1982
My first memory of Leyton County High
School and it’s formidable Commander coincided with my first successful
performance as an actor. I had
taken my 11-plus by correspondence course, being confined to bed for many months
during the crucial period of educational assessment by a rather virulent form of
rheumatic fever. The examiners had
not given my efforts rave reviews and I was consigned to what was then known as
“the pool.” This merely meant
that they couldn’t decide whether or not I was fitted for further education.
That decision was to be taken by the Headmaster of one of the Grammar
Schools of my choice through personal interview.
Feeling that my best bet was to charm and intrigue rather than
scholastically impress, my ensuing performance was designed to suggest a willing
schoolboy, avid for learning and culture, cruelly struck down by a debilitating
illness on the threshold of academic glory.
It worked. John Cummings
opened the door to seven happy and unforgettable years at a school which became
quite literally a second home.
I lived a mere half mile away, in the same road, and school very quickly
became an extension of my life with my parents, both of whom relished and
encouraged active participation in the “doings” of their one and only
offspring. When the Parents’
Association was formed they were among the first to stand up and be counted, my
mother becoming secretary. Teachers
soon became friends (well, most of them) and extra curricular activities ensured
that a school-day didn’t end at the final lesson bell.
I was incredibly lucky in the masters available at the time and one in
particular, Bobby Brown, was to have an enduring influence on my career.
Against many, if not all, the odds he inherited and encouraged a
theatrical tradition in a school dedicated mainly to maths, science and the
manly sports of field and track. Persistence
eventually won his critics over and even John Cummings himself was a slightly
reluctant convert. A wonderful
Headmaster, stern but approachable, austerity with a human face, terrifying in
his wrath, a hawk-eyed defender of discipline and routine, whose smiles of
approval were as valued as they were rare, his was the dominant personality of
those years. If he had a nickname,
I never heard it, but on occasion Godzilla would have been apt.
I remember well the no-go area outside his study, stretching across the
entrance hall, to traverse which was like braving the perils of the erstwhile
Berlin Wall. Mind you, he had a lot
to contend with. I remember one
morning prayers, when instead of some uplifting and inspiring piece of classical
music to send us all off to our days edification, we were treated by some
comedian to Lena Horne. We loved it, but such bravery was rare and the resultant
facial and body language of our Headmaster were an object lesson to all actors.
I recall visiting the school as an adult and fully fledged, reasonably
successful actor and being rather irritated to hear myself still bluntly
addressed as “Jacobi.”
The importance of the Arts in schools is often a contentious platform,
participation in which is sometimes accompanied by the disproportionate contempt
of one’s contemporaries. At LCHS
the ratio of ‘yobs’ to gentlemen was fairly high and the hostility provoked
in some dull breast, for instance, by my reading the morning lesson, or acting
Two areas of the school figure largely in my memory, the Library and the
Hall. The first because of many
wonderful play readings and meetings with local luminaries like Joan Littlewood,
but also for Scholarship level examinations and hours of contented study.
I was a bit of a ‘swot’ and frankly enjoyed studying.
I had a quick and retentive memory which was to help me greatly at
Cambridge reading History—and of course in learning my lines.
The Hall, as well as being another place where examinations were held,
where morning assembly was attended, was also the scene of all the theatrical
highlights of my school life. Those
boards, trod with such trepidation and terror many a time and oft, those trestle
tables, strewn with materials and costumes and frantically sewing mothers on the
night before we opened, my own included, those petty jealousies if Anne Boleyn
had more frocks than Queen Katherine, or if the second murderer looked more
impressive than Macbeth, those rows of
proud parents and the performance watching their gilded cherubs tearing a
passion to tatters and making up in enthusiasm and energetic noise what they
lacked in expertise, and finally receiving the acclaim of their adoring public
backstage after the show in the gym changing room.
This was the Hall to where the annual school dance would separate the men
from the boys and only the bravest would dare ask the girls for a dance and
where the remembered strains of the last waltz can still bring a nostalgic lump
to my throat.
Not only did John Cummings and his merry band manage to get me to
University they also catapulted me into the professional theatre via the
Edinburgh Festival in 1957. That
year I, regretfully, left school and had to grow up (not entirely, of course,
because actors never do). Bobby
Brown’s school production of Hamlet
appeared on the Festival Fringe to great accolades and years later I was told
that my existence then had been duly noted by the Godlike Olivier himself.
I was just 18 and after my three years at Cambridge I “turned pro”
and became a child again.
I remember LCHS with affection, warmth and gratitude too deep for my
words. It formed and informed me.
It enriched not only mine but also my parents lives.
It’s greatness was a reflection of those who served it.
It deserves to be remembered.
DEREK
JACOBI – LEFT LCHS IN 1957
The Actors Are Come Hither
By Bobby Brown
I was very lucky to inherit, when appointed to LCHS in 1952, in my
function of ‘looking after the Drama,’ a veritable posse of thrusting,
questing young thespians previously guided, and thrashed on and reined in, by
Martial Rose. I had glimpses of him
and them rehearsing Macbeth and recalled
later that I’d seen a very young Derek Jacobi sitting on a bench near the gym
waiting to tear on with a lantern as a storm-tossed Fleance.
We all have to start somewhere! Martial
was almost on his way to lecture at Bretton Hall in Yorkshire, there to prepare
a remarkable new acting edition of The Wakefield Mystery Cycle, which Bernard
Miles put on, to great acclaim, at his then fairly new Mermaid Theatre in Puddle
Dock. Later Martial became
Principal of King Alfred’s College, Winchester.
LCHS, like
many other hard-working schools, had no Drama Department as such.
For English staff it obviously ‘got into’ classroom teaching but it
was otherwise an after-hours activity. I
came flushed with a heady spate of acting and directing at University—and then
got down to preparing the annual play.
Stalwart
exceptions apart (bless their socks they looked all right!), those who enjoyed
drama seemed quick at line-learning so that production points and character
development became synonymous: and
there was always an eager, skilled stage management, lighting and music crew.
One could
clearly take a few risks. So we lunged into one of Shakespeare’s stickiest
plays (not that he wrote it all!) Henry VIII,
which even now rarely gets an airing—and only recently came to (professional)
grief. Immediately the task was
lightened by the availability of obvious casting (though the actors’ parents
may not have agreed!) in the main roles. Donald
Langdon was a ‘born’ Tudor Prince—albeit resident normally at a pub in the
Balls Pond Road, Cardinal Wolsey was a pushover for John Punson (who fancied
politics anyway) and John Freestone, might easily have descended from the
Archbishop Cranmer he enacted. The
distaff side was no problem either: Graham
Smith accepted banishment as queen Katharine with considerable poignancy and
Jacobi—Fleance now transmogrified into an Old Lady held the infant Elizabeth
(a mere bundle) in ‘her’ arms; while Shakespeare’s most sycophantic
pronouncements were made. There was
appropriate period music and dancing. Many
mothers had done unbelievable things to pieces of cloth to assemble the Tudor
touches.
What next? I recall a ridiculously long double-bill comprising both
Christopher Fry (in vogue at the time via The Lady’s Not For Burning)
and Marlowe: i.e. A Phoenix
Too Frequent (Master Jacobi as an irreverent
very Welsh maid doing curious things among Greek tombs) and a ‘slashed’
version of Dr. Faustus.
Mothers had been hard at it with the needles and thread, again.
The late Raymond Swain (a thoroughly mature young Methodist) embodied the
scholar’s dilemma in a most remarkable way.
No one really wanted to play Helen of Troy because she merely had to look
exceptionally beautiful.
Perhaps the
jolliest play done was Miles Malleson’s version of Moliere’s The
Miser. For
Roger Collinson the title role was a halfway house to his later Polonius.
Pinero’s The Magistrate ran it
a close second for fortunate casting: D.J.
was still among the ‘ladies,’ having a whale of a mock-censorious time,
encountering their menfolk in a far from respectable dining establishment.
I’m pretty
sure I never, at the time, made sufficient acknowledgements of the support,
artistry and sheer hard labour of my colleagues or of the lads, who did so much
unseen work. For sure I took Peter
De Ritter for granted both at Leyton and further north (He became a fine local
head teacher later). His skill in
costuming and make-up was miraculous.
And so to Hamlet
though meanwhile there had been excerpts from Thorton Wilder’s Our Town—at
that time not ‘done’ in England since its 1930’s appearance in America,
and a raunchy stab at Coward’s Fumed Oak,
with Ronnie Bloomfield as the husband who walked out on his horrid womenfolk and
awful child (the fretful Stephen Merritt).
There was also the esoteric The Last of the Incas. Contact with the controversial, renowned Professor (George)
Wilson Knight—whose discerning studies of Shakespeare and Byron (in
particular) had held me captive revealed that he’d written a play—which had
only once been staged. He gave me a
copy. I immediately began to
‘fillet’ it. He received my
excisions with alarm but since this was preceded by absolute horror I eventually
moved him towards grudging agreement, and modest participation.
He even
connived at my approaching The Peruvian Embassy in order to obtain temporary
loan of some very curious ‘props’, such as prayer-threads and an embossed
religious robe of rather mere historical value than one usually found stored in
the staff room locker.
The play
dealt with the shameful treatment by the invading Spaniards of the last Inca
Emperor, Atahualpa. I suppose one
might say it was a rather long-winded study in deceit and treachery.
(Alas Peter Shaffer’s Inca play later rendered it a museum piece by
comparison). But it received sturdy
performances and Master Jacobi ‘came good’ in his first sizeable thoroughly
masculine part as the realist Spaniard, De Soto. Tim Alien emerged as a thoughtful unworldly ruler.
The ‘sound track’ provided a field day for assistants Malcolm
Billingsley and Fred Goodland (the latter a doughty recording specialist and
professional film editor in later years). Weird
recorded singing by the alleged Inca Princes Uma Sumac—in control of 3 ½
octaves vocally fought a battle. Professor
Knight wondered what was hitting him—but he was such a trusting man
(constantly afraid that he’d die incapacitated and in abject poverty) that he
probably took Leyton’s truncation of his ‘great epic’ as a Freudian
experience he was fated not to avoid, sooner or later.
Next to
Edinburgh I’d never missed a Festival there since its 1947 inception and there
in 1956, it occurred to me ‘nothing venture, nothing win.’
What was talent for if not to be displayed?
The Parable of the Talents (i.e. ‘woe betide you if you bury it!’)
seemed to encourage a move from Essex Road to Auld Reekie, albeit briefly, as an
acting scene.
Part of the
secret, one was frequently conscious, of the drama’s success at LCHS was the
underlying, ceaselessly active aid of the Parents’ Association.
I always had the feeling that John Cummings bewitched them.
They provided funds, they catered, they raised enthusiasm . . . his eagle
eyes rolled, they responded and there was never the remotest conception of their
even expecting to be thanked—though they were.
So there was a safety net for showing the LCHS flag over the Border.
Hamlet was ‘tried out’ at LCHS. It
can rarely fail unless it’s abjectly awful. But there was no fear of that.
Casting, by steady growth over the years, was obvious, though of course,
a good deal depended upon Derek Jacobi as the Prince.
I came to an understanding with the Edinburgh Academy for the play’s
occupancy for 2 ½ weeks, and found communal accommodation for most of the
company.
By sheer luck the Festival’s own flagship—the Assembly Hall—ran on
to the rocks: or, rather, the production, The Hidden King,
presented there did.
The critics (by grapevine contact) began to attend. By the first weekend
no seat was available for the rest of the run.
But human
nature wants a double dose. So what
next? After the peak of popularity why not the almost unknown?
So I plunged
the LCHS ‘little eyases’ into the murky Measure For Measure—an
interesting play and a veritable teaser. The
part of the pure Isabella must
have been envisaged for a particular boy actor—and it did work.
Meanwhile, Master Jacobi had got wider experience by a season with
Michael Croft’s National Youth Theatre, as Prince Hal in Henry IV
(1). Nevertheless, though now on
the verge of university (St. John’s College, Cambridge) D.J. agreed to say
goodbye to LCHS and friends by playing the ‘whited sepulchre’ Angelo in Measure
for Measure.
The part then passed into the hands of Alex Clements. He
had recently gained great credit from his performance in The Clandestine
Marriage (Garrick & Colman), endowing an 18th
Century parvenu with crusty humor, using ever-developing expertise.
(He went on to lecture in the Manchester Polytechnic Drama Department).
Alas, the
play did not ‘draw,’ though it did decently.
I remember well something of a running argument that transpired between
John Cummings and myself over the purchase (not just a hire) of a questionable
set of virginals because of my sins. I
was a stickler (is one not still such?) for authenticity.
Measure for Measure is a
‘black’ play, occasioned by years of London plague and representing the new
darker world of James I after that of Elizabeth.
Even the music had to be right—and there it was up in the gallery at
the Academy, costing a fortune! Virginals
are not good for economy!
My
‘reign’ ended shortly after, too. I
will always, however, be indebted, to LCHS.
My linkage
with a magazine of the 1950s and early 1960s, called the Elizabethan, brought in
actors from ‘outside.’ A joint Twelfth
Night was performed at the Edinburgh Festival
of 1960—and even after that, since I was then a Head of English in what was
then Westmorland, a collaboration took place between north and south.
In fact, a marriage too.
The
unflinchingly resourceful stage manager at LCHS, Grant Allen (now a Head Teacher
in Lincolnshire) married an ‘actress’ from Kirkby Stephen, and went on to
‘stage manage’ her as Goneril in King Lear
at the next Edinburgh Festival 1962; after he’d given sterling aid to a joint Macbeth—rehearsed
in LCHS and then taken north. Finally,
another Twelfth Night followed.
When I returned to LCHS to see a later play, Andrew Best was talentedly
in the saddle and the Richard II I saw
had, in its cast, the young man who was soon to be first clarinet in The Royal
Philharmonic Orchestra, and to make the recording of Mozart’s Clarinet
concerto which is most critics’ choice—Antony Pay.
Of members of staff who actively participated at Leyton and in Edinburgh,
I happily remember Jack Moulden, whose expertise and ‘hard grind’ in set
provision and general management robbed him of many otherwise free hands and
sturdy Jack Nicholas whose performance as a friar in Measure for Measure
(in Edinburg) must have given him more to think about than he’d envisaged.
And to who
should or could I have turned to for sagacious comment and shrewd, considered,
witty criticism . . . and continuing encouragement . . . regarding all matters
(not merely thespian) but Jack Meltzer.
Looking back
(where else can one look?) I marvel at the most uncommon talents of Derek
Jacobi; and many others in a kindred sphere, such as John Lill.
By Antony Hurst
I taught at Leyton County High School for Boys for only one academic
year, 1961-1962. It was my first
ever paid employment and I didn’t do particularly well as a teacher, though
this had a great deal more to do with me than the school.
But there was one aspect of my year there which meant a great deal to me
and which I still remember both with pleasure and with pride; as well as
teaching English, I was also in charge of drama school.
I came to Leyton straight from Cambridge University, where acting in and
directing plays had been my main spare-time activity.
I was very lucky to have been there during its dramatic golden age, and I
still have programmes in which my name is listed alongside those of Derek
Jacobi, Ian McKellen, John Clease, Eleanor Bron, Miriam Margolleys, Peter Cook,
and Tim Brooke Taylor. This had its
drawbacks as the competition for leading roles was intense, but on balance I was
pleased to have been a small fish in such an exciting and glamorous pond, and I
came down wanting more of it.
So I arrived
in Leyton deeply committed to drama as a source of excitement and meaning, and
armed with standards that would not have shamed the West End.
The fact that the school was able to respond did not amaze me at the
time, because I somehow assumed that the school’s dramatic inheritance and
tradition were normal. But in
retrospect what I found was awesome: Derek
Jacobi’s LCHS performance of Hamlet was still talked about beyond the bounds
of E10, and his mother was still school wardrobe mistress and ready to offer
support and inspiration to anyone willing to continue the tradition.
During my
first term I directed the big school play, Terrence Rattingan’s “Adventure
Story” about Alexander the Great. It
went down very well, and a number of my Cambridge theatrical friends who came to
see it were very impressed by the boys’ work.
The only problem was who should be awarded the prize for being the best
actor: Derek Jacobi, who presented
the award, gave it to Gerry Hodgson for his performance as Alexander, but had
difficulty in overriding a more intense performance from Alan Booth, very much
in Derek’s own mould.
But what was
more remarkable was the dramatic year didn’t stop there.
The group of boys who acted in “Adventure Story,” and also a few who
hadn’t, wanted to continue to put on plays.
There was no real possibility of repeating the enormous effort that goes
into mounting a full-scale production, so we invented a new format instead.
We put on a further seven or eight plays as dramatized readings, with the
cast performing with their books in their hands, but in full costume and on a
properly lit set constructed at nil cost from whatever bits and pieces we were
able to find. In order to keep the
demands on our time to a reasonable minimum we restricted our rehearsals to the
inside of a week, and we did a single performance to the fifth and sixth forms
on a Friday afternoon. Later on in
the academic year we decided that we needed real females to play the female
parts, so we brought in some girls from the other Leyton County High School, and
their sixth formers came to see the performances as well.
In this way
we performed Anouilh’s Antigone,
Sophocles’ Oedipus, Miller’s Death of a Salesman,
something by Ibsen and something by Harold Pinter: I can’t remember them all.
Even with this minimal amount of rehearsal and effort we were able to
turn out very exciting productions, because the actors were individually very
talented, and they had learned how to work well together as a group and how to
play to their sixth form audience. I
certainly enjoyed it, and I think they all did too. And in retrospect it seems an amazing achievement.