A talent to enthuse….

No one ever built a monument to a critic, goes the old saying (though on Broadway they’ve memorialised critics by naming at least two prominent playhouses after them: the Brooks Atkinson and the Walter Kerr). But yesterday, the life, times and many friendships of Sheridan Morley were remembered at the Gielgud (the subject, of course, of one of his multitude of biographies) in a wonderful, nearly two-hour tribute to a critic who held the rare distinction of actually being held in affection by many in the industry, as the incredible turn-out of actors and writers proved, both in the (packed) stalls and onstage in an impeccably produced show.

I remember devouring Sheridan’s expertly-turned celebrity profiles in The Times, which were models of their kind, when I was at University in the early eighties and hoping that I, too, could one day do that sort of thing for a living. And now that I do, Sheridan’s way of making a review “travel” – with versions of the same review appearing here, there and everywhere — have provided me with my own template as a freelancer (though I try to change the form of the words more!). Edward Fox read a tribute from Miles Kington, Sheridan’s former Punch magazine colleague, in which Miles recalled asking him once if it seemed right getting paid three times for the same piece. Sheridan replied, “You’re quite right – there must be a fourth place slot somewhere.” Cameron Mackintosh later pointed out that Sheridan’s reviews could provide the key to “a dubious quotes ad” – since you got three reviews for the price of one from Sheridan, a producer could make it look like he had more good reviews than he really did! Of course, since each review actually did appear, this wouldn’t fall foul, I imagine, of the new legislation I recently blogged about of reviews being misquoted from.

Sheridan was often referred to affectionately yesterday as Sherry, but I remember reading a letter by him to The Stage in which he specifically disavowed that nickname, and his widow, broadcaster and writer Ruth Leon, always uses the full form of his name, so I will, too. Ruth, resplendent in a matching black and white skirt and blouse suit, was on hand as the elegant host to yesterday’s event whose intention, she said early on, was to provide a kind of “verbal photo album” to his life. Staged as a sort of literary soiree, with all the speaking guests seated around tables on stage (so you don’t get that usual endless procession of people on and off stage; Sheridan the sometime director as well as critic would have been impressed), it moved swiftly, seamlessly and lovingly from personal reminiscence to songs and readings.

Sheridan, who always loved stars, would certainly have been impressed by the roll-call of talent assembled in his honour: cabaret singer Steve Ross (coming over specially from New York and singing “Old Friend” from I’m Getting My Act Together and Taking it on the Road, not as the programme had it, “Old Friends” from Sondheim’s Merrily We Roll Along); also coming in specially from trips abroad, Miriam Margolyes and Simon Callow; old University chum Oliver Ford Davies; fellow writer and biographer John Lahr, who knew him from the age of seven, when they attended primary school together in New York (and with whom Sheridan shared a special affinity as a fellow son of someone famous, with the combination of privilege and neglect that such children can suffer, since the parent gives the best part of themselves to the public as Lahr noted here); and actors that also included Corin Redgrave, Lucy Fleming, Simon Williams, Liz Robertson, Jenny Seagrove, Rosemary Ashe, John Owen Jones and Michael Law.

The only pity, as Ruth said, was that the one person who would have most loved it all couldn’t be there. But his infectious public sense of joie de vivre – that often sadly turned itself privately into deep depression – was ever-present. As Ruth also said, the phrase that occurred most often in all of the thousand plus letters, and another thousand e-mails and phone calls, that she received after his death was that he was a “man of the theatre”. Simon Callow nailed it when he said that Sheridan was a “chronicler of the passing scene” as much as he was a critic; and Cameron Mackintosh, referring to Noel Coward’s famous “talent to amuse”, said that Sheridan had, above all, a talent to enthuse.

And yesterday his palpable love for the theatre was repaid by the theatre world’s love of him. It’s a personal pity for me that he’s not here, either, to read this entry: I saw him at a theatre in the last week of his life, and the next day, he sent me a handwritten postcard to say that he’d forgotten to tell me how he’d been talking to someone about the Royal Court’s last press conference that he hadn’t been at — and they asked him how he knew so much about it. He replied, he told me, that he did so by reading this blog. If you weren’t at Sheridan’s memorial yesterday, I hope this blog entry likewise at least helps you to remember him.