Thursday, 27 August 2015

Guardian, Stage, Variety and Observer digitised records post 1979



Bea post 1978
April 24 1979
The stage
Equity annual general meeting
Included, The president spoke of the plight of British Theatre and of Equity’s campaign to get VAT removed from theatre seats, of the ITV dispute and the coming second channel. He spoke of the BBC, of the film industry and, in some detail, of Equity’s domestic affairs, paying special tributes to three former Presidents of the Union who had died in the previous year: Beatrix Lehmann, Andre Morell and Sir Feliz Aylmer.

Nov 20, 1980 The stage
(mentions radio performance that is referred to in the obit letter)
Well qualified
That great actor Wilfrid Lawson is the subject of a Radio Three profile programme scheduled to go out on December 2 at 8.30pm.
The material for the tribute, entitled, This fabulous Genius, has been compiled by Peter Cotes, and among those participating on tape will be J.C. Trewin, the late Beatrix Lehmann, Donal Pleasance, Leonard Rossiter, Eric Shorter, Trevor Howard, Joseph Losey and John Boulting. The producer is Alan Haydock.
Cotes is, in fact, well qualified to compile such a programme; he directed Lawson in The father back in 1953 and is an expert on the “big” style of acting Lawson specialised in.

Saturday 28th Feb 1981
Screen international reviewed by Marjorie Bilbow
The cat and the canary
Comedy horror based on the play by John Wilard,
Story outline (go back and re-read after watching)
Audience rating: for fans of the stars and horror fans interested in seeing another re-make of the good old oldie.
Business prediction average in popular cinemas
Critical comment: This begins well with Wendy Hiller and Beatrix Lehmann giving richly melodramatic performances as Alison Crosby and Mrs Pleasant and all the more avaricious of the possible heirs exchanging insults and innuendoes which suggest developing sub-plots. And the staging of the reading of the Will, with the screen image of the long dead Cyrus playing host at the head of the dinner table, makes a very diverting variation on the original story. But, from then on, Radley Metzger lets the batteries run down by treating the plot as if it were more of a detective mystery than a good old fashioned creepie packed with screams and laughter provoking shock effects of bodies falling out of cupboards and hairy hands clutching at pretty throats. There is more talk than action and too little comedy to compensate for the loss of suspense as the story winds to its predictable end.

Sep 25, 1983 Observer
MY TWENTY MINUTES IN POLITICS
Author: Redgrave, Michael
Extract from biography about People’s convention with diary extracts
(biography on order from TH)
Mentions Bea only in relation to giving a speech and seems rather reluctant about the whole thing.

Nov 29, 1984 The stage and television today
Chit chat
Thesps with a Bee [sp] in their bonnet
Dame Wendy Hiller (photo)
Dame Wendy Hiller, Michael Denison and the pianist Eric Hope, who frequently shared the poetry readings and musical soirees given by the late Beatrix Lehmann for the Pro Arte Society, informed a distinguished gathering at the Purcell Room the other evening of their wish to see a Poetry Reading Prize established in her memory at the Central School of Speech and Drama.
Bee, as her friends knew her, had left her collection of theatrical books to the school.
After the evening’s recital, Dame Wendy spoke admiringly of “Bee” Lehmann’s Lavinia in Mourning becomes Electra at the Westminster in the 30s, the only time, believe it or not, she told us, that she had actually seen this remarkable actress on the stage.
Michael Denison paid tribute to Bee’s three years as President of Equity in the 40s, while Eric Hope invited friends and admirers to send donations to the Pro Arte Society, c/o Lloyds Bank, Southampton Row,… to help get the prize off the ground.
Among Bee’s other interests, he reminded us, was the law, which might account for the ranks of judges, barristers and solicitors in the Purcell Room. For a further explanation one had only to note the name of the barrister-cum playwright Jacques Sarch, on the programme, responsible for devising the items that ranged far and wide, from Humbert Wolfe to T.S. Eliot, via Chopin, Poulenc and Villa Lobos. Anybody, like myself, who was chilled to the bone by Denison’s horrific rendering of Edgar Allan Poe’s The tell tale heart should immediately have reached for their cheque books!

April 11, 1987
Poetic choice
Author: de Jongh, Nicholas
John’s obit.
“earlier he had perhaps been overshadowed by his brilliant sisters – the novelist Rosamond and the actress, Beatrix, both of whom ranked very high in their fields, …

Jul 10, 1987 Guardian
Publication or Rosemond Lehmann’s album
(requested at BL)


Research plan updated

Research plan

Short stories and articles - Read
Plays - Read all at BL
Reviews in Variety, Stage, Guardian and observer done
Women's parliament Done
Our time- done

To do
Add in research notes to full docment

Books on communism in the Britain (from work)

BL
Weavering's entries for each decade (40s onwards)
Follow up in Theatre World magazine for those months
Finish reading Daily worker for articles re equity 1946-1949

Equity
Annual reports, meetings etc

Arts Council
archives - reports etc

Central
Teaching info?
library collection

Cambridge
Personal letters

Communism archives in Manchester

Hunt down missing play texts
Watch available TV and films

Guardian, Stage, Variety and Observer digitised records July 1973-1973



Mar 22 1973 The stage
Stratford’s opening
The Royal Shakespeare season at Stratford-Upon-Avon opens on March 28 with Terry Hands’ new production of Romeo and Juliet which has Estelle Kohler and Timothy Dalton in the leading roles… Beatrix Lehmann as the nurse
 Brenda Bruce as Lady Capulet, Tony Church as Friar Lawurence, Jeffery Dench plays Capulat Bernard Lloyd Mercutio and BL as the nurse. In other roles are Brain Glvoer, Peter Machin, Clement McCallin, Richard Mayes, Anthony Pedley, David Suchet, Janet Whitseide, John Abbott, Ray Armstrong, Robert Ashby, Annette Badland, Gavin Campbell, Janet Chappell, Michael Ensign, Nickolas Grace, Denis Holmes, Louise Jameson, Colin Mayes and Lloyd McGuire.

April 5 1973 the stage
Sharing at Stratford
The new Royal Shakespeare Company production of Richard II directed by John Barton opens at Stratford on two successive nights, April 10 ND 11. Beatrix Lehmann is the Duchess of York… Also with Lou and Jan and Brian Glover…

Apr 5 1973 the stage
 Action, vitality but little heart in Romeo and Juliet by R. B. Marriott.
Terry Hands’ production of Romeo and Juliet which opened the season at the Royal Shakespeare. Stratford-upon-Avon on March 28, is packed with action, vitality and visual variety but overall effect of harshness being enhanced by iron work settings by Farrah. The Montagues and the Capulets battle, or rather brawl viciously, and the atmosphere of Verona – though it is hard to believe we are in Verona – is filled with foreboding of blood and disaster to come.
The prince demands discipline and order, he gets so mad about the warring of the youngsters, the Romeo of Timothy Dalton is relatively quiet through all this; then is loud in cries for Juilette, and athletic in movement as passion grows….
The play as a whole emerged rather scrappily on the opening night; probably integration will come later. Styles may be better co-ordinated or matched too. Beatrix Lehmann’s nurse is rough, sensible, old world., while the lady Montague of Janet Whiteside is somewhat modern-day…

The stage and Television today May 8 1975
Did no one have heart to tell writer? By Patrick Campbell
Let no one, in these days of the stereotype and the predictable, decry experiment in television drama. By all means let our dramatists break the rules if the result is entertainment. After all, today’s avant garde will be tomorrow’s old hat.
Ruth Prawer Jhabvala’s The place of Peace (Granada, Sunday May 4, 10.15) could hardly be said to break the rules; since before you can break them you must know what they are. Mrs Jhabvala clearly had no idea and no one at Granada, it seems, had the heart to tell her so.
The place of peace lacked every thing but good intentions, nor must the author herself be allowed to shoulder all the blame. Robert Knight’s direction made no attempt to create the atmosphere that was so essential to what development there was in the story.
Apart from some authentic and disconcerting irritating music (credited to Neil Cotton) the setting  might have been Guildford, home of the thrice-raped and inexplicable Suzie.
And even allowing for the naivety, the staginess and the artlessness of the lines, to say nothing of the utter inconsistency of the characters, the actors gave their author minimum of support – a charge from which Renu Setna’s Babuji is absolved.
It is hard to see why Beatrix Lehmann, a fine actress, allowed herself to be saddled, not with Clare – a character from which she might, left to herself, have built something to remember – but with Clare’s dialogue which, in a literal sense, was unspeakable with conviction.
Basically too, her storyline was impeccably simple. Jean arrives with her boyfriend Willy at an Indian hill station to visit her dying aunt Clare who has devoted her life to the poor and the outcasts. Jean has always admired her aunt and would like to follow her example, but the pull of sex and England is too great. Exit Jean and Willy, leaving Clare and the faithful Babuji to muse on what might have been. The promiscuous Suzie from Guildford and the sensuous karim whose wife (apparently Indian fashion) has given him two sons but no sexual fulfilment were presumable dragged in to make 30 minutes worth of material….
What lingers on the taste is a sickly sentimentality encapsulated in one of Clare’s final dicta, so completely out of character in one who has devoted her life to the Indian poor. “All they need,” she says, “Is a little kindness from someone more fortunate than themselves” ugh!

Dec 21, 1975 guardian
Greek blood and thunder
Nothing happened in David Rudkin’s working for radio of Hecuba that Eruipedes wouldn’t have recognised. John Tydeman’s production was a long, noisy version, Greek blood and thunder with knobs on Ulysses was a bureaucratic politician, Agamemnon was a smoothly, but the screams were straight out of a nightmare.
Radio doesn’t need to worry about credibility to the same extent as television, you accept naked voices –without faces, clothes or landscapes. Then and now are more easily interchanged when there are no hair styles or marble pillars to wreck illusions. Instead of the ghost of Plydorus (Hecuba’s son nastily butchered after the fall of Troy) Rudkin gave us the actual floating corpse, as wounds and disgusting sea gurgles. The corpse addressed us, the modern audience. It was like the start of a documentary about the cruetlies of man.
The electronic sound effects were important, either as ominous sea and thunder noises in the background, or to enhance a bit of foreground agony. Polynestor, blinded with brooch pins, was given a peculiarly evil drill-like buzzing to go with the groans. Beatrix Lehmann’s Hecuba was left, more or less, to weep and gnash her teeth without electronics…

Sep 23, 1976
The stage and tt
Short list for Imp radio awards
First year of the annual awards for radio, sponsored by Imperial Tobacco for the radio writers association presented on Nov 4,
Outstanding radio performance by an actress
Hecuba – Beatrix Lehmann
On a day in Summer Julie Hallam
(Bea won)

Nov 11, 1976 television today
BBC gets nine out of ten radio awards
Bea gets award for Hecuba

Sat Nov 27 76 Cat and canary starts shooting the stage

Dec 1 1976 Variety – Cat and canary currently filming

Feb 17, 1977 Televsion today. Love for Lydia is nearing completion with hopes of a transmission date in the autumn

May 20, 1977 stage and television today shooting love for Lydia

Sep 4, 1977 Observer The week in view
Includes photo of Bea and Rachel in Love for Lydia
Another massive adaptation set in the almost obligatory inter war years and possessed of  a cast of characters, who, even if they are more or less instantly recognisable, are not displeasing. Set in the wintry East Midlands this episode depicts the initial encounter of Lydia, young isolated and rich, with one of the men with whom she will soon fall in love. …The appeal of Mel Martin’s Lydia is rather lessened by her almost wanton tiresomeness.

Sept 22, 1977 Television today
Lydia slow but looks promising (Love for Lydia)
Television today reviews by Patrick Campbell.
(discusses the inconsistency of the characterisation)
Mel Martin, so far, has made a commendable job of combining the new-found power of Lydia with the nastiness that accompanies it. She engages the attention but not the sympathy and will doubtless, before the series is out, have established herself as an actress fully capable of sustaining one of the most difficult roles television has offered this year.
Chirstopher Blake has, so far, been given the less rewarding task of creating a substantial and logical character from the young reporter, a task more successfully undertaken in his scenes with Lydia than when he has to play against the subtle characterisation of David Ryall as Bretherton.
The delightful double-act of Beatrix Lehmann and Rachel Kempson as aunts Bertie and Juliana cannot be faulted as they alternately support or discourage the skating lessons; while Michael Aldridge’s Captain Rollo appears always to have something up his sleeve – though what he has, as yet, never let us know.
If Love for Lydia has not, at this stage, made quite the impact its advance publicity promised, at least it cannot be called dull. Well acted, directed with style and a sense of period, striving hard to be faithful to the intentions of the original, its report so far might well read “shows promise – possibly a late starter”.

June 26 1978 Cat and Canary rights for the UK go to Gala

Jan 5, 1979 Guardian Ad
Exchange theatre company at the new round house,
Edward Fox and Beatrix Lehmann in the family reunion by T S Eliot directed by Micahel Elliottt 18 April-12 May

Jan 14, 1979 Observer
Ad as above

Jan 31, 1979 Guardian
Theatre rebuilds itself
Opening of the Round house in camden as  a theatre instead of a rock venue, starting feb, with the Manchester Royal Exchange Theatres presentation of several plays including BL in Family Reunion

April 12, 1979
Production of Family Reunion opening at the Round house on April 18
 Aviril Elgar, Joanna David, Daphne Oxenford, Wllliam Fox, Constantce Chapman, Jeffry Wickham, Hilda Schroder, Harry Walker and Esmond knight also feature. Laurie Dennett is the designer and costumes are by Clare Jeffery.

Jun 20, 1979 The Guardian
Family reunion
de Jongh, Nicholas
Review but mentions that Pauline Jameson has taken over the part of the matriarch when Beatrix Lehmann was taken ill.

Aug 1, 1979 Guardian
News in brief
Beatrix Lehmann, the actress, died in hospital yesterday after a long illness. She was 76 and was celebrating her 55th year in the theatre. Obiturary page 2.

Aug 1, 1979 Guardian
Beatrix Lehmann, rare classic actress by Nicholas de Jongh
Beatrix Lehmann, one of the least publicised but most highly regarded classical actresses in the last 40 years, died in London yesterday aged 76.
She had a stroke earlier this year while playing the leading role in Eliot’s The family reunion in Manchester.
Her death deprives the British theatre of one of its strongest emotional performers and also one of the most individual. She excelled in roles requiring intense emotional energy and passion or a touch of the macabre.
In old age with her hard, crackling voice she created a great gallery of ancient harridans of tragic heroines; perhaps the most flamboyant was the centenarian Miss Bordereau, in an adaptation on Henry James’s short story.
“Does the sun still shine?” she croaked in a voice and tone sufficient to send shivers down the best maintained of spines.
Her entire career was notable for the quality in her selection of roles. Having understudied Tallulah Bankhead in 1926, she played a succession of dramatic roles in the 1930s including Ibsen’s Hilder Wangle and the tormented Mrs Alving; O’Neill’s heroines in Desire under the Elms, All God’s Chilin and Mourning becomes Electra.
Apart from a Stratford season in the late 1940s her career went into decline at this period. She had been a communist, a president of Equity and was banned from the BBC along with Michael Redgrave for her support of the Communist Convention.
She recovered her place in the 1950s with her glorious performance in Anouilh’s The waltz of the Toreadors, the landlady in Pinter’s first play The Birthday Party, and the horrific Tennessee Williams matriarch in Suddenly last summer.
She moved into a long, sunset phase at the National Theatre, in classical Greek Tragedy and with the Royal Shakespeare Company.

[Well, as a side note almost EVERYTHING about this obit is wrong. She wasn’t a classical actress at all. She spent her entire career performing new works which dealt with contemporary issues and was very interested in the new developments in theatre. Most of the plays she was in were new and not revivals. She didn’t appear in Shakespeare till she was in her mid 40s and did not do any Greek tragedy apart from Hecuba on stage. The “ancient harridan” she played in her “old age” were in fact when she was in her early to mid 50s where she was made up to look old. That same year she also played Lady Macbeth without the ageing makeup.  She acted for 55 years on the stage, not 40. She wasn’t banned from the BBC for the “Communist Convention” but the People’s Convention. And this was only a temporary situation which was resolved quite quickly. She did loose her presidency of Equity because she was a communist.  It doesn’t mention that she was also a writer, her work with the Arts Council, her activism, or any of the kindly and amusing old ladies she played on television in her last decade which, because they are some of the few performances that survive, are what most people remember her best for now. This was easily the worst obituary of Bea I’ve read so far.]

Aug 5, 1979 Observer
Beatrix Lehmann by J C Trewin
Beatrix Lehmann’s death last week, at the age of 76, takes from the London theatre its most imaginatively idiosyncratic player.
A sister of the writers John and Rosamond Lehmann, she had acted for more than half a century since her years at drama school. Spare, pale and relentlessly compelling, her gift of suggestion could carry audiences beyond the boundary of any part. We recall her Lavinia in O’Neill’s restatement of the Electra theme, and an Emily Bronte that did indeed bring Haworth Moor to Clemence Dane’s Wild Decembers; but she could modulate also the aged enigma in the Venetian palazzo of the Aspern Papers, splinter into the madness of the wife in The Waltz of the Toreadors and establish both the agony of the lesbian in Sartre’s hell (Huis Clos) and the defiant melodramatics of a homicidal farm servant in a forgotten shocker, They walk alone.
In a sense, she always walked alone, for her performances – sometimes adventurously and hauntingly off key – owed nothing to tradition. She did relatively little Shakespeare, but her Portia, Isabella, Viola and – for Peter Brook – Juilet’s nurse at Stratford (1947) her chilling Lady Macbeth (Old Vic 1958) and the nurse in another Stratford revival (1973) linger with their remembered urgency, adding fresh, sometimes strange, resonances to familiar texts. And as she showed in her last part, the dowager of Wishwood in Eliot’s The Family Reunion, she could be a mistress of the charged silence.

Aug 8, 1979 Variety
Beatrix Lehmann, 76, British legit actress whose 55 year career in showbiz included stage, film, radio and television roles, died Aug 1 in London. Best known for her work on the stage, Lehmann appeared in a number of West End classical dramas, including Euguene O’neill’s Mourning becomes Electra, All god’s chillun, and desire under the elms and Tennessee Williams’ Suddenly last summer.
Her roles on the screen included the Key with William Holden, Trevor Howard and Sophia Loren, in which she had a supporting role and the Spy who came in from the cold, with Richard Burton.
She began her career in 1924, in a production of William Congreve’s The way of the world, succeeding in the role previously held by Elsa Lanchester. She was also the British Actors’ Equity President in the late 40s and continuing her radio and television career in later years., was radio actress of the year in 1977.

Aug 9 the stage
Letters
Beatrix Lehmann
Sir – I am deeply saddened to hear of the death of Beatrix Lehmann. She was distinguished in the best sense of that often debased and much abused word and was an old friend and much admired colleague.
Her own inflexible will as an actress and a TRUE professional critic made her formidable but a joy to work with, it is a lasting pleasure – both to have seen her at work in rehearsal and then performing opposite the late great Wilfrid Lawson in the Father, which I had the privilege of directing in the early 50s at the Arts Theatre Club.
It is by happy chance that we talked together recently in a recording on Radio 3 for a script on Lawson that I had completed for the BBC. As this may well be the last occasion upon which “Bea” will be heard, it could be considered something for your readers to look forward to when the programme is transmitted later in the year.
Peter Cotes


Aug 16 1979
The stage
Obiturary Beatrix Lehmann
Although Beatrix Lehmann, who died on July 31, aged 76, began her career at the Lyric Hammersmith in 1924, when she took over from Elsa Lanchester as Peggy in the way of the world, it was not until 1937 that she came into her own as a player of distinction and originality. This was when she gave a magnificent performance as Lavinia in a memorable production of Eugene O’Neill’s Mourning becomes Elecatra, at the Westminster. She had given performances of considerable interest previously, but her Lavinia had the stamp of great acting.
Beatrix Lehmann studied at RADA and with Rosina Filippi and following her debut at Hammersmith was seen at the Adelphi in a small part in The green hat, then understudied Tallullah Bankhead as Amy in They knew what they wanted at the St martin’s at the court she played Judy O’Grady in the Adding Machine, other parts in the next few years including Lady Constance Lamb in Byron, Ella Downing in All god’s chillum, Susie Monican in the Sivler Tassie and Myology in Brain, all in London.
At the Phoenix she was seen as Luella Carmody in the original West End production of Late Night Final, and at the Apollo as Emily Bronte in Wild Decembers.
She stood alone in suggesting the sinister with a touch of the macabre, which was brilliantly evident when she played Emmy Baudine in They walk alone. She made vivid impressions as Hilda Wangel in The Master Builder. Stella Kirby in Eden End, Mrs Alving in Ghosts, and Madame St Pe in the Waltz of the Toreadors, but was not so striking when she went to Stratford-upon-Avon to play Portia Isabella in Measure for Measure or Viola in Twelfth night.
She gave studies in the true Lehmann creative mould as Miss Bordeaux in the Aspern Papers at the Queen’s in 1966 and as Aase in Peer Gynt at Chichester in 1970.
She was a hard worker for equity being president in 1945 and wrote several novels. Her brother is John and her sister Rosamond, the well-known writers.
R. B. Marriott.

The stage
Dec 20 1979
There was a unique occasion on December 6, when John Lehmann, distinguished poet and man of letters, visited the Central School of Speech and Drama to present Beatrix Lehmann’s library of the theatre and theatre personalities to the school.
The library was received on behalf of the school by Norman Collins, Chairman of Governors, and Laurence Harbottle, Vice Chairman.
Norman Collins referred to the enormous contribution that Beatrix Lehmann has made to the British Theatre and to the benefit which future students of the school would derive from her bequest – a most handsome addition to the present library resources of the school.

Tuesday, 25 August 2015

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…