Today is 11 o’clock on the 25th of January 2024. We are in Hammersmith, by the river. I would like – my name is Susannah Herbert, my subject is Peter Gill. Peter, will you introduce yourself and explain your relationship to Riverside Studios.
I’m Peter Gill. My relationship with Riverside is based that I was asked to be on a committee that helped the Labour council, whose leader was the forward-looking Barry Stead - who’s still with us - and Nick Rainsford, who’s no longer an MP, of what to do with Riverside Studios. Now, that part of Hammersmith is not remotely sort of middle-class, sort of a working river, and that was where – next to Riverside, those flats, that was the cleansing department. But I had actually acted in something in Riverside Studios, it was an old site of a film studios and then the BBC had it. And they, they put it on sale in a relatively good price, I think, and the council then was lead as I say by Barry Stead who was a considerable figure in that world of local government, and he thought that it was not too expensive and it was an investment that they didn't know what to do. But for it to go out of the borough, this space.
And so they set up a committee. And Hugh Willet - do you know who I mean? - rang me because he lived with his wife, who's an artist down in those new houses in Hammersmith Terrace, which was designed by the husband of one of the artists. And I didn't know him very well but of course he was - he was not the sort of, a) he'd had a very good war, but he'd been an agitator, really in the thirties. And he had been, run the Arts Council, et cetera. And I didn't really know and he said, ‘Have you been asked?’ And I said, ‘I have been asked’. He said, ‘Well, if you go, I'll go’. So we went to the public meeting, not to the public meeting to the meeting, and it became very clear that this was going to be a kind of ludicrous replay of students in the sixties that that people were going to be doing good without knowing anything about what good they were doing or how. So we, I don't really know what it was after. So we decided we would take part. And then there became a became a battle of, of an ideological battle because this was the time of the new left, as it were, and, of course, part of - but I was not going to see Riverside being some middle-class boy's idea of what the working-class wanted, and neither did Hugh. He was too old and lefty, you know what I mean? That it had, so we, we sort of thought it was our duty to, and there was a big argument about what it should be. And I got so interested in the battle that I volunteered to run a weekend, which would be because I'd done a production of As You Like It at the Edinburgh Festival. And I thought, well, they can do one performance of that in jeans. And incidentally, I suddenly saw looking at Yes Minister that one of the - the actor who played Touchstone wasn't free. I’ve forgotten his name. And what's his name? Who is in, who's dead now, and I can't remember his name. In Yes, Minister. He's....
Paul Eddington?
No, his enemy. The civil servant who's famous [Nigel Hawthorne]. So, so we did it that I had done it with - I managed to get the same cast, which, with Jane Lapotaire and I, I realised there was going to be a battle of what we, what I had hinted at, which was what they would now call wokery, which you know - that was good intentions, but becoming - not achieving anything...without the skill. And there's a little side story here.
I'm going to keep you on this one, simply...
Go on, ask me a question.
The question will be about your role. You were putting on a weekend. If I can take you on chronologically, then you decided to become or were invited to become the artistic director and the administrator.
No, we had, there was a young man called Nick Hooton, I still think, and he worked for the Council and he had worked his socks out, getting all these meetings done. So I saw no reason why he shouldn't be appointed to manage it, because he knew the Council and he was a clever chap.
And you had the power to do that?
I don't know, I suppose, yes, I suppose it must have been - I thought, well, if I'm going to run it, I'm going to run it. I know there'll be a board. I know how to deal with this. And I had had Hugh who was the chairman of the board. We had a public meeting. We did everything you're supposed to do. Hugh was very skillful at that because he could bat a question. And you say oh get on with it, Hugh, and you thought, oh no, this is what he's doing. He's boring them to death.
You were what age?
I was getting on a bit, actually. I mean, by those -
Thirties?
Thirties, yes. And it was not, in a way, a very wise move if you looked at it objectively because I could have made a lot of money, et cetera. You know, that was that time. But I - I did not act of virtue, but it was so interesting to see this, this modern battle of ideas going on. And I was a boy brought up in a council estate, so I would - but I wasn't going to let this become... nor Hugh, something that wouldn't work.
I'm going to ask you about what you did to make that vision, become reality.
But I may...
First of all, will you articulate the vision that you had. You told me what it wasn't, what was it?
An image is, an image is that I wouldn't let - I made sure the coffee was cheap and there were various ideological things. So a chap who that is a picture of really in a funny way who who sort of dropped me was a cleaner, a Scottish – you could hardly understand – and he lived next door. And he said, I heard him say he was overweight: ‘Is it all right for me to sit here?’ I said - and I realised that one of the big things there was going to be cheap coffee. And just in – if somebody might have popped in. So we had a little boy who's now well-known who was at St Paul’s School. Simon Curtis, who's the producer. And at the same time, there was a girl called Lizzie, now dead, who was a problem child, and I gave her a job. So there were two images. He's now rich and famous, she's dead. But nevertheless, it was a way of including the kid, because we then found one of the boys on the estate lived in the top of the studio. He had a mattress when it was - it's very difficult for me to exactly remember. It was a battle of ideas, if you see what I mean, at the time when I was old enough not to be of the generation, that was, I thought, posing as they would say then, and there was an interesting example of what I saw my job to be and that never could do was the caretaker. I noticed there was a lot of clearly stolen rock and roll equipment in one of the big studios because we're near the Apollo and he said can my boy – his band – rehearse? And I was on the boy’s side but I got I've got no power, I said, and I thought, well hang on.
This is meant to be a community. And I said, well, as long as you don't tell anybody, yes, and, he's – I've forgotten his name, he got chucked out eventually. That was the Sex Pistols... Were they the boys from...? And that really was true. And I think it's because of my father who had worked in running a youth club. You know, I used to go with him to football. I hated football, but I liked my father. So I used to go every week with my brothers. I suppose coming from a Catholic upper working-class background, I knew about that kind of duty, I suppose.
I want to ask you about your, your first moves when you actually got to be in charge of the centre, you had a place, possibly not a grand place. You had a budget....
Yes, that was the big thing.
And you had a team. But you were in charge. Apart from the coffee, what did you do that you think was most important?
Well, symbolically giving Lizzie a job, if that makes any sense to you. But it was an acknowledgement that we were not going to be some hippie ...
Meaning that Lizzie was a local kid.
She was a local, problematical child. And she fulfilled a function, which was that it meant that she could cope with anything going on with kids. So she and Simon Curtis are the images, the one didn't – you know she's dead – and the other is a rich man, because he was – genuinely, he hung about and he used to do our photocopying, and he was at Saint Paul's school.
So you have this rather radical idea of an open space. You invite people in and you have an eye – you can determine who is welcome and who isn't. But the expectations of your employers, the Hammersmith Council, were presumably quite clear?
Well, then we had one or two. We had an old-fashioned Labour girl who thought this will trickle down to the real people, you know, who had sense - is it better to have it or not have it, that sort of thing? Do you know... not as Hugh Willit was an expert in the field that we're talking about. He was a good man. His wife was a painter, and he'd had experience of the Arts Council good or bad, because he actually came from a family in Nottingham that had been the people who got the Nottingham Playhouse built. I think his father was a figure in.. So, I had by now, by living in Lower Mall ,knew a lot about that upper middle-class thing. Do...you know, because don’t forget...
Yes, you knew the area. The contrast between the wealth...
Yes. And I'd lived there a long time. And you see, if you look when you're at the White House, that was where Anne – I've forgotten her surname, her son is a designer, that's which – they hosted in her drawing room the Royal Court Writers Group. And I'd been to a few. Now, that was only a particular cadre of Royal Court writers, the – John Osborne never went to any of those, if you know what I mean. So that's where Keith Johnson started. Do you know who I mean? He's dead now. He was - he invented.. They went to live in Canada. He was – became, he’s a good figure to look up.
I will. I have, what did, I want to know what Riverside enabled you to do? What did it do for you as a...?
Director. Well, I could do what I liked is what it is. And I wasn't so stupid as - so the thing I did first, which was a deliberate, awkward upper working-class thing is, I did a production of the Cherry Orchard. You’re not meant to do the Cherry Orchard in working-class. Do you know what I mean? I was not going to do what pleased he sort of bourgeois. Do you see me? And I was, I trained at the Court Theatre, so I had no snobbery about acting. So I landed this famous girl who just turned down Evita called Julie Covington to be in it because she was that kind of girl.
The reaction to your choice of a classic. Did it surprise you?
It was the sort of George Devine-y who's a good man. But it was the good side of the angry whatsit at the Court Theatre, of not being told what to do. And, and it seemed to me it would be saying this is not some dodgy... um, you know, it's about seat prices - you can't make people go to the theatre anyway. So to have fantasies about people who will go to the theatre who are not going to go to the theatre... Does that make any sense to you?
Would you explain it? Not necessarily to me, but to the people who may be listening later.
Well, if you if you imagine the time. This was the time of the Trotskyism in various forms.
It was 1978.
Yes, and I knew about it because I was, you know, because we had a militant element to the subsidised theatre. And I suppose my own personal thing - I was born on a council estate, however my cousin paid for me to go to a Catholic school, et cetera. So I saw the world in a couple of ways. What I did know was that working-class were not going to do what they didn't want to do.
So the principle that a working a theatre set up primarily to appeal to the working class would not be...would not, would not work.
Well, I'd seen I'd seen too much...You know, I used to go - I saw every one of Joan Littlewood's productions that I could see, so I knew what it was all about.
I knew about the Brechtian revolution. I had been in a production of The Chalk Circle for the RSC and Bill Gaskell had directed it with us and went with.. So, I suppose I was too Catholic to be...fooled. I don't know how - that's not clear. Just that, OK, I knew there were a lot of - They didn't mean to be bogus, but who didn't have the ability to do what it is they wanted to do. And the result was that you often wasted public money on some notion. Does that make any sense to you?
I'm fascinated by this because in a way, it is quite radical what you are saying even now, the idea that, you put on a classic play, which doesn't necessarily have any direct correlation with the lived experience of the community.
Yes, but as genius is Chekov is, and we know about it, there's a lot of people that it doesn't - But in that sense, I'm a high brow I can't see... And I, I think that we were all we would all, don't forget influenced in the grammar schools, not that I think... If we did English, particularly if we were Catholic by, without knowing it, by Leavis. Does that make any sense to you?
Yes
Because the Catholic seniority approved of Levis because he had a moral element. So my English teachers at school had been, I realised afterwards, pupils of Levis.
So I hate to paraphrase, this is not my job, but I'm going to feed back to you what I think you're driving at, but I think that the resistance you found to your, inverted commas, highbrow agenda, came from people, politicians and activists in the area, who thought the working classes and the different communities of Hammersmith aren't ready for this.
Yeah, well, I was born in 118 Tweedsmuir Road [Cardiff] at the front bedroom on a new council estate so they could fuck off frankly [laughs].
So how did that play out? You had, you won your -
Well, because I was also...I was interested in it being good, right? And The Cherry Orchard is a good play. Do you mean? So it wasn't that I was off on some, you know, we did Julius Caesar, I remember after that.
Tell me more about the decisions that you took, uh, in the programming because you were not simply directing your choice of plays. You brought in people to stage plays and exhibitions from all over the world
Yes. We didn't have, we didn't have a gallery until they did later, but I spent money on making the wall of the studio... of the foyer newly laid. And we had very good, uh, sort of arts council-ey people with little exhibitions on the wall. That's all we could do. But let me just think what...But I also... WellI spent my time.... what's he called, David Gothard, who hasn't spoken to me for hundreds of years, was hanging about. And he, he was this dilettante, a bloke who knew who had seen everything that ever could be when he was at university in Edinburgh. So, and I was into all this. So when I heard about Tadeusz Kantor, which is one of the most incredible things I’ve seen, I made sure... Well, Erica Bolton, do you know what I mean, who was just hanging about doing something, Erica? She was a clever girl, and she knew them at the at the Arts C- not the art -the GLC. So she knew that Kantor... that things like that were going to be in London. We were in London! We were incredibly lucky because we knew these things were going to come for a few days and we nabbed them.
So, you nabbed Kantor. You nabbed Athol Fugard
Athol! That was the one... Athol, I knew, and I became fond of Athol. And they were wonderful things that they did. And, so it was...I... It all sounds so simple, but I was not going to let it, this is my first thing, be rubbish. But I didn't see why it couldn't be welcoming and I... I was realistic enough to know that I wasn't going to change the audience in any sort of...which is what they used to pretend too much of Stratford East in my view.
[23.30] Who was your audience?
Theatregoers I suppose. People. people who... the people who read the papers who want to put them a bit onto a good thing. Well then, we created a nice atmosphere, too there.
Yes, I read that you were interested in making the place a public space, so that even if you had no intention of buying a t...
It wasn’t about buying a ticket in my head, but that, I'm not saying that I was entirely successful. But, I mean, that was my... And I always did my work in the foyer. Those jobs are weird, though, because...directing... There's an awful lot you don't do when somebody else is doing if you're running something.
So, you did your work in the foyer? What do you mean?
I used to do, I used to always be sitting, I, I had an office, but I, I also just used the foyer. So I was there,
Talking to people.
Just being there. And I lived nearby, you have to remember, very nearby.
Yeah. What's, can you give me some descriptions of the Riverside, the sensory experience? OK, you're in the foyer, is it...? What does it look like? What does it smell like?
Trestle tables. A coffee bar and lunch, read by a a girl who voted Tory, who was very, very talented. And I - you couldn't do it now - I was not interested in whether we made any money running... So the lunch that she made in it was terrific, right? And then there was a bar. So it was, it was, well, I mean, that is a picture of it. That, that is, that is Willie, the cleaner. That's me, I think. And the pink is David Gothard.
So, you're the fellow in blue in the light bulb, in the light shaft?
Yeah, no, that's David. I think we altered that. I'm, I'm on the red line really in the centre.
Yeah
But that's Willie.
It looks as if he's sleeping in the...
No, no, he's pushing his cleaner.
Ah, of course.
I once was coming from Lower Mall in a very bad winter around this time, and I, because my nerves are bad, I spent all my money on taxis. And we were stuck in it trying to get a taxi because the Lower Mall, you were stuck like that. And it was a blizzard, a real blizzard, and there was somebody cleaning the bridge, a big old bloke, and I went my man [clicks fingers], and they took...because I knew it was Willie. The taxi driver nearly had a heart attack because I said, just get this done right? And he fell in with my little plan and dug, dug us out of the snow.
He dug the taxi out? (laughs) So you have this building, which is pretty functional. Ugly?
Yes, but it, it had atmos, atmosphere, but we went for gl... I made, as I said, I had the wall. I spent money on making the wall so we could hang pictures. In fact, one of the first exhibitions of somebody, his own name, I've just forgotten. Who, who is the great man around the Tate, posh mother? Serrota. His mother was in the House of Lords, he was running something at Oxford, and we brought in the man I can't remember, exhibited that that so we, all we could do was really to make it, nice things to be on the wall, we didn't.... But then we had Kantor and people, you know, but we didn't have a gallery, you see.
You had dance, not just theatre.
No. I made dance a big thing because Rosemary – is she dead now, Rosemary Butcher? Because she, we had no dance floor, you see, so we had to have, I was determined to have dance because I love dance, and I thought it would be a good thing in a community arts centre to, to say, Look, what it’s about and, she performed, you know, all over the place on roofs, and we eventually raised the money to get a dance floor, but we didn't have one to begin with. But I always had dance from the beginning.
The Rosemary Butcher was famous for bringing Black dancers together - is that correct?
Yes, but I think that was probably later than this.
OK. About physical spaces. The first time that you put on The Cherry Orchard, the critics commented on the lack, the bareness of the stage. They said it was not really a theatre. It was an acting space. There was...
Well, there was, there was a sort of anti-artistic, I don't have a picture for you, that the thing was, there was this great big television studio and we had a permanent setting of scaffolding with a slightly apron-y feel and an entrance on through the middle, right, because we couldn't. And so the, so you had to celebrate the back wall, because otherwise the thing, and, and so I just wouldn't let any, I knew from experience not to let anybody paint it, because once you start it, it goes to piece, it might. So Bill Dudley, who's still with us, but I think actually designed an incredible set, but you'd have to know about it. There was nothing at the time, so it took ages for them to come on. I can see Julie Covington running on now, right? But we had a.... but what he did was he made a sort of, that, that shape because that's the back wall, of lattice of wood that was, that when you look at it, you came into a kind of swirl. It was very beautiful and the same on the floor.
So that was the ambiance. And we just had furniture or benches. And, and the difficulty I remember was the entrances were very, very difficult, but it did look very beautiful actually, if it was, if you didn't think it was beautiful, you wouldn't be a different kind of person, I mean, you know,
[30.43] Well, the critics, I note from the reviews, particularly Bernard Levin, certainly thought it was a stunning production. And what the critics seem to notice was that you focused on the characters very, very closely. And it was a play about relationships, and what was not said, it was, it was very focused.
Well, then, of course I had Judy Parfitt as, you know who's now, she doesn't look like it. Do you watch ‘Call the Midwife’? And she used to be a beauty and I, I knew her because she was a sort of leading lady. She was actually upper working-class girl who'd been to RADA and had, was in various smart things. But, I had a marvellous cast in that.
What other of, obviously, this was your inaugural performance, it was hugely important. But what are the other great memorable performances or exhibitions that you particularly think back on?
Well, I think seeing Kantor and and, the Africa that was incredible because they were so brilliant. I mean, he was a man, but it was so wonderful. That's, and just there being dance there, because I love dance.
So you had Mass, didn't you? I read a letter in the archive from a probation officer. I'll tell you later, it's not part of this interview. But it was about the impact of that production.
Well, I just, it seemed to me I just created a perfectly, I knew from my experience of life, I was not going to get people on the estate to come if they didn't want to. Do you, do you mean I? I was, I was too much of an old-fashioned Catholic working-class boy to, to, to fall for the bilge, to, do you see what I mean? But that didn't mean to say you didn't have to have cheapish seats if you could. When you didn't create a nice atmosphere. And, but, but doing things where what you're doing looks virtuous but doesn't make any difference to the audience is sort of hypocrisy. Do you....?
I, I see that. And yet some of the things that you did, for example, I don't know what the racial mix of Hammersmith was in the 1970s, but you can tell me. You, by putting on, a performance or several performances or a season where you have, many Black, many Caribbean actors and performers...
And, and writers – it was Hanif Kureishi's first play.
Yes
And poor boy, and it was not a very good play, and he was a type of thing. But, but he was, he had a job at Riverside.
Yes
It's, it's all to do with what the 60s was meant to be. Not just, you know, it was just old-fashioned progressive theatre. and it was highly, my big thing was it was not going to be not of high standard.
Nothing is too good for the
Yes, exactly
working classes.
Well, I, yes, and it's even thinking that is such an obscene notion. Do, do you know what I mean? It's the sort of....
Tell me....
Because I loved Stratford East, but she was a brilliant director. But she, but, but then she fell for, you know, doing fucking Robin Hood. And you know, on some view of the working class that I didn't share and I had every right I came from it like anybody else, do, do you see. And I think that was also my, that was also being a Catholic, see the whole [Phone rings]. Do you mind if I take that? In case it's .....
I hear what you say about the Catholicism and your ambition for the best. And I think I want to know What did you learn at Riverside about that, about the advantages and disadvantages of that approach.
I can't really think - say it again.
What did you, what did you discover about the advantages of such an approach? Do you think that you were punished, or were you, did you make, did you bring people along with you?
On the whole brought people along, I would say. Wouldn’t say I felt punished, but the world was still full of arseholes, do, do you know what I mean? So it's, I, I think, would be a bit narcissistic for a minute. What happened? I went to this Catholic grammar school, right. And we had a hall, we didn't have a gym and we used to hire it to a middle-class drama group. And if you put the chairs out, you could see it. And the first thing I saw them do, and it was in a version of Bristol Old Vic, was Tartuffe, and I thought I'd gone to heaven. It was so funny. So all the cliches, yeah, because they would.... I then took all my friends, and we all joined. And in fact, a middle-class girl, Pat England, I see her often because she was an actress in London. And I made all my friends there – John James was my poet. Steven McKenna was a painter. And me, we were all, they were most likely posher old-fashioned grammar school boys.
When I talk about being punished, I mean pushback from maybe local councillors, and I know that there was, there has been, a feeling that Riverside was not serving the local community, or their idea of the local community. I saw press cuttings in which local politicians said the problem was, you were attracting people from outside the borough.
Well, I didn't know what else you could do or what to do. I'd seen Stratford East and how it worked or didn't work. And it just seemed to me that, well, it was the period we were in when there was an awful lot of rubbish being talked. Do, do, do you see what I mean, a lot of well-meaning not particularly talented, so, so..... I I've been in the profession for too long to do, you know, my first job was on an Arts Council tour when I, Tony Hopkins and I were the ASMs. Right? So, and that was from Frank Dunlop. There was a school called the first, the London theatre thing, and they all – there's one of them alive, she's in the nursing homes – that they wanted this, they were influenced by Michel Saint-Denis, who I have a thing about, not... But yeah, just take me back to the things.
The question is really, there was pushback from Hammersmith Council
Yes, because it was not imitation.
They said, they said, under your control, Riverside was becoming, was no longer serving the local community, but was perhaps becoming too big for its boots.
Oh yes, I’m sure....
Can, can you tell me what your memories of that?
Well, I can understand what they're talking about, but I knew from my a, my slightly arty thing, but my actual human experience of being born on a council estate, that, that they were talking nonsense.
It didn't bother you then?
No.
No.
Well, I mean, I was in battle with it, and, you know, and it was, none of it was......
But the interesting thing is, the money kept coming. You still got the funding despite being....
Well, because we were too successful in the eyes of.... You know, it made Hammersmith look like what it was, a progressive... You see, because it, lots of mistakes had been made. First of all, the great mistake was pulling down the Lyric Hammersmith. Then the ridiculous mistake was to rebuild it in a way to, to, you know, and I remember the Hammersmith when it was a poor, because I'd walked on in something there. You know, they, the Tories are not being wise. They, having pulled it down, then to build it up again, seemed to me completely stupid.
Tell me about the Borough then, because I know the Borough now, and I can see it's mixed. But what, what did you see when you were here?
Well, I had a bedsit in Barons Court, and there were lots of dancers in that house because it was where the ballet...... And if you went out in the morning, you saw lots of exquisite little girls walking like that to class. And so I knew the ar, area, but I had got a job. John Dexter, who's now dead, did a double bill of, of, oh, Yorkshire writer anyway. And I got a job as an assistant ASM and walking on. And a slightly plump girl - I'm quite good with girls, do, do, do, do, do you see what I mean? - and, and she was a difficult little number, and I didn't put it together, but she was George Devine's daughter. And Harriet, who I see when she's in London, what I've discovered that nobody realised how clever Harriet was.
And she had a mother who was just part of this famous motley, who became one of my dearest friends, right. And I had no eyes, I told you, I'd never met anybody divorced. And they, and she was the victim of a whole lot of patronage because Jocelyn Herbert, who was a great designer, you know, et cetera, et cetera. So I was in this, this thing was, George.....
You were scooped up by a raffish artistic middle class.
Yes. And they were terrific people, they were kind, do you, do you, do you know what I mean? So Nicky White has written as well about me, because I used to sit with Sophie and do, get, when she was doing some musical that was a failure, and annotating the, see.... and Percy, her sister was a marvellous woman.
[42.58] I, I was thinking of when you walked around. I don't know when the estates were built around Hammersmith, but obviously there's a lot of....
Well, if you ever see a film, ..... called ‘Mandy’, which you won't see, I think you'll find there are shots of what the estate was before the 60s estate, before the...
Queen Caroline
And that was all a poor area, you know that? Because, because one of the big ..... lived with signs about the buying of those houses. That was not, because it was a fact...there were factories and the BBC. It was not, no, there was nothing chic about that part of the
And the river presumably. Did it smell?
Yes, and, and, and of course, it, from there up to here, were all docks. And, well, you couldn't walk up here. I mean, that's one of the great things that the Labour Party did was to, to make the river available to people. But you could walk the other way, and you were in Bloomsbury.
Yes.
In fact, in the house, when you go over next the Blue Anchor in the alleyway, Christopher Hampton lived in one. But in the house next to the, that was one of the Bloomsbury women and she, she appears, and her son married Peggy Ashcroft and became the head honcho of the Lord Chancellor, I think. I've forgotten his name. But, so it was, it was, it was not so rich as it is now, but it was more bohemian.
Yes, I know the, William Morris and his legacy attracted...
Yes. Well, Jocelyn Herbert [celebrated stage designer] – you know who I mean?
Yes.
Told me when she was a girl, because her father was AP Herbert.
Yes.
She saw an elderly lady dressed entirely in Pre-Raphaelite gear when she was a little girl. And I think that was, that would have been his daughter.
May Morris.
Because she lived in one of the houses on Upper Mall.
[45.13] Yes, yes. Do you think, I mean the effects of Riverside on the local area. You have this very working-class, very poor, rough area. You've got a kind of liberal, posh enclave. What did Riverside Studios do in your time to cross pollinate?
Very little that you could do. I think that, I think that's the one thing I had, was that because I came from an ‘ordinary’ quote unquote, I was not fooled by... Do, do, you mean, I made a choice that it was better to go highbrow than to do nothing in the name of.... And I didn't think I was the best.
Yes
Because why shouldn't they have the best, even if they didn't go, if you know what I mean. I was too... because such a lot of great things were talked in that period, but such a lot of balls was talked, you know?
I mean, I wondered if there was resistance to the foreign element? I'm not sure if Tarkovsky was there when you were there or if that was later? Under David [Gothard].
Under David. But well, that's why, I mean... David doesn't speak. Well, that's when I discovered David, right, because he had - he was this snob. You know, David had, he had the nice thing, but he had no real sense of... do, do you know what I mean, as long as they were famous. But that was all right, because he had talent, and, you know, he was, he was thought to be as silly as fuck, you know. He had no reputation, David, do you know... and he dropped me actually. But, but he loved art, and that's not a bad thing, is it? If, if you got...... But the thing is, he was a terrible snob, and I had to, to look after the fact that you can't just give somebody because...You know it, it is wonderful that Beckett was here rehearsing, but that's all he was doing, right? Do you know what I mean? That, that's not a policy,
OK, because I'm interested in that when we talk about the legacy of Riverside, there are often mentions made of the fact that Nobel Prize winners, Beckett or Tarkovsky or, very culturally....
Esoteric, I suppose.
Esoteric, but also huge names are associated.
Well, that's the good thing of David. But it was also a good thing of the [Royal] Court theatre that I was brought up in. You read a play and you thought ‘I don't think Laurence Olivier is good enough for this, is he?’. You know what I mean? Or is he free? Is, who's the best? Is Edith Evans free? Is she to, to me. And don't forget, George [Devine] had been, had been a sort of angry young, but he, he had been an actor in... they were all his friends, that whole world, do, do do... you see, and Sophie and the Motleys. I heard, or I couldn't see why it couldn't be why, if it was good. You can have it good or bad. Which you.....
So one of the things, and I'm picking up a little bit on this, is that you can look on the Riverside Studio as a kind of Barbican Centre or Southbank, before its time, you know, bringing in these incredible international things.
Well, it seemed to be so silly because we were in London, and they were mostly there. And all you had to do was to book them. Which is where, what's her name was so good. Erica [Erica Bolton]. David’s snobbery, because I took no notice of it, half the time I didn't meet them, but because I was so barmy. But....
I see. OK, so you sort of delegated the international world stuff to others on your team? Your focus was it's got to be good.
That’s it. It has to be honourable.
Honourable
So it has to be as cheap as it can be, because the people are paying for this, the fact that many of them won't come, right, do you....? I suppose that I'm trying to, thinking about it, that that, and, and there were things that we had to do - the duty. Like, like it seemed to me a simple thing because there was money, that these black kids - young actors, who'd never been nourished and they didn't think could be there, and not have to pay rent, you know.
So, hang on. Did you make living space for the black actors?
Yes
Did you put them up?
Rehearsing. Yes, they would, and I would, and I'd forgotten that that was the case. But at the thing I went to [at Riverside Studios, the launch of the Black & Gifted exhibition in 2023], one of the boys [Trevor Laird] made a very nice speech about me. And of course, I went, I did, I did deal with the boys better than the girls, because I then did the production of Julius Caesar with them, for one night at the National Theatre.
These boys were who? Local kids?
No, no, no. They were the only young black actors. What's his name? [Trevor Laird]. Trevor used to come to - was it Trevor? But who was the other boy used to come? Who, who then became a name in, in... he used to come to rehearsals on his scooter, on his, you know, skateboard.
[Benjamin Zephaniah?]
No, but it was pretty.
[Norman Beaton?]
No, not... well Norman was a marvellous actor. He was the one with the talent. It seemed that I was just educated, so lucky, because people seem to think that you couldn't find talent, and a bit of not talent. They were very un-English then, and much of the thinking wasn't what had made the country a great country.
Can you say that again? Explain.
Well, well, you could hold two notions: talent and duty. I did... It's all to do with FR Leavis I think, it's, it's and, and Christianity. And because the Catholic Church understood you had to do things for the working class, you have to work for them, you have to have a youth club. My father ran a youth club.
It comes back to that. So, one of the things I'm seeing is that you made the space open and welcoming.
Yes, that, that's why I always sat in the foyer. Do you, do, do you see what I mean? Whereas David was a snob. Well, that was a useful thing to have.
You had different skills.
Yes. And, do, do you know what I mean, and I had to, because he was just this kid - people didn't take David at all seriously at this period.
But you as a director and an actor and indeed as a playwright, had a lot of things going on. But what I'm interested in, what I have noticed in this interview, is what you have driven towards, is something buried quite deeply in your notion of, of duty and of quality.
Yes. I can't see why you can't have the both. That's the thing that was...
Social activism and great work.
Yes, because that's what, that.... but they've been marvellous people. The French should have managed that, to not, to not to drop, drop standards.
I do see that....
When I did see Bill Gaskill, and I did go to the first night of Coriolanus by the Berlin Ensemble. Now it was all a Communist whatever, but it, but because I hadn't been in London, but that first visit of Berlin Ensemble changed the British theatre.
Well, I'm going to stop here and thank you, because..
But I when I've been chattering away, I don't.......
No, no, no, no. I think you've been incredibly generous with your thoughts. I'm going to - we're going to review it and print it out, and you can look at it then. But is there something in particular which you wish to?
Think that we should have covered?
Yes. Because to be honest, I can come back. We could do that. But if there is something that you feel I should really, we should really know about your feelings about, let's say, Riverside now, as opposed to then?
Well, that was a terrible – that, that's something for you to write about sometime. That was crookedness. I mean, I wasn't anything to do with it, but they were in terrible trouble, and they built that terrible building. I mean, there's nothing to be, you can see. But, but the time changed, do you see what I mean? It was not a liberal time. I'm not, I can see how difficult it was, people didn't have any money. And in fact, that big space has, people do go and have their coffee at Riverside regardless, do you know what I mean?
Do you go?
It's too far for me to walk now. But I did a play recently, you see, that I rehearsed there [at Riverside Studios]. I did a play at the, play of mine at the, the theatre in Jermyn Street. And we rehearsed there.
The one about women. So you have, it's still a working space for you?
Yes. No, no, no. It’s that it's too hard for them - they've been set too big a task, the people running things now, do you, do you know what I mean, because though it's all alright and everything has to be right, it doesn't have.... I can't explain it, it's sort of – it's not, they're not allowed to be individuals, I think, in some ways.
I think the climate is very different, but one of the things you have shown me – us – in this interview is how much of what we think are new battles are, in fact, battles that you fought in the 1970s.
I think that's true.
On that note, I'm going to thank you, Peter.
