Guardian, Stage, Variety and Observer digitised records July 1963-1972

Jan 10, 1963 Television today
Front page BBC sequel to Age of Kings, called the spread of the eagle. Produced by Peter Daws. Players include Robert Hardy, Beatrix Lehmann, Roland Culver and Frank Pettingell.


Apr 1 1963 The quarter reviews and news BBC drama reviewed by Derek Hill.

A vision of Sydney Newman stamping about the corridors and trumpeting his impatience to get on with the job may have exerted some influence during the later part of the long hiatus in his move from ABC to the BBC. Whatever the reason, the ratio of original plays to adaptations presented by the BBC Drama Department improved remarkably…

Photo of Bea in Aspern papers…

Broadcasting, Apr 15, 1963 The spread of the eagle three Roman plays by William Shakespeare Coriolanus Julius Caesar, Anthony and Cleopatra. AD for television

Variety April 17 1963 same full page ad

May 1, 1963 Guardian

Shakespeare on tv by Mary Crozier

The new BBC series of Shakespeare plays The spread of the eagle directed by Peter Dews, which starts on Friday with the first part of Coriolanus should be espeiclally interesting because the Roman plays have scarcely been touched by telelvision… Robert Hardy, who was the Henry V of An age of kings plays Coriolanus in the first play and viewers – who have seen Beatrix Lehmann in her impressive earlier television performances will have an idea of what quality they may expect from her performance as Volumnia…

August 21 1963

Variety – International sound track Psyche 59

Columbia’s Psyche 59 moved into Shepperton studios last week after two weeks of locations in Rye and Hyde Park. Film is being produced by Philip Hazelton, directed by Alexander Singer, and stars Patricia Neal, Samantha Eggar, Curt Jurgens and Ian Bannen with Beatrix Lehmann as the latest edition to the cast.

Sept 19, 1963
People the stage and television today

Beatrix Lehmann is guest star in Cup, Hand or Cards the episode of Dr Finlay’s casebook, dramatized from A.J. Cronin’s story by Harry Green, next Thursday



January 9 1943 Television today

Last article on front page

BEATIX LEHMANN is one of the guest starts in the z cars episode, Promise Made by Alan Plater on Wednesday. Also in this episode is Thomas Heathcote.


Variety April 29 1943

Psyche 59

Dim, dense psychological [?]. Oscar winner Patricia Neal name will have to carry.

Hollywood April 21

(available as DVD but haven’t bought or watched yet)

Presence of Academy Award winner Patrica Neal should help box office prospects of Psyche 59 and its going to need all the help it can get. As a matter of fact, a synopsis should be provided each customer to clarify what’s going on in this Columbia release. The psychological melodrama that occurs on the screen is muddled, monotonous and opaque.

Four weirdos cavort mysteriously in Julian Halevy’s contrived screenplay from the novel by Francoise des Ligneris. Its not always clear which character is to be despised, but there are times when all four seem to fall into that category. Pivotal figure in the bizarre tale is the psychosomatically blind wife (Miss Neal) of an industrialist (Curt Jurgens) who is trying to plug the gap in her memory that is responsible for her non-vision. She’s the only one in the theatre who doesn’t know. The audience easily deduces that she went blind when she caught hubby Jurgens in the sack with her baby sister (Samantha Eggar) It’s a so no surprise when she regains her sight upon finding them in the hay again, after which she feigns blindness long enough to convince herself they’re sick, sick, sick.

Further compounding the deficiencies of Halevy’s scenario are Alexander Singer’s deliberately paced, artsy-craftsy direction. (too much technical razzle-dazzle at the expense of clarifying dramatic matters) and Max Benedict’s carless editing, which evidently eliminates scenes even if they render subsequent events mighty peculiar. Walter Lassally has contributed some flashy photographic strokes. …

Miss Neal manages a persuasive portrayal of the blind woman.. Beatrix Lehmann plays a fifth screwball – Miss Neal’s astrologically oriented grandmother…

Boxoffice May 18 1964

Psyche 59

Patricia Neal’s academy award for best actress for her performance in Hug will boost the box office prospects for this psychological melodrama, filmed in England….is often confusing but the soap opera situations, in which a pscyhomatically blind woman learns that her husband and her selfish young sister have had an affair, will appeal to women patrons…While the action is often slow-moving and filled with dramatic pauses, as well as astrological terms employed by an eccentric grandmother, a role well played by Beatrix Lehmann, the climax is a powerful one and is followed by the wife’s ecstasy at regaining her sight and being free of entanglements.


June 11 1964 Television today

Beatrix Lehmann makes a début

A play written and produced by Emyr Humphries called A girl in a garden is on BBC Wales on Tuesday. Beatrix Lehmann makes her first appearance on television in Wales…

June 21, 1964 Observer

Birthday party

Pinter makes it all too play by Bamber Gascoigne

The world premier of Harold Pinter’s the birthday part at Cambridge six years ago was a distinctly exhilarating affair. The merits of the play split the town, but the balance of the audience was the precise opposite of the disastrous London opening a week later: “we” busy acclaiming a splendid new playwright, were in the majority, “they” who maintained that it was a shapeless dump of rubbish, were a few old sticks who could quickly be argued out of court.

Meg, the landlady has a habit of asking people whether their food is nice before they’ve even tasted it and is surprised that her lodger can recognise fried bread. In Beatrix Lehmann’s angular and macabre performance such oddities were entirely acceptable. In the mouth of Doris Hare’s plump everyday creature they just sound unaccountably moronic, and, by implication, very patronising…

June 21, 1964 Guardian

Last night’s television by Mary Crazier

Compact was as absurd as ever; the guest star Beatrix Lehmann, playing the eccentric novelist on a Mediterranean island, was an attraction, it is true, but even she seemed infected by the generally witless atmosphere built up by the star of Compact and her performance was certainly not characteristic of what she can do.

Oct 23, 1964 Guardian

A cuckoo in the nest

Ben Travers’s celebrated Aldwych farce of 1925 enjoyed an excellent revival at the Royal Court Theatre last night, where it gave the impression of conquering a completely new public.

The last act, always the acid test with farce, went like a flash … John Osborne as the starchy MP and Beatrix Lehmann as the disapproving landlady also turned in contributions which worked well and will surely grow crisper as the run proceeds…

The stage and television today Oct 29 1964

A cuckoo in the nest Aldwych farce at the Royal Court.

Ben Travers’ A cuckoo in the nest, his first success at the Aldwych almost fourty years ago, was revived last week by the English Stage Company at the Royal Court to the accompaniment of much laughter and with cheers and calls for the author at the end. …

Beatrix Lehmann is splendid as the dour righteous Mrs Spoker…

Variety Nov 18 1964

A cuckoo in the nest

London, Oct 23

In the heyday of the 1920s the Aldwych farces by Ben Travers were as much a British institution as the Houses of Parliament or the British Museum. Now after 39 years the Royal Court theatre has revived A cuckoo in the nest which originally ran for 376 performances...

The one feature to emerge clearly from this revival is that in the last 440 years there has been no significant change in the basic ingredients of farce, neither in regards to situation or dialogue... Beatrix Lehmann stands out as the landlady of the inn, and playwright and occasional actor John Osborne does well as the silly ass husband of the other woman.

Jan 14 1965 The stage and television today

Some productions of the year a personal choice

A cuckoo in the nest Ben Traver’s old Aldwych farce, revived hilariously at the Royal Court, directed by Anthony Page with Beatrix Lehmann, Nan Munro and Ann Beach prominent in the cast…

Dec 20 1965 Boxoffice

The spy who came in from the cold

The combination of Richard Burton, of the top marquee draws, in a frist rate picturization of Le Carre’s best selling novel means business of blockbuster proportions.. These four and to a lesser degree Sam Wanamaker, Cyril Cusak and Beatrix Lehmann in memorable scenes couldn’t be bettered.

(full film and le carre talking about it on youtube)

Dec 30, 1965

The stage and television archives

Players are forced into false characterisations by Kari Anderson

Eugenie Grandet. … a company of players, all with many creative performances to their credit, have been forced into false and awkward characterisations. The sense of period has not been allowed to grow out of the lines, the atmosphere, the costumes and décor. It has been imposed and forced and thereby exaggerated to the point where story and people become almost ludicrous.

Beatrix Lehmann who we have seen give memorable performances on the stage and on television, was presented in a death bed scene that would have disgraced a drama school production. I cannot believe that she was to blame…

March 30 1966 vareity

Hunchback of notre dame with Peter woodthorpe, Gary Raymond, James Maxwell, Erys Jones, Gay Hamilton, Alex Davison, Suzanne Neve, Beatrix Lehmann, Jeffrey Issac and Normal Mitchell.
25 minutes BBC2


Sept 22 1966

The stage and television today

The Storm at the Vic opening oct 18

Guardian oct 19
The Storm

“whether this martyrdom of free love and youth, at the hands of the middle aged and repressive has much meaning today is an open question… But Doris Lessing’s adaptation has no flavour of time or place and perhaps because of this the production of John Dexter seems to lack teeth.

Beatrix Lehmann turns the matriarch (who should be terrifying) into a sniffy Victorian Spinster. Sheila Reid’s Varvaara (the mischievous sister-in-law) has some character but too many of the other minor figures seem merely stagey peasants…

Oct 20 1966 the stage

Ostrovsky at the national
The storm is an excellent sounding and meaningful adaptation by Doris Lessing, came into the repertoire of the National Theatre at the Old Vic on Tuesday last, a very welcome addition indeed. The tragedy of Katya Kabanova has been given a strong and moving production by John dexter which has haunting sombre setting by Josef Svoboda. ..

One has a vivid sense of the reality of the life of this place and of the people in it, justa s it was so long ago. And also a realisation that Ostrovsky is also deeply concerned with life beyond the confines of the setting. The grimness, sadness, shafts of hope and beauty, and the tragic element are shown clearly and sensitively in Mr Dexter’s direction and ther are perfectly fitting performances of considerable distinction by Beatrix Lehmann as the mother, Jill Bennett and John Stride as Katya and her husband…

Oct 23, 1966 Observer

The storm

Sheila reid gives ungent vitality to the part of the sister-in-law, John Stride is touching as the bullied son, and Beatrix Lehmann, though insufficiently hoggish and mountainous, makes a powerful caricature of his monstrous mother…

Variety Nov 2 1966

Legitamite shows abroad the storm Oct 19

After an unprecedented run of hits since it started operating just three years ago, the National Theatre has come up with a disappointment with The Storm.. whether trouble lies with Doris Lessing’s adaptation or because the play itself is the sort of old fashioned melodrama which no longer appeals in the west, the essential fact is that the storm is a dull and tedious evening…

Jill Bennett has little chance in the main role but there is a dominating study by Beatrix Lehmann as the matriarchal mother in law…

May 18 1967 Guardian

The trojan wars at the mermaid, Hecuba

Bernard Miles has had the idea of presenting four plays by Euripides (two each night) as the Trojan wars which is said to have activated the Mermaid box office better than anything since Treasure Island. Last night we had the beautiful play Ipiginea in Aulis and that bad one Hecuba. What’s Hecuba to Miles? The short answer is Beatrix Lehmann in a red wig, making strong stuff of the queen. The acting is variable but there were things to admire and Miss Lehmann is not one to shirk such a part.

May 18 1967 The stage

Trojan wars

Opened last night company includes Beatrix Lehmann, Richard Ainley, Michelle Dotrice,…All four plays have been specially translated by the novelist and historian Jack Lindsay…

May 25 1967 the stage and television today

The Trojan wars was made meaningful today by R B Marriott. (features picture but not of bea)

… New adaptations by Jack Lindsay, who gives the dialogue a contemporary slangy, loose-speaking to us tang and focuses on here and now about our own cruelties, falsities, needless sacrifice and passion and wealth wasted in war.

Mr Linday’s work, I think, is most telling in Hecuba. Iphiniginea in Aulis seems flattened out by cliché phrases…Perhaps because Hecuba has at its centre a performance in the title role by Beatrix Lehmann that belongs to the old all out raving tradition of Greek tragedy in English, the production is more arousing… Miss Lehmann certainly gives a gripping, penetrating all passion embracing study, rising to shattering grief and anger when she dwells on the sacrifice of her daughter and the loss of her sons. She creates an atmosphere into which one is instantly drawn, as she has her revenge by murdering Polymestor’s little sons and blaming[?] the father.

Around Miss Lehmann matters do not have quite such a powerful impact, …

June 21 1967

Variety

Shows abroad, the Trojan wars, june 1

These two grim anti-war tragedies have been considerably cut in translation by Jack Lindsay…

Hecuba also involves the sacrifice of a maiden, again played by Miss Dotrice, this time as a slave. The role of the unhappy Hecuba is a field day for Beatrix Lehmann, who brings out a chilling anguish as she bemoans the loss of all her children..

January 11 1968 The stage and television today Portrait of a lady

Equal of the Forsyte saga by Angela Moreton

The essence of late Victorian themes[?] and the authentic Jamesian favour was captured in proposals the first of this six part dramatization of Henry James novel by Jack Pulman…Beatrix Lehmann made a splendid impact in this part. Her eccentric Mrs Touchett, drawling and sleepy faced but with wit darting out with the speed of a lizards tongue, was quite brilliant…

Variety foreign tv reviews Jan 31 1968

Portrait of a lady…

This six parter from BBC indicates the richness of the material…

June 6 1968 the stage and television today

A pity that the plot was unnecessarily consuming otherwise neat and ingenious by Ann Purser, Thirty minute theatre, a walk in the dark, BBC2 May 29

Tit is the creepy story season. There has been an abundance lately of horror and ghost stories and it is remarkable, considering the resources available, how few of them have come up to a really spine-chilling standard.

The half hour play has always been a favourite for the unexplained mystery – no one expects a detailed explanation in thirty minuets. Last week’s thirty minute theatre a walk in the dark by John Wiles, from a production point of view came near to being very frightening with ghostly farmhouse, shutters flapping, seen from a distance across the arid South African dessert.

The cameras peeped through cloudy windows at an old lady in pale sprigged muslin, carefully unfolding an ancient wedding dress. Even innocent movements when seen through dirty windows looks sinister. Lingering shots of a huge chopper for the moment at rest in the chopping block suggested something nasty in the offing.

Then the cast Beatrix Lehmann, skin like pinch-pleated parchment, looking as if she had no business in this world anyway… On to the story which unfortunately is where the play fell short. The old lady’s half caste servant had occult powers and told his mistress that her dead husband would return at midnight to take her away. Through the eyes of the intruding [?] as a plot by the servant to kill the old lady and take her farm and money..

It was an excuse for Beatrix Lehmann to utter some picturesque trance talk but muddled an otherwise neat and ingenious story.

Oct 17 1968

Fourteen new plays in Boy meets girl, heading to BBC1 new series of 14 fifty minute plays. John Gorrie’s tragic story, The eye of heaven, stars Beatrix Lehmann and Sharon Gurney.

Jan 15 1969

Film review Wonderwall (available on amazon)

Well produced but frail and often psychedelic fantasy. Useful programmer for art theatre situations.

London Jan 7

Beatrix Lehmann, “mother”

Wonderwall is an arty psychedelic fantasy which is the kind of offbeat pic that should find a ready home at Cinecentra the new west end four theatre complex designed to give a show place to some films at which the two big commercial circuits would probably look askance.

In fact wonderwall is fairly rubbishy piece but it has a number of pluses which raises it from the utterly trivial. It’s a cain[?], from original story by Gerard Brach, with good acting, sharp direction by newcomer Joe Massot and smooth lensing and artwork. It also has a score by Beatle George Harrison that cannot claim to be very tuneful but has the right atmospheric style for the pic.

Jack MacGowran plays a middle-aged bachelor professor who specialises in the study of butterflies, caterpillars and so on. In the apartment next to his he spies through the wall, a beautiful dolly model doing her daily exercises and she reminds him so much of a butterfly that he becomes obsesses. Dazzled by the vision he watches her constantly as she’s photographed for magazines, makes love to her boyfriend and so on. There’s nothing offensively peeping Tommish about the pic. It simply dramatizes synthetically the imaginative wonder of a repressed dentist who dreams about the girl, and in them, duels for her love, and other ariy-fairy nonsense which lends itself to somewhat pretentious scripting and highly coloured floating photography and dreamy fantasy…

May 29 1969

Chester Night I chased the women with an eel - ad

Very funny and enormously touching superb performance that London theatre goers deserve to see John steveson Daily Mail

It was a triumphant night Ken Tossell daily mirror

A potential winner alternatively heartbreaking and uproarious Gerad Dempsy daily express.


The stage and television today Jun 5, 1969

Night I chased…

Includes lovely smiling photo

Julian Oldfield, Theatre director of the Chester Gateway, held a civic evening to mark the completion of the first six months of this new theatre, when the premier of William Payne’s the night… received an enthusiastic reception.

Payne has woven a clever fabric, starting with sledge-hammer blasphemy and spate of four letter words, in the first act, to tell by comedy and most compelling drama, the dreams, fears and hopes of a typical family living in a drab working class home in a small industrial town.

As Jimmy Cooper, John Alderton is at his mercurial best, appealing and arrogant by turns, reflecting pershpas the good grounding he received for a complex part of this nature at the hands of Donald Bodley, at York’s Royal, Pauline Collins, as Brenda Cooper, his wife, is a perfect foil, not always in agreement with her lord and master, but consistent in her affection and support, a very moving and competent portrayal. Beatrix Lehmann as Sarah Cooper, reveals a harshness in the religiously embittered mother which is so much nearer to reality that the lavender and lace of the Victorian novelist. Miss Lehmann has a control and mastery which near perfection.

The combined set, showing part exterior and part interior of the Cooper’s house, is the work of Gateway’s capable resident designer, Robin Edwards.

June 12 1969 The stage and television today, front page

Eel chase for the comedy

John Alderton, Pauline Collins and Beatrix Lehmann are in The night… which will have its London premier at the comedy on July 8. There will be reduce price public previews from July 2. Prior to opening in the West End the production will be seen at the Royal, Brighton for a week from June 23, it originally opened at Chester Gateway on May 27.

July 10 1969 The stage Night I chased…

Family life again

The twisted loves and smouldering hates, along with the daily round of boring acrimony, among ordinary people in a working class home are the driving forces of the night… by William Payne which opened at the comedy on Tuesday last. Familiar ground and familiar types – angry, dreaming young husband, steady decent wife, bitter jealous mother – are covered with little sign of a new approach or fresh ideas.

The young man is Jimmy Cooper, a distant cousin to Jimmy Porter, who, frustrated in his sex as well as his working life, is secretly studying to be a doctor – a process in which it is almost impossible to believe, as put by Mr Payne. There is a good deal of repetition. My Payne takes what seems an age, for instance, to tell us what sort of person mum is, when we recognised the sort from the start. There are too, spouts of emotional drama, corny melodrama and real tenderness. But the whole is too drawn out and too obvious to be satisfactory.

Satisfactory however, are excellent performances by John Alderton, Pauline Collins and Beatrix Lehmann.

Variety July 23 1969 the night..

The shrinking author of the night.. uses the pseudonym of William Payne. Although he is understood to be an American, he shows an impressive knowledge of the gloomy, repressed atmosphere of a Midlands factory town and its people. Despite the play's intriguing title, which suggests a wild farce, the work is on a well tried theme which is gutsy, over-long, often contrived, but engrossing.

The show also gives opportunities for expressive acting by the cast of three. Such play shave probably been seen too often on television to make full legit impact. Nevertheless Eel has more than many recent stage offerings.

Ranging from black comedy to near tragedy, the story concerns a young married couple and his melodramatic, religious mother, living in a shabby, cramped house in an atmosphere of chilling love-hate. The young mechanic cherishes a dream to get away from it all and secretly studies to become a doctor. While his young wife and mother accept his wild flights of fancy as the emanations of a kind of compulsive self-dramatizer, this final threat to their security brings about a final crisis.

The third act of the play is haunting. Earlier, there's a lot of laughter as the three insult each other and strip themselves of dignity. Much of the dialogue is too contrive, but the author is[?] and sure as he reaches his deliberate climax.

Under the firm direction of Allan Davis, the three actors carry the play along with some excitement. Pauline Collins gives a beauitful and moving performance as the bewildered [?] wife who longs for a baby. John Alderton, best known as a young comedian, shows other qualities as a dramatic actor. Beatrix Lehmann, as the mother, gives one of her fine essays in bitter shrewishness, though her role is overwritten.

Eel deserves a respectable run, though it is probably a shade too frail and conventionally conceived for solid success or export. Robin Edwards has produced an effective set of a tattily furnished little house.

Aug 5 1969 Guardian BBC 1 Stanley Reynolds

The eye of heaven

I wish I had watched the aggressive behaviour of gulls, fish, monkeys and stags last night on BBC2’s eye on life rather than the lifeless jerks of the wooden puppets in the boy meets girl play on BBC1. So far this BBC series, both this season and previously, seems to have demonstrated that writers today do not know much about romantic love. It is a subject I never thought I knew very much about, but having watched John Gorrie’s play, the eye of heaven starring Beatrix Lehmann and Sharon Gurney, I have come around to considering that, at least in the love league the BBC operates in, I am an expert.

This was one of those jobs that looked like it should be set in Faulkner’s or Tennessee Williams’s Deep south. A crumbling estate, governed by a possessive but sweet smiling old grandmother (Miss Lehmann) a blind and otherworldly grandson (Paul Greenhaigh) and a pretty girl who comes to stay and falls in love not with the blind grandson but with the cook’s boy (Kenneth Cranthant). In Faulkner's or Williamson’s country this would be fraught with fear of miscegenation. Here class warfare barely raised its eyebrow – instead for some reason the grandson went out and drowned himself.

Of course I have known a few girls who fooled around with sleeping pills and one fellow who scratched himself with a razor blade, but so far I have never known or heard of anyone actually killing himself for love, at least, not for the specific loss of one particular love. The play failed at one end, to appreciate the real but simple force that love mysteriously has, while at the same time it overdid the effects with phoney theatricals. The nice thing about love for the purposes of fiction seems to me that it easily gives one a beginning, a middle and end, and creates no expensive problems of sets or location. All you need in fact, is love.

Aug 13 1969 Variety

Film reviews Staircase

Probe into loneliness and interdependence of two homosexuals at home. A Rex Harrison and Richard Burton “stunt” pic. Brilliant but close to depressing.

Producer-director Stanley Donen’s staircase investigating lonely, desperate lives of two ageing male homosexuals in a drab London suburb, comes uncomfortably close to being depressing. Caustic wit, splendid photography and fine direction serve only to point up weary plight of the middle-aged pair who cling to one another even while they clash.

Homosexuality, though predominant influence of storyline, is not central theme of writer Charles Dyer’s screenplay. Its basis is urgent need of neurotic individuals for consolation. Homo-philes will find little to tickle their fancy since film shuns exhibitionism. Strongest, selling points, aside from stunning performances by Rex Harrison and Richard Burton, will be production merits, brittle fag humour and exploitation of stars in roles totally unrelated to what they have done before

Title refers to several points – Staircase leading from downstairs barbershop, where Harrison and Burton work, to their living quarters overhead; use of Burton by Harrison to rise above his despondencies and life itself among lifelong afflicted, emotionally or physically where every step seems a step downward.

Harrison as the flighty dagger tongued room-mate of fellow hair stylist Richard Burton offers portrait of a bitter, disenchanted man living in terror of being alone. Burton almost stole in his less theatrical role, commands respect and at the same time, sympathy. Harrison and Burton have dared risky roles and have triumphed.

Harrison, flamboyant ex-actor awaiting police summons for publicly appearing in drag and creating a scene, is compulsively sadistic. He must act upon Burton, tear at him, pick away whatever flesh is left. Burton, with his arthritic mother sharing their apartment, suffers but endures. After many years together, Burton feels he has not aged as well as Harrison. I’m wearing tight Italian trousers inside, confesses the stouter turbaned Burton who has lost his hair and refuses to show his baldness.

Harrison and Burton’s scenes are tours de force with each man building his character through revealing confrontations. Where Harrison is mercurial, Burton confines his desperation to hopeless dreams of being different…

Buying and booking guide vol. 64, no. 6 Aug 19, 1969 The independent film journal.

Staircase
Super-saturated in woe, Charles Dyer’s domestic drama of two ageing homosexual lovers has gotten reverential treatment in its transfer to the screen. Film will have to ride on curiosity provoked by the casting of Richard Burton and Rex Harrison as the homosexuals and its hard-core sentimentality. Limited appeal.

Staircase, a domestic drama about the marriage of two ageing male homosexual lovers, will have to ride on the obvious boxoffice appeal of seeing two notoriously “Straight” actors, Richard Burton and Rex Harrison, reverse their real-life roles to play flamboyant homosexuals. This odd coupling is the kind of casting coup that frequently wins Oscars, no matter what the performances. Unfortunately, Burton and Harrison – who gives the more restrained, subtle performance – may have had a good time with their thankless roles, but they haven’t transcended them. Charles Dyer’s quagmire of sentimentality and self pity is too deep for that.

Dyer receives sole credit for the screen play, which he adapted from his own two character play. In it two London barbers, living together as lovers, are super-altered to the ineffable sadness and the insupportable burden of a life without love. Harry (Burton) is humiliated by his advancing age and total baldness, which he hides under a turban of bandages Charlie (Harrison) is a failed actor anxiously waiting to appear in court for an impromptu re-enactment of one of his old female impersonation routines in a public bar. In the interim they flail each other unmercifully until, by the fade-out, they have recognised their mutual need.

Staircase is such no-holds-barred sentimentality that it is impossible to respond with the sympathy to the universal condition of the two men, particularly when Dyer’s script, Donen’s heavy handed direction and Burton’s performance so shamefacedly beg for it. The nut of its reassuring message is that God made all things and loves them equally, or so a hymn, which Harry wistfully observes a young boy singing, tells us.

Harry and Charlie bite and claw viscously, but, underneath their bitchiness are hearts that could have belonged to Little Eva and Little Nell. At bottom, they’re lonely and desperate – only more so – just like everyone else. Woe is piled upon woe. Harry’s arthritic, bed-ridden mother, absent from the stage play, has been wheeled in front of the cameras in all the grisly realism of Cathleen Nesbitt’s painful performance. Half of the food her son spoon feeds her winds up on her chin; when he changes her bed clothes, she registers the most excruciating pain. She is a terrible reminder of the ravages of time, but the feeling extends as much to the actress as to her role.

In little drama tradition, staircase glorifies the trivial by letting it occupy stage centre. Realistic bits of business become the meat of the drama; Harry taking a bath while Charlie cuts his toenails; Harry emptying his mother’s bedpan or wiping Charlie’s slime out of the tub or depositing his false teeth – in huge close up – into a glass of water. The big dramatic highpoint is the scene in which Harry makes some kind of compromise with life by summoning the courage that enables him to unravel his turban – slowly, with the camera held fast on him – and expose his baldness to Charlie

Their plight gets even further reiteration at a park where our two pathetic figures are surrounded by the lithe, young bodies of cavorting heterosexual couples, and in the old aged home where Charlie visits his helpless old mother, who doesn’t even recognise him and chases him from the place, but not before the camera has caught the hopelessness and emptiness in the faces of the aged, as if complete deterioration were the necessary fate of all men.

Dyer’s artificial, overwritten dialogue betrays the film’s stage origins. It is theatrical in all that word’s bad connotations. The verbal daggers are such precise, obviously hand-made implements that any sense of spontaneity or of quick wit at work is lost. The spoken reveries which fill us in on the histories of the characters are mock poetic, and the opening up of the play amounts to having the stage dialogue spoken against a variety of backgrounds. The film ends with an insight that is becoming the trite convention of domestic drama. Charlie, apparently the stronger partner, is revealed to be the weaker, more dependent member of the union.

May 14, 1970 Guardian

Peer Gynt at the Chichester festival

New translation by Christopher Fry, with some beautifully turned lines and a great air of naturalness. ..

Roy Dotrice hardly alters at all in appearance as the years go by, but his manner alone effects some changes from rebel youth to pompous potentate and then on to the disillusioned old man. Last night his voice was not at its best and at first sounded decidedly thin and monotonous but he later uses it with uncommon skill to suggest the various facets of the great character, but this is only done in fits and starts according to the adapter’s notion – as it might be a series of sketches by a quick change artist…

Beatrix Lehmann, Sarah Badel, Edward Tenza and William Hutt were stalwarts in support of Mr Dotrice…

May 21 1970 Stage

Impressive start to Chichester festival with Peer Gynt by R. B. Marriott

Chichester Festival Theatre season has opened with a very impressive production by Peter Coe of Ibsen’s Peer Gynt with Roy Dotrice as Peer and Beatrix Lehmann as the mother. The English adaptation by Christopher Fry has a moving poetic quality; it is flexible and clear, notwithstanding cuts in the long work, the elements of metaphysics and philosophy, of realism and fantasy are finely blended. While there are sections which at present seem rather lightweight, particularly in relation to the Trolls, the great craggy work is given a spacious vividly colourful and for the most part, a deeply absorbing interpretation…

Roy Dotrice is an admirably mercurial Peer, though in his soul as troubled as any man who tries to face, in any serious and consistent way, life as it appears to be in him and about him. .. Even now, Mr Dotrice’s performance is strong and fine; and one is sure that later on certain weaknesses will disappear. He is at present least effective in the comic interludes, when he tends to be superficial, and with Solveig, when his passion is a little unconvincing.

Beatrix Lehmann’s mother is a commanding study of depth and imaginative realisation. …

May 21 1970

Photo on front cover of the stage and television today, notice on page 12.


Nov 5 1970 – the stage

Listed as one of the BAEA actors in favour of the living wage.

Feb 28, 1971 Guardian

Ad for Reunion in Vienna at Chichester festival July 21 – sept 11

July 29 1971 The stage and television today

Reunion in Vienna at Chichester by Wendy Monk

To achieve the kind of entertainment that Reunion in Vienna undeniably is, demands self-effacement on the author’s part, almost to the point of anonymity. Robert Sherwood, whose romantic comedy completes this year’s programme at Chichester Festival Theatre, developed the art of telling, a story within a restricting framework. This called for discipline which allowed so time-taking diversions, no indulgence in social comment, hardly any satire, nothing goes very deep; it id did the play would turn into something else.

In these days we are inclined to ask ourselves searching questions about the dramatists purpose and meaning. In Sherwood’s case the cynical reply would be that he was simply writing a vehicle for a pair of superstars – as it happened, the Lunts. People no longer write vehicles, except possibly Mr Pinter for Mrs Pinter, a whacking star part, such as Archive Rice is probably accidental.

No boredom

The thing that most people will admire about Reunion in Vienna, is that nothing goes on too long. If a boredom-detector could be set up in the Chichester Theatre this play would surely score a record in absence of boredom.

But when all’s said this is actors’ theatre, the occasion is memorable not for Sherwood’s skill but for the performances of – yes – the stars. It is hard to care whether the banished Rudolf, in Vienna for a single night, does recapture Elena, his ex-mistress, now happily married to a distinguished psychiatrist. It is impossible to take the danger of Rudolf’s situation seriously; he would charm any policeman out of shooting him. What does matter is that Nigel Patrick grasps to the full his superb build-up and makes the most of his second act entrance disguised in shabby cloak and Tyrolean hat. For all Rudolf’s barely hidden brutality – he shouts at the hotel staff, he slaps Elena’s face – it is impossible not to feel sorry that he has now to drive a cab for a living. Margaret Leighton endows Elena with more than the beauty and elegance she must have; she giver her intelligence, and a sense of humour. When in the almost Shavian scene in which husband and lover compete for her she frankly enjoys the situation, as we do.

In the less showy part of the husband Michael Aldridge suggests a rather stuffy integrity, and Beatrix Lehmann is splendidly down to earth as the hotelier who buys flowers cheaply from an undertake and who hopes her guests won’t look beneath the napkins that shroud the wine bottles.

Sept 9 1971 stage

Dyer Trilogy completed

Charles dyer who wrote Rattle of a simple man and staircase has now completed his trilogy of plays concerning the humour and humours of lonely people with Mother Adam, which goes into rehearsal shortly with Roy Dotrice and Beatrix Lehmann as the two lonely people. The play opens a short tour at York on Oct 11 and then goes to Wilmslow Rex and Bournemouth Palace Court before reaching the West End in November.

Oct 19, 1971 Guardian

Mother adam at the Rex, Wilmslow by Gillian Hush

It is Sunday and in a curious remote attic mother, old and crippled, is trapped in her elaborate swan encrusted gilded bed, tended, bullied, loved and hated by her son Adam. He is, he says, a middle aged failure, a museum attendant who tomorrow is to be banished downstairs in the museum to the wearing of a brown overall and no sight of for the general public.

Following his two earlier plays Rattle of a simple man and Staircase Charles Dyer has written a third work for two characters, Mother Adam, now at the Rex Wilmslow, on its way to London. MR Dyer has created another very private world with its own rituals, its own word play, and its fantasies. His writing here is compressed, often – especially at the beginning – obscurely complicated, sometimes very funny as he explores delicately and sharply the real nature of his two characters and the enduring relationship between them.

Their relationship endues because they depend on each other and at the heart of the free wheeling fanasy and the blackmail and the battles are their very real human needs.

The complexity of the dialogue, its poetry imagination makes the play sometimes indigestible, sometimes baffling, but always interesting.

My Dyer has directed the play himself with an intensity of feeling which is shared by his two players; Beatrix Lehmann, lying motionless, dominates the stage and uses every note of her extraordinary voice to make its effect. Roy Dotrice, looking extraordinary young after years of playing John Aubrey and Haddock, suggests the torment and the fear as his last chance of something like an independent life is seen to vanish.

The strangeness of this very individual world is carefully underlined in Brian Currah’s attic setting

Nov 18 1971 The stage

Mother adam

Roy Dotrice and Beatrix Lehmann appear in Charles Dyer’s new play, Mother Adam, which opens a limited season a the Arts on November 30. Mother Adam completes a trilogy of plays concerning the humour and humours…

Dec 1, 1971 Guardian

Michael Billington’s review of Mother adam

Charles Dyer’s Mother adam is the third of his extended duologues on “the courage and humour of lonely people”. A worthy enough theme, but alas, the play tells us little we hadn’t already learned from Staircase and Rattle of a simple man and employs a vast amount of verbal camouflage to conceal a pitifully slender amount of dramatic action….

The trouble with the play is that there is a prodigious gulf between intention and achievement. Mr Dyer’s hero is supposedly afflicted by loneliness; yet he rattles on with the extrovert fluency of a natural actor, studding his conversation with the imagery of a saloon-bar Hopkins and assuming new roles with an ease Lon Chaney might have envied. To me his spiritual home would seem to be the Salisbury rather than a dusty provincial museum. On top of this Mr Dyer loads the play with a wealth of self conscious baby-talk (very drabble, Mammies, very drabble) that puts the events at one further remove from reality. Nothing is more poignant than an ageing son tethered to a possessive parent, but five minutes of Steptoe and Son bring y ou closer to the subject that the whole of Mother Adam. However there’s some magnificent salvage-work by Roy Dotrice as the restless, role-playing hero, and Beatrix Lehmann adds another commanding portrait to her notable gallery of marooned, ageing grotesque.


Dec 30 1971 the stage

Rattigan at midnight. The midnight performance at the Haymarked in honour of Sir Terrance Rattigan… In Nigel patrick’s production of Table number seven are Polly Adams, Joyce Carey, Andrew Cruickshank, Doris Hare, Wendy Hiller, Trever Howard, Celia Johnson, Deborah Kerr, Beatrix Lehmann and Brain smith…