Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
2 appearances
Playwright and actor, best known for his play 'The Entertainer'.
On the island
Eight records
I've Grown Accustomed to Her FaceFavourite
Julie Andrews and Rex Harrison
this one I would save from the waves
Jelly Roll Morton's Red Hot Peppers
I think Jellyroll Morton at his most oh, light-hearted in Doctor Jazz, it's a very good example of what I mean.
And when I came to write that old play of mine, The Entertainer ... I named after the tune, because it just seemed perfect and apt.
My next record involves an extraordinary voice in my past, and again it makes me think of my father because it's the sort of thing that we shared, and that extraordinary, great, incredible voice of Paul Robeson.
Ode for St. Cecilia's Day: But Oh! What Art Can Teach
This, in a way, I think, bridges the gap, because it's it is like a secular hymn, I think, and it's got Dryden's wonderful words, and Handel's sublime music, and I can't think of anything more beautiful.
I remember going to see Yankee Doodle Dandy and literally bursting into tears when Jimmy Cagney was the real, archetypal song and dance man, and he sang I'm a Yankee Doodle Dandy, and that song haunted me for months and months after
Cello Concerto in E minor: Adagio
Pablo Casals with the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sir Adrian Boult
I think this cello concerto is so unbearably moving. About a time which I never knew, and I think that is really the remarkable thing that he can bring that kind of focus to bear for somebody who didn't even know what happened at the time.
Don Giovanni: Finch'han dal vino (The Champagne Aria)
I love this ari. I would love more than anything in the world to be able to sing it, because to me it represents the most marvellous Italian phrase d'Affagniente, of not caring, of style, of grandeur, of heroism, of romanticism.
The Lark AscendingFavourite
Hugh Bean with the London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Sir Adrian Boult
I think listening to this music I could imagine myself just looking up at the sky and thinking I was living in Kentish countryside or almost anywhere, and think of England, I suppose.
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:10How early in life did you become fascinated by the theatre?
Well, when I was very young, um my father used to take me regularly to the music hall on a Saturday night and uh my mother used to take me to um musical shows a a great deal.
Presenter asks
2:58Was 'Look Back in Anger' written in anger — with the same feeling of frustration that your principal character had?
But I think it's impossible to write anything uh without a certain degree of objectivity and make it um you know sort of makes any sense. I think these sort of questions usually imply a lack of regard for form, which is um pretty common … an ailment these days, I think. But it wasn't, as so many people have have said in print, it wasn't a in any sense an autobiographical play. No, not a bit. I mean um it's so easy to over personalize these things.
Presenter asks
3:31Did you write the part [in 'Look Back in Anger'] with the intention of playing it yourself?
Never.
The keepsakes
The book
Jeremy Taylor
because it does demonstrate how the English language should be used beautifully and simply.
The luxury
upright piano with instructions
And then I could accompany myself and sing the champagne aria or some boogie woogie or something like that.
Presenter asks
3:35Did Sir Laurence Olivier commission the play 'The Entertainer'?
No. I saw him one day with Arthur Miller. And he said to me, as I thought jokingly, he said, 'Dumb, are you working?' and I said, 'Yes.' He said, 'Is there a part in it for me?' And I didn't think he meant it seriously. And then … when I was nearly finishing the play, George Devine rang me up one day and said 'Larry wants to know whether whether he can see the play' and I sent it along to him and um he wanted to do it immediately.
Presenter asks
5:14There's no acting among your plans. Does that worry you?
Uh well it worries me but to the extent that uh life is a little less cheerful when I'm not acting. Uh … I have no illusions about myself as an actor, but I find it a great relaxation and when one is an actor you have a sense of being one of a group and you're not on your own as you are when you just sit at a desk and write all day.
Presenter asks
5:36What do you think are the prospects for the future of the theatre — the provinces and suburbs where theatres have been closing down?
Well, I don't think the situation will get any worse than it has already. Um I mean, there are probably almost as many reps as there ever were. And as for the touring theatres, I I would have said that television once again has done uh quite a service in … probably inducing people to see plays who who never would have gone to a theatre before. [They've] gotten used to seeing plays.
Presenter asks
0:35How important in your life is music?
Oh, absolutely, vitally important. I mean, I c really can't think of my life without it. But I was very lucky because uh my father was very musical, being Welsh, I suppose, and uh it always figured very, very largely in my life.
Presenter asks
3:22In your autobiography, A Better Class of Person, you quite bitterly attack your mother. Has she commented on the book?
Oh no, exactly. I mean, she wouldn't read it, I mean, anyway.
Presenter asks
3:58Why did you start as a journalist?
Well, well, because it seemed to be the only way of making a living, because the only thing I could do was to write and I had no qualifications, and work was hard to find at that time ... I thought that I didn't really have the kind of cheek and drive to be a journalist. And I thought, well, I can't knock on people's doors and ask them intimate questions and that sort of thing.
Presenter asks
15:29Look Back in Anger is now required reading for every student of drama. What do you think it teaches them?
I've no idea what it teaches them. I don't think they do get very much from it. Although, I'm the thing is, of course, it still goes on playing, and somewhere in the world, it's being played to an audience every night.
Presenter asks
17:46Who started the nonsense of the angry young men?
Well, I know exactly who started it ... the man who was the press officer suddenly coined this phrase, and he hated the play ... He said to me, rather in desperation, in the pub one day, he said, Well, of course he said, Really, you're an angry young man, aren't you? and I said rather feebly, Well, yes, I suppose so, I don't know. And it caught on.
Presenter asks
29:55Could you look after yourself on a desert island?
No, I don't think so. I mean, in fact, I've I had to. I mean, I wouldn't be very good at, uh, making anything very much, I don't think.
“But I think it's impossible to write anything uh without a certain degree of objectivity and make it um you know sort of makes any sense.”
“It wasn't, as so many people have have said in print, it wasn't a in any sense an autobiographical play. No, not a bit. I mean um it's so easy to over personalize these things.”
“I have no illusions about myself as an actor, but I find it a great relaxation and when one is an actor you have a sense of being one of a group and you're not on your own as you are when you just sit at a desk and write all day.”
“I'd love to play the piano in a bar or something like that. I mean, I wouldn't want to play it well, because I wouldn't be good enough. No, I'd love to play any instrument.”
“I'd always thought of myself as a writer, really. I thought of myself as being a very tweedy novelist, doing a thousand words before lunch, and then taking the Spaniels for a walk after lunch, and then re doing what I had done at five o'clock, and leading a very Bourgeois Of a dull existence.”
“I love the theatre to be grand and overwhelming and overpowering and dangerous.”