Mrs Warren’s Profession
Trinity College Gardens, Oxford,
8th - 12th June 1976
Trinity Players
CAST
in order of appearance
Praed - Richard Penn, Balliol
Vivie - Cathy Shepherd, Poly
Mrs. Warren - Diana Hope, St. Anne’s
Sir George Crofts - Nick Hawkins, Lincoln
Frank Gardner - Robert Dawson Scott, Trinity
The Rev. Gardner - Robin Seavill, St. John’s
DIRECTED BY
Gillian Smee
PS
I knew nothing about the play, but I managed to worm my way in by making the lovely director, Gillian S, laugh during my audition. She asked if I could do a fruity old codger kind of characterisation as the Reverend Samuel Gardner, one of Mrs Warren’s many former lovers. Apparently I could (though it was the first I’d heard about it), and so I got the part. In the event, the reviewer was kind enough to mention “Robert [sic] Seavill playing the Rev Gardner, who ages visibly throughout the early performance, after a rather ‘young’ and shaky start.”
As the article It’s the Rich Wot Gets the Pleasure in the Proscenium section seeks to indicate, Shaw had a lot of serious and important things to say about the sex industry of his time, but I was far too young and shallow to take any notice of that. Especially when there was a very beautiful make-up lady to be smitten by. I like to think of myself as an instinctive, natural actor, so I’d never gone in for a lot of make-up before. Props had even provided me with a false moustache made from a couple of old pipe cleaners which looked remarkably like a false moustache made from a couple of old pipe cleaners, and in the dress rehearsal these came adrift and ended up hanging off the back of Vivie’s bustle. I have no idea how they got there, which is the story I’ve stuck to all these years and I don’t have any intention of changing it now. (I told the director I would act the moustache instead.)
But something needed to be done about my big hair. It just about passed muster for an old clergyman circa 1895; when it was caked with white powder, it made me look like I’d just let myself go a bit in middle age. Then in my hangover scene on the first night, Frank crammed my hat back on somewhat harder than usual and this big plume of smoke rose up, obscuring us both for several seconds. I don’t know if the play was meant to be a comedy – as I say, I don’t think I ever read it all the way through – but that bit certainly got a laugh.
It was a happy week, with good audiences and nice weather (even though one evening the wind got up and we all had to take it in turns to dash on in the blackout and hold up the wavering flats), and frankly it’s so long ago now that I can no longer be sure how much of this is true or simply stuff I once made up for a book. But I will go to my grave recalling the tickle of that fake, short-lived moustache, and the cool hands of that lovely make-up assistant as she gently stuck on my warts. As Clive James once wrote and Pete Atkin once sang just a year or two before in ‘Touch Has a Memory’ (Beware of the Beautiful Stranger, 1973):
When in a later day little of the vision lingers,
Memory slips away, every way but through the fingers;
Textures come back to you real as can be,
Making you feel time doesn't heal,
And touch has a memory.
Director Gillian S and Cathy S as Vivie. I’m just out of shot to the left, and I believe this was taken during rehearsals shortly before Gillian had to admonish me for farting about with a croquet hoop while she was trying to give me a note.