Making an Exhibition of Myself Read online

  First published in the UK in 1993

  by Sinclair-Stevenson an imprint of Reed Consumer Books Ltd

  This edition first published in 2000 by Oberon Books Ltd

  521 Caledonian Road, London N7 9RH

  Tel: +44 (0) 20 7607 3637 / Fax: +44 (0) 20 7607 3629

  e-mail: [email protected]

  www.oberonbooks.com

  Copyright © Petard Productions Ltd 1993, 2000

  Epilogue copyright © Petard Productions 2000

  Copyright photographs © the copyright holders

  Peter Hall is hereby identified as author of this book in accordance with section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  The author has asserted his moral rights.

  You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or binding or by any means (print, electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  PB ISBN: 978-1-84002-115-8

  E ISBN: 978-1-8494-3686-1

  Cover design: Jon Morgan

  Cover photograph: Matthew Thomas

  eBook conversion by Replika Press PVT Ltd, India.

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  Contents

  List of Illustrations

  Acknowledgements

  PART ONE: Better Lucky Than Rich

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  PART TWO: A Little Bit Famous

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  PART THREE: Prima La Musica

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  PART FOUR: The War That Had To Be Won

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  PART FIVE: Flash Forward, Flash Back

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  PART SIX: Extravagant Hopes?

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  EPILOGUE: Joys and Sorrows

  Joys and Sorrows

  List of Productions

  FOR NICKI

  AND FOR CHRISTOPHER

  JENNIFER, EDWARD

  LUCY, REBECCA

  AND EMMA

  List of Illustrations

  Copyright holders are given in brackets

  My mother in 1924

  My father when he had just been appointed Stationmaster

  At six years old

  Albert Herring (Guy Gravett)

  3120201 Aircraftsman Hall

  At Cambridge

  Jill – my first love affair

  With Tom Bergner and my Austin Seven

  As Hamlet at the Perse

  As Petruchio at the Perse

  As First Citizen in a Marlowe Society’s Coriolanus at Cambridge

  With Leslie on our wedding day (Tony Armstrong-Jones)[Lord Snowdon]

  Sir Fordham Flower (Shakespeare Centre Library)

  Charles Laughton as Bottom (Angus McBean – Shakespeare Centre Library)

  Mary Ure, Olivier and Edith Evans in Coriolanus (Angus McBean – Shakespeare Centre Library)

  A starry line-up in the gardens behind the Stratford theatre during the 100th season in 1959 (Roger Wood)

  With Leslie, Christopher and Jenny on holiday in France (Camera Press)

  Leslie and Christopher do the twist. Jenny is bored (Rex Features)

  Avoncliffe, our Stratford home

  With John Barton, rehearsing The Wars of the Roses (Times Newspapers)

  Peggy Ashcroft as Margaret in the trilogy The Wars of the Roses (Reg Wilson)

  Peter O’Toole as Shylock (David Sim – Shakespeare Centre Library)

  David Warner as Hamlet (Morris Newcombe)

  Paul Scofield as Lear (Svoboda – Shakespeare Centre Library)

  Dorothy Tutin as Cressida in Troilus and Cressida (Angus McBean – Shakespeare Centre Library)

  Vanessa Redgrave as Rosalind in As You Like It (Shakespeare Centre Library)

  The Homecoming (David Sim – Shakespeare Centre Library)

  The Government Inspector (Reg Wilson)

  A theatre cricket match (Birmingham Post and Mail)

  With Jacky, Lucy and Edward in our Barbican flat

  With Edward

  Paul Rogers, Paul Scofield, Ben Kingsley: Volpone (Reg Wilson)

  Ralph Richardson and John Gielgud: No Man’s Land (Anthony Crickmay)

  Rehearsing the orgy round the Golden Calf in Moses and Aaron (Rex Features)

  Ileana Cotrubas and Frederica von Stade: Figaro (Guy Gravett)

  Technical rehearsal of Ulisse (Guy Gravett)

  Così fan tutte (Guy Gravett)

  Michael Gough and Joan Hickson in Bedroom Farce (Anthony Crickmay)

  Rehearsing Peggy Ashcroft in Happy Days

  Rehearsing Pinter’s Other Places (Laurence Burns)

  The Romans in Britain (Laurence Burns)

  Judi Dench in The Importance of Being Earnest (Zoë Dominic)

  A rehearsal of Amadeus

  Working on Jean Seberg (Nobby Clark)

  Animal Farm (Nobby Clark)

  A rehearsal of The Oresteia at Epidaurus in 1982 (Nobby Clark)

&nbs
p; In the amphitheatre at Athens with Ian McKellen when he played Coriolanus there (John Haynes)

  Moran Caplat by the lake at Glyndebourne (Guy Gravett)

  Ileana Cotrubas and James Bowman in A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Guy Gravett)

  Rehearsing Janet Baker as Orfeo (Guy Gravett)

  The death of Carmen: Maria Ewing with Barry McCauley (Guy Gravett)

  Das Rheingold at Bayreuth (Roger Wood)

  A cartoon by David Langdon that appeared when I returned to the NT from directing The Ring at Bayreuth

  With Rebecca, Maria and Lucy at the opening of the Torville and Dean ice show (Camera Press)

  Anthony Hopkins and Judi Dench in Antony and Cleopatra (John Haynes)

  Steven Mackintosh as Ariel in The Tempest (John Haynes)

  Akenfield (Peter Hall)

  With David Warner and Cilla Black while making Work is a Four Letter Word (David Magnus, Rex Features)

  Rebecca, aged nine, with Toby Stephens in The Camomile Lawn

  Peggy Ashcroft, Geraldine James and James Fox in She’s Been Away (BBC Photograph Library)

  Vanessa Redgrave in Orpheus Descending (John Haynes)

  Dustin Hoffman in The Merchant of Venice (John Haynes)

  Julie Walters in The Rose Tattoo (John Haynes)

  My second production of The Homecoming, twenty-five years after the first (Ivan Kyncl)

  John Sessions, Jennifer Ehle and Paul Eddington in Tartuffe (Ivan Kyncl)

  Judi Dench in The Gift of the Gorgon (John Haynes)

  Born Again (John Haynes)

  With John Guare, author of Four Baboons Adoring the Sun

  Nicki

  All my children (Edina van der Wyck)

  With Emma in Los Angeles (Eric Charbonneau at Berliner Studio)

  Acknowledgements

  Above all, I am grateful to John Goodwin. His help in the preparation of the manuscript was invaluable. He also encouraged me to be as candid as the law and reasonable courtesy allow.

  My warm thanks as well to Maggie Sedwards for all her work in making this book happen, and for urging me on when I was flagging; and to Tim Goodwin who not only compiled the Index but searched out photographs – as did the Shakespeare Centre at Stratford-upon-Avon, Helen O’Neill at Glyndebourne, and Stephen Wood of the National Theatre.

  Penelope Hoare and her assistant Roger Cazalet at Sinclair-Stevenson gave the text the most generous care which I greatly appreciated; and Mike Shaw of Curtis Brown kindly provided bracing enthusiasm throughout.

  I hope those I have known well in my life but who do not appear, or appear fleetingly, will understand that this has absolutely nothing to do with the depth of my affection or of my regard for them.

  Peter Hall

  London, 1993

  Part One

  BETTER LUCKY THAN RICH

  Chapter One

  I have a vision of a garden in long-shot and the lens of my worried young eyes makes it look enormous.

  I was four years old and, after an upset with my mother, was running away from home. Rows were always with my mother, never with my father. She was handsome, genial and quick-witted. She was also the tempest – volatile and given to flying into rages. Yet she never disciplined me; she always asked my father to oblige.

  I turned back at the end of the garden as I reached the gate, expecting to see two grown-ups begging forgiveness and imploring me to change my mind and stay with them for ever. Instead, I saw my father standing alone at the back door.

  He was a kind man and did not know the meaning of cruelty. But he would not tolerate self-indulgence or dramatics. This made for frequent disputes, not only with my mother but with me, for we were both histrionically inclined.

  I saw that he held my coat and large cap in his hand. ‘Here,’ he said. ‘You will be needing these.’ I burst into tears.

  This taught me a valuable lesson: never threaten unless you are prepared to act.

  My mother was alert to my temperament from my beginnings to the end of her days. She was a Suffolk country woman who lived by precept and aphorism. Her vocabulary was packed with comforting phrases: ‘It is better to be born lucky than rich’; ‘It’ll all work out in the end’; ‘A change is as good as a rest’. Some were less reassuring and induced alarm in a small boy: ‘They’re always out to get you’ or ‘They’ll get you if they can’. In later years, she was much given to pronouncing these mantra grimly, usually after she had heard me sounding off on television or radio on censorship, or the teaching of Shakespeare, or the iniquities of the government’s arts policy. ‘I heard you, boy,’ she would say pointedly, ‘making an exhibition of yourself.’ She became most anxious if I discussed politics. In her opinion, they would indeed then be out to get me. She was right in a sense: in the Thatcher years, they nearly did. She firmly believed that it was safer to ‘keep yourself to yourself’.

  She would certainly think that, by writing this book, I was making an exhibition of myself.

  From earliest childhood I always took on too much and was what is called, in modern psychological jargon, an over-achiever. This made my mother proud, but also very anxious. When things went wrong, she would say triumphantly: ‘You should have thought of that before.’

  I have always worked too hard, played too hard, and taken risks. I have lived by obsession and enthusiasm and have always thought too little of the consequences. And when I was under intolerable pressure, or failing, my mother was always there to mutter her disapproval.

  Being a director is not a safe job. Putting on plays is an unwise thing to do. The likelihood of success is small. It is better not to chance it. But I have always wanted to provoke, to startle, to challenge – and not much cared if I did. And I suppose it all started with provoking my mother. My father was wiser and warmer, and the man who tried to teach me balance. But I preferred to arouse my mother’s anxiety. I have never wanted to play safe. It has made for a bumpy ride, but I have not often been bored.

  Chapter Two

  I once knew a BBC producer who turned his office at Television Centre into a serious health hazard by passing his whole life in it. Old socks, unwashed plates and coffee-ringed scripts were tumbled all over the floor. He obviously felt thoroughly at home in this mess, and I understood that. The place where I live and work is important to me because it gives me security. I am an untidy person, though I like tidiness. I am equally happy in two extremes: either a very precise environment where everything is carefully planned and placed — like a production awaiting its final dress rehearsal – or a complete shambles where I simply don’t bother to see what isn’t worth looking at.

  I am a reckless traveller. I love nearly missing trains and just boarding flight-closed aircraft. But this recklessness does not extend to where I stay. Not for me the sudden arrival at the motel as the sun is going down. I need to know where I’m going, and I prefer to know what it’s like. For thirty-five years I always stayed in New York at the Algonquin Hotel. It was a ghost of its great 1920s-self and had appalling service and hazardous, infrequent lifts. But it was the place where the staff, increasingly white-haired and puffing over heavy suitcases, always greeted me by name whatever time of day or night I arrived. Now they have gone, taken over by a Japanese corporation; and I have moved to the Wyndham where the staff remain cordial and constant.

  So a sense of place is where I begin. When I think of the past, I think first of places.

  Twenty-four Avenue Approach, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, is an unprepossessing little house in a row of early twentieth-century workers’ cottages: two up and two down, with a kitchen at the back. The house has now sprouted a porch, a bathroom and an indoor loo. When I was born there, to Grace and Reginald, on 22 November 1930, the loo was outside and a tin hip-bath hung on the kitchen wall. The garden was tended by my father; not to grow food on decent soil would have been as unnatural to him as not breathing.

  I was an only child and grew up cocooned by my mother’s family who lived all around us. My father’s relations were m
ore widespread, and even more numerous, though most of them had emigrated to Australia. He was not obsessed with ‘family’; he left that to his wife. ‘Blood is thicker than water,’ my mother would intone when we were faced with yet another family gathering.

  Both families were close to the land and had been peopled by generations of farm labourers. Now, however, they were moving up into crafts and professions and becoming policemen or shop assistants. Nonetheless, they all had an innate ability to grow things and to look after animals. My maternal grandfather was a house-painter. My father’s father, who died before I was born, seems to have led a roving, Dickensian sort of life, doing odd-jobs here and there, running a pub in Bangor, and ending up as a rat-catcher on the Royal Sandringham estate. My mother, who had a distinct aura of piss-elegance, as if she were clinging to respectability for dear life, always insisted that he was a ‘vermin exterminator’. An old photograph shows a rather fly-looking man who would not be out of place on a racecourse. He looks the sort of helpful, convivial character seen by the score at Bury St Edmunds weekly livestock market – men who might be small-time farmers, or odd-job men, or pillars of the church. They were certainly pillars of the pub.

  My father was the only member of the family who had achieved any academic distinction. He had won a scholarship to secondary school, secured his school certificate, and had then become an office boy for the London and North Eastern Railway. By the time I was born, he was a miserably paid clerk in the goods depot at Bury St Edmunds railway station – a huge, dusty, clanking place, smelling of bloaters and Jeyes Fluid. I knew the pay was miserable because of the endless comments from my mother. She complained continuously about the lack of money and how hard she had to work to make ends meet. Even at that time, she castigated my father for his lack of push, his lack of ambition. Apparently it was his failings which made us so poor. I heard both of them talk enviously of the rich people who lived not in the Approach but in the Avenue itself. There you found the six-pound-a-week men … the men of affluence.