Tim Bannerman's Theatre Chronicles Part 12: 1984 “House High Hay”
The Theatre Chronicles – Part 12: 1984 – “House High Hay”
“My wishes raced through the house high hay
And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows
In all his tuneful turning so few and such morning songs
Before the children green and golden
Follow him out of grace,
****
Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
Time held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like the sea”
from Dylan Thomas’ “Fern Hill”
From these words of Dylan Thomas’ “Fern Hill”, I found the title and the entire concept of one of my, as yet, unwritten plays for the Theatreaction primary schools, Redgrave Theatre, Farnham programme. This was mostly in the days following the glitzy “rehearsed reading” of “The Enigma of George Sand” at the French Ambassador’s Residence at the beginning of April, leading up to the birth of Amy Myfanwy Angela Bannerman, on Good Friday 20th April 1984.
I called it “House High Hay” and according to the student, an all too perceptive first year Farnham Sixth-former called Sam, who tracked the whole process as part of her “A”-level Theatre Studies assessment course, it “was in the form of a mystery play in which Age and Authority, as represented by the Sun, the Moon and the Stars, consider childhood”. She continues in her report (which I think is worth quoting to get the full, damning inference of her observations):
“For this play, the children were condensed into a central mass while the three performers, masked, were roller-skating around them. At the climax of the piece, the three characters took a corner of a triangular blue parachute, representing the sky, and waved it above the heads of the children while skating round in a circle, chanting various pieces from nursery rhymes and poems, all with astronomical themes. For this piece, the set was technical and complicated, perhaps too complicated given the time the designer had in which to design and make it.
“The aim of “House High Hay” was primarily one of a spectacle in which, over the 15 minutes running time, the children were asked to help bring the Sun, the Moon and Stars together from their disharmony which had upset the world, into a state of contentment, with the idea that the children could relate this notion of restoring harmony out of discord to their own lives. Although these aims were well-intentioned, I thought the theme might be somewhat overwhelmed by the spectacle of the roller-skating and the parachute swirling above them.”
She was right, of course, but the theme was never more relevant than right then.
By this time, Mrs Thatcher was in the full swing of her “where there is strife, let there be harmony” St. Francis of Assissi assassination with the Miners’ Strike. It had already claimed its first fatality thanks to her who-blinks-first attitude to Arthur Scargill – and his to her’s, of course. Did that play a conscious part in my choice of theme? Or did I just sense that there was something rotten in the state?
Oh, but we were young and easy in our own cosy domestic and professional world, even if by “cosy” I don’t mean wealthy or secure. Clearly neither apply to an erratically employed actor in a family of by then five, dependent on Equity minimum wages. But in terms of quality of life, in so many ways as a family we were blessed. Nevertheless, out there, I could see a different political reality emerging in which the “sky blue trades” were turning darker by the day.
Characterised by an arrogant, sink-or-swim authoritarianism that played to the you-can-have-what-you-want-whenever-you-want-it New Tory ethos, starting with buying your own council house (so cunningly touted by the Thatcherite cabal), it was not until June when we were in full swing with our Theatreaction tour that we saw the true colours of the burgeoning police state emerge.
The Battle of Orgreave on 18 June 1984 saw a kind of reenactment of the “Peterloo” situation at St. Peter’s Field, Manchester 175 years earlier. This time 5,000 NUM pickets from across the UK were confronted by 6,000 highly trained anti-riot police drawn from a nationally organised force brought together for the first time for the specific purpose of defeating the NUM.
On the arrival of the first lorries at the Orgreave coking plant, the police charged the pickets trying to prevent the lorries from entering the plant in what historian Tristram Hunt described as “a brutal example of legalised state violence”. In an Orwellian forecast of how the media can, wittingly or otherwise, manipulate public opinion, that evening the BBC news showed pickets throwing stones at the police and the subsequent charge by mounted police, seemingly in response to this provocation. In fact, the reverse had been true and changed by the news editor in what the BBC later admitted had been “a mistake made in the haste of putting the news together”. This version of events was challenged by Tony Benn who, having talked to BBC staff after the broadcast, said that they had been “ordered to transpose the order… They didn’t make a mistake. Whoever gave the orders actually destroyed the truth of what they had reported.”
As a consequence of police actions during the rest of that day, 95 pickets were charged with riot and unlawful assembly, charges which, in the case of riot, carried a potential sentence of life imprisonment. These charges later collapsed when police evidence was deemed “unreliable” and some years later the South Yorkshire Police Force, under whose command the “battle” had taken place, was ordered to pay £425,000 in compensation to 39 miners for “assault, wrongful arrest, unlawful detention and malicious prosecution”. In 2015, the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) reported that there was "evidence of excessive violence by police officers, a false narrative from police exaggerating violence by miners, perjury by officers giving evidence to prosecute the arrested men, and an apparent cover-up of that perjury by senior officers".
This, then, was the background to the world in which my Theatreaction plays attempted to show children that there was another way to look at people and society; that disharmony could indeed be restored to harmony, given a level of care and concern for the well-being of the world. Of course, this was at odds with Thatcher’s “there is no such thing as society” attitude in which only “wimps” believed in a “Nanny State”, including subsidised theatre which had given me such a privileged grounding in the art of performance. As for the Women of Greenham Common, well, that was another story. 1984: a year of evictions and “Cruisewatch”, with which I hope the bicycles we delivered to them helped.
But young Sam was right, of course. The poor 5-8 year old children didn’t know what had hit them with “House High Hay” and were frequently terrified by the whole thing. I exaggerate a little but it would be remiss of me not to quote again from her report:
“Despite the suggestion of placing teachers at intervals around the children so they felt secure, Tim Bannerman was against this as he felt it inhibited the children and prevented them from becoming totally involved. So the show carried on with several casualties in each one – up to six children in one show.”
They wouldn’t let it happen today! Sorry, though. For a lifetime’s PTSD. Sorry. However, “House High Hay” was just the warm up to the main show.
“The Woolly”, all 20 minutes of it, was inspired, if that’s the right word, by the things my mother, God rest her soul, used to crochet for me to wear to school on those cold winter days when bobble hats and woolly scarves were de rigueur. They were accompanied by a pair of mittens attached to a long piece of elastic that went up one sleeve and down the other inside your coat so you couldn’t lose them.
If Sam’s sympathy for the poor designer of “House High Hay” was entirely warranted, it was the entire Wardrobe Department of the Redgrave Theatre that suffered from my unreasonable demands for “The Woolly”.
The magnificent knitted jumper that cost so many sleepless nights and blisters to so many fingers, worn by The Woolly, himself, was a work of art. It deserved to be kept and put on permanent display in the fashion department of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. It was – well, indescribable, really.
It had just about everything you can think of incorporated into the entirely unsubtle weave of scraps of every kind and colour of wool, bailer-twine, curtain rings, string, bits of old tights, plastic bags, oh you name it, it was all in there. It was utterly, fabulously, eat-your-heart-out-Vivienne-Westwood beautiful.
And I lent it to my eldest son for some smoky, lagery, stay-up-and-see-the-sunrise affair or other. And he lost it.
Nearly 40 years on, I haven’t quite forgiven him. I’ve tried – and failed.
HOW COULD YOU????!!!!! There, that’s better. It would have unravelled by now anyway. Probably. And I did have another, not quite so long, or so magnificently insane, but it went quite well with my grandfather’s old regimental blazer that came out on special occasions like birthdays or weddings, perhaps even a funeral or two – anything requiring a bardic declamation to meet the occasion.
Anyway – “The Woolly”, continues young Sam: “…is the story of a boy made an outcast by the eccentric woolly jumper his Mum had made for him and which she makes him wear to school. The play examines conventions on dress, behaviour and thought – and what makes someone ostracise those who go against the general rule. With a father out of work and a mother harassed by being always treated as a Mum, the play tells of how The Woolly, with the aid of his only friend, a very large pantomime dog called Nit, manages to turn his isolation from his parents and his school into acceptance and admiration through his skill in music and song-writing.
The play was aimed at showing the children that everyone has something that they can do and contribute however different they may seem. After all, they still have the same feelings as you and can be hurt in just the same way as you can.
The costumes were designed as totally knitted by the Director (I think she means that’s how I wanted someone else to design and make them…) which proved to be totally impractical given the amount of time they had to make them.”
Again – sorry. Sorry, sorry. But how simple I make the world sound in those days, despite my unreasonable demands and creative tyranny. Nevertheless all the issues that stare us in the face through our little screens today were still there of course but under the surface. What we didn’t have then was the constant bombardment from Facebook, TikTok, WhatsApp, Twitter and all the rest of it, with all the risks attached through online exploitation and bullying. Not so much at primary school age perhaps but, nowadays, the terms of reference once secondary age is broached would have to include online issues such as sexting, trolling, extreme images of all kinds and active targeting of those vulnerable to all forms of exploitation from political extremism to gambling, under-age grooming, drug running – my hair is standing on end just thinking about it.
So, no, we didn’t deal with the issues of 2021 but loneliness, rejection, deprivation and the need for self-esteem and love, both to give and receive – these are perennial issues, aren’t they? At whatever age, social status, time and tides. And so that, my friends, is the story we told in 1984 to those, for the most part, happily untraumatised children.
However, time and resources were, indeed, ridiculously tight. Not only did I have to write – with the help of the cast in rehearsal, I admit – the two pieces for Theatreaction, with 12 performance-interrupted days of rehearsal to finish writing, compose the music, learn and perfect songs and script but I also had to find a way to help my cast learn how to roller-skate, which none of them could, while working on their parachute technique at the same time.
Furthermore, I had to find a way to make the pantomime dog, Nit, work. As Sam commented, I was “very lucky in (my) final choice of an extremely bright, enthusiastic and organised Stage Manager”. Rather more so than the Director, she implies. Not without reason. And these qualities of Stage Manager Steve’s truly came good when I had a Moment of Truth regarding Nit, the dog.
“One of the largest changes made during the middle stages of rehearsals was in the size and design of Nit, the pantomime dog,” writes Sam. “The Director originally wanted to have two people inside the Nit costume. The Designer explained the problems involved with this but the Director insisted they should persist.
Whilst rehearsing The Woolly, the Director and cast began to realise that perhaps it would not be possible to have two people inside the dog as, with a cast of three, it would mean that only one other person could be on stage at the same time. There was also the further complication of the amount of time it would take for the two cast members to get into the costume.
Eventually the Director conceded that it would perhaps be easier to have just one person in the costume. By this time, there were only five days of rehearsal left and the whole of The Woolly had to be re-blocked and re-rehearsed.
On the evening of the first dress rehearsal, which because of the lack of time for rehearsals, was also the first full run through, the cast discovered that there was not enough time for the person playing Nit to get in and out of the costume in time for the next scene. At this point, the Stage Manager volunteered to take on the part of Nit for the whole of the play, hence more time had to be used on the morning of the first performance to teach Stephen the blocking of Nit and altering the costume to fit him.
It was hot by then inside the knitted Nit. Very hot. So thank you, Steve, if I omitted to thank you properly all those years ago. And for those who have, oh so wisely, never thought of treading the boards for a living, let alone putting your son or daughter on the stage, as Noel Coward so rightly warned Mrs Worthington, let this reassure you that you took the right course.
On top of writing the Theatreaction stuff, I still had to find a way to make Joe Orton’s first play “The Ruffian on the Stair” hit the Redgrave Studio stage with all guns firing, literally in this case, by 22 May 1984 – for £200.
People may not realise quite how small a sum 200 smackers is, even back then, when it comes to putting on a show. Just ask Andrew Lloyd Webber how much he budgets for “Phantom of the Opera”, not that the tiny Farnham studio stage under the main auditorium – now consigned into eternal, phantasmal darkness – was comparable on any grounds to be fair.
Tiny or not, I had to find an interesting, even “innovative”, way of making my debut as a director on the professional stage in which I had to hit the budget, combine the same three actors for both “Ruffian” and Theatreaction, write the latter, and emerge with reputation, marriage and sanity intact.
“The Ruffian on the Stair” opened on 22 May 1984, to run till 2 June, at lunchtimes in the Redgrave Studio Theatre, Farnham. While performing this, my three actors and saintly stage manager were also rehearsing (aka co-writing/composing music for/learning to roller-skate, etc.) “House High Hay” and “The Woolly” the morning before and the afternoon after each show.
I can’t remember if it was after or before my interesting first ever casting experience as a professional director on 6 April, at Wimbledon Theatre, that I had the brilliant idea of filming it. “Ruffian”, I mean. Partly filming it at least.
How could I make that £200 go further and make my mark as a new name to reckon with, a spark of light in the run-of-the-mill, bums-on-seats stuff; a “who is that guy?” moment in the maelstrom of everyday theatre?
On making a few enquiries, I found a name – a man called Malcolm Jenkins. He was a lecturer/professor/resident genius at West Surrey College of Art & Design in Farnham and, when I went to see him at his home, he liked it. The whole idea.
So for the ridiculously small sum of £123.05p, to cover basic E180 VHS tape and general production expenses, he said, yes, I’m in. I’ll do it as a degree project for my film students. And we had the beginnings of a show.
To be honest, I’m not sure what Joe Orton would have thought of it all and the late, dear Stephen Barry who gave me the job in the first place, had his doubts, but I don’t regret a second of it. God, we worked hard, from beginning to end, but in some ways, the trickiest bit was finding the right people for the job. As ever.
I had no conception of just how demanding seeing 23 actors, for 15 minutes each, morning and afternoon in a small room at the Wimbledon Theatre would be. I had asked agents to get them to prepare a short contemporary piece before a chat to get the feel of who they were, what they’d done and, crucially, how they might fit together in the darkly humorous play by Orton, his first, originally performed as a radio play in 1964. At more than one point, I began to see just why Stephen preferred to proposition people like me in the theatre Gents – by which I mean, offer me a part. Oh dear, it’s sounding worse. Come to think of it, how he offered the female roles I never asked. It’s not quite the same as standing there as contentedly as you can pointing Percy at the porcelain with your boss beside you saying, “Fancy a spot of directing?” – not meaning: “watch where you’re pointing that thing”.
Two actors seemed to be a good fit for the roles of Mike and Joyce who are living in a down-at-heel bedsit, both existing on the margins of society, he a semi-criminal “derelict”, ex-boxer, she a God-fearing ex-prostitute. They also had a versatility I felt that might help in my early thoughts for the roles in the Theatre In Education pieces for Theatreaction – yet to be written…
The third role I found more difficult. I needed someone who could capture the somewhat sinister charisma of the character of Wilson and I had yet to find that person by the end of the morning.
It took the only latecomer – never a good move for hungry young actors – to do something completely unexpected, to complete the set. Despite looking as if he’d just got out of bed and sheepishly confessing he’d not prepared anything in advance, except for “something I thought about in the tube coming in”, he asked if he could show me what he’d got.
“Go ahead,” I said, fearing the worst.
In seconds, I was captivated. As much by his physical presence as by anything he said. I can still see his long fingers describing renaissance arabesques through the air as he played out whatever improvised scenario it was. I knew I’d found my Wilson and, in time, my Woolly too.
It was his first job out of drama school and, come the first rehearsal, he was the best prepared of all, possessed with an uncanny stagecraft and an ability to make everything he did compelling. You couldn’t take your eyes off him.
His name was David Thewliss and he went on to greater things, as I knew he would. But for now, he was mine, as were Fergus and Yvonne, and we threw ourselves into the whole crazy business, goldfish bowl, gun and all, living for the moment and loving every minute of it. Well, I did anyway.
