Roy Dotrice

Speaker 10:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Disc's Archive. For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen seventy seven, and the presenter was Roy Plumley.

Presenter0:32

This week our castaway is the actor Roy Dartrice. Roy, you must know what loneliness is, because you hold the world's record for the number of performances given in a one man entertainment, Brief Lives, and there must be no lonelier place in the world than an empty theatre backstage. I think the whole process of doing a one man show is a very lonely process.

Presenter0:51

Particularly in that show, because I spent three hours every day making up. And uh then when I toured the world with it and and you know by the time I'd got out of my makeup, which was about eleven thirty at night, I don't care where it was, whether it was Baltimore in America or Auckland in New Zealand or Brisbane in in Australia. You you wandered the streets for hours at a time trying to find a restaurant open and invariably went back to the hotel and pleaded with a night porter to make you a sandwich. It's a it's a very lonely life. You're a Channel Islander, aren't you? Yes, yes, I was born there. Is music a major interest of yours?

Presenter1:24

It it used to be when I was much younger. I I can still remember all the lyrics from the pop songs of the thirties and I was a a choir boy for a great number of years until they found out what was wrong with a choir. What's your first record? My first record is is um

Speaker 11:34

Uh

Presenter1:37

a Julian Bream record, and I would like him to play some Dahland for me. I I adore Darland. I became acquainted with the works of Darland during Brief Lives because we use it as background music. I think it's typically English and very evocative of that particular period in English history.

Presenter2:52

A Dull and Galliard Mignada played by Julian Bream.

Presenter2:56

You were educated in Guernsey, were you?

Presenter2:59

Yes, I was. Yes, I I went to the intermediate school in in Guernsey and uh then for a short while to Elizabeth College.

Presenter3:06

What did you want to be as a boy?

Speaker 13:06

What did you do

Presenter3:08

I really hadn't made up my mind, Royce, simply because uh th th the the war happened rather quickly for me. I was a schoolboy at the age of fifteen when the Germans invaded and uh

Presenter3:18

I didn't much like the idea, and because I used to muck around in boats and go fishing and things, uh a few of us got a boat out one night and and pushed across to England. Once in England you joined the Royal Air Force? Yes, I put my age on and joined the R A F and uh

Presenter3:31

then was eventually shot down at the beginning of'forty two.

Presenter3:35

You were a long time in the dinghy before you were picked up.

Presenter3:38

Well, yeah, three days in the in the North Sea in winter, which was quite a long time. And you were only, what, sixteen then? Yes, yes. I spent my seventeenth birthday in a prisoner of war camp. Uhhuh. It was in that prisoner of war camp where you had your first contact with the theatre, I believe.

Presenter3:53

Yes. Uh in indeed it was. I'cause I was so young and I hadn't started shaving and all that sort of thing. I I I got roped in actually to play female parts. Comedies and straight plays and musicals but nearly always playing female parts. I was fantastic as Winnie Clugston in the Rutters.

Presenter4:08

The

Presenter4:11

Any other plays you remember from Well, there was one in particular I remember called Winterset, which was an American tragedy in blank verse by Maxwell Anderson. And everybody was very keen to play the lead in this, because the lead was a part of a a fifteen year old roadboy called Mio Romagna.

Presenter4:27

And I auditioned for it along with about sixty others, and much to my surprise I got the part and uh we started rehearsing. This was at Stellagloof three, and uh we rehearsed it for about six months when um they got us out in cattle trucks and took us up to Lithuania, to a place called Heiderkrug. There was no theatre there, so we built a theatre, which took a number of months, as you can imagine.

Presenter4:46

And we did our dress rehearsal, and everybody came back to the barracks that night, and we were very elated, because it had gone extremely well, and we were looking forward to the first night the following night, when some one suddenly said, My God, there's a fire in the compound

Presenter4:57

And indeed it was the theatre which was raised to the ground, so we started rebuilding and we nearly got it completed when the Russians advanced and and we they got us out in cattle trucks and took us down to Poland, you see. And in Poland there was no theatre at this place called Torn, so we started building a theatre and eventually the theatre was finished and we'd just about put Winset on when the Russians advanced into Poland. So in cattle trucks once again right across a place called Follingbostel in West Germany where in fact they had a theatre but it was an army camp and they had a long programme already mapped out.

Presenter5:24

So we tacked on at the end of the programme and we kept on rehearsing Winterset until eventually we were relieved by the Eighth Army and I was sent back to England, having spent three and a half years rehearsing Winterset every day. I bet you never playing it. You'd have been terrific too. Do you think so? I think so. Let's have record number you're your second record.

Speaker 15:37

Yeah

Presenter5:45

Well, the the second one is um

Presenter5:47

A record I like tremendously because it it's it's a Ralph MacTell record. He composed the song and sings it himself, The Streets of London. I like it simply because I've played a lot of old men in my time, and I often roam the streets of London myself looking for new characters.

Presenter6:02

So

Roy Dotrice6:03

How can you tell me?

Roy Dotrice6:05

You're alone.

Roy Dotrice6:09

And say for you that the sun don't shine.

Roy Dotrice6:15

Let me take you by the hand and lead you through the streets of London.

Roy Dotrice6:22

Show you something to make you change your mind

Presenter6:33

Ralph MacTurl singing The Streets of London

Presenter6:35

So, back to Britain and Civy Street. Now you were hooked. You were going to be a professional actor.

Presenter6:41

I had decided at that point. In fact, whilst I was in uh

Presenter6:44

Prisoner of War Camp, I heard that Sir Alexander Corder, the film producer, had granted £10,000 to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.

Presenter6:52

for scholarships for ex service men and women, and I applied for one of these through the Red Cross.

Presenter6:57

And when I came back to England I did an audition there, and Kenneth Barnes was kind enough to uh offer me a scholarship. And I was all set to go to Rado when I was on de mob leave in Manchester and I went to see the Manchester Rep, doing the Barrets of Wimple Street, I think it was, and the guy playing Browning was so dreadful, I thought, if I can't do as well as that without going to Rado, I ought to pack in now.

Presenter7:16

And I met the proprietor, uh a fellow called Frank H. Forski in the interval. He said, uh uh are you are you an actor, are you? So I said, Well, yes, sort of He said, Right He said, You're you're playing for me next week in Flare Path at the Epidome Stockball.

Presenter7:29

And I went on to do thirteen years for him actually. You went into management yourself for a bit, running your own rap company? Ye yes, I did eventually. In Guernsey, my hometown, I went back there uh and I was backed by a local businessman who gave me the chance of either coming to London and seeking my fortune, and he said he would promote me there, or of spending the money by trying to make a permanent theatre in Guernsey.

Presenter7:50

So I accepted the second of the two choices and attempted a permanent theatre. It wasn't at all successful. The first show we did there, actually, strange enough, we were talking about it recently, was Winterset. So eventually I put it on and I imported a marvellous cast from England. We rehearsed it for about five weeks. And I played Mio Romagna eventually in Winterset. How did it go?

Presenter8:14

It's the worst performance I've ever given in my life, actually.

Presenter8:17

Because then I was thirty-five and I should have been fifteen. Must be a moral there somewhere. When did you decide to try your luck in London?

Presenter8:26

Well, it was when the Guernsey season literally folded on me. This meant taking a big chance, because you were well established in Rep, and by now you had got three young daughters, hadn't you? Yes, indeed. Ye well, at least the the I had two and th the third one was born. I went to Stratford on Aden, the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre Company.

Presenter8:43

literally, to to walk on uh at the ripe old age of thirty-five or whatever I was, or thirty-six.

Presenter8:49

And I was walking on for a number of years. Let's break at this point for your third record.

Presenter8:54

Well, the third record is a record I find extremely restful and I think would be immeasurably useful to me on a on a desert island, not only from a restful point of view, but to remind me a little about religion and things. Um Gregorian Chants, um, recorded by the Benedictine monks of uh Clervaux.

Roy Dotrice9:12

Shall we share his body?

Roy Dotrice9:26

Let's give us whoever you live with.

Roy Dotrice9:48

By Christmas mind I trade with Savior.

Speaker 19:48

By your sense of

Presenter10:08

Angelus Autum Domini sung by the Benedictine monks of Clervo in Luxembourg. Wright, you were at Stratford playing Bits and Pieces, a change after playing a different leading part every week in rep. What was the first chance they gave you there?

Presenter10:23

I I sort of made my own in a way, um simply by playing old men. When I got one line like

Presenter10:29

The carriage awaits my lord. If you come on and set straight, it means very little, you know. If somebody blinks, they've missed you. So I used to come tottering on with a long white beard and and and hump on my back or one leg or something and say, Yeah, the the the carriage um awaits my my my my lord or whatever it was. At least I was on a bit longer that way.

Roy Dotrice10:48

I was

Presenter10:50

But I suppose the first break I ever got was in a play written by John Whiting called The Devils.

Presenter10:55

And uh I played Father Ambrose, who was um a marvellous old priest. Uh and when Grandier, the condemned man, was in the cell and had lost God completely, this very simple man, by a very simple faith, allowed him to find God again. I had great difficulty playing the part because I

Presenter11:12

I was playing it rather like Felix Aylmer, and he sounded much too cultured, you see. And one day I saw a programme, actually, about an old Irish priest who lived literally in the bogs of Ireland, and he entertained the children of the village twice a week in this barn, where he read to them never the Bible, but always Shakespeare. And this marvellous Irish priest with a lovely sort of brogue, I realized that he was very peasant-like and very near to God, and I cheated a bit. I copied him. This, of course, was at the London end, at the Old Witch Theatre. At the Old Witch, then, yes, indeed. Let's have record number four. Number four is a marvellous piece of self-indulgence on my part. I hate loneliness, and on this desert island, I would really indulge myself on occasion. I think there's the most marvellous emotion for a human being to go through is self-indulgence and really self-pitying. And I would get this from an early Sinatra record when he had a marvellous voice. It's called Only the Lonely.

Speaker 111:41

You had the old

Roy Dotrice12:08

Fine love

Roy Dotrice12:13

Hang on to each caress.

Roy Dotrice12:18

And never

Roy Dotrice12:23

Long gold.

Roy Dotrice12:30

For when it's gone

Presenter12:36

Frank Sinatra, Only the Lonely

Presenter12:39

We mentioned earlier on this record-breaking one-man play.

Presenter12:43

with which your name will always be associated, the stage presentation of John Aubrey, the 17th century diarist, and his brief lives. Now, how did that start?

Presenter12:53

Roy, it started in the most peculiar way. It was in nineteen sixty four, during the quatto centenary celebrations at Stratford-on-Avon, Shakespeare's four hundredth birthday, and we wanted a programme.

Presenter13:03

uh which would commemorate his birthday and honour him.

Presenter13:07

And Patrick Garland, who later directed Brief Lives, devised a programme which was an attempt to trace something of the background of Shakespeare. Shakespeare the Man was so elusive he called it the tremendous ghost. That and the fact that John Aubrey tells us that the top of Shakespeare's performance as an actor was as the ghost in his own play Hamlet.

Presenter13:25

So we did this, which was a Sunday night reading, literally, uh just four of us and um lute player and singer. We just read these, and by some strange coincidence all the bits I'd been given were John Aubrey bits. We were in dinner dress, no make up or anything, but I played them as an old man looking back on life and remembering

Presenter13:43

And they seemed to go extremely well. And then Pat got the idea. He was the director of arts programmes, the monitor for BBC. And he conceived the idea of doing half an hour of this on television, which we did. And we got terribly ambitious and then said, let's try a full-length state version. And I approached the War Shakespeare Company and said, can I possibly try it out a full-length version of John Albury's Brief Lives, you know, for the club on Sunday night.

Presenter14:06

And they said, Certainly not. It's the most boring idea we've ever heard of.

Presenter14:11

And so, with those words of confidence ringing in my ear, I tried it out at uh the Hampstead Theatre Club and uh surprise, surprise, it took off. Yes. And I did something like one thousand seven hundred performances altogether around the world. As you say, very elaborate make up to put on. Very tiring altogether, because you're on stage the whole time, even in the interval.

Presenter14:28

Yes, I I tried to convey, or we, I must always use the word we because it was Patrick Garland's uh conception.

Presenter14:35

Tried to make them feel they were spending an evening with this lonely old man in his room, so we didn't use a curtain.

Presenter14:40

And the stage was cluttered with antiquities which he'd spent a lifetime collecting. I mean, the man was a veritable magpie. He collected not only.

Presenter14:48

uh objects of interest to him, but stories and and gossips about his contemporaries.

Presenter14:53

And so we wanted them to feel they were coming into this room. I had a real fire on stage, and I used to cook my own breakfast and go through all the chores of the day.

Presenter15:00

And uh th for that reason I felt that one couldn't suddenly drop a a red tab, you know, halfway through and I would go offstage and start again. Uh so in the middle of one story he just dozed off and fell asleep and uh the the audience went out for a drink or whatever they wanted to have and came back in a quarter of an hour later and a baby cried in the next room and woke him up and he carried on exactly where he'd left off.

Presenter15:21

Record number five now.

Presenter15:23

Uh well, number five is uh is Mala, his eighth symphony, directed by Sir George Schulte.

Presenter15:31

I think the m my most favorite musical instrument is the human voice, and th there's quite a lot of choral work in this.

Presenter15:37

I I enjoy it very much. It's very theatrical too. It's very uplifting I think.

Roy Dotrice16:26

Here we go.

Presenter16:40

Part of the closing section of Mahler's Eighth Symphony, conducted by Sir George Shouty.

Presenter16:47

Now, we've talked about your Shakespeare productions and brief lives. What else do you like to remember?

Presenter16:53

Some of the most enjoyable things I think I've done have been on television. I enjoyed playing very much the

Presenter16:59

The tramp and the caretaker on television. I enjoyed playing uh Bernard Shaw.

Presenter17:03

in uh two-handed piece uh which I did with Peggy Ashcroft uh called Dear Liar.

Presenter17:09

And recently, of course, you've done Tickens of London. Yes.

Presenter17:13

That went awfully well. That did do no harm whatever, did it?

Presenter17:16

Well, I hope not. I mean, we're yet to find out. But I certainly enjoyed it. It was one of the most stimulating years I've had in the profession for a long time. I was working with a a friend of mine who I admire tremendously as a director, Mark Miller. And I had to find two very different characters, basically. There were many other variations and other bits and pieces of characters. But basically, I had to find a a great difference between Charles Dickens and the father John.

Presenter17:40

and I hope this I managed to achieve in some way.

Speaker 217:43

Next record.

Presenter17:43

What's that?

Presenter17:44

is a strange record which I I heard once in a church.

Presenter17:49

I was on location filming Clochmel for the BBC and uh we were stationed in Ville-Franche and I took off in my car one day and I went into miles away, I can't even remember where it was, but in this cathedral it was almost it was a very large church certainly they were playing this music. It it's it sounded strange because it's quite jazzy really. It's a it's a Bach piece, but played by this quartet. It it was quite breathtaking in this cathedral.

Roy Dotrice18:50

Pro Player Player

Presenter19:17

A quartet directed by Jean-Christian Michel, who was playing the clarinet of a Bach air, which isn't credited on the record, but was indeed obviously from suite number three in D. We haven't talked about the rest of the talented d'Autrices. Oh, the hordes, yes. There are lots of us. Your three talented daughters. Michel, first of all, is the eldest.

Speaker 119:35

Uh

Presenter19:38

I think she's a very good stage actress. I saw her playing Viola down at uh Chichester this last year in Twelfth Night and I thought she was tremendously good. And Corin comes next. She's now very tall and very beautiful. And uh she played uh Charles Dickens' first love actually in the series Mariah Beadnell and has just finished um uh a thing on television called The Princess and the Hedgehog. I think she plays the princess in that.

Presenter20:01

Big Shorebook. And the youngest Yvette. And the youngest Yvette is just raring to go. I think she's probably got more talent than the rest of us roll together.

Speaker 120:04

Yeah.

Presenter20:10

She is tremendously keen. Uh she has left school. I think she purposely flunked her O levels because she wanted to become an actress. And uh so she's she's, you know, desperately anxious to start now and to compete with her sisters. What's your seventh record?

Presenter20:25

The seventh is a George Butterworth piece called The Shropshire Laid. I've I've recently been recording for for Decker The Hole of Warship Down and uh we use this Butterworth music as background music and I think it's tremendously evocative. I I think it's wonderful music and I've grown to love it. I I often play it myself now.

Presenter21:45

A Shropshire laird by Butterworth, played by the Academy of Saint Martin in the Fields, directed by Neville Mariner.

Presenter21:51

Now, your capabilities as a castaway, Roy, you're an islander. That should help. You know about small boats and smaller. And my great hobby is is is fishing. I've uh I've fished in every part of the world, really.

Speaker 121:56

Yeah, but I think that's a good question.

Presenter22:02

rather unsuccessfully most of the time, but I have uh it is my great hobby. Would you try to escape from this island? Oh, yes. I think I'm rather sort of good do it yourself man. I'd I'd I'd build a ship very quickly, I'm sure. I don't know whether it would float, but uh

Roy Dotrice22:13

Good.

Presenter22:15

You'll have a go.

Presenter22:16

Record number eight on your last one.

Presenter22:19

I would like, as I've talked about uh my favorite musical instrument being the human voice, I would like a Dylan Thomas recording of one of his own poems.

Presenter22:28

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Speaker 222:32

Do not go gentle into that good night Old age should burn and rave at close of day Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Speaker 222:46

Though wise men at their end know dark is right, Because their words had forked no lightning, they Do not go gentle into that good night.

Presenter22:58

The voice of Dylan Thomas. If you could take just one of your eight discs, w which would it be? It would be the last one, the Dylan Thomas, because on the other side there's the uh Charles Christmas in Wales, which I adore, and uh I would love listening to that for hours at a time.

Presenter23:12

One luxury to take to the island with you.

Presenter23:14

Well, I think probably a a suit, uh a rather splendid possibly dinner dress. Yes, that would be it. I that would be the one luxury I would indulge in. As I was sitting there at night eating my barbecued sea bass. You would drink a change with it. Oh, yes, of course. One book apart from that select list are the Bible, Shakespeare and Big Encyclopedias.

Presenter23:32

Well, there's one book I've always been threatening to read and and and I need uh

Presenter23:36

Sort of dipped into it, and I would like to read it properly, and that's Isaac Walton's Complete Angler. And thank you, Roy D'Artris, for letting us hear your Desert Island Discs. Roy, I've loved it. Thank you very much for asking me. Goodbye, everyone.

Speaker 123:56

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.