I can't get to grips with the gist of this thread, although hugely interested and, waiting for various guys to arrive to assess or provide estimates for a programme of renovations - Godot, I understand you at last! - I've scribbled a series of musings on the impact of European Theatre during the past half century.   British writing will have to wait for another time.   I'm mainly working from memory.   I could talk about 30, 40 or 50 years ago but, please, don't ask me about a few weeks ago; I'm not at home.   I've also cluttered the floor with a few reference books as I often have a clear image of a play but can't recall the title.

Several headings may give me the springboard I need; the era I am covering is a glimpse at the early 50s to the mid-80s - I found an article by Michael Billington: (and Michael, if you're reading this, you may recall how we shared lodgings at the huge West Hill House, overlooking Lincoln, in 1962,when you arrived from Cambridge as PR for Lincoln's Theatre Royal.   The house was owned by a benign Mrs Danvers and I had to wing my way through rehearsals in the morning after we had nightly righted the British Theatre until 2am.)  Your article, in 1985, goes some way to explain why European Theatre was sidelined in 1985 and became almost invisible.   I'll quote chapter and verse at the end.

1   Star-studded casts in 'tasteful' HM Tennent productions of Chekhov (usually in staid Constance Garnett translations - we had to wait some years for Frayn& Stoppard to lighten our darkness.)   
2   The emphasis on the writers theatre at the Royal Court from the mid-50s; more European Theatre than is realised.
3   In particular, the World Theatre Seasons, annually sponsored by Peter Daubeny at the Aldwych Theatre for several years from the mid 50s.
4   The role played by the RSC and NT in world theatre.
5   Sterling work done by Hampstead Theatre, the Arts Theatre, the Bush Theatre and extraordinary explorative workshop productions by Charles Marowitz at the Open Space Theatre in the sunks of Tottenham Ct Rd, near Goodge St.   And good quality 'rep' in the sticks could also be adventurous.  I've played in Chekhov, Goldoni, Pirandello, Ionesco and Satre.  The Traverse Theatre at Edinburgh also led the way in world theatre  Max Stafford-Clark's direction, 1968/74.  He directed Arrabal, Satre, Ionesco, Genet, Mrozek and de Ghelderode and I particularly remember a thrilling Ubu Roi.   Not forgotten either is the work done by the Questor's Theatre (Ealing) and the Tower Theatre (Canonbury); useful calling points for those of us involved in the West End as they staged Sunday performances.  Radio 3, too, was paramount, particularly under Martin Esslin's direction.

Re 1, HM Tennent (Binkie Beaumont) and, later, Michael Codron productions - he was my boss on several engagements so I need to ca -canny - provided classy productions of Jean Anouilh's prolific output.   Tennent's gave me my first taste with Ring Round the Moon, in Christopher Fry's translation, directed by Peter Brook; Point of Departure (a young Dirk Bogarde - so sad that he quit the live theatre with stage fright, a few years later), Colombe (the delicious Yvonne Arnaud), The Rehearsal (a young and radiant Maggie Smith), Poor Bitos, The Fighting Cock, Waltz of the Toreadors, Dear Antionette and Becket (RSC) - most enjoyed commercial success.       
Jean Giraudoux, Tiger at the Gates (aka The Trojan War Will Not take Place) translated by Christopher Fry.
Francois Billetdoux - Chin-Chin.   Celia Johnston in Brief Encounter mode falling in love with a hot blooded Italian (Anthony Quayle)  - one of her best performances and, yes, she wore one of those 'hats' too.
Ugo Betti - Irene Worth, a great actress, in The Queen and the Rebels.     All presented in the West End.

2    The Royal Court arrived in the mid-50s, under George Devine's inspired direction; with hit and miss productions - remember Devine's mantra was always 'the right to fail'):

Eugene Ionesco; The Chairs, Rhinoceros, Exit the King, Adamee, The Bald Prima Donna.
Satre: Altona: Max Fritsch, The Fireraisers; Brecht, The Good Woman of Setzuan (Peggy Ashcroft);
Samuel Beckett, Endgame and a whole series of short plays with Billie Whitelaw.

3    During the mid-50s, Peter Daubeny's annual World Theatre Season (WTS) became the linchpin for European Theatre.   Later, at a NT 'do', I recall Kenneth Tynan, Literary Director at NT - or 'dramaturg' which he preferred - hotly denied that the WTS had a direct influence upon the NT (or RSC) repertoire but Peter Hall, apparently, had implied that he chose Gogol's The Government Inspector, after he'd seen the Moscow Arts Theatre production of Dead Souls.   The NT subsequently staged Zuckmayer's The Captain of Kopenick (Germany in post WW1) with Paul Scofield, in grand form,; Pirandello's The Rules of the Game (not a success) and Tolstoy's Fruits of Enlightenment.   The plays of Paul Claudel were also seen during the WTS and, in a wider repertory, I fell in love with Madeleine Renaud, Edwige Feuillere (Sunday Times theatre critic, Harold Hobson was obsessed with her and it became a bit creepy) and Jean Louis Barrault.   Some years later, I sat opposite M.Barrault at a play he had directed, in-the-round at the Roundhouse, Chalk Farm.  I didn't see much of the play as I became mesmerised by his face; his features lived every moment of the action!   The extraordinary aspect of the French players was their ability to be star performers, yet part of an ensemble.   I had to depend on headphones for a simultaneous translation.   If I think about the meaning of style, I remember those actors.   The experience of the WTS fully deserves a thread to itself.

4   The arrival of the RSC (1960) at the Aldwych Theatre and the NT at the Old Vic, propitiously fast on its heels, in 1962/63, brought 20 years of riches.

Friedrich Durrenmatt's The Physicists, (Irene Worth a psychopath hunchback), Marguerite Duras's,  Trees in the Street, (Peggy Ashcroft on top form), Peter Weiss, Marat/Sade, The Investigation - Peter Brook at his most imaginative - and the treat of the RSC Theatre of Cruelty season at the LAMDA Theatre.   Nikolai Gogol - several fine productions by David Jones.

Visits to the NT

Proclemer-Albertazzi Co in Hamlet, directed by Franco Zeffirelli  ( he then directed several productions for the NT in later years)   Sept 1964
Berliner Ensemble The Resisitible Rise of Arturo Ui, Bertolt Brecht:  August 1965    Memorable closing line, "The bitch is on heat again".
Berliner Ensemble Brecht's version of Coriolanus.   August 1965
Brecht The Threepenny Opera & The Days of the Commune 11 & 12 August 1965
Le Theatre du Nouveau Monde; L'Ecole Des Femmes by Moliere,  Sept 1965
Klondyke by Gabriel Charpentier & Jacques Languirard     Sept 1965
Compaigne Renaud-Barrault  Rabelais by Jean-Louis Barrault   Sept 1969
Belgian NT Co Pantagleize by Michel Ghelderode  Sept 1971
     "     "   The Seventh Commandment by Dario Fo      Sept 1971
Theatre National Populaire  Tartuffe by Moliere, directed by Roger Planchon  Nov 1976
       "         "          "        La Dispute by Marivaux, directed by Patrice Chereau  "
Schaubuhne am Halleschen Ufer    Summerfolk, Maxim Gorki, directed by Peter Stein  March 1977
Nuria Esdpert Co  Divinas Palabras by Don Ramon Maria del Valle Inclan, dir Victor Garcia, June 1977
Market Theatre, Johannesburg  A Lesson from Aloes, written & directed by Athol Fugard, July 1980
    "          "             "      Master Harold...And The Boys    "         "             "      "        Nov 1983
    "          "             "    Bopha!   written & directed by Percy Mtwa           Jan 1987
Schaubuhne Co, West Berlin   The Hairy Ape by Eugene O'Neill, directed by Peter Stein, May 1987  I probably saw less than half of these NT listings but the O'Neill was a tremendous experience in the theatre
Royal Dramatic Th, Stockholm Hamlet, directed by Ingmar Bergman    June 1987
    "        "        "          "       Miss Julie by Strindberg  "       "             "     "
Ninagawa Theatre Co, Tokyo   Tomorrow Was War, Boris Vassiliev, directed by A A Goncharov, Oct 1987
      "           "       "      "     Medea by Euripides, directed by Yukio Ninagawa    Sept 1987
Moscow Arts Theatre  Uncle Vanya, Anton Chekhov, directed by Oleg Yefremont,  Sept 1989
Theatre de Complicite  The Visit, Durrenmatt, directed by Annabel Arden  Feb 1991
Schochiku Company, Japan   Grand Kabuki           Oct 1991
Comedie Francaise   Les Fausses Confidences by Marivaux, directed by Jean-Pierre Miquel,  Sept 1997

I'll complete this posting later.    Tired AND I daren't risk losing my work!  Not even checking.

                 Here endeth Part 1     

A wonderful juicy post, Stanley. Thank you! It prodded a lot back into memory of that period but also had me whimpering and kicking myself for not going to so many of the things you mention. 

Just to pick out two names that jumped out at me and whose importance I don't think can be overestimated in this context:

Martin Esslin had a huge effect on a whole generation with the work he did on the Third Programme bringing incredible riches, week after week, from European writers and dramatists that most of us had never even heard of and had little chance of seeing in the theatre. The announcer's, " ... was produced by <pause> Martin Esslin" was an absolute guarantee of quality and excitement.

And I think it is almost impossible now to explain the excitement of Peter Daubeny's World Theatre Seasons at the Aldwych. I only caught the very tail end of them (which continued, falteringly, for a few years after his death if I remember correctly) but these were companies from another world, the stuff of legend and travellers' tales, that he brought to London.  I suppose to some extent the annual BITE seasons at the Barbican Theatre do something in the same tradition but I don't think it is entirely the effects of rosy nostalgia to say that they have a decidedly less sure touch in picking out true quality than Daubeny did.

Heady times!

An astonishingly powerful production that, Ron, and the performance of a lifetime for Leonard Rossiter who finally got the role that allowed him to show what a great actor he was. It was a Glasgow Citizens Theatre production by Michael Blakemore which I saw the year before at the Edinburgh Festival, August 1968, a few days after the tanks had rolled into Czechoslovakia. John Lancaster as the Actor rehearsing Ui and, although I cheerfully loathe the man, Steven Berkoff brilliantly evil as Givola.

As for Stanley with the Berliner Ensemble production, I remember the final line "The bitch that whelped him is on heat again" producing a chill throughout the theatre. I really thought it had been written and added for Rossiter to say at that particular time. But it probably always feels like that.   


   

Leonard Rossiter's Arturo Ui.     This, too, was my era with several friends in the cast at The Citz and the Saville.   His manic energy used to drive them mad and, as I got regular 'comps' for side seats in the Stalls, I saw the production at least half a dozen times.  He never slackened, matinees and all.  The great theatrical stroke for me was when the van searchlights strobed the auditorium before the outbreak of shooting.  Quite terrifying.  Incidentally, Blakemore's biography Arguments with England (2004) faber & faber, is a good read.   

A final quote from it and - I promise - I will go to bed (well, in due course):

              "You must stop worrying about success or failure,
               your business is to work step by step, from day to day,
               softly-softly, to be prepared for unavoidable mistakes
               and failures, in a word, follow your own line
               and leave competition to others."

    Translated for the collection Dear Writer, Dear Actress; the Love Letters of Olga Knipper and Anton Chekhov - and why didn't I read this, 40 years ago, before writing to Martin Esslin?


 

Thanks, tinners.     Further rummaging produced a pertinent Peter Ansorge interview with Paul Scofield, in 1973, and I was particularly interested in his view of the reaction to his gruelling world tour of 'Lear' in Peter Brook's RSC production of 1962/63.   It was presented in a full text performance of 4 hours, with the first interval after two and a half hours; good training for Reggie's later Gotterdammerung at The Coli!

    "...We were the first classical English company to go to Russia since before the revoltion.  A
    completely new world opened to me in watching the Moscow Art people at work.   In 1955 we
    only saw a production of Tolstoy's Fruits of Enlightenment.   I didn't see their work in Chekhov
    until Peter Daubeny brought the Moscow Art Theatre to Sadler's Wells in 1958.   It was
    absolutely fascinating for me to see a company which had a rhythmic way of working that
    came from a concentration and awareness of the interior lives of the characters in relation to
    a Chekhov play.   The actors had a sense of give and take , a flow of relationships between
    each other regardless of the text.   They conveyed relationships which were outside the scope
    of what they were actually saying to each other.   Their extraordinary detail and exactness
    never seemed mechanical or pedantic, but completely spontaneous.   I think it came out of the
    experience of working together over a long period of time.   The fact that the younger parts
    were played by actors who were too old didn't matter to me at all.   They had a kind of
    spontaneity that could only come from long practice with each other.  That might sound like
    a paradox but it gave them a freedom to be spontaneous.   I'd never seen anything like it
    before - ever, not even in the best things which had been done in London...

    ...Had the WTS encouraged Scofield to view a play like Zuckmayer's Captain of Kopenick in
    its social context - the Germany of post-World War One?   'I didn't go to Germany while
    preparing for the part though the director, Frank Dunlop, did.   When it comes to studying
    a play I'm inclined to rely entirely on the text.   Even when I played Thomas More, for instance,
    I never read Chambers' Life of More until after I'd played the part.   In Kopenick I was
    fascinated by the  "shifting sands" speech - the sense that the social background behind
    the play was very unstable.   The lives of all the characters were based upon something
    very shaky indeed - something that was constantly moving and shifting.   But I only got
    that idea from the play itself.   It was something Zuckmayer talked to me a lot about afterwards.'

    This kind of sensitivity was underlined when I asked Scofield about the varying reactions
    of audiences on his King Lear tour.   Instead of distinguishing between West and European
    audiences, Scofield found differences between East and East:   'After half an hour
    of a performance an audience begins to unify - whatever its getting from a play its sharing,
    and the minute it begins to share it becomes, in a sense, like talking to one person.   You
    begin to get a strong sense of an audience's personality.   This became particularly charged
    during the Lear tour.   Bucharest, for instance, provided a strong emotional feeling.
    It was a very highly-strung warm, temperamental audience.   In Poland they were very
    reserved, very intelligent, very listening.   In Hungary, there was a kind of melancholy
    attentiveness, there was something very sad about the Hungarian audience.   The visits
    of English companies have a kind of diplomatic relevance in those countries.   We're only
    usually invited during a thaw.   Although it was before the agonies of 1968 there was a chilly
    feeling about the Czech audience.   It came from a certain feeling in the culture, of their
    capital city Prague.   It's difficult to define exactly what gives an audience the sense of
    being a unified personality.   I think that it's something to do with the common experience
    between people.   You felt that you had to give a different performance in Warsaw from the one
    you had given in Prague.   The emphasis shifts according to the response you're getting....'


    I almost wept reading this interview.   During this time, 1973, I was engaged in a long run of
    Christopher Hampton's 'The Philanthropist'  I'd played the title role before Nigel Hawthorne
    took over, when I returned to playing Braham, the John Braine clone!    It's a sophisticated play
    centred on self-indulgent university dons.   However, the whole emphasis of the play changed
    during the year when, say, UK universities started their term and, a month or two later, we had
    Motor Show week in London.   Another case of shifting sands.   The balance of the production
    remained, of course, but we'd often catch each others eye, before changing the nuance.  It
    was this kind of response which kept autopilot reaction at bay.  Paul Scofield's stamina and
    integrity must have been enormous.   But, talking of Peter Brook......           
   
   

 Lovely posts as usual Stanley.
 The "Philanthropist"! What a great fun that play is, the conclusion of the first scene gave me one of the biggest shocks I've ever had in the theatre I really did jump out of my seat. I use to love reading the monologue about Jack Boot at am-dram favourites-night just so that I could try every possible way of saying "But Boot said I but Boot!" Did the scene about the boy scout and the train trip to Littlehampton ever give any audience problems?  Oh hell I really do envy you Stanley!!
 The Polish production of Dostoyevski's "The Devils" at the Aldwich remains a high-light in my theatre-going life. What power.

Thanks, Ted.      Re the suicidal student in Scene 1 of 'The Philanthropist', can you remember who played this role after it transferred from the Royal Court to The Mayfair Theatre (for almost 3 years)?  It was Will Knightley, father of Keira....!       Alec McCowen played Philip, The Philanthropist, then George Cole (so dry and funny), then yours truly, followed by Nigel Hawthorne.

The nightmare speech is Philip's when, goaded by Braham, he gets into chop-logic by nervously discussing his reasons for quitting smoking - I used to go around muttering it all day, as if I'd 'dried' there is no way a prompt could help.      It starts casually with "I gave up smoking last summer" before Philip snares himself in a hilarious knot - and the waves of audience laughter, get louder and louder.   I'll dig out the text later.

Worth mentioning, too, is Philip's final break up with Celia.   Its bloody difficulty to find HIS degree of pain.   Finally, I spoke to Chris Hampton.    "The pain, Stanley, is exquisite."      Got it, got it!