Interview Transcript
So, it's the 24th of June 2024. My name's Kiz Durrani. I'm here with the actor Caroline Langrishe at Riverside Studios.
I was wondering whether I could start by asking you about how you first became involved with Riverside Studios?
I first became involved with the Riverside Studios... I wasn't really involved with Riverside Studios, but I did a weekend workshop here with Peter Gill, courtesy of an actor who said that this was the man to work with and he was assisting him on this workshop. He'd worked with him a fair amount himself and he said, come along.
So, I came along and, I mean, it was, it was quite overwhelming. There were a lot of well-known people there. They're not as, they weren't as well known then as they are now, but they were very top-notch actors. And there were quite a lot of actors from Peter Brook’s Company for some reason. I remember that and it was terribly exciting and I mean, unlike anything I'd ever really done before. I was very, very young. I mean, I think I was, then I was, you know, probably 19 at a push and pretty much the youngest there I guess.
I remember he got us all, one of the exercises was, he got us all to speak in our voices that we used when we were 10 years old. So, of course, you had people speaking with South African accents, people speaking with Australian accents. And I just thought I daren't speak how I spoke when I was 10 because, you know, this was the seventies and I was really downplaying my poshness [laugh] big time pretending I sort of talk ‘a bit like that’ and roll my own cigarettes. And I thought God, I'm gonna have, well, everyone else is doing it, I'll just have to do it. So I sort of talked like that, a bit like, you know, the young queen and everybody fell about and I thought it's fine, you know, it's perfectly inclusive, I'm getting a laugh and I think, I think it was from encountering me in that workshop that he brought me in for an audition for The Cherry Orchard, which I wanted more than life itself.
I don't know that I was aware of the significance of Riverside Studios as such, because it wasn't really even on the map then, but it was all about working with Peter Gill and I'd been playing a lot of Russian ingenues up until then. So, I thought I'm on home territory here and the audition, I remember having to get to Hammersmith Tube. I lived in Notting Hill at the time, which of course, you know, one did in the seventies.
I got the tube to Hammersmith, and I thought, ah, Queen Caroline Street, it's an omen, I'm going to get the job. And he was so sweet and welcoming and basically wanted the gossip on Anna Karenina. You know what was Stuart Wilson who played Bronsky really like, and I'm very interested in him as an actor. Now, what's he like? What's so and so like, and I, I like a bit of gossip myself, so we got on like a house on fire.
Then I had to go back for a recall with Julie Covington who had just recorded Don't Cry For Me Argentina, which was a huge hit and obviously in The Cherry Orchard, you've got Anya and Varya, they're not blood sisters, but she was, you know, my sister in the story and he wanted to see us together, how we reacted together. And I was just so impressed that it was Julie Covington, you know, the singer as she was then. And I, sort of like Tourette's, I kept humming, Don't Cry for Me Argentina. Good God, I hope no one heard that! Anyway, I got the job. And was absolutely terrified most days at rehearsals because they were all so grown up. But they were so funny. Everybody. I'm looking at the cast now on a flyer and already it makes me want to laugh. They just, we just laughed and laughed and laughed. We just laughed and that, you know, that's really put me on the map.
I mean, I have to say it's irrelevant for this particular subject, but in the same week as I was offered The Cherry Orchard, I was offered a part in a film called The Stud with Joan Collins. And I would have had to have done some awful kind of sex scene in it with, I don’t know, some hunk, and my agent who, who's a renowned agent actually, Jeremy Conway, said to me “Now, you've been offered The Stud for which you'll be paid £500 a week for three weeks’ filming. But you've also, I'm very pleased to say, been offered The Cherry Orchard with Peter Gill for £60 a week, what are you going to do?”.
And I mean, I just immediately said I'm going to do The Cherry Orchard and he went, oh, thank goodness you said that. So, I mean, I think that was a slightly career defining moment actually because I did actually go on to work with Peter in five more productions when he went to the National. And I think if I hadn't have done The Cherry Orchard, who knows what the story would have been, who knows?
You mentioned having an involvement with Riverside Studios quite early on and obviously Riverside Studios has been through a number of changes physically, it's a different building to how it would have been. Could you tell us a bit about what it was like in those days, walking to Riverside Studios, what the sounds were like and even what the place smelt like perhaps?
It was very... it was a very grotty building and you sort of, you didn't approach it from where you approach it now. You went down this, what's that street called this street down here where there's the, is it The Chancellor's (pub)?
Crisp Road.
Crisp Road. You went down there and you went down a sort of little alleyway and into a sort of side access and yes, I remember the smell vividly. I mean, I guess it was still like a TV studio, but it was tatty, was really tatty. And it had this sort of strip of a bar where we all congregated, and I spent an awful lot of time in the loos panicking that I looked terrible.
I needed to top up my lipstick, I needed to brush my, you know, so young and anxious. But the loo I remember vividly and of course I was always in love with somebody, so I was always hurling myself into the loo to glam myself up in case I happened to bump into my latest pash [laugh].
What would you say is distinctive or unique about Riverside Studios then and perhaps now?
I suppose its accessibility and the space of it. I mean, to be honest, in those days, I didn't even really notice that it was anywhere near the river. I mean, we didn't see the river from where we worked unless, from your dressing room, you could walk down a corridor which either took you to the stage and you made your entrances from the back of, basically seats on scaffolding, really it was just like scaffolding, there was no backstage area as such, but the corridor that the dressing rooms were in which were obviously left over from the, the TV days, there was a little fire exit door at the end and you could open it and you could, you could see and smell the river from there but that was all I knew about the river. And the strange thing is now it's all about its river frontage and the views and these fab flats upstairs and a completely, you know, an entrance in a different place. So yes, it was pretty grotty, but it was happily grotty.
Just from a personal perspective, what sort of impact has Riverside had on your life and career?
Well, I feel very, very sentimental about it. I mean, very sentimental. Unknowingly, of course, to me anyway, it was a, it was what would nowadays be called, very, very trendy, but we didn't really use that word cool or trendy, a more, more recent language. This was, you know, this was the mid to late seventies. But it felt kind of right on, if anything, it felt really groovy, you know, if you were working at Riverside Studios, you were in the right place at the right time. And that was a, a very kind of, you know, yummy feeling. I think I was sort of in love with it. I was in love with it and I was in love with everybody who worked in it. I was just in love with the whole experience.
Thinking back to that time period, do you have any recollections about particularly memorable colleagues?
Memorable colleagues? I mean, Peter. I mean, this is probably to do with Peter himself. He creates when he casts, he creates a family and because the play The Cherry Orchard was about a family, you know, that was the essence of it. So, you know, when I say I was sort of in love with it, I mean, I was, in love with everybody. I mean, Liz Estensen was pretty impressive because she'd been in The Liver Birds. And I thought, oh, how weird that you're on telly in The Liver Birds but you're, you're also doing a play in this kind of, you know, very groovy place. I didn't think the two really went together, I was too young to understand that as an actor, you know, you work in all sorts of different areas. I was terribly impressed by her and she was so sweet. (Looks at a photograph) Yes, oh my God, there she is, Liz Estensen and Julie Covington. Well, Julie Covington, I just thought was a star but of course, she didn't behave like a star at all and she, you know, she rejected the whole, Don't Cry for Me Argentina malarkey in order to do The Cherry Orchard. So, we were all here for the love of Peter and, and the commitment and of course, with it being the first kind of main show in the theatre, it got a lot of attention, and it was just simply, it was just like being in the right place at the right time. I do remember Liz Estensen telling me quite quietly when I asked her how old she was that she was 29 and I thought, God, 29. And I thought, you don't look 29. You know, it just seems so old, and I think I was closer to her in age than the rest of the company.
But I did, I stayed friends with her for years actually. I was quite intimidated by the other actors. I mean, Stephen Rea I just thought was, you know, heaven on a stick and was supposed to [be] in the play, so that worked very well. There's lots of gossip there, but I probably won't tell you that regarding Julie and Stephen. They were very, very close. And, oh my God, it was, it was a very romantic, very heady company. And as I say, very, very giggly.
I mean, Eleanor Bron. Being in a rehearsal room with Eleanor Bron and Philip Locke, they had a competition one day, they were just playing around where they, they had to get higher than the other one. So, they were sort of climbing up in the, we rehearsed in situ, you know, in the studio that we did the play in and there were these sort of ladders going up, obviously left over from the telly days and they would climb up these ladders trying to get higher than the other, convulsed with laughter. And I just remember thinking I had no idea that grownups behaved like this.
During the time you were working here, you may have seen other performances or exhibitions or shows taking place because Riverside Studios is known for its sort of diversity and range of programming. Is there anything from among that that you remember or have a fondness for?
Well, I remember I went, you know, like literally doggedly to see everything that Peter directed after that. He did a production of The Changeling which I desperately wanted to be in and he said, no, no, no, no, you can't possibly play Beatrice-Joanna in The Changeling. And I said, but why? And he said, well, you couldn't act it. [laugh] I said I'm sure I could. And he said, no, no, you couldn't. He said, I mean, I could teach you to act it but you're not going to play it. And, you know, I just had to accept that and then he did a production of Measure for Measure which, bizarrely my ex-husband, Patrick Drury was in, but I didn't, I only saw that production and I do remember chatting to him in the bar afterwards. But I didn't meet him again, for... again in Peter Gill's Company at the National, a few years down the line when, when I did A Month in the Country and Don Juan as, as Peter called it with its translation and Much Ado About Nothing and Patrick and I met on Much Ado. But I do remember him and Helen Mirren in this production of Measure for Measure and I remember thinking, oh, he's rather interesting. He's, he's quite, he's rather good, but I was rather frightened of him in the bar. He seemed rather stern and severe and, you know, Helen Mirren flitting around. But again, I don't think I was starstruck because these people weren't nearly as famous then as they are now.
And Peter went on to hold a lot of workshops for his repertoire of actors. Actors he'd worked with over many years, just ad hoc workshops and I, I would, you know, attend them all, you know, religiously. And then went through, you know, all the agony, a few years later when he went to the National of having to audition for him for A Month in the Country which thank God, I got. Another Russian ingenue.
I think you're based locally, that you're not far from Hammersmith?
Well, actually, I lived, I did live for 28 years in Putney, just the other side of the river. So, I would pass Riverside Studios all the time on my walks. I also row on the river. Not competitively. I'm what's called a recreational rower. A little gaggle of us do it every so often. Well, every week we try to. So, I've, I've watched, you know, Riverside disappear and come back again and from a sculling boat. And yeah, I mean, it's difficult for me now. I only moved about four or five months ago. So, it's difficult for me now not being in the vicinity of it because it's, it does feel, it's my place you know. It is my place, and I felt very sentimental walking from the tube, which I don't normally, I haven't done for 28 years because of course, I would just walk over Hammersmith Bridge from the tow path and trot by.
I came here for Eat Out to Help Out. Probably not a very wise move!
Hammersmith plays a role in Riverside Studios as the setting. In the time since you were working here, how has Hammersmith changed, in your view?
Hammersmith? I don't know that I spend that much time in Hammersmith. I'm not sure that Hammersmith itself has changed that much actually. The thing that is noticeable, of course, is the tube and all the places you can eat, like I did just before I came here. I suddenly thought something's not right, I'm starving and I had a choice of about, you know, fifteen fast food places, so that's all new. But it doesn't feel... it doesn't feel very different, to be perfectly honest. And the pubs along the river we used to go to, no, it doesn't actually feel that different. I've got to know Bishop's Park much more from living in Putney because again, you can get to it over Putney Bridge and then walk through Bishop's Park and Fulham Palace I absolutely love. And then, you know, then I'd go, I'd go the extra mile and come up past Riverside, pop in for a coffee. I do feel very strongly that it's very much my place.
Do you have a view on how Riverside Studios has involved younger people or the local community?
Well, yes, I'm aware that it does now, it's but, you know, Peter was always very interested in the local community and he had all sorts of, strange friendships actually. I mean, there was a guy who was a dustbin man, Willie. I can't remember what his surname was but Willie, he befriended... Peter was, you know, wanted to teach him and gave him Proust to read and, you know, you'd see Willie who really, you know, I probably shouldn't say this but I mean, he actually looked like a dustbin man. I mean, he was, he was large, he was overweight, he didn't look healthy, he didn't look like he had a healthy diet. And there he was with his battered copy of Proust, you know, and Peter sort of took him under his wing and educated him. He'd appear, he'd appear in rehearsals or, you know, he'd be around and he was like that, Peter. And I do remember plays Umbrella, I remember that being a big thing and meeting, meeting all these amazing black dancers and, you know, long before all the diversity that's going on now and that was all terribly exciting and it was sort of really good to be a part of that.
Just trying to compare Riverside Studios as was, to where it is now, from your perspective are there any elements from that period that are missing today?
Well, I suppose, for me, Riverside Studios was Peter Gill. So, because he was, is such a talented man and such a genius. And he has such a wealth of knowledge that to be part of his inner circle was a sort of honor. I mean, he was, for me, he was a Svengali figure and, and I didn't go to drama school as such, I trained as a dancer and was certainly never going to be a ballerina but I left Elmhurst Ballet school when I was 16 and a half. I did a season with the National Youth Theatre and then I just started working. I got an agent and I started working. So I didn't, hadn't had a drama school experience. So working with Peter, that was my drama school if you like, probably not ideal because I wasn't always with people my own age, unlike if I'd gone to university or drama school where I would have been.
But, for me, I mean I'm interested in the studios, I love the building, I come and see the odd thing here, I always keep my eyes open. You know, it feels, even though the loos are in a different place, it feels familiar to me. But I think, I think because Peter Gill was sort of, you know, the ringmaster at the time and attracted all these actors of that period, I'm not seeing that now. You know, it would be nice to have a sort of theatre manager/director. But I don't know if the building requires that, if it wants to do in-house productions in that way. But that would be fun to see again.
What difference, if any, do you think Riverside Studios has made? Very general question?
Well, I suppose it's a tricky one because it's, I suppose it's not really what I would call a fringe theatre, but it's obviously not mainstream either. It's a sort of art house and you tend to find these places, more like the Arnolfini in Bristol I suppose I would equate it with. There would, you know, you have art exhibitions here, people come here to do play readings, people use it as a rehearsal space. Shows are put on, shows for children are put on. It's an art venue rather than specifically a fringe theatre unlike, for example, the Menier where I've worked a few times is very much a theatre and that's kind of it. This is, I would say this, you know, covers a lot more in the arts world.
I think earlier on, you mentioned the word accessibility which you associated with Riverside Studios. Do you think the programming currently is accessible to a broad audience?
I think so, I think so, yes. And it's still got that lovely feel that it always had, that you can just walk in. You don't have to have booked something or you might walk in and be surprised. And of course you've got the cinema which is quite a draw so I don't think there was a cinema in my day. There was further down the line because of course, I ended [up doing] Twelfth Night here,10 years later and it had changed, it had changed and it wasn't under the umbrella of Peter then.
But then weirdly, I was working for Ken Branagh, you know, who at that time was very much, you know, a rising star. So again, I was in another legendary production completely by accident, because it was his sort of showcase for Renaissance Theatre, and I'd just been working with him on The Fortunes of War. So, we've been filming out in what was then, Lubljana Yugoslavia and doing the Balkan Trilogy. So, I got to know him and then he said, I'm going to form a theatre company and we're going to call it Renaissance. And I was like, oh God, are you really, you know, and even when we were filming in Yugoslavia as it then was, for my character, I wasn't on set all day, every day, so I was flown back and forth and he would get whoever was flown back and forth, but it was me more than anyone else, to go to Foyles and come back with carrier bags of copies of plays.
And I remember bringing back, you know, A Midsummer Night's Dream or, you know, they were mostly Shakespeare and I'd, you know, come through with 12 copies of this and 15 copies of that and we'd sit around the hotel after filming and read plays. And of course, Emma Thompson was very much on the scene, that's where they met. And he would say, you know, I'm going to form this theatre company and we were all a bit sort of, how are you going to do that? And the next thing was he did.
And then again, I got a call from my agent saying, do you want to go in and read for Olivia in Twelfth Night for Ken? And I was like God, he's really done it, that's impressive. And I started reading, I got halfway through, you know, Olivia and he went, stop, stop, stop. Don't worry, do you want to play it or not? I said yes, I do. So, I was back here at Riverside Studios but it was slightly different in that it had been sort of cleaned up and it looked a bit more glamorous.
I mean, when we did the first performance well, the first Press Night of the Cherry Orchard, honestly, it was a tip and I will never, you know, we were all very nervous. We were about to open, you know, the first performance and there were literally people coming in with plants in pots, designing a lobby as it were, a foyer. By the time we got to Twelfth Night, it was a lot smarter and I can't remember whether it was Twelfth Night, I think it was Twelfth Night that Princess Margaret wanted to see, but there was no royal box and it was sold out. And I remember Ken very grandly saying, well, it's sold out, there aren't any tickets. Anyway, she can't come because we haven't got a royal box. They didn't come, but Prince Charles came, as he was, and sat in the, I mean, you could see him. Obviously, you could see him from the stage and sat in the audience and met us all afterwards. I’ve got a picture hanging up in my bathroom with me shaking hands with Prince Charles and Ken looking proudly on. It was a pretty good place to be, yeah.
And it was kind of funny, you know, 10 years later coming back as more of a grown up. I had, I had a bit of a profile by then, you know. I think, what had I done? Had I done Lovejoy by then? Maybe not but I'd certainly been in TV series’ and stuff. So you know, I came back as a grown up with a bit more kudos. I was married by then to Patrick Drury from Measure for Measure and had two very small children. And, yeah, I mean, you know, Twelfth Night was the most resounding success.
Even Ken was saying, he said I couldn't have written these reviews myself, they were so good, so good. And it just sold out and we didn't transfer it. I don't think he would have got the all the cast together to transfer it into the West End but ITV made a film of it which, embarrassingly, it is still shown in schools and my girls, as they were growing up, were subjected to that in their English lessons.
Is there anything we haven't covered that you'd like to mention or discuss?
No, I don't think. I mean, well, I think I could probably talk forever about how happy I was, in both those jobs.
But you do get a sense that the Riverside Studios almost helped you gain confidence?
It was, it was what I would say that, on both occasions, and it still feels like it now just passing the building or walking into the building, I suppose the word is egalitarian, it just feels like there's, there was no star dressing room, there was no ..., everybody was on the same money for both those productions. The dressing rooms, I don't know if they still are, actually, I haven't been in one but they're just rooms off a corridor. The loo was always, you know, you had to walk through the bar to get to the loos so I'm afraid we just used to use the basins [laughs] and that was the same for both those productions and it was 10 years between them, so someone hadn't worked something out. And it was, it's just the fact that, I don't know, everybody was in it together, everyone was here, you know, doing those shows because they wanted to be working with those directors. They were very happy to be in this space.
You know, think of Helen Mirren now, I mean, she was just in one of those little cubby holes backstage. There was no sort of green room area as such, nothing like that. It was the bar and the dressing rooms and some loo somewhere that nobody could ever get to on time and you made your entrance from the back on both those productions,10 years apart, from the backstage was..., literally you would come out of your dressing room and there would be, you know, a wall of seats. You know, you could look up people's skirts, you could help yourself to their handbags on scaffolding and you had to be very, very quiet and walk around the back and walk down the side and then you make your entrance onto the stage, this lovely wide, wide stage. And it was nice because you could have sort of sound effects off stage, particularly in the Cherry Orchard as a family. You know, you could hear laughter and people chatting as if they were in another room and, really, we were literally kind of under the audience's seats practically and that had a really nice feeling.
I was far more nervous during the Cherry Orchard, because I was so young, than I was perhaps during Twelfth Night. All that certainly had its challenges with it being Shakespeare and everything. But I hadn't done very much Shakespeare at all, especially having not been to drama school. But I do remember on The Cherry Orchard sitting, having to sit on a long bench with Liz Estenson and Stephen Rea and me and Judy Covington just sitting on this bench playing this scene. And I remember being so panicked with stage fright on occasion, particularly because of someone famous in the audience, there were famous people in the audience all the time because people flocked to see both these productions. And I can remember sitting on stage sort of looking dreamy, which is what I've been directed to do but really thinking up like Chekovian sounding lines to get me off stage so that I could faint or vomit or something. And of course, I never did.
And Peter was quite a dictatorial director, and I remember him saying to me once in rehearsals “Caroline, if you don't say this line right, you've got to hit the inflection right, if you don't say it right, all the lights will come down and everybody will go home”. And I thought, yeah, you know, whatever. Anyway, I was sitting on the stage one night and my mind had wandered into kind of, oh God, how can I get out of this scene? I'm so scared and all the lights went out, all the lights went out and I went, oh, he's done it. Because he watched the show every night, he was obsessed with it. Most of his productions, he does. And you would see him, you could see him walking along the back row. You could even hear, you know, the creaking of the seating and I thought he's done it, he's actually done it.
So, all the lights went out and it's awful when that happens in the theatre because you think what's happened, and the audience sort of start muttering and shuffling in their seats. And Judy Parfitt very sort of confidently and grown up, got up and said “Very sorry ladies and gentlemen, there's obviously been a power cut or something and we'll be back with you shortly”. And we all sort of went off feeling our way to the back of the auditorium. And I was, I was going it's my fault, it's because of me. And Judy Parfitt said “It's not all about you Caroline”. And I went, no, no, no, it is. It's because I wasn't doing it properly, I wasn't concentrating and Peter's seen it. Anyway of course, the generators had gone down, and they were fired up again and on we went and I felt such an idiot, such an idiot. But I have told Peter that. He knows that story. But that's how much I was in his thrall [laughs].
That's great, thank you. I think it's so interesting that you were in kind of the first productions, in the first season of Riverside Studios’ iteration as a performing arts centre. So, what was that like coming into somewhere that wasn't really set up as a theatre? And I suppose, were you aware of that as well? And did you foresee or think about what it might become?
To be perfectly honest, no I don't think I did I mean, I was 19. You know, what did I know? I didn't, it could have been the Theatre Royal Drury Lane really. It didn't even cross my mind that it was anything other than this exciting place to be. Everyone was very excited to be here. There was a real sense of this is very exciting, this is opening the new space and there was a real energy about it and a real panic when we got to the press night and they had to make it look a bit attractive, you know, and put a bit of carpeting down and, you know, bring these plants in and everything. But no, and then of course, as soon as I'd finished working here, I just wanted to come back and I just came back all the time.
And yes, of course, you know, immediately it was on the map and it was always, I remember Helen Mirren being on the cover of Time Out, you know, she's doing Measure for Measure at Riverside Studios. And I was like, I've worked there, I've worked there.
So, by the time we did Twelfth Night it was completely on the map and the grooviest place to work. Maybe again, maybe I suppose a modern-day comparison would be like, maybe like the Almeida when that started or the Donmar Warehouse. But Riverside was more than that, as I said earlier, because it wasn't just a theatre, it was, you know, this vibrant place, there were lots of different productions and different studios sort of opened while we were here. I think the play’s Umbrella probably opened one of the, studio two or something, I can't remember. And the cinema didn't really exist, that all evolved, yeah.
Well, one thought was about, thinking about the spaces which were TV studios then, as you said, and Brian Cox, when we spoke to him, talked about doing these running entrances and exits that were quite daunting. You know, you had quite a long way to travel to get to the centre of the stage.
Yeah, you really had to time your entrance and I think that's where Peter was clever and that he got sort of chattering, as in characters chattering off stage as if we were actually all in the same house. But God, yeah, I mean, and because I was an ingenue, I had to run nonstop, and we had these little lace-up boots, petticoats and wigs and God knows what corsets.
Did you have a costume? Was there a costume department?
Well, there was this costume designer, Pamela Howard and there wasn't a costume department that I remember, no. We would go to Cos Prop and it was done off site. Yeah, there wasn't a costume department as such.
I mean, I have to keep telling everybody, of course it was the seventies. So, in between meeting Peter for the audition and the rehearsals actually starting, I had a perm. So my hair just went mmm. And he went, oh my God, oh my God, what's happened? Who's been nibbling your hair? And I said, well, you know. What have you done? I said, well, it's, you know, it's the fashion, you know, it's just curly hair. And he went, well this is an absolute disaster, you'll have to have a wig. So I was sent off for a wig fitting.
And in one of these pictures, there you are, you can actually see in this flyer that I've got this crinkly hair. But you've also got a cutting in a newspaper that was taken during the dress rehearsals, which was used for the publicity where you can see this wig. Look, see that wig, that's a wig and that's my real hair, right? So I turned up for the dress rehearsal with this long blonde wig which I think cost more than I was being paid for the whole job. And Peter took one look at it and he went, oh God, you look as if you were about to go down a rabbit hole and off it came. And by which time my own crinkly perm had grown out a little bit and we used that because it was sort of more natural looking. So all this money went on this wig at vast expense, which is in some photographs because they were used for the publicity from the dress rehearsal. But when the play opened that wig got stamped on, that was the end of that [laughs].
I've got a very specific question as well. Richard Briers. Obviously in that first production by Renaissance, but I think until he died he was working with Ken. Can you just talk a little about working with him?
It's impossible to work with him, because all you do is cry with laughter. It's virtually impossible to get through a scene, let alone a sentence. He is just ridiculously funny. Was. Delightful, unaffected, terribly generous, very nervous, very nervous, which is great because we're all nervous so we could all like, you know, he was one of us.
And he was a very, very, very sweet man. We laughed ourselves stupid and in the yellow stockings scene, when he comes on in the yellow stockings and he just grinned at the audience and they, literally everybody just collapsed. And I had to keep a straight face for the scene. Well, I mean, on occasion, I just couldn't.
So, of course, I mean, it was obvious that I was trying not to laugh, which made the audience laugh even more. I mean, and this would go on minute after minute after minute, and I’d think God Ken's going to be furious. You know, he's gonna tell us off. But actually, he was just very, very funny, but he, he'd be standing backstage as it were, you know, this hugely wide backstage and terribly nervous. “Oh, I can't do it, I can't do it, I'm gonna be terrible, I'm gonna be awful. They hate me, they will hate me. It's all going to be a disaster”. And I'd be going, get on, get on, you know, the cue will go, go. “Oh God, oh God, oh God, I don't want to do it, I don't want to do it”. And he'd go on stage and he'd stand there and before he'd even opened his mouth, the audience were laughing. It was so extraordinary how self-critical he was, how negative he was and yet how funny he was.
And by that point, had you lost your nerves? I mean, had you gained control of, because obviously 10 years between, you're reassuring somebody. So, was that the journey?
Well, I suppose, I mean I'm not saying I was without nerves. I mean, it's a very exposing stage to be on, there's nowhere to hide, you know. In The Cherry Orchard, there was, of course, a set, there was a beautiful floor and beautiful furniture, I think William Dudley did it, you know who Peter worked with a lot. It was a beautiful, beautiful set.
And Twelfth Night actually was sort of on two levels. He had the band on stage throughout the whole play but it was still, you're very exposed, it's very wide, there's no wings to hide in. Before you make your entrance, you’re really amongst the audience, so you can sense the atmosphere, you can sense whether it's going well, whether they're receptive or not. It's a, it's a frightening place. It takes a lot of bottle. But for me, of course, it was very, very useful being that young and not really having that much to compare it to. And then, you know, in later years when I worked with Peter on the Olivier stage, it's absolutely fine standing centre stage completely on my own, and the older acts would be, oh darling, darling, it's all so frightening, it's all so huge. And I'd be like, no, it's not, it's fine.
So, in that sense, was Riverside a good training ground?
Yes, Riverside was my drama school. It was my world, it was my world. And, and you know, I was on the up as an ingenue actress and in the last couple of weeks of doing The Cherry Orchard, I was offered a major feature film which was filming in Mexico. I mean, I didn't want to do that, I didn't want to do it at all and all the other actors who were obviously all older than me were all going, oh darling, I'm going to be out of work again, oh, it's all awful. And I was so embarrassed that I'd got this film to go on to, literally directly go on to, that I just didn't mention it, until literally sort of the last few days. And they'd say, well, what are you doing, Caroline? I go, well I'm going to Mexico to be in a film. They were going, what? Why didn't you tell us? And I can remember the last night party of The Cherry Orchard, which was held in the studio, I had to leave. I had to leave early to get in a taxi to go to Heathrow. And I wrote to Peter Gill from Mexico saying I don't want to be here. I just want to do The Cherry Orchard for the rest of my life.
I think that's a really nice way to end. Thank you so much.
Thank you.
