Stephen Phillips
Plays and Players, 1977
Take 50 people, actors, musicians, dancers and stage management, three large physical productions, with props, costumes, musical instruments. Place them loosely in the Mediterranean basin then stir vigorously around four countries, six cities and eight different locations. You have the recipe for a British Council tour.
8:00 a.m. Sunday, July 10,
Heathrow. Only nine hours ago
this bunch of bleary-eyed, weary travelers were all at the Old Vic for the final
performance of a grueling ten week season opening four new productions and
fitting in a two week tour of Germany. Those
involved with getting the shows out of the Vic and packing haven’t slept at
all. A secretary has been typing
freight lists through the night. We
look incapable of mounting a poetry recital, let alone taking the Mediterranean
by storm. Much of the freight is already on the road between London and
Istanbul. Some will have arrived.
We discover several tickets have been made out in stage names.
They have to be altered and one actor arrives late from deepest Sussex.
The first surprise of the tour—we all catch the aeroplane to Istanbul.
4:00 p.m.
We’ve landed at Istanbul airport, met British Council officers and
taken a couple of buses to the hotel. Now
we are driving along the Bosphorus, the historic Straits linking Europe and
Asia. It’s some 20 degrees warmer
than London. Thousands of Turkish
men are swimming in the somewhat oily waters of the great seaway.
We count only two Turkish women in swimming costumes, and those are on
smart private beaches. Make a mental note that the female members of the company
will soon be making quite a splash. Hope
it won’t lead to riots. (One lady
in stage management with a line in diminutive bikinis drew large crowds wherever
we went in the Middle East.)
Check in to smart resort hotel which, like the castle where we are to
perform, is on the banks of the Bosphorus.
Sort out who is to share rooms with whom and wonder how long those
combinations will last. Almost
everyone is clear that they don’t actually want to share with anyone at all.
The musicians are concerned about whether they will get eggs for
breakfast.
9:00 p.m., Monday, July 11, Rumeli
Hisar Castle. Our First Night, and what a theatre! We are to play Hamlet
within the walls of this huge Ottoman fort, inside which the ground forms a
natural amphitheater around a circular stage where a mosque originally stood.
The theatre entrance is through the sea-gate where a temporary box office
is selling the few tickets not sold long in advance.
The whole lofty castle was built by Sultan Fatih Mehmet in 1452 to close
the straits and cut off aid to the beleaguered city of Constantinople which fell
to his army the next year. It took
just four months to complete. Perhaps
the builders of some of our new theaters might try employing a sultan or two.
Stage management have been struggling all day to solve the problems of
playing Hamlet in the open air.
You have to have an arras or Polonius can’t get his comeuppance for
eavesdropping. They have rigged one
up. There is no way we can have a
grave trap as the stage is built over solid stone, so we have traveled with a
huge sarcophagus on wheels into which Terry Wilton as Laertes will have to leap
to embrace Suzanne Bertish’s Ophelia. She
then gets trucked off in it. The
walls of the castle make a stunning back-drop, although we don’t have enough
lighting to make the most of them, and Timothy West, acting as director for the
tour, has decided not to yield to the temptation of playing the battlement
scenes on the battlements. This
apparently perverse decision is quite correct.
Mehmet built his battlements so high that the audience would neither be
able to see the actors, nor to hear a word they said without the kind of sound
equipment used in the Rolling Stones tour.
Except in exceptional circumstances, Prospect scorns to use microphones.
Only one feature of the staging was a little out of place in the
recreation of Elsinore, the first of many the company will have to deal with.
A truncated minaret at the side of the stage hardly evoked the court of
Denmark. I doubt if Shakespeare’s
most obscure subplot made much of the influence of Islam.
9:40 p.m.
We should have gone up ten minute ago, but the Turks have a remarkably
casual attitude to starting times and late-comers are wont to cross the playing
area during the performance if it seems the most direct way of reaching their
seats. Part of the delay is due to Mehmet’s not having allowed for
proper car parking space in the design of his castle. The cast is becoming very impatient. They won’t be eating until the early hours; generally the
company prefer to eat after the show. Throughout
the tour we have had to schedule performances in the open air to commence after
dark. Derek Jacobi is nervous as
usual, though it never shows in his performance.
Suzanne, in her Ophelia gear, is chain-smoking.
One day she’ll make an entrance still smoking.
Eventually we go up, and the almost entirely Turkish audience are more
attentive than we have been led to expect.
There are a lot of cameras clicking. Being out of doors, a much stronger
performance is called for. Derek
claims that there may have been better Hamlets than his but none louder.
There are unscheduled noises off too.
Every entrance of Timothy West appeared to be the cue for a huge Russian
tanker to sail past hooting to its friends, masts and funnels clearly visible
above the walls. Sundry aeroplanes
were clearly in league with the Russians to sabotage the performances.
12:45 a.m.
The performance ends and to our great relief the audience give the
company a prolonged standing ovation. They
had already given a round to Suzanne’s mad scene which fainter hearts had
feared might prove offensive to Turkish and Arab audiences.
Good start.
Wednesday, July 13, Rumeli
Hisar. War
Music rehearsals are uncovering quite different problems from those faced by
Hamlet. The surface of the stage has to be improved for the dancers.
We dispense with all scenery and manage to train a couple of follow spots on the
massive tower behind the stage. Smoke
effects were a major feature of the production at the Old Vic but our smoke
canisters were off-loaded from the truck to Turkey owing to their disconcerting
habit of exploding. Dry ice would
be the solution, but none can be found in Istanbul. A helpful professor comes up with a concoction based on
ammonia. It works, but the smell
would empty the castle in minutes. Simple
solution. Real smoke.
Yildez Kenter, the leading Turkish actress, arranges flaming torches
which look wonderful.
Michael Howarth, the Equity dep, who has naturally been the first person
to go ethnic and is walking around dressed like a latter day disciple, is
worried about body make-up. First of all, the artists have to make up in the open air or
in very small dressing tents and there is no privacy as the dressing area is
immediately adjacent to the only public loo.
We decide to keep the audience out as long as possible to shield them
from the spectre of twenty naked actors applying body make-up.
Someone suggested we might do better to sell tickets.
After the show, the difficulty will be how to get it off, as there are no
showers and the hose which is available has cold water!
We had borrowed 20 large towels from the hotel and will drive the actors
back as soon as possible afterward.
Midnight, Tarabya Hotel.
Some confusion is caused in the hotel lobby as 20 naked men in nothing
but towels and strange body paint come racing in, seize room keys and make for
the lifts. The perfect setting had
given us probably the best ever performance of War
Music.
Friday, July 15.
Half Central Europe. Black
Friday if ever there was one. Three
flights between four equally uncomfortable and mostly unfriendly
airports—Istanbul, Bucharest, Belgrade and finally Ljubljana.
Several of us get our films wiped by a hostile X-ray machine.
We all wish we could have afforded a direct charter flight, but the
already overloaded British Council budget wouldn’t take it.
The freight fares worse. For
some reason, the authorities at Istanbul airport off-loaded our freight, which
includes all the sound equipment, musical instruments, War
Music costumes and props, wigs, make-up, tapes and some Hamlet
costumes. Much earnest praying that
they will arrive before the Hamlet
performance on Monday. In Ljubljana,
we find the extra members of the company, including Dorothy Tutin, Alec McCowen
and Robert Eddison, who have flown out for the Antony and Cleopatra perfs.
Monday, July 18, Ljubljana Open Air
Theatre. Last night’s Antony
went quite well, but the omens for Hamlet
not so good. It’s been raining on and off all day.
The latest on the freight is that it may still be in Frankfurt on the
airport tarmac. Alternatively, it
could be en route to us overland. Too
late for tonight. Company
magnificent. Stage manage-ment have been out begging, stealing, and bartering.
The result is a weird collection of amplifiers, props and musical
instruments sufficient to get Hamlet
on. The soldiers will be a little short of armour and the ghost
will have to wear a helmet from Antony and
Cleopatra. Robbie the wigmaster
has had a heroic afternoon trying to make a dreadful blond wig from a local
studio look like the complex crowning glory of Barbara Jefford’s Gertrude.
The result is a masterpiece and we are sorry that we can’t buy the wig
as a reserve.
Tuesday, July 19.
Dubrovnik. After many a
stern warning to the company about not being late for travel calls, Timothy West
and I nearly miss the bus for the airport.
Much gloating. Safely in
Dubrovnik after a quick internal flight, the weather is magnificent and we check
in to a truly luxurious hotel (eggs for breakfast).
The only problem is that they have not understood our room requirements
and, instead of 28 singles, we get ten. More
doubling up. Check out the Ducal Palace, location for our Antony performance tomorrow. We
all agree it is the perfect back-drop for Nicholas Georgiadis’ extravagant
Renaissance costumes. The Festival
people, models of efficiency, are in the process of rigging up seating in the
street outside the Palace. Tim runs
through the exits and entrances with the company.
No great problems apparently.
Wednesday, July 20.
Ducal Palace. How wrong
can you be? We performed Antony
to a packed ‘house’ who can scarcely have heard a word of the performance.
To start with, the busy café next to the palace, which was supposed to
close its outside terrace for the performance decided business was too good to
miss. Dorothy and Alex therefore
had to contend with the friendly crash of drinks trays and the chatter of
tourists. Worse still, and quite
unforeseen, Shakespeare proved an irresistible attraction for some thousands of
noisy starlings, who, taking their cue from the first bars of the music, proceed
to descend on the Palace and to sing discordantly throughout the entire three
hours.
Monday, July 25.
Lovrenac Fort, Dubrovnik. The
week here has passed too fast, made truly pleasurable by the real festival
atmosphere which is a rare phenomenon in Festival towns.
After two days, our missing freight finally caught up with us.
We have contributed all three of our productions.
War Music was rained off the
terrace-roof of one fortress and played as a very intimate show in the
restricted space of the castle vaults. It
was in many ways very effective, and the sound was remarkable.
As usual, Gary Kettel’s drum solo at the end got a second ovation. Composer Don Fraser actually heard his music properly—from
the audience—for the first time, because the organ he should have been playing
didn’t work. Gary, Don and
choreographer Bill Louther return to England.
Strangely quiet without Gary, who can make 100 decibels of sound even
without his drums.
Hamlet was the difficult one,
though. Derek went to see the
Yugoslav production of Hamlet which
was actually designed for a permanent set in Fort Lovrenac, on five levels
inside the open keep. He came back
so impressed by the local production that he persuaded the whole company to be
on its very best mettle to not be shown up. Throughout the midday heat of Sunday, Tim rehearsed our
proscenium arch production until it was cajoled, dragged and bullied into the
multi-level setting of the fort. Last
night was a huge success, with breathless actors racing up and down ladders and
John Turner looking very impressive indeed as the Ghost some forty feet above
the main playing area. Tonight was
better still and the standing ovation simply wouldn’t stop.
Once again Ophelia scored with audience and critics too.
There are many disadvantages in lightning tours like ours where many an
artistic short-cut has to be taken to get the show on, but just once or twice a
location will impart something magical of its own and give an extra dimension to
the play. So it was with Lovrenac
Fort, and a better place to film Hamlet
would be hard to find.
Thursday, July 28.
Diocletian’s Palace. Split.
Our third Yugoslav Festival brings another location which can only
enhance Antony and Cleopatra.
The peristyle of Diocletian’s Palace was where the wily old Emperor
appeared to give audiences, and was designed to inspire awe in the ambassadors
and petitioners who visited him. Our
own contenders for the mastery of the Roman world, and particularly Dorothy in
her lovely frocks, were thus afforded a sumptuous centre stage entrance, and a
magnificent classical façade to play before.
The audience were packed into a narrow square on benches, where a busy
café had been operating until only minutes before the performance.
This excited some trepidation on our part, but the festival officials
arrived with a small squad of policemen to make sure this one actually closed.
They also had to visit a number of houses which looked out onto the
square to silence the commentary from a television sports programme.
This is one of the locations where we have had cause to regret the sheer
bulk of many of Niko’s very impressive costumes.
The stage right entrance can only be reached by a circuitous voyage
through the narrow back-streets of Split, across several make-shift draw-bridges
and through one of the tunnels of the old Roman Palace.
Some of the actors, short on breath or on experience of orienteering,
find this almost too much. Timothy
actually bumped into Mardian the Eunuch in his collosal robes making haste in
exactly the wrong direction and already late for his entrance.
He got on.
Wednesday, August 3.
Palace of Culture, Amman. However
bad a performance may be in England, it is not customary to lock the audience
inside the theatre, but here it is quite a commonplace on nights when the King
is in the audience, and we have not only King Hussein, but many of his leading
ministers, as well as Constantine the former Greek King.
This has also meant a day of the most rigorous security checks which
involved body-searching the entire company and the audience as they came in.
Staging Antony has been difficult in what was originally designed as a
basketball arena. We have covered
the huge stage and its shocking orange curtains with black drapes, and built out
the stage as a wedge into the audience. The
willing suspension of disbelief is challenged for a few moments during the
opening tableau when a curious security guard backstage peers through a gap he
has opened in the drapes to catch a bit of the action.
He is blissfully unaware that he is perfectly visible to the audience,
and none of us could get backstage to tell him because of the locked doors and
guards. Eventually we heard a
scuffling, some muffled shouts and the gap closed.
Saturday, August 6, Petra.
Today there has been no performance, but I think most people would agree
that it has been the social high-spot of the tour (or the easiest to own up to).
The ‘rose-red city’ of the Nabataeans is the one place everybody in the
company has visited except one who stayed at the hotel to work on his sun tan. I made myself thoroughly unpopular with the company by
insisting on a five-in-the-morning start. By
noon, when the heat drove us out of the wonderful canyons of this ancient city
which truly beggars description (even ‘rose-red’ isn’t strictly accurate),
most of them had forgiven me. I
hope.
The company has now joined its Equity dep in going entirely native, and a
stranger assortment of Jellabahs, Kafirs and biblical gear of all sorts would be
hard to find. We look like something between the followers of an Indian
mystic and a detachment of the Arab Legion.
Cyrus Vance is in Petra today too. He
hasn’t gone ethnic.
Amman is the place where we have seen most of the resident English
community (if one had existed in Yugoslavia they were conspicuously shy), even
to challenging the Embassy to a game of cricket.
This took place on a pitch behind the theatre with cricketing gear
borrowed from the king who occasionally plays himself.
The second surprise of the tour. We
won. The fact we have some Australian stage management may be the
key to this.
Our main concern during the match is that the heat will not increase our
body of sick. With an almost
flippant disregard for their own safety, many of the company have been out
tasting the delights of Arab cooking. We
now have three in hospital on saline drips and two more back at the hotel
waiting for a doctor. Last
night’s performance saw the band reduced to just flute and trumpet, the two
surviving musicians bravely combining to attempt a drum roll where one was
really necessary. Paul, the regular
drummer who will always be better appreciated in future, has a temperature of
105.
Bernice Stegers, the leading amateur courier of the company, mercifully
fails to organize a day trip to Damascus. It
would have been even more difficult to mount a performance without another half
dozen actors.
Friday, August 12, Cairo.
If it’s Friday it must be Cairo—and we’ll soon be in England,
because today the tour ends and we fly back from sun and sand to that other
festival in the cooler clime of Scotland.
Egypt has been the hottest, easiest and surprisingly one of the
healthiest places on the tour. I
think the whole company were so concerned not to share the fate of the sufferers
in Amman that everybody drank mineral water and stuck to international cuisine
in the hotel restaurants. The
spirit of adventure was restricted to shopping in the Khan el Khalili Bazaars,
by far the best during the trip, where everybody finally threw financial caution
to the wind and guaranteed themselves a rough ride through British customs.
From the famous and faultless Mena House Hotel it was but a five minute
drive to the theatre of the Sphinx, where we performed in the open air complex
which also features the Son Et Lumiére. Behind the stage rose the battered wall
of the funerary temple of Chephren, four and half thousand years old.
Behind that, the three great pyramids and the ever watchful Sphinx.
A better setting for Antony or War Music would
be difficult to find, especially since the theater had offered to light these
extravagant stage props for us. For Hamlet?
The tragedy was that we were unable to perform either of our suitable
pieces; Antony because there is a
current production by Egyptian National Theatre, and War
Music because it was feared the bare bums might give offence to the
resurgent religious extremists who are trying to lick wicked old Cairo into
moral shape. So we played only Hamlet,
the most intimate of tragedies, in the middle of the desert with Derek bellowing
to be heard above the wild dogs and Muezzins summoning the faithful of another
faith to prayer. It says much for
Shakespeare, and for the company too, that it was a great success.