Behind the Curtain by Peter Bowles

Author:Peter Bowles
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: OBERON BOOKS Ltd

Billing

OH YES, TO get your name on a playbill or poster is thrilling – but not nearly as thrilling as getting your name written up outside a theatre, especially if it is star billing and ‘in lights’.

Sometimes billing is given outside theatres in alphabetical order, as it was when I did Stoppard’s Dirty Linen at the Arts Theatre. With a name like Bowles I was pretty fireproof or dog-proof in this case, but Frederick Treves who was at the bottom of the poster outside the theatre said, ‘Oh I see, Alsation billing again.’ Just low enough for a big dog like an Alsation to cock his leg, but you had probably worked that out for yourselves. Forgive me.

Agents have been known to take tape measures to posters outside theatres to make sure that their client’s name was in the size of type that had been negotiated in the contract. Oh yes it’s not just salaries that are negotiated, or cried over, I can tell you.

There is now, however, a strong movement for ensemble theatre. That is, all actors are equal, which of course in terms of talent is obviously untrue. I remember going to see a play in London, which contained several friends, and was invited to have drinks with the whole cast. The young actor who was playing the large and dominant leading role asked me, and I was most flattered, if there was any helpful comment I could make on his performance. I suggested as tactfully as I could that perhaps he should not be afraid to dominate the stage, to take the part by the throat and remember that the play was ‘his’ story. He was very shocked. ‘Oh no,’ he said, ‘that would mean giving a star performance, and we are a company that believes in ensemble acting.’ Well I thought the play suffered in consequence, and that actor not long afterwards gave up acting and is now a film director.

The billing at the National Theatre at first gave no names to accompany the large production photograph, but after Olivier’s tenure the cast were billed although in very small print and in alphabetical order. The actor playing the leading role may have had his/her photograph dominating the poster but the only way to discover their name was to twist your head around to read again in very small print down the side of the photograph the name of the photographer who had taken the picture – and at last you would read the name of the actor. Things have got better recently. They now say something like ‘with X as Hamlet’ under the photograph. The thin end of this welcome wedge was started when the occasional American star was invited to the National. I think their agents made sure their client’s name was mentioned clearly.

I first became bemused by the new tradition of not promoting a star name in subsidised theatre (Stratford is the same – it being a company you see) when the Hammersmith ‘New Lyric’ opened.

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