When we die, we hopefully live on in the memories of those we leave behind; and though it’s far from the only way in which that kind of legacy can be judged, public memorial services are one gauge of the impact that one life can make. Two memorials that I’ve attended in the last week – for The Stage’s very own Peter Hepple (indefatigable even in death, since extracts from his writing still appear regularly in the paper) last Friday, and for director Steven Pimlott yesterday – proved to be both paradoxically life-affirming occasions.
I knew Peter better than I did Steven – Peter was a colleague whom I used to see regularly at first nights and around town, whereas Steven is someone whom I interviewed three or four times (a couple of them as “phoners” rather than face-to-face), but whose work, of course, I knew well. But by the end of yesterday’s beautiful memorial on the Olivier stage (the director in him would have been impressed by the simple but effective stagecraft and excellent stage management), I felt I knew him well, too – from his love for rollercoasters (footage that he’d shot hurtling around one got the celebration off to a bracing start) to an eclectic professional reach that stretched from Shakespeare to G&S, opera to Lloyd Webber.
For Steven, said Andrew Lloyd Webber in a loving, off-the-cuff speech, there were only two kind of music, good and bad – he was no snob. They worked together on the revival of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat at the London Palladium in 1991 (a production itself now being revived, once reality TV has helped to cast it, at the Adelphi in July), and Andrew remembered how Steven commented when they arrived at the Palladium that “this was a building that wanted to love whatever is on its stage,” beautifully nailing the contribution that a building itself can make to a show’s success.
But then Steven was himself a man who seemed to inspire love amongst everyone and in whatever he was staging. Many spoke of his love of life and his passion – as Declan Donnellan said of him, “he was the most alive person I ever knew”. And even as he faced death, he was completely alive: in video footage taken while he was ill, he was seen saying that he never asked “Why me?” but rather “Why not me?” when he was diagnosed with lung cancer. “It’s part of life. It’s all nature, it’s how things happen”.
But we still lost Steven far too soon. His wife and daughter both took to the stage – one to sing, the other to play the piano – and their loss in incalculable. But as yesterday’s memorial demonstrated, we all felt a part of that loss. There wasn’t a dry eye in the house. I started crying during Raza Jaffrey and Stephen Rahman Hughes’ rendition of ‘The Journey Home’ (from Bombay Dreams, that Steven directed) and continued through Maria Friedman and Philip Quast’s recreation of ‘Move On’ from Sunday in the Park with George that they both starred in the British premiere of, under Steven’s direction, at the National in 1990.
Peter Hepple, who wrote for The Stage for half a century and edited the paper for some twenty years, was also much loved: a rare thing for a critic and entertainment writer. But he was loved not just by his colleagues, but also by the business itself, as tributes from the likes of Barry Cryer and Danny la Rue made clear. As Barry pointed out, Peter was naturally self-effacing – he had a way of backing into the limelight, who made self-deprecation into an art form.
Charlie Spencer, who openly acknowledges that he spent some of his happiest days of his professional life working for The Stage with Peter after arriving there as a burnt-out Fleet Street hack, called him the least elitist of reviewers, as happy reviewing variety acts as shows at the National Theatre. Peter also bequeathed Charlie an immortal phrase that, in the cut and thrust of arts journalism and the constant rows and rivalries that erupt, is always worth remembering: “It’s only rock ‘n’ roll”. I wonder what Peter would make of the current row over the “dead white males” charge levied against critics by the National’s Nicholas Hytner. Peter, who was reviewing until two nights before he died, aged 79, would probably just reply, “It’s only rock ‘n’ roll.”
