Dead Now Of Course

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Dead Now Of Course
Phyllida Law

‘My future mother-in-law burst into tears when she heard her son was to marry an actress. There’s still something disturbing, I grant you, about the word “actress”. If an MP or some other outstanding person plays fast and loose with an actress the world is unsurprised. She is certainly no better than she should be, and probably French…’As well as being a mother (to the actresses Sophie and Emma Thompson) and a devoted carer to her own mother and mother-in-law, Phyllida Law is also a distinguished actress, and Dead Now Of Course is the tale of her early acting career.As a young member of a travelling company, Phyllida learned to cope with whatever was thrown at her, from making her own false eyelashes to battling flammable costumes and rogue cockroaches. We find her in Mrs Miller’s digs, which were shared with a boozy monkey bought from Harrods, an Afghan hound known as the ‘the flying duster’, several hens and various children.Filled with funny, charming anecdotes, Dead Now Of Course paints a fascinating picture of life in the theatre – and at the heart of the story is an enchanting account of Phyllida’s courtship with her future husband, the actor and writer Eric Thompson.

COPYRIGHT (#uaa3d60e6-5722-5c1a-a9ac-7a08480ec4b9)

4th Estate

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF www.4thEstate.co.uk (http://www.4thEstate.co.uk)

First published in Great Britain by 4th Estate in 2017

Text and illustrations copyright © Phyllida Law 2017

Phyllida Law asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008244743

Ebook Edition © April 2017 ISBN: 9780008244750

Version: 2017-04-25

CONTENTS

COVER (#u0ef07d43-ef44-5958-b643-484a0abbcae8)

TITLE PAGE (#u205117dd-1300-5784-ba61-ed06c0ca7de7)

COPYRIGHT

DEDICATION (#ub8b51dea-0e25-5ad1-892e-e8e26c80a6e7)

EPIGRAPH (#ud84f4c4a-32d5-546f-abf9-a6d84d7f6328)

OVERTURE

DIGS AND TOURS

MILDEW

STAGECRAFT

GREASEPAINT

FOOTLIGHTS

RUDE BITS

PROPS!

OPEN-PLAN THEATRES

WIGS AND WARDROBE

CURTAIN CALLS AND ENTRANCES

OFF

NAME-DROPPING

NORMAN POPHAM

DRESSING ROOM NUMBER 10

DRESSING ROOM 11

TYRONE GUTHRIE

DIRECTORS

EXTRA JOBS

THE RUSSIANS

TOM

THE WEDDING

FINALE

PHOTOGRAPHS AND PROGRAMMES

ABOUT THE PUBLISHER

For my grandchildren,

Ernie, Walter, Gaia & Tindy

‘Here’s tae us

Wha’s like us

Damn few,

And they’re a’ deid’

Old Scottish toast, Anon

‘Our revels now are ended. These are our actors,

As I foretold you, were all spirits, and

Are melted into air, into thin air;

And like the baseless fabric of this vision,

The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,

The solemn temples, the great globe itself,

Yea, all which it inherit shall dissolve;

And like this insubstantial pageant faded,

Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff

As dreams are made on, and our little life

Is rounded with a sleep.’

Prospero, The Tempest, Act 4, Scene 1

OVERTURE (#uaa3d60e6-5722-5c1a-a9ac-7a08480ec4b9)

One September, the grown-ups started talking of this thing called War. I was evacuated from Glasgow aged seven. No one liked evacuees. They were dirty, came from Glasgow and had fleas. I was lucky: the eldest daughter in my billet was a superb storyteller. She and I improvised a mystery called ‘The Red and Silver Purse’, which lasted for weeks. I spent a lot of time crouched in cupboards, or underneath the gate-legged table. I think her grasp of storyline was educational.

I loved her stories, and played a lot of major characters. The War was a sideline.

At my school, I was the only boarder, and I loved it. The classroom window-seat was heated and the walls were lined with books. I read all of George Eliot – he was my favourite writer, until I found a large medical dictionary. At thirteen, I had some very odd symptoms and I researched them in depth. Apparently I was to die young, so I decided to devote my life to the human race – a Scottish Mother Teresa, with a stethoscope. I always wanted a stethoscope.

I gave up all the things I loved, like music, painting and drawing in order to pass the required exams for the medical school in Glasgow. I got them all, but the elderly professor, with pince-nez, said I was too young. ‘Go away,’ he said. ‘Go away for a year.’ I didn’t have the time. In despair, I told my mother I was to die young. She disagreed. So did the doctor, who gave me iron pills.

The lid blew off my life. I decided to be a set designer, without the slightest idea of how one could achieve that ambition. I simply applied to every drama school of which I had heard. The Bristol Old Vic replied, asking for two speeches to be learnt and delivered. I presented myself for the audition in a room above a cabbage wholesaler. I’d had the sense not to choose Juliet, and I included a Scottish speech, from David Lyndsay’s A Satire of the Three Estates. ‘Behold my paps of pulchrytude perfyte,’ I breathed. I think that was the clincher. They accepted me immediately.

My indomitable granny thought theatre the ‘Gateway to Hell’. There was nothing in the family except medicine and the Church. She said she had a degree in Electricity and, of course, she knew Shakespeare. He lived on Sherbrook Avenue.

No one ever asked me for my portfolio, but I understood that the first year was to be with the actors and the second year was backstage. I had such a good time. That first year was hilarious – I didn’t understand any of it. When asked to relax, I folded myself up and fell onto the floor in a heap. Each morning we did exercises in very little clothing to ‘The Skater’s Waltz’, and it was frightful. I did mine with Joe, the bridge of whose nose was rather flat because, having told his dad he wanted to be an actor, his dad thumped him. He eventually became a tax inspector.

I was trained to kiss stage left or right of the opposing mouth, leaving the face of the star contender available for the audience. When this year’s young fling their clothes off and devour each other on screen, I have to leave and put the kettle on. I mean, how do they do that? What if they haven’t brushed their teeth?

Romance did not flourish in Glasgow. My mother disapproved of people holding hands in the street. ‘Why can’t they wait till they get home?’ she’d say. And eating in the street was unthinkable, as bad as smoking in the street, or wearing curlers till teatime. George Bernard Shaw thought that pushing food into a hole in the middle of one’s face was revolting. He even considered that sexual activity was less offensive. At least, that’s what I’ve heard. You may have to Google it.

Ken Tynan would certainly have preferred it. I remember catching him on TV, telling us with firm conviction that we would be seeing ‘the act’ on stage any day now. He was right. He actually used the word ‘F***’, the F word, and it was startling.

My generation was pretty hopeless. We could smoulder a bit on stage, but we were sexually timid, and a bit lumpy. Or was that just me?

My future mother-in-law burst into tears when she heard her son was to marry an actress. There’s still something disturbing, I grant you, about the word ‘actress’. If an MP or some other outstanding person plays fast and loose with an actress the world is unsurprised. She is certainly no better than she should be, and probably French.