Theatre critics… for whom the bell tolls

PAUSING to pore over noticeboards is the habit of a working lifetime.

Back in those far-off days when I was a teenaged trainee reporter, my tutor-cum-tormentor chief reporter Len Archer would lurch to a halt on one of our many patrols around Rugby and stutter: “B-b-boy – see that noticeboard? It’s packed with stories. Get out your pen and notebook and start writing!”

More than 60 years (gulp) later I’m still at it. Such as when I saw a noticeboard in the sunny seaside town of Sidmouth last week and gave it a good old perusal. And it was absolutely groaning with potential tales, not that I’ve ever heard a noticeboard groan.

All the same, it was a veritable smorgasbord of tasty morsels lurking under the slightly splattered gull-stained glass, truly treasures in a shallow sea.

There were jumble sales, beetle drives, fetes, functions of all kinds and a poster detailing a talk by a local worthy on the history of Sidmouth’s theatre, chronicling the many years of amateur productions that had graced the boards, no doubt being rewarded by the tumultuous applause of happy audiences.

The poster featured a head-and-shoulders photograph of the speaker and also that of a youngish female thespian. Her head was turned slightly to highlight one of those early 1960s helmet hairdos that seem to have been firmly anchored in place by a setting lotion mixture of engine oil, paper glue and liquid concrete.

This image was completed with a vaguely earnest, come-hither look that hissed and honked loud and clear: “I am an act-torrrrrrrr don’t you know!”

Walking back to our holiday accommodation, my thoughts returned to those early days in my native Warwickshire, working for The Rugby Advertiser and my first forays into reviewing shows. These were staged principally at the Granada Cinema and, of course, the Rugby Theatre, which had been founded in 1949 by a few people including my late father.

It would have been sometime in the early autumn of 1965 when one day I was marked down in the office diary to ‘shadow’ deputy chief reporter Guy Edgson. His mission was to report on the first night of a production at the theatre and write what was then called a ‘crit – a critique – of the show, the title of which now escapes me.

That night we found our allotted seats, the lights went down, the curtain rose… and we passed through the portal that is the parallel universe of am dram.

During the interval, I guess we must have made a beeline for the bar. For as well as being educated in the dark arts of being a hack, I was also undergoing advanced training in how to not only imbibe, but also how to keep up with a hollow-legged instructor such as Guy Edgson.

Thankfully, back then I didn’t possess a 76-year-old prostate, so there was no stumbling in the gloom to the sound of banging seats for the ‘gents’ during the second half of the show. Halcyon days, as the Bard might have observed.

Anyway, around 10pm, the show ended, and we made our way back to the ‘Tiser office, conveniently situated just a single street away. Entering the reporters’ room, stuffy and still foetid from a day’s cigarette smoking, Guy sat down at his desk, motioned for me to pull up a chair, and started banging away on an ancient cabbage green Remington typewriter.

Right, young John. First comes the ‘intro’ – something catchy, calculated to induce the reader to keep up with the plot, as it were. You’ve got to make sure your audience stays with the story, right from beginning to end. Got it?

Rule number one. Don’t just regurgitate the plot, that’s the easy way out. Any bloody fool can do that. Rule number two. On no account give away the ending, especially if it’s an Agatha Christie story.

Rule number three. Provide a list of not just the actors’ names, but also those of everyone involved in the production, from show director to the cleaners. This will appear in six-point roman on 6.5 leading beneath a crosshead. Ah yes, the intro? That will be set in 10pt bold, second par going into nine, then eight. Glad you mentioned that. Guy: “Names sell papers, lad. Always remember that.”

And so, around midnight, we locked up and went our respective ways, Guy astride his Triumph Bonneville motorbike, and me smoking up the Leicester Road on a Lambretta TV175, two brothers-in-arms, rocker and mod briefly united by the power of the pen.

Fast-forward six decades later. I am in the foyer of a leading provincial theatre talking to the Press and promotions manager when she breaks off to acknowledge the presence of a stooped old man raffishly attired, complete with a bow tie.

He looks like a retired schoolmaster, solicitor or a college lecturer and appears to be at least 100 years old if he’s a day.

My theatre contact resumes our conversation and tells me that the dapper gentleman has been taken on by a local paper to review theatre productions. It’s not clear what this individual’s qualifications are, or even if any exist, and my heart sinks even further into the floor when I’m suddenly informed that this old fossil will be producing ‘reviews’ using artificial intelligence (AI)…

A lot can happen in 60 years. Back then, names did indeed sell papers, whereas very little seems to do the trick nowadays, while reporters who once toiled late into the night hammering typewriters to bring the latest news about local theatres for a readership hungry to be in the know are long gone.

And peering way back into those proverbial mists, I readily recall that newspaper editors once placed considerable value on a newspaper’s need to report on the activities of local drama groups, wisely acknowledging that all forms of entertainment provided the spiritual sustenance of a community.

But that was long, long ago. And cub reporters would, like dragonfly nymphs, eventually crawl up reed stems to retirement and morph into cynical old hacks, some of whom never quite lost the habit of studying noticeboards... wherever they might be found.

My book Go and Make the Tea, Boy! (published by Brewin Books) – recounting the further adventures of a cub reporter during the 1960s - can be obtained direct from the publisher, Amazon or by messaging me on Facebook.