Gillian Lynne

Speaker 20:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young and this is a download from the Desert Island Discs archive. This edition may be slightly different from what was actually broadcast, but it's the only version we have. It comes from the British Library's radio collection. It was archived without the music, so although the Castaways choices are introduced, they're not part of this recording. Full details can be found on the Castaways page on the Desert Island Discs website.

Speaker 20:26

The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen eighty one.

Speaker 20:30

And the presenter was Roy Plumley.

Presenter0:33

This week our castaway is the director and choreographer Gillian Lynn.

Presenter0:37

Gillian, you have just eight discs. Now you're listening to music all day long. Do you play it at home as well as in the theatre or the studio or wherever you're working?

Gillian Lynne0:46

Yes, all the time. It's uh my way of relaxing.

Presenter0:48

It's a

Presenter0:50

A big collection of discs.

Gillian Lynne0:51

Huge, huge, and this this choice was really it's given me sleepless nights.

Presenter0:56

Do you have any musical skill yourself? Do you play an instrument?

Gillian Lynne0:59

I have none. I have a very, very quick ear, thank goodness. But I started learning when I was a kid.

Presenter1:06

Piano.

Gillian Lynne1:06

Cruel yes, had a cruel teacher.

Gillian Lynne1:09

She hit me so hard on the mouth one day the tooth fell out. Oh

Presenter1:13

Uh

Gillian Lynne1:13

How peace means.

Gillian Lynne1:14

And my darling parents I was an only child instead of finding another teacher and making me go on they didn't they were kind and I wish they had, because now it would be very useful, as you can imagine.

Presenter1:25

But obviously we have a great appreciation of music. What's the first of the discs you've chosen?

Gillian Lynne1:31

My first one would be a record of Diana Ross's, because it's the tune that Peter and I fell in love to.

Presenter1:41

Peter, your husband.

Gillian Lynne1:42

Yes, Peter Land.

Presenter1:43

whom you met in a show when you were directing him.

Gillian Lynne1:45

That's right. Uh in uh My Fair Lady. We did it in Leicester first and then it did a a year long tour and then it came to the Adelphi where it's still running.

Presenter1:56

Diana Ross, Top of the World.

Presenter1:58

You were born in Bromley, Kent, I believe. Any theatrical president in the family?

Gillian Lynne2:04

None absolutely none.

Presenter2:06

How old were you when you started dancing?

Gillian Lynne2:08

But eight.

Presenter2:09

Did you take to it at once?

Gillian Lynne2:10

Yes, instantly.

Presenter2:12

When priced

Gillian Lynne2:13

Yes, prizes and every exam in the book, which of course is useless to me now, but

Presenter2:17

Uh

Gillian Lynne2:19

I suppose it was good training.

Presenter2:20

Now you had the great misfortune to lose your mother.

Gillian Lynne2:22

Yes, uh in a car crash just before the war, which is very tough. And it it was very interesting because um I was.

Presenter2:26

It has

Gillian Lynne2:30

quite a good dancer up until then, and then to various reasons, war and evacuation and everything, I was sort of prevented from dancing for a long time, and when I finally got back to a dance boarding school, the arts educational school, such talent as I had had taken an enormous bound forward.

Presenter2:47

Now the Arts Educational School, of course, is a school for theatrically minded children.

Gillian Lynne2:51

Yes, totally.

Presenter2:53

So what happened then? There you were at the school and dancing away in all your spare time and and indeed during the dancing classes. Then what happened?

Gillian Lynne3:01

There was a small company called the Ballet Guild in London, run by a wonderful lady who's still teaching called Molly Lake, and she somehow got to hear of me and I was brought up to London to dance things like Papillon and uh

Gillian Lynne3:14

Oh, odd famous solos and uh at places like the Garrick Theatre and eventually I danced Swan Lake, the Swan Queen, when I was fifteen at the People's Palace in Mile End Road. And Cyril Beaumont, who was a wonderful critic of the time, uh saw me and and gave me a very good write-up and Ninette Dvalwa saw me and I got into the Saddlers Wells Valley.

Speaker 23:16

There was

Presenter3:16

Uh

Presenter3:28

Yeah.

Presenter3:38

Now, of course, the Royal Valley.

Gillian Lynne3:39

Yes.

Presenter3:40

You began naturally in the cord bellows.

Gillian Lynne3:42

Oh yeah.

Presenter3:43

How long before you danced your first solo?

Gillian Lynne3:45

I was lucky. Wasn't very long, it was about six months.

Gillian Lynne3:49

Actually it wasn't a solo, it was one of the two bats in The Quest. Wonderful choreography by Sir Fred, Sir Frederick Ashton, I always called him Sir Fred and a wonderful score which I I'm going to choose at some point. Yes.

Presenter3:54

One f

Presenter3:58

Yes.

Presenter4:03

Are you? Yes. And then leading roles, of course. Which which were your favorite?

Gillian Lynne4:08

The Black Queen and Checkmate. Symphonic variations.

Gillian Lynne4:13

and The Lilac Fairy and The Queen of the Willies, I suppose, would be my favourites. Most of them dramatic, as you see, except for Symphonic, which was an abstract ballet.

Presenter4:23

And working with the Royal Ballet, that meant touring and overseas tours sometimes.

Gillian Lynne4:26

Yes, um I was lucky enough to be on the first American tour.

Presenter4:30

How long did you stay in the company altogether?

Gillian Lynne4:30

How long did

Gillian Lynne4:31

Seven years.

Presenter4:34

Why did you leave?

Gillian Lynne4:35

I left because on one of those tours I saw my first musical, which was South Pacific.

Gillian Lynne4:41

And I fell in love with the form instantly, and being greedy for theatrical experience, which I still am, um, I thought I've got to open my mouth as well as dance. So

Gillian Lynne4:56

That's not why I left. I mean, it was basically the subconscious reason. The the sort of overt reason was that on one of the American tours both Moira Scherer and Beryl Gray, with whom I shared roles, got ill. So I played um their roles and mine, and then I got ill.

Gillian Lynne5:13

and it seemed a moment to take the plunge and see if I could start opening my mouth as well as dance.

Presenter5:19

What did Dame Lyonette say when you told her that you were leaving the company as as a leading dancer?

Gillian Lynne5:24

She was surprised,'cause she knew I was very keen and very ambitious, but I was married at the time, and I think she thought

Gillian Lynne5:31

That I hadn't quite got the iron in my soul that, in fact, I have got. And since then, she and I have talked about it and uh

Gillian Lynne5:39

She's been very, very supportive. When I had my own little company, she was wonderful. But at the time, she was amazed.

Presenter5:45

Yes.

Gillian Lynne5:46

Thank you.

Presenter5:47

Let's have your second record. Watch that.

Gillian Lynne5:49

Well, it's Brokofiev's Romeo and Juliet. I think it's the most wonderful.

Gillian Lynne5:55

Piece of

Gillian Lynne5:57

writing for a choreographer and for drama, the accurate interpretation of a piece of wonderful writing, Shakespeare's play, in music to choreograph to that I've ever heard.

Gillian Lynne6:10

Whenever I'm working with a composer today and I and we're stuck, I always go back to Prokofiev and feel what he would have done, and I always bring him up as an example.

Presenter6:23

A section from Procofius Balle, Romeo and Juliet.

Presenter6:27

So you quit from The Saddler's Wells Ballet, from Classical Ballet. What shows did you do?

Gillian Lynne6:34

I did everything. I went into rep with the under thirties theatre group.

Gillian Lynne6:40

In Hythe and I went to the United States.

Presenter6:44

That was weekly rep, yeah.

Gillian Lynne6:46

And I went into musicals. I played Gwen Verdon's part in Can Can at the Coliseum for a year with no mics as I keep telling everybody today.

Presenter6:54

With no mic

Presenter6:57

You worked at the Palladium for a while?

Gillian Lynne6:58

Yes, I I was the sort of lead dancer at the Palladium on and off for two years, doing twice nightly and three performances on Wednesdays and Saturdays. So when people get tired today, I'm afraid I'm not sympathetic.

Presenter7:12

Yes.

Gillian Lynne7:12

And um I did everything but the circus.

Presenter7:16

You did some film acting. You were in a film with Eros.

Gillian Lynne7:18

You were in the film with Erol Florida. Yes, I was. Yes. That was the first time I acted, and I was very lucky that it was Errol that I was playing opposite, because he was extremely instructive and helpful to me.

Presenter7:31

Dude, what was the film?

Gillian Lynne7:34

was called the Master of Ballantre.

Gillian Lynne7:36

and I played that what they had been looking for was a sexy

Gillian Lynne7:41

Tortugan woman with a a wonderful blonde with um big bosoms.

Gillian Lynne7:46

Am I allowed to say big bosoms on this program? Of course you can say big bosoms on this project. What they'd found was me who had tiny little bosoms and.

Presenter7:48

You can say big bosom song on Instagram.

Gillian Lynne7:54

was brunette, not redhead as I am now, and very, very slim, but I managed to satisfy them in a way that they hadn't expected, and so I got the part, which was lovely.

Presenter8:06

Let's love

Presenter8:07

You spread your net wide. You were doing all sorts of jobs. One that I dug out when I was researching you, as they say. You narrated Peter and the Wolf with the London Philharmonic Orchestra.

Gillian Lynne8:17

Yes, I did. And it was live, Roy.

Presenter8:19

Yeah.

Gillian Lynne8:20

It was twenty-five minutes alone on the screen, live television. Yes, we we did it at Lime Grove and uh

Presenter8:22

Live

Gillian Lynne8:27

The B B C sent me for a month to Paris to work with a wonderful mime teacher called Jacques Lecoq, and then he came back and directed me here.

Presenter8:36

So you were not only doing the narration, you were also miming all the characters.

Gillian Lynne8:40

All fourteen characters, yes. And so you can imagine at the end when it gets to the procession.

Gillian Lynne8:45

It was very difficult. We we had a wonderfully stylized set on which there was a tree, and I used to approach the tree as one character. The tree was about five inches wide, and as I emerged the other side I had become somebody else.

Presenter8:59

Wow.

Presenter9:01

And I remember you in one of the new style intimate reviews of the lyric Hammersmith. Which one was it?

Gillian Lynne9:07

I did two. I did New Cranks, which was Jon Cranko's follow-up to Cranks, which I played the lead in with Bernie Cribbins.

Presenter9:08

Which was

Gillian Lynne9:14

And I did one called Out of My Mind, I think it was called, with John Wood, John Cater, Jill Ireland. I don't remember.

Presenter9:21

I don't remember that one.

Gillian Lynne9:23

It was directed by Robin Ray, and as I've just directed Robin Rae and Tom Foolery at the Criterion, you can imagine we had a wonderful moment on the first day. I said, oops, you know, because he had only directed me up till then and there I was going to have to yell at him. However, we got on very well, so all was well.

Presenter9:39

However, we got

Presenter9:43

Let's have another record.

Gillian Lynne9:45

Well, as we are allowed Shakespeare on the uh

Gillian Lynne9:50

island to read anyway, right?

Presenter9:52

Indeed, there's a copy there.

Gillian Lynne9:54

That's right. Um uh some of my happiest times and where I have learnt to be a better director and where I have been able to bring something that I know about to a company has been my work with the Royal Shakespeare Company and being able to work with Trevor Nunn and John Barton is a joy, as you can imagine. And the first thing I did was the Comedy of Errors with Trevor, which we did as a musical and that had enormous success and we tried to do it on Broadway and were

Gillian Lynne10:25

prevented from taking the English actors in by American Equity, sadly, so we never could do it. But the second thing I did was I co-directed um A Midsummer Night's Dream with John Barton.

Presenter10:29

Oh dear.

Gillian Lynne10:37

And this is from the score, beautiful score of that.

Gillian Lynne10:42

by Guy Wolfenden. It's a lullaby and I think it would help me get to sleep. But also I admire Guy very much and I'm at present directing for the B B C a commissioned musical written by Guy and John Fletcher.

Presenter10:56

Yes.

Gillian Lynne10:57

So I think

Gillian Lynne10:59

This music is important to me, and also it would help my reading of Shakespeare, it would make me think about it.

Presenter11:08

Phila Mill with lullaby, Guy Wolfendon setting, sung by Martin Best. Now the work you do with the Royal Shakespeare Company, how do you find straight actors take to dancing?

Gillian Lynne11:19

Reluctantly sometimes

Presenter11:21

It's too hard work.

Gillian Lynne11:23

I don't think it's that'cause after all they work especially at the Royal Shakespeare Company where they're usually working on three or four plays at once. They work

Gillian Lynne11:32

Very hard. It's just a different way of work. It's the relentlessness of the repetition that you have to have to get anywhere physically, that they.

Gillian Lynne11:41

Fight against initially.

Gillian Lynne11:44

But I find that they are wonderfully eager, and when they start to feel themselves able to do just a little bit, the joy that they exude at that accomplishment, which is a new one for them, makes up for a lot of technique which they don't have. For instance, I don't know if you saw Once in a Lifetime

Presenter12:02

I missed it.

Gillian Lynne12:03

what that I did with Trevor. And uh we we tacked on a huge sort of Busby Barclay type ending in which I had to make thirty six S Shakespearian actors tap and

Gillian Lynne12:16

you know, really make like the old films, and they totally convinced one. I mean, I was often cringing and thinking, Oops, so and so's on the wrong foot, so and so's cheating there but the audience never saw it because they were so joyous.

Presenter12:29

Yes.

Gillian Lynne12:29

And they got wonderful critical reviews for it just because of their sheer joy.

Presenter12:35

What was the first ballet you devised?

Gillian Lynne12:37

It was with Dudley Moore. Dudley Moore wrote the score, and it was the Owl and the Pussycat, and it was for the long gone Western Theatre Ballet, which has become the Scottish Theatre Ballet now.

Presenter12:49

No.

Gillian Lynne12:50

It was for a wonderful woman called Elizabeth West, who is sadly dead now.

Presenter12:54

You mentioned your own small company. Tell me about that.

Gillian Lynne12:58

That was called collage, and I got it together in nineteen sixty three because I was fed up with everybody saying that it was only the Americans that could dance with real zest and

Gillian Lynne13:11

panache and energy and at that time I had a sort of dual technique. I could modern dance and I was still a fairly good classical dancer and there wasn't anybody choreographing for those two techniques in England at the time. Now everybody does and

Presenter13:26

Time.

Gillian Lynne13:28

you know, wonderful choreographers like Den Tetley and people like that.

Gillian Lynne13:34

But they were not choreographing in. So I thought, well, don't grumble about it. Try and do something. And I found a group of

Gillian Lynne13:42

dancers from all over the place. I gave classes to find them who felt like I did.

Gillian Lynne13:48

And we we worked for nothing. I mean, we hadn't got any money. And Dudley Moore wrote the score for nothing, and a wonderful lighting man called Michael Northern

Gillian Lynne13:58

Lit the show for nothing and we found a hall in Edinburgh, a church hall in a basement, and uh

Gillian Lynne14:06

I had to create a company in about eight weeks, and I asked all sorts of other choreographers to choreograph for us, because I didn't do it to prove I could choreograph, I didn't think I could, I didn't want to.

Presenter14:13

Because I didn't do it.

Gillian Lynne14:16

But I knew I was a very good dancer at the time, and I wanted to show that we the English could have the same guts as the Americans, you see, and what happened was that the other choreographers gradually fell out, except for two.

Gillian Lynne14:30

because there was no payment and although they had professed to be excited by artistic freedom, when it came to no payment it wasn't so good. So it ended up with me choreographing the whole night on the whole.

Presenter14:42

And you've got a sad story of spending your last five pounds on two pairs of jeans for two of the male dancers.

Gillian Lynne14:46

That's right. If i if the show hadn't worked, I don't know what would have happened. But the the show did work, and the lovely thing for me was that um

Gillian Lynne14:54

David Merrick was staying with the late Binky Beaumont at the time the reviews came out, which were very good.

Speaker 214:58

Uh

Gillian Lynne15:00

And he came to see it and I was on Broadway a year later, which is a sort of Cinderella story.

Presenter15:07

And you gave a season of collage in London, the Savoy.

Gillian Lynne15:09

The Savoy had a dark month.

Gillian Lynne15:12

And we did this one month at the Savoy, long before we were ready really, but at least it was the first modern dance jazz company in England, so I'm proud of that.

Presenter15:20

Yeah.

Presenter15:22

There was a ballet you did for the Australian Ballet Company.

Gillian Lynne15:25

Ah, now that did win all sorts of awards. It was the first colour.

Gillian Lynne15:32

Television

Gillian Lynne15:33

for Austr it's incredible to say this, but it was the first colour television done in 1974 for the Australian broadcasting system.

Gillian Lynne15:42

I say it's incredible because it seems so late to have got colour television, doesn't it? And I got carte blanche to make what I wanted. The uh people I was given were the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and the Australian Ballet. Not bad, eh? And I asked I had the temerity to ask on top of that for um ten singers and a jazz quintet. And I wrote a story called The Fool on the Hill using all Beatles. It was about The Fool on the Hill and his search for

Speaker 215:55

Not bad, eh?

Gillian Lynne16:12

being able to communicate with another human being. And I used thirteen Beatles songs, which were wonderfully brilliantly orchestrated by Jack Launchbury.

Gillian Lynne16:22

And played by the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. There's a lovely record of that. Actually, it was one of the ones I nearly played.

Gillian Lynne16:29

And um it won Best Television Programme of the Year, Best Musical of the Year, and I took Tim Goodchild out to design it, a wonderful designer from England, and he won Best Designer of the Year. So it was a happy time and I love the Australian Ballet Company. It's wonderful working with them.

Presenter16:45

And you've done an ice ballet.

Gillian Lynne16:47

Well, it's not an ice barrier. I did a long ice solo for John Currie. A little while ago Yvon Littlewood, who's a B B C Telemeth and producer, as you know, asked me to make a dance solo for John on a Pericomo show.

Gillian Lynne17:00

And one of the first scores I fell in love with when I was in Saddlers Wells Valley was William Walton's score for The Quest, which is seldom heard.

Gillian Lynne17:10

And I remembered this music, and I thought it would be perfect for John, and he agreed, and we found it, and made a long ice dance.

Gillian Lynne17:18

And I I I worship William Walton's music. I mean, there isn't a piece of his that I don't love.

Presenter17:24

Well, this is one of the records you've chosen, so this seems a good place to put it.

Presenter17:30

A section from Sir William Walton's Ballet, The Quest

Presenter17:34

With the composer conducting the London Symphony Orchestra. Now, you mentioned that you were swept off to the United States, Gillian. What happened there?

Gillian Lynne17:42

I did three musicals for David Merrick. The first one was The Roar of the Grease Paint, The Smell of the Crowd, with Tony Newley and Cyril Richard, who's now dead, sadly. The second one was Pickwick.

Gillian Lynne17:59

And the third one was Harnow Dow Jones. The third one was a very difficult one to do because it was with a totally

Gillian Lynne18:08

American team, except for myself, and it was about the American stock market. In fact, there's a wonderful moment when I said to David Merrick, I must go and see it because I need to do my research. And it was at the time of the Mini, and we got the Mini far ahead of the States, if you remember.

Presenter18:23

Yeah.

Speaker 218:23

Yeah.

Gillian Lynne18:24

And he took me on to the floor of the American Stock Stock Exchange in I had a very, very short mini on, and

Gillian Lynne18:31

He said afterwards the business stopped.

Gillian Lynne18:35

Terrible, terrible exaggeration, but it was great fun at the time.

Presenter18:39

And you've choreographed some films?

Gillian Lynne18:41

Yes, quite a few, really.

Presenter18:43

Which in particular?

Gillian Lynne18:45

Well, the ones you might remember would be um half a sixpence.

Presenter18:50

Of course.

Gillian Lynne18:51

And The Man of La Mancha with Sophia Lauren. That was lovely.

Presenter18:55

It's love.

Gillian Lynne18:56

and Quilp, again with Tony Newley, and a mad film called Two Hundred Motels with Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention and

Gillian Lynne19:07

Ringo Star and strange people like that.

Presenter19:09

What was the first show for which you undertook complete direction and choreography and and the lot?

Gillian Lynne19:16

It was a, I think, very good English musical called The Match Girls.

Gillian Lynne19:22

Written by Bill Owen.

Presenter19:24

Yes.

Gillian Lynne19:25

and Tony Russell.

Gillian Lynne19:27

And it was a serious musical about the Match Girl strike, which was the first potent strike ever to happen in England and which led to the dock strike, which was the forerunner of trade unionism. Of course, whether that's a good thing or not, I don't know. But the musical was a lovely chance for me because half the kids in my company, in my dance company,

Gillian Lynne19:49

came into it with me and I was directing for the first time and they were acting for the first time and so we all grew together and we had most wonderful response to that musical and we transferred to the Globe.

Presenter20:01

Mm-hmm.

Presenter20:03

And opera is another field that you've worked in.

Gillian Lynne20:05

Yes, curiously enough, because of the match girls.

Gillian Lynne20:09

Stephen Arlen, who was at that time head of Saddler's Wells Opera,

Gillian Lynne20:14

They wanted somebody new to direct an operetta and um.

Gillian Lynne20:20

Binky Beaumont again and

Gillian Lynne20:22

Various people said, Well, why don't you have Gillian? and I mean it was incredible. I'd only done one directing and choreographing job, but Match Girls was running, and Stephen came to see it, and he knew me well as a dancer.

Gillian Lynne20:35

And

Gillian Lynne20:36

Anyway, they took a they took a leap and a long trot and allowed me to direct and choreograph Offenbach's Bluebear.

Speaker 220:43

There.

Gillian Lynne20:44

And we got we got raves, and later on I did it at the Coliseum.

Gillian Lynne20:49

We were very lucky, but it's a crazy zany piece. It's it's very as you can see, I'm crazy and zany, so it was a good match. Mind you, they've never asked me back because I broke the rules. You know, to to get what you want out of

Gillian Lynne21:04

the uh time you're allowed to direct an opera.

Gillian Lynne21:08

It's very, very difficult if you want to do something new and different.

Presenter21:08

Purpose.

Gillian Lynne21:11

So I used to con people into working through the lunch hours and tea breaks and all of that, and I d I don't think they approved.

Presenter21:17

Well you have this reputation, Gillian, for being a very tough cookie. You're so hard on your performers, they say, you keep them going until they drop.

Presenter21:25

But you never drop. You have this extraordinary vitality. You seem quite

Presenter21:29

Tireless, have you any secret for that?

Gillian Lynne21:31

No, nana, I I just love the job. I think it's that. And I'm always thinking that what I'm doing isn't good enough, so I keep trying to

Gillian Lynne21:40

you know, going on and on and on to d to get it better. And I I just I'm in love with the job. That's really the answer, I think.

Presenter21:47

Let's have another record.

Gillian Lynne21:49

This is a section of the ritual dances from The Midsummer Marriage, a wonderful opera by Sir Michael Tippett, who's a composer that I admire tremendously, who's sort of become part of my life. I um Peter and I play his music a great deal at home.

Gillian Lynne22:05

I think this is the best piece of choreography I've ever achieved, partly because it's a wonderful libretto for the dance the actual story of the ritual dances. It's obscure and mysterious, you could say, but on the other hand within it are such marvellous depths to find that it brings the best out of you.

Presenter22:28

One of the ritual dances from Tippett's The Midsummer Marriage, the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, conducted by John Pritchard.

Presenter22:36

There was a time, I think it was last year, wasn't it, when you had three shows running in the West End at the same time.

Gillian Lynne22:42

Yes actually, I think for one little moment there were five.

Gillian Lynne22:46

Uh

Presenter22:46

Uh

Gillian Lynne22:46

Yeah, uh Fair Lady had been running for some time, is still running, at the Adelphi.

Gillian Lynne22:54

Tom Foolery was on at the Criterion, Once in a Life Time was at the Piccadilly, and my husband had done a platform performance at the National of Brecht and Eisler songs and poems, and they decided to transfer part of that show to Hampstead New End Theatre.

Gillian Lynne23:10

and they wanted to present it as a performance rather than a platform concert.

Gillian Lynne23:15

and three of the performers from the National, including Peter, asked me to direct it.

Gillian Lynne23:19

So I did, and it was called to those born later.

Gillian Lynne23:22

And also lovely Edward Duke, whom I admire very much, was doing his one man show, Jeeves Takes Charge, at The Fortune, and won Best Newcomer of the Year for it. So it was it was a busy time.

Presenter23:37

And of course once a show is on, that isn't the end of the job. You've got to be in front every few nights to keep it fresh and crack the whip and and see what's going on.

Gillian Lynne23:46

Yes, it it's very difficult because if you're working on two or three things at once, as I usually am.

Gillian Lynne23:53

Obviously the homework is enormous. Obviously you you want to get the odd evening at home, being a wife and just sitting and saying hello to your husband and cooking a meal.

Gillian Lynne24:04

And if you do that you feel guilty that you're not in one of the shows having a look and seeing how they're going. But

Gillian Lynne24:10

you know, you have wonderful people to help you look after a show. You have wonderful ballet mistresses or ballet masters, and uh usually what I try and do is go in every so often and and give a spring clean.

Presenter24:21

Right. Well, we got a record number six.

Gillian Lynne24:24

Well, I've worked a lot on The Muppet show and I've learnt a great deal from Jim Henson's brilliance and

Gillian Lynne24:33

I've learned a lot from some of the wonderful artists who have appeared on that show, and I did one with a girl called Melissa Manchester, who is not tremendously well known in this country. She's brilliant lyricist.

Gillian Lynne24:47

She's a brilliant

Gillian Lynne24:48

Performer and beautiful voice, and someone I want to work with again as much as I can. And she's written a

Gillian Lynne24:56

song called Shine Like You Should, which, if I were in the doldrums, and as I'm a Piscean, I'm a manic depressive like most Pisans, up one minute and down the next, when I was down I'd put this record on to make myself shine and and think that life was worth living even if I am alone on an island.

Presenter25:15

Melissa Manchester, shine like you should. Gillian, cats have played a considerable part in your life. Your first ballet was The Owl and the Pussy Cat. You played The Queen of Catland in Puss in Boots at the Palladium. And now you've choreographed a show called Cats. Now all the characters are cats, and they're dancing most of the time for two and a half hours. The amount of detailed invention called for makes the mind boggle.

Gillian Lynne25:41

Yes. Well, when I was actually staging the show, I really thought I was going to go mad some days because

Gillian Lynne25:48

You the thing is that it you don't have a long time. I mean, I had

Gillian Lynne25:53

I think six weeks with the cast. It isn't long to produce that amount of dance. I mean, you can imagine how long you would have in a ballet company.

Presenter26:02

Hmm.

Gillian Lynne26:03

if you had to produce that amount of dance. So that what I had to do was, as I finished staging a number, I would have to wipe my mind and get on to the next one. But then when I wanted to run that number two or three days later, I'd have to search back in my mind for the details that I'd been looking for in case I'd missed something. And I really did think I was going crazy at one point.

Presenter26:25

And it's all cat dancing. Everybody's got to keep in character as a cat. Did you have any cats to help you? Were you were you observing cats?

Gillian Lynne26:33

Oh, of course. I've been observing them like anything. And uh Peter and I were married last year and one of our wedding presents were two kittens, one boy and one girl, Scarlet and Rhett we call them. And I have watched them for hours on end and I've learnt a great deal about them. But that was one of the hard things about the show, because I uh you know, one of the rules we set ourselves was that we had to make all our human

Gillian Lynne27:00

Believable emotional reactions.

Gillian Lynne27:03

Be shown through feline qualities and through feline.

Gillian Lynne27:08

Physical movements and awarenesses, which are very different, and that was a discipline.

Gillian Lynne27:13

that I had to impose on everybody. Well, we we all imposed it on each other. And it it made it well, in a way it was a release. It's a bit like playing a character part when you are not good at playing yourself, or when an actor is nervous, you put a mask on him, it releases him. In a way it was a release. And on the other hand, you know, it was a tremendous discipline because being a cat means being totally elastic and it means having antennae all over your body, much more than a human. And they must be visible to an audience. So that meant a degree of physical discipline much higher than one normally looks for, I think.

Presenter27:50

Yes. Well, the record of of the music from cats is the next one on that pile. Which number have you chosen to play?

Gillian Lynne27:57

Well, in the penultimate moment in Act One is the reason why all the cats have gathered together on this particular night of this particular year to celebrate, and it's during the the Jellical Ball from which this music comes that all the wonderful adventures happen. And this section is a wonderful piece of writing by Andrew Lloyd Webber, whose music turns me on no end. I mean I never know how to sit there and watch it. I always want to leap up and dance myself because the music's so beautiful. So it's the penultimate section of the Jellical Ball.

Presenter28:32

A section of the Jellical Ball from Cats, and we might remember TS Eliot's words.

Presenter28:38

Gillian, you've survived. You're on the desert island. What now? Can you look after yourself?

Gillian Lynne28:44

I suppose so. I've had to exist in some pretty tough situations all my life, so yes. Um I d I don't know that I'd be very practical uh about finding food in berries and all of that.

Presenter28:58

Done any fishing ever?

Gillian Lynne29:00

Yes. I had an assistant once who was mad about fishing, and when we were making that film in Italy with Sophia, we used to go and fish in the Bay of Anzio.

Presenter29:09

You catch anything.

Gillian Lynne29:10

No.

Presenter29:11

No never

Gillian Lynne29:11

No, never. But I l I watched him doing it, so I could possibly learn from that.

Presenter29:15

You could build a shelter.

Gillian Lynne29:16

Yes, I could do that. Would you try to do that?

Presenter29:18

Would you try to

Gillian Lynne29:19

Um of course I'd try to escape, yes. I well and I'd like the flowers, and I'd I'd lie on the beach in strange positions, hoping that a plane would fly over and think what's that extraordinary fish on the beach?

Presenter29:33

Well, that's a new idea.

Presenter29:35

Last record, what's that?

Gillian Lynne29:38

Well, it's another Michael Tippett. It's the piece of music that means home.

Gillian Lynne29:45

And peace.

Gillian Lynne29:46

and my marriage to me.

Gillian Lynne29:49

When wh whenever I get into the house or and Peter's there before me, I'm pretty sure this music will be playing and vice versa.

Gillian Lynne29:57

Uh it's a piece of it says Sundays and Calm and England and Togetherness to me, so to keep me sane I'd want this piece of music.

Presenter30:08

Yes. You haven't said what it is.

Gillian Lynne30:10

It is the Concerto for Double String Orchestra by Sir Michael Tipper.

Presenter30:17

The opening of Sir Michael Tippett's concerto for double string orchestra

Presenter30:22

The Academy of Saint Martin in the Fields, directed by Neville Mariner.

Presenter30:26

If you could take only one disc out of the eight, which would it be?

Gillian Lynne30:29

I think it would be that one.

Presenter30:30

And one luxury to take with you nothing of any practical use.

Gillian Lynne30:34

My eyelash curlers.

Presenter30:36

That's a modest request.

Gillian Lynne30:38

I can if m my eyelashes grow straight out, which is not a flattering angle for a woman. So if I could always curl my eyelashes, I've always been like this, I can face the day.

Presenter30:50

You have to have heat for that, don't you?

Gillian Lynne30:52

No, no you have a strange metal thing which you clamp on them. I once had a wonderful char lady who used to say, Oh, Miss Lynne, you're gouging your eyes out again Stop it, stop it

Gillian Lynne31:04

And uh you know, it it's it's just a silly thing. I I always feel if I've got my eyelashes curled I can face up to anything.

Presenter31:11

All's right with the world. And one book. You've already got the Bible and Shakespeare.

Gillian Lynne31:16

the best French language teacher that I could find, because we have a little home in France. I've always loved the French language. I never have enough time to get it any better, my my French, and this would be the wonderful opportunity.

Presenter31:30

We'll pick out a good one for you. And thank you, Gillian Lynn, for letting us hear your Desert Island discs.

Gillian Lynne31:36

Thank you for having me. I was very honored to be asked.

Presenter31:39

Goodbye, everyone.