Roundabout
Building
IN AN EALING
Mr. Michael Redgrave, the President, all modesty and god-like good looks, his diffident actor's stammer stumbling on the heart of every woman in the audience. The Mayor of Ealing, judging the building with the severe eye of an ex-bricklayer : 'I've said before, and I'll say again, that' we in Ealing are very proud. . .' The MP for Ealing South ; 'And I shall have pleasure in undertaking to pay £100 to endow a seat in this theatre.' The MP for Ealing North : 'And as we can have any name we like inscribed on a seat we pay for, I shall have my wife's name put on mine as I've never been able successfully to sit on her before.' Mr. Benn Levy looking like a naughty rabbi : 'Miss Constance Cummings, to Whom I occasionally have access, also sends her good wishes.' Mr. Trevor Howard, silent and devilishly handsome.
Before the offers of £100 began to whizz back- wards and forwards the entire company had shaken hands with Mr. Redgrave and trooped into the present theatre—a tiny tinny chapel. This has a period charm—a suspicion of Christian moth- balls and bunion shoes, the gentle ennui of a thousand Sunday Schools—and it was hard to believe that the Battle of Agincourt had recently thundered on its boards. The Questors put on two films they had made as part M their campaign to whip up the £34,000 needed to complete the project. They showed the actual agonising process of digging the foundations, laying the bricks, pre- paring the floors. Traditional methods of building are used—pre-cast walls cost far too much—and the wing so far finished has clean, Scandinavian lines, all windows and colour. The membership of the Questors was able to produce men with expert Plumbing and electrical knowledge. Apart from the architect they have employed no professionals, except for the plasterer and the man who laid the Parquet floor.
Wasn't it utter hell giving• up all one's-weekends and evenings to hard physical labour? Not apparently to those who did it. But there emerged a small gulf between those who acted and those Who worked. Some people had done both. But most of the acting members were always either busy rehearsing a new play 6r recovering from the last one. And the building project had attracted a number of new people whom nothing and nobody would coax on to a stage. One was a young architect who was giving all his free time purely from a wish to acquire practical experience. Another was a man who wanted to improve his knowledge of tree-felling. In the sum- mer there were often as many as thirty people labouring on the site.
Digging
IN CHISLEHURST CAVES on Saturday night there suddenly was• Feliks Topolski. The Cave Kids were rumbling in from South London, lugging washboards and torches, dressed a la Teddy ltaliano with frock-coats over near-split jeans. They were tough, rumbustious and terribly young under the mascara. And there, skitfling away with a pencil, sat Feliks. The din from a genuine Druid labyrinth didn't seem to annoy him. While his camera eye recorded on paper, another camera recorded him. Television arcs drowned the candles which normally provide weird illumination.
'Gam, you're spoiling the atmosphere,' com- plained a beau in celluloid collar and pyjamas, who wasn't impressed with BBC ingenuity. 'Monitor? Never 'eard of it.'
Topolski looked like his own sketches; the same exaggerated panache, almost a parody of itself, the swashbuckling red scarf floating beneath a deer-stalker hat, bold and oblique. Anxiously co- ordinating, the human and electronic lens, Peter Zadek the producer crept through garlands of wire. Topolski designed the set for his production of Amedee at Cambridge. Explosion from the vigilantes has hitherto enlivened Zadek's premieres. This contribution to Monitor couldn't make anyone see red. Chisleburst turned out dis- appointingly quiet : no fracas with jagged bottles, no refreshment stronger than coca-cola. The cave manager was white-haired, prolix, and benevo- lently tough. He employed four bruisers with armoured torches to keep order.
'Sometimes kids get a bit rough.' he said; 'once we chucked out a gang that took all the fencing with 'em and ripped out the lay chains in Chisle- hurst Station.'
Electric bulbs are protected with wire, and all secret exits to the Caves have been well blocked. But that night, everyone sublimated their anarchic urge to the deafening thumb of seven skittle bands in different caverns. Candle wax dripped on the blank, fervent faces. Then at eleven o'clock, every- one went home. Quite sedately.
Previous page
