The R.A.D.A.
I don’t know what R.A.D.A. is like now, because I can't face going back into the building.
When I went there I thought I would be entering a temple of art. I lived in north Cheshire, in a suburb of Manchester, so I was far enough away to entertain such a delusion.
Though I was being groomed for academic stardom, I couldn’t bear the thought of writing one more exam. so followed my inclination to the theatre. I obtained an extraordinarily generous grant from Cheshire County Council and entered R.A.D.A. in 1951, three days after the Festival of Britain closed. The place was run as a finishing school for stage struck people with enough money to pay the fees. The principal was a terrible old snob called Sir Kenneth Barnes who came alive on the days when the Queen Mother attended - or any other Royal relative.
The fast track into work, then, was to be either Jewish or homosexual and there is a story of Sir Kenneth’s interviewing a prospective young actor and asking, among a number of other salient questions: ‘Are you a homosexual?” “I’m afraid not, sir Kenneth,” came the reply (it was reported).
Because of the war, women had been hired to play male roles at The Old Vic, on occasion, and we were taught by one such lady – her only claim to any distinction; she was a poor producer (directors were called producers in those days) and the staff were almost all underpaid, aging ladies with very little talent – with one, shining, exception; un utterly brilliant woman called Mary Duff (not as old, either) for whom the discerning yearned. She was funny, with a cutting tongue and once said to an actress (still living) “You talk like trumpet and walk like strumpet” – she was spot on; it was a very helpful remark.
The centre of the building had been hit by a bomb so that throughout the two years I was there all classes were accompanied by pneumatic drilling. They were building what long after became The Vanbrugh Theatre. We didn’t have a theatre to perform in except for a makeshift black box stuck in the basement. Each term would end with a class performance which would be assessed by Sir Kenneth in his office, afterwards. One day we were summoned about a performance which we hadn’t given. Sir Kenneth invariably entered his viewing box at the back of the tiny auditorium with his spaniel; nothing could happen till the dog was comfortably settled. (I can’t remember the mutt’s name, but let’s call it Henry.)
There we all gathered in Sir Kenneth’s over-crowded office wondering what was up. Sir Kenneth was clearly outraged. Something had occurred in some production that he should have been warned about and he wanted to know who was responsible. He outlined the plot of some high drama concluding: “…the story reached a climax, the gun was picked up, aimed… and fired. And Henry fainted! Now who did this? And why wasn’t I told?”
We were detained for this investigation – nothing about the quality of the drama came up – as no-one was prepared to come straightforwardly clean about it. “It took Henry some minutes to recover. I want you all to apologise. I never, never want anything like this to happen again!”
There were a large number of Americans at R.A.D.A., mostly girls. The further away you got from the school, the better was its reputation, so in New York or Tucson it was hallowed. There were so many students that no-one ever played the whole of a leading part. You were very lucky to get the whole of an act (in a three-act play). Once we put on Cymbeline and there were eight Imogens. At one point one Imogen (Ethel Schlesinger, 5ft. 2in.) went into a cave and another Imogen (my friend Linda Barrett, 5ft. 11in.) came out – she still lives in New York. Linda is the daughter of the literary agent who thought Gone With The Wind might shape up for a movie.
Quickly I learned not to try for the lead and so played all of Tony Lumpkin and all of Cloten. No-one under five feet nine could fall in love, then, and I only once played an ordinary young man of my own age in the two years I was there - and that was because it was a comedy. I made the mistake of volunteering to stage manage in my first term (Twelfth Night) – there was no stage management course, then - only a single, middle-aged employee to service the entire school. ‘Producers’ therefore tried to get their claws into non-standard people like me, hoping we would stage-manage throughout the course and give up aspiring to perform. I refused to ever do it again in spite of arm twisting. Not only could no-one my height have any normal relationships within the conventions of the day, but we were also cast to play above our age and often old.
Student numbers were so great because the place was a commercial enterprise. And the fees did not even guarantee a public showing. At the end of my two years, ninety people were competing for forty-five parts for the Public Show. You can imagine the atmosphere on the stairs!? Fortunately, most people turned it into a joke and only pretended they wanted to throw each other down the well. Afterwards, it struck me that the best thing that R.A.D.A did was to prepare us for the outside world, which turned out to be just as ugly and cut-throat. Of the forty-five parts, only fifteen were worth playing. The rest got variations on ‘your carriage awaits, madam’. I landed an extremely good part as Reedbeck in Christopher Fry’s Venus Observed - he’s sixty-five. I was nineteen. I had to sell myself to agents and managements on that.
As non-standard, none of the staff expected me to get work at the end of the course. The best hope was to a.s.m. in an outlying weekly rep. So when I turned up in the last days saying I’d been hired by The Old Vic for a year there was genuine astonishment. (A number of reps. were asking us to pay them!)
The only other fully competent director for some drama (especially American) was Hugh Miller. He taught me comedy tripping. A great comic timing and delivery specialist, who had a marvellous insight into Commedia dell’Arte and presented us with his own versions to play; hilarious. Voice was also worth the money at R.A.D.A., led by Clifford Turner. Clifford was the voice production guru of his day, author of a definitive book; a very handsome man, every inch the actor and there was an awful story about him; he’d been cast as Hamlet, it was said, and at his first performance, early in the play, had dried stone dead – and never been able to face going on stage again. Amy Boalth ran imaginative movement classes… and that was pretty well it.
Teaching is still not rated enough in this country, but once John Fernald, a very successful – but eventually declining – theatre director accepted to be Principal at the Academy a totally new level of professionalism gingered up the whole drama instruction field. By then the Vanbrugh was well in use and I think I saw a single show there, but never hung about so have no idea of the standard attained or maintained at R.A.D.A under new direction. I would be interested to hear a frank appraisal. Trouble is, many mates who pissed consistently on their alma mater when there, years after, now, in their softer brained days, wax maudlin lyrical about their time at the Academy; and so reporters and biographers get a phoney picture.
The Gold Medallist at my Public Show was a striking young Jewess who won pretty well every competition she entered. I beat her once, for ‘Quick Characterisation’, awarded by Athene Seyler – a wonderful human being. The young Jewess, almost always playing at least thirty years above her real age, was in Venus Observed. She won her prize, left school and was never heard of again. (She did marry Colin Blakely, though, which I would have thought - and I hope she thought - was a real prize).