils hugely enjoy seeing their teachers with or without their consorts making fools of themselves on stage. I particularly remember Terence Rattigan’s two one-acters. Playbill, largely because of Muir Temple’s quite outstanding performance as Crocker-Harris in The Browning Version and Christopher Mullineux’s show-stopping performance as Chudleigh, (the aged actor, a virtuoso study in timing (or mistiming) with his “Faith, we may put up our pipes and be gone”. Douglas Marcuse and Elizabeth Rawcliffe are not likely to be easily forgotten either. I think it was in this production that, making what I imagined to be’a Hitehcock-like entrance as the Duke, I found that the ladies of the Stratford Theatre Wardrobe had thoughtfully pinned a bunch of violets to my cod-piece – an attention all too rare in these degenerate times.
For exactly forty years (1948 -1988) including 20 years at Stowe and 14 years at Winchester, amateur theatre took, I nearly said, “centre stage”. And then I put up my pipes and bewent, or whatever the word is. These are two very different schools but I was very lucky at both. Lucky to have met and worked with many who have remained friends ever since: set designers, who without exception leave everything to the last moment and produce wonderful results, sometimes literally overnight (Michael and Jane Mounsey) or put the finishing touches to a spectacular set as the first members of the audience filed into the auditorium (Bill Dady), electricians, painters, musicians (David and SylviaGatehouse’s music for The Royal Hunt of The Sun in particular), wardrobe-mistresses, co-producers, actors and actresses, and even (now and then) audiences and critics. I’ve written, of course, as requested, only about the first 50 years of Stowe drama, the Prologue and First Act, as it were. The show goes on and looks set for a long and successful run.
There were plenty of high and low spots in the Stowe scene in my day, but what I remember when I think of those times and involuntary memory brings back a scene unbidden, and in no order of merit necessarily, are Brook Williams and Piers Plowright in Pirandello’s Henry IV; the Historians tumbling around the Queen’s Temple under the amused, alert and watchful eye of Bill and Patience in their summer costumes; Othello in the Marble Hall with an inspired .set by Anthony Doherty, with Clive Hershman as Othello and Gillian Shedd as Desdemona, the first of a line of female Stowe stars, in a most powerful and .moving performance, Rupert Wood’s Robespierre in Poor Bitos by Anouilh; Rodney Cottier’s acting and superlative fencing as Hamlet – he was after all junior épée champion of the South of England; the tango in Ring Round the Moon, choreographed by John Hunt and danced with outrageous gusto by Dudley Howard and Richard Temple; Michael Avery as the young Henry VIII stabbing the table with his dagger in A Man for All Seasons; Charles Richardson and David Lewin as Judge Brack and Hedda, confronting one another over a bowl of grapes in the tensest moment of Hedda Gabler; Oliver Croom-Johnson as Apollodoros flying over the stage on a rope in Caesar and Cleopatra; and perhaps above all the beautiful summer evenings under the cedar for A Midsummer Night’s Dream, rehearsed in shift-work shared between John Hunt and me in fifteen days, with the lights in the cedar, the floodlights coming up over the Temple of Ancient Virtue and the torchlight entry of the Stowe beagles; and, above all, the rustics arriving up over the South Front lawn in their donkey-cart.
How long ago it all seems! But when I am nostalgic that is what I see. It seems to epitomize the education Stowe gave me and gave and gives us all: that one can educate oneself and each other without being too po-faced about it, and that however hard the effort, the rewards are infinitely greater. After all, well or badly, if a thing is worth doing it’s worth doing for all we’re worth. And for those who took part wasn’t it all great fun? I at least am naive enough to think so.
I don’t go to the theatre these days (well, hardly ever) and I don’t think I miss it. I recovered from my theatre mania ten years ago. I can’t see myself again at a school play, however expertly done. But the memory, as they used to say, lingers on. Why I, neither a Lancastrian nor a cricket buff, am so affected by Francis Thompson’s At Lord’s I can only guess, but I am, and here it is:
It is little I repair to the matches of the Southron folk,
Though my own red roses there may blow;
It is little I repair to the matches of the Southron folk,
Though the red roses crest the caps, I know.
For the field is full of shades as I near the shadowy coast,
And a ghostly batsman plays to the bowling of a ghost,
And I look through my tears on a soundless-clapping host
As the run-stealers flicker to and fro, to and fro: -
O my Hornby and my Barlow long ago.
Eheu fugaces, my Hornbys and Barlows, labuntur anni; but we really did hear the chimes at midnight, and that’s a memory, my old friends, they can’t take away.
(Posted by kind permission of Stowe School.)