Bye bye Sah-Peter!

     Peter Hall on the left and Trevor Nunn on the right.

It's amazing really, that when someone in the theatre, someone as important as Peter Hall dies, not a lot of people know him or have even heard of him. But he was important to the theatre and with all the tributes yesterday, including a whole programme dedicated to him on the radio, Front Row, the one that stuck out for me was the tribute by Trevor Nunn.

Both of them were knighted, so it should be Sir Peter and Sir Trevor, even though in professional terms they shouldn't use the title. They both came from Suffolk and if they ever worked together, those two posh boys reverted to Suffolk accents.

Trevor Nunn was from Ipswich and attended Northgate Grammar School for Boys (Now Northgate High School) and Peter Hall was from Bury St Edmunds and his father was the station master of Shelford Station, where the family lived – so two relatively humble starts to life.

He won a scholarship to The Perse School, in Cambridge before taking up a further scholarship to read English at St. Catherine's College, at Cambridge.

Trevor Nunn also went to Cambridge so the pair had a similar pedigree. 

This start in life, for them, may have changed the British Theatre because directors, and even actors and comedians, started to come from the Universities, both Oxbridge and others, as opposed to the traditional training methods such as drama schools and colleges or even ASMs (Assistant Stage Managers) in the theatre.

There are many great actors who used the university method and some used both, going to drama schools after getting an MA.

It gave rise to clever comedy like Monty Python's Flying Circus of which I was a great fan. I didn't mind sketches about Jean Paul-Sartre or having Mao Tse-Tung and Che Guevara on quiz shows in sketches, and sometimes when I watched these shows I found them uncontrollably funny. But they were funny because they were intellectually clever. 

Charlie Chaplin was intellectually clever. He would work out exactly what he wanted to do with a tramp, a cop and a park bench and then do it till he got it right. Sometimes, eventually, taking days to do one bit and even scrapping a lot when he couldn't do it up to his satisfaction.

Then this man would get on with his serious life of debauchery (let's face it) whereas his contemporaries, Laurel and Hardy, were just funny.

Laurel and Hardy could not go through a door, take a drink, start a car or anything else, without there being a great gag at the end.

Rather like Morecambe and Wise – whose spontaneity was brilliant.

I had a pal once who was working backstage with another double act, Mike and Bernie Winters, and he watched them do their act every single show and found it hard to believe what he was witnessing; so he went up to them after one of the shows and asked them about their spontaneity. I don't know what the answer was but, like everything else which concerns talent, they probably didn't know.

The university educated actor would probably know – but they didn't have it themselves half the time, and the university trained director might know - and that's where they came in useful.

It was strange that one of the clips on TV yesterday has a clip of Peter Hall directing Cilla Black, of all people! It was in a film called Work is a 4 letter Word.

A lot of times an actor can bring a tear to the eyes of the audience. They do this by playing their role with soul (ha ha I'm a poet); they would play it straight from the heart and, at the same time, hit their marks and, as James Cagney used to say, 'look the other fella in the eye and tell the truth'. That's, more or less it, I suppose, but when you think of it, people in real life don't always look people in the eye. They move their eyes, they shift. There are some false observances by psychologists that when you look away you are lying; I think people who are good liars look people straight in the eye and this is a good technique sometimes for an actor when they have to act innocent whilst playing the crook!!

But getting back to Morecambe and Wise – or should I say, Hall and Nunn – they're not funny; they may have been in real life when talking to each other in Suffolk accents and some of their actors may have brought tears to the eyes of their audiences but, by and large, it was the instinctive actors and comedians who move you; sometimes move you out of your seat and in to the bar, I have to admit, but I'm sure you know what I mean.

Sometimes the audiences are impressed by the technique and the learning of all those lines, by university actors, but half the time you don't believe them.

It's funny because the only reason I started this post was because I found it funny that Sir Posh and Sir Posh spoke in Suffolk accents when they got together and I was going to chip in with a bit of an anecdote about me but sometimes we have to take a back seat.

Bye bye sah-peter!