The other outstanding player at the Altrincham Garrick in my time was William (Bill) Toothill. He was superb as Crocker-Harris in Terence Rattigan’s The Browning Version – a tale of a schoolmaster who becomes known to the boys as ‘The…
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Amateur versus professional... What’s the difference? It’s just the range of talent, really. At an amateur show you can watch an actor as good as you’ll see anywhere, but he or she will be on stage with a fellow-thesp who…
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Graham Armitage was the Carpenter (the taller chap), in the Garrick’s production of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. I was the Walrus. Graham was very, very funny – not academically inclined – but a fine performer in school plays, usually as…
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I was nudged into acting by a bolshie schoolmaster. He came out of Hitler’s war, still wearing his army fatigues, and revived play-acting at my grammar school. There was a small foreigner’s part in Sheridan’s play The Critic and Mr…
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By Joan Crawford, co-founder of the King’s Head pub theatre Robert and I made contact, after 50 years, through the internet. I read the sections of his book, Are You Going to do That Little Jump part one. about his…
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Introducing part two of Joan Crawford’s remarkable story The pattern of feast and famine continued over the years. Shortly after The Collector Peter Stevenson, then a solicitor, gave up his job and came to live and work at the Kings…
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I walked into the King’s Head pub and knew I was working with two, equally powerful, people – Joan and Dan Crawford. It was 1971, just one year after this imaginative couple created the upstart, cheeky theatre venue. Directors, actors,…
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And to tempt the biggest beast of them all – the mega-hulk Harold Hobson – out of his comfort zone to visit the back of a seedy pub in the sticks was epic – a triumph. Harold Hobson was, for…
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David Mercer’s thriller, Let’s Murder Vivaldi, exploded at the King’s Head pub theatre at the perfect time. Two years after the King’s Head first hit society and the scene, we gave fans the ultimate show-biz thrill. Two couples fencing, verbally,…
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Kevin Stoney played Bernard Kevin at the King’s Head. Kevin was, indeed, very different. Much lighter, much more tongue-in-cheek, much more optimistic. His reviews were good and – importantly – he pleased the author. Jim Norton played the three wickedly…
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To my astonishment - and dismay - the author, Tom Gallacher, responded adversely to Julian’s performance.‘Too negative, too downbeat’ was his judgement. Idly, I wondered if Shakespeare was ever troubled by the astonishing variety of interpretations of Hamlet he must…
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The rocky road which led to the spectacular success of Mr Joyce is Leaving Paris in Dublin, left management and audience hungry for more from author Tom Gallacher. And pat from his satchel he produced – Revival! A tale of…
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But for the audience, well… the back room of the King’s Head pub theatre had a rakish charm. And if you were keen on finding something theatrically new compared with the machine-made West End fare, you could be in for…
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They are busy people, journalists… always in a hurry. Only a few are specialists… so, remember to just give them the basics – they won’t be insulted; grateful. (It also means they don’t have to stay for the whole performance.)…
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Joan and Dan had taken on a helluva challenge – to run the first combined dinner and theatre venue in a foreign (though English-speaking) capital city – with minimal resources. The deal with the brewery was (so they told me)…
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Where from…? I didn’t know he’d been away. Ohh… yes he’d been lurking around in a basement in Soho, then - typically - accepted an offer he couldn’t refuse back home in Dublin, only to be arrested in mid-speech and…
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Sometime in the second half of 1971 I was asked if I would consider meeting this (to me) unknown couple with a view to directing in their – what exactly was it? Oh… it was a theatre in a public…
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The King’s Head pub theatre Islington has given its last performance and people who weren’t there are telling us how it started and… EVERYTHING about it. But that’s the rub – they weren’t there and don’t know what really happened…
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You have been reading Episode One of what would have been the greatest sitcom ever. We’ve been inundated with questions asking… Why? What happened? Why wasn’t there more? Was someone ill? Was it too political? Did some high-up intervene, and…
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This must be one of David Nobbs’ most bizarre inventions. There’s our wife, Pauline Yates – acting as a boxing referee, I think. And I see that Geoffrey Palmer is in this boxing scene. (I was his patient in Butterflies.)…
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