Nicholas de Jongh’s current appearance on the marquee of a West End theatre with his play Plague Over England was, I wrote here a few weeks ago, the first time a member of the Critics’ Circle had a play on in the West End since Jeremy Kingston’s Signs of the Times played at the Vaudeville in 1973.
But I’ve now discovered another regular first-nighter has had a previous life as a playwright! Researching the career of veteran composer Sandy Wilson for the public onstage interview I am doing this afternoon with him at the Shaw Theatre, I discovered an intriguing credit buried in one online bio: “He contributed material to the Peter Cook revue Pieces of Eight in 1959, and in 1960 wrote some songs for a play by Robert Tanitch, Call It Love, at Wyndham’s Theatre (the show was a disaster)”.
You’ll have heard of Cook, of course; but I didn’t know that Robert had this sort of prior pedigree.
I’ve known him for years - he variously writes for Plays International and The Lady, and can also be found in such disparate places as the Morning Star (“Britain’s Socialist Daily Paper”) and the Catholic Herald (“Britain’s leading Catholic Newspaper”) - but I’ve managed to miss his theatrical output. I think I can be forgiven: it seems that most if it happened before I was born!
I duly spoke to Robert yesterday, and he remembered that Call It Love had been a great success at the Belgrade in Coventry, where it used period songs, but that Wilson had been conscripted to compose original pastiches instead of the period for its London transfer. Not that Robert blames Sandy; it was just one of those things that failed to travel. It had been specially commissioned by the Belgrade’s artistic director Bryan Bailey after the success of a one-act comedy, A Prior Engagement, that had been premiered at the Oxford Playhouse while Robert was still an undergraduate at St Catherine’s College, Oxford.
Robert also had another play produced at Coventry subsequently: It was called Came the Knight and was directed by a young tyro director, then fresh out of Cambridge - none other than Trevor Nunn in 1963! And Robert also had another West End credit for a show called Highly Confidential that starred Hermione Gingold at the Cambridge Theatre, in 1969.
Robert, who now regularly writes theatrical biographies (subjects include Ralph Richardson, Laurence Olivier, Leonard Rossiter, Peggy Ashcroft, Dirk Bogarde, John Mills and Oscar Wilde), also published an impressive tome, The London Stage in the 20th Century, last year. The book listed every London opening of the century, from January 9, 1900 (when The Times review for a production of She Stoops to Conquer declared, “The dearth of good new plays has at any rate one good advantage. It induces managers to revive some old ones”) to December 16, 1999 (when an RSC production of another old play, Othello, in which Ray Fearon had been the first black actor to play the title role at Stratford since Paul Robeson, opened in London); I obviously didn’t read it closely enough to notice that Robert warranted two entries of his own! I will now go back to check….
But Robert is not the only active member of the Critics’ Circle to have had such a compelling earlier life. In the obituary last Saturday for Laurence Payne, best known for playing TV detective Sexton Blake in the ITV children’s series, Michael Coveney recalled that, “As Blake, he never lost his suavity or self-composure as he dashed about town in a Rolls-Royce with his trusty young sidekick, Edward ‘Tinker’ Carter, and Pedro the intrepid bloodhound.”
No, it isn’t the bloodhound that has been a member of the Critics’ Circle, but another person with a scent for a hit: as Michael’s obituary continues, “Carter was played by Roger Foss, now an arts journalist.” Roger even has his own IMDB page here. How many other critics can make that claim?
To my astonishment, I can - http://uk.imdb.com/name/nm3017911/
But, in view of the content of the programme, I don't think I will.
It also reports that I'm "Down 62% in popularity this week." Pah.