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Rowan Atkinson interview from 'Sore Throats & Overdrafts: An illustrated story of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe'

Started by goldfish, November 13, 2006, 11:41:05 AM

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goldfish

A few months back, I promised I'd type up an interview I'd found in a book over the summer. I'm afraid events rather overtook my good intentions, so I've only just done it.

The book is called Sore Throats and Overdrafts: an illustrated story of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and was published in 1988 (Precedent Publications Ltd). It's by Michael Dale, who was Administrator of the Fringe from 1981 to 1985. I stumbled across this book in a local charity shop, which was lucky as it now appears to be out of print. The interview itself is pretty much centered around Atkinson's Fringe experiences and has some interesting insights into 80s attitudes about performing at the Fringe, particularly where big-name performers fit (if indeed they should) into the Fringe concept. It ends a bit suddenly, though.

Again, apologies for the delay in posting it!

Quote   MD:   Legend has it you first came to the Fringe acting in straight roles for the Oxford Theatre Group.

RA:   Even before that I'm afraid. 1973 was the first time I appeared in a post-school production directed by my English master, Richard Elgood. It was We bombed in New Haven by Joseph Heller, at the Lauriston Hall. That was when I was only 18.

   MD:   What were your impressions then?

RA:   I remembered the traffic lights most: how long they took to change. The great thing about them is that they're still the same. There are still as few one way systems in Edinburgh now as there were in 1973, which means that everything is extremely primitive.
   I remember the Fringe reception, with people wandering around in white masks holding spoons in front of them trying to attract the media's attention, and I thought, I hope I never have to do that.
   Then in 1975 I was there with – believe it or not – The Dundee University Theatre Group doing Angelo in Measure for Measure. At that time I also did a revue with another guy at lunchtime at the Roxburgh Reading Rooms. I had just left Newcastle by this time and we started doing a revue. No more than 13 people came... Probably because the show was absolutely diabolical. I was me doing impersonations of Denis Healy and things like that, so you can imagine how grim it was.

   MD:   Were you thinking of becoming a professional at that time?

RA:   I can tell you exactly when that was. It was the first year that I went with the Oxford Theatre Group to St Mary Street Hall. We'd done a revue in Oxford and I'd got a very good notice in the Oxford Mail, that redoubtable publication of the Midlands. It really was an extremely good crit. It was very much one of these, you know, 'the next John Cleese' sort of things. I remember asking this other man, who was doing zoology or something, what you did if you wanted to be in showbusiness and he said 'you've got to have an agent, so write to agents.' I said, 'which agents do you write to?' Try and find out who the agents of the people you admire are and write to them, so I did and I wrote to nine agents that summer before I went to Edinburgh, saying, now look I'm going to do the Edinburgh Fringe, I've got this (I enclosed a photocopy of the revue). Nobody replied, except David Wilkinson (who's John Cleese's agent) saying that he might come (but he didn't) and the other one was Richard Armitage, recently deceased, who was in charge of the Noel Gay organisation and he flew up especially to see me and we worked together from the day that he came.
   I was doing a tremendous amount of visual stuff at the time, and it was that side of me that I think Richard particularly latched onto. But that was the first summer that I went with the Oxford Theatre Group – and it was the first time that I was there to do comedy.

   MD:   Would you say that you were noticed then? Did The Scotsman review you?

RA:   I think so. Actually, The Scotsman reviewed me in 1973. I've been desperately trying to find a review of We bombed in New Haven because I think I got a mention. We got a lot of attention with OTG and the show was packed out on the word of mouth. That was also when I met Richard Curtis, who's written everything I've ever done.

   MD:   This was a revue with other people. How did you go solo?

RA:   The one man show was the next year, 1977. It was a bit of a mistake, really. It involved a guy who I was working with through this Dundee University Theatre Group and we concocted this revue which was to become the Oxford Revue that year. We kind of took it over. I think we were completely cruel and selfish in setting up a virtually one man show, but I can't remember. You forget these things.
   The first night was awful. It was his fault really and I think he would accept the blame. It was full of long parodies of Brecht and the like which, if you're going to get away with it anywhere then Edinburgh will let you get away with it, but it wasn't really the stuff of popular entertainment. I'm someone who's always preferred to entertain for people rather than to people. I thought it wasn't working, so I cancelled it for three nights and we rustled together a new revue.

   MD:   That illustrates the Edinburgh Fringe technique: to completely change everything after one night, knowing you only have a few days to run anyway!

RA:   Not only the idea of changing things after just one night, but actually cancelling two or three shows completely. Just showing the audience over the road into the pub instead of into your theatre because you haven't got anything to do for them. So that was the start of the one man show which became known as Beyond a Joke, a rather pretentious and inaccurate title. I did a version of that a year later in London, in the Hampstead Theatre.
   That was when I was called the 'funniest graduate clown since Jonathan Miller.' I just hoped that everyone remembered what Jonathan Miller used to do. I wonder if they thought I was the funniest director since Jonathan Miller.

   MD:   Tell me about the extraordinary scenes at the Wireworks Theatre in 1979. By that time you were a professional, but you hadn't done the first series of Not the Nine O'Clock News.

RA:   I can't remember whose idea it was, but I think it must have been Pierre Audi. Chris Naylor and Will Bowen, whom I knew from Oxford, were getting the Wireworks together as an Almeida venue. It was this peculiar factory, with the insides ripped out, no floors, no nothing; and Will Bowen, who still designs all my shows today, took on this extraordinary job of converting the place into a theatre. It was the dirtiest, grimiest, lousiest place to work in. It involved 40 or 50 tons of scaffolding top be erected by everyone, including me. I tried to muck in, because I was very keen on truck driving at the time and I'd just got my heavy good vehicle licence, so I was very taken with the idea of carting 50 tons of scaffolding around!
A great feature of Edinburgh is the all night session. You got to the Oxford Theatre Group planning meetings, when they're trying to do four shows and get them all on in 18 hours, and someone comes up to you and says 'your technical rehearsal is at three.' You know that they mean 3am and not 3pm. Sure enough, you have to be in the theatre at 3, work for 2 and a half hours and then be out again. Because at 6 The Lorenzaccio Story was coming in instead! Unbelievable. And I remember the Wireworks was like that. Grimy, dreary nights when you could hardly keep your eyes open, trying to build another staircase out of this jumble of old scaffolding.

   MD:   Despite all that, your show was a great success there. I remember it was very difficult to get a ticket!

RA:   They thought I was going to do very well, so Will actually designed a gallery. It was the biggest pain to get up – it actually jutted out and had supports and things. It was a tremendous engineering and technical exercise and you couldn't see the stage from the Gallery (except from the front row), so there were 18 seats on the front which were useable, and the other 150, which were going to be the break-even factor of the whole season, were completely useless. And then there were all sorts of ideas about raising the stage 10 feet, so all the people in the gallery could see. But then it would mean that the front 6 rows were looking at a wall of wood, so that plan was scotched. It was a huge and horrible exercise really, the whole thing. In the end you look back and say, 'it was all worth it,' but I'm not absolutely convinced that it was. At least it brought back to life a venue that hadn't been used before.

   MD:   I think it was the only time the building was used. It was a standing joke in the District Council that it got a performing licence!

RA:   It was a wonderfully central venue, right behind the Fringe Office. There is no doubt that, once the word of mouth was about, we did well. We got a Fringe First that year, although there was a debate whether a revue should ever get a Fringe First, not being strictly a play. I remember that was when I got Bill Cotton and all sorts of large people from the BBC who were turning up during the TV festival.

   MD:   I think there was always an element of talent-spotting in Edinburgh. In more recent times, it's become a place for the BBC Light Entertainment department to descend en masse. You were aware of that, were you?

RA:   Yes, I think so. Witch the Television Festival starting in the late 70s, that year (1979) was one of the first times that they were there in great numbers.

   MD:   Is that when you met John Lloyd, the producer of Not the Nine O'Clock News?

RA:   No, John Lloyd saw me after the show in 1977. In 1979, I knew I was already going to do the first series of [/i]Not the Nine O'Clock News[/i] after the summer. It was kind of pre-fame, but it was the most exciting year, I think, in terms of the amount of recognition that I had and the obvious success of what I was doing. I suppose the most influential year in my career was probably '77, because that was when the producers who had seen me asked me to do Not the Nine O'Clock News. But the most enjoyable and the most high profile success was 1979.

   MD:   Then you went the next year to George Square with the Children's Music Theatre.

RA:   Yes, now that was interesting. In 1980, I felt the backlash. It was very curious, because by that time we'd done two series of Not the Nine O'Clock News. We did a series in the autumn of 1979 and another in the spring (1980) and it was really beginning to take off. The next series in the autumn of 1980 was the biggest success of all the work that we ever did. The album sold more copies than all the Monty Python albums put together, or something absurd, and we were certainly on a hot ticket in television terms. But the funny thing was, of course, I was going back to Edinburgh as someone who was known for his success on the Fringe, but increasingly known for his success in television.
   I didn't go back to Edinburgh until 1986, six years on, because there was incredible cynicism. You know, the Festival Times and all these kind of things populated by 18 year-old journalists. They will tend, like the record press, to praise anyone who's unknown and pour large buckets of excreta over anyone who is known. Indeed that's how most of our media thrive and that was the first time I'd experienced the backlash of fame. In terms of the rest of the country, I was still just budding, but in terms of the Fringe I was virtually a failure.

   MD:   You don't seem to have got much enjoyment out of it!

RA:   Well, the show was at least half like what we'd done the previous year, so it wasn't very new, and the venue was a bit fraught. It was a good venue, but it was a marked contrast to the Wireworks.

   MD:   Much cleaner.

RA:   One of the cleanest venues I've ever played in. But there was such cynicism! Perhaps it was when I was just trying to come to terms with the whole idea of heads turning in the street and what have you. I experienced it in Edinburgh, which was somewhere I'd known and liked so much as an unknown. I had that feeling of the world being my oyster and not having to pay any price yet. Then suddenly I felt as though the price was starting to be paid as the real fame hit me. It was very odd. It's a bit like going back to Newcastle-Upon-Tyne now, to the places of my youth, which I knew so well when I was just another face.

   MD:   You've been in and out of favour again. It is a baptism when you become successful. That's when you feel you're really going places and the public is most keen to associate with you. Do you feel you reach some kind of plateau and then something else happens? It never stays still, does it?

RA:   Well, that's right, it's just a struggle trying to keep up. It goes in waves, because in fact I have already experienced another wave since, as people took interest in me again. But anyway, that was the first time, and then I was rather pissed off with it. I suddenly realised that I had done the Edinburgh Fringe.

   MD:   You'd been there over a seven year period and in 1980 you were a well-established name. Not many people who were as well known as you are would come up to the Fringe.

RA:   No, that's right. I suppose I went more times than almost anyone else. 1973, '75, '76, '77, '79, '80 then 1986.

   MD:   Between 1981 and 1983, you came back for the Board meetings> How did you come to be on the Board?

RA:   Alastair (Moffat) asked if I'd like to be put up for it. I actually loved going up to the meetings, and then I kind of ran out of time. Not interest, but just time, and that's why I had to resign. But I wouldn't mind doing it again.

   MD:   When I started in 1981, I remember you saying to me that you felt it was very important to keep the bottom of the Fringe tied to the top, somehow. Is that something which you had noticed because that was the year the Assembly Rooms started?

RA:   Yes, I suppose I felt very much for the predicament that the Fringe can put people in. To a certain extent, the Fringe has sorted itself out slightly, I think. People wave friendly flags at each other now, which was certainly not the case a few years ago. I think I'd experienced the Fringe at the two extreme ends: of being able, and perhaps keen to exploit it for the massive commercial audience which you can find there, you know, if you are popular. I mean there are a huge number of people wanting to see something, and if you're there and you're well known and, you've carved a niche already, then you can go and make a reasonable amount of money. That was probably my thinking in the last two times I was there ('79 and '80).
   At the same time, I've known it at the very other end. Coming to Edinburgh in '73 with that play which no-one remembers was probably the thing that gave me the taste and the inspiration to want to do what I now do; more than the later things, and so I felt a sort of a guilt about some of the motivation later on in my apprenticeship and I felt very much for the predicament at the other end of the scale, because I remember what a tremendous, genuinely good and inspirational thing it was to go to the Edinburgh Fringe just as a schoolboy. There are so many school groups who, like us, never played to more than a few people and therefore, I suppose, I felt some guilt for my changing attitude towards the Fringe. It made me try and think again about what it was like to be at the bottom of the pile. It is a very high hill; it's a very steep slope.

   MD:   What did you make of the Fringe Society Board?

RA:   I just remember enjoying the meetings and the lovely calm of them. There were these quietly spoken Edinburgh solicitors and accountants who were lucid and perceptive and mature, with just enough feeling for what the Fringe had to be about. I enjoyed the calm and professionalism that I thought was very endemic in the Board.

   MD:   But you indulged your love of Edinburgh, at the same time.

RA:   Yes, of course. The great thing was having an excuse to go to Edinburgh three or four times a year.

   MD:   I think that's one of the reasons why Jonathan Miller got involved. He found it a bit of a struggle to get there, but once he was there he loved it.

RA:   Yes, absolutely. I also wanted to keep in touch with the Fringe and its surroundings. I nearly bought a house there.

   MD:   Then you came back, rather suddenly, to perform in 1986. But you weren't really on the Fringe, were you?

RA:   No, no, I wasn't really. It was a bit of a mess, really, 1986. Again it was probably money-making more than anything that was dragging me there. The Playhouse is such a ghastly old barn at the best of times, but when you have to trot in after the ballet at 11 o'clock at night, it meant that we had no time. Even in the early days of the Fringe, my shows have been very theatrical revues – they're not stand up comedy in any sense. They're not even, you know, the two chairs and a table sort of comedy; you really have to make a bit of an effort theatrically with set, lighting and sound, and we didn't have any time to set up or take things down, so we had a terribly shoddy first night.
   The venue was too big, but it was the only one available for me. I had decided to go relatively late in the day, and there was nowhere else really.

   MD:   You were on your way to New York, weren't you?

RA:   Yes, exactly. We came to Edinburgh to keep ourselves occupied and try out some things that we were going to do in New York. It served its purpose.

   MD:   It was quite interesting, because it paralleled the previous year when Pamela Stephenson had been at the Kings Theatre doing exactly the same thing. She was not on the Fringe, as it were, either.

RA:   That's right, but exploiting the Fringe audience.

   MD:   One interesting contribution I recall you making to the Fringe was your trailer that went to Circuit in 1983, which was used to sell spares to venues – bulbs, clamps, floor-tape and so forth. Tell me about that.

RA:   Well, as some people are aware, one of my abiding interests is in technical matters. I had this caravan and I was asked through a friend if I would lend it, and I was happy to do so.

   MD:   Your only appearance in Edinburgh that year was to help launch it!

RA:   I'm interested in these things.

   MD:   You certainly are. One of the first times I met you, you were trying to fix the photocopier in the Fringe Office!  
 

CaledonianGonzo

Thanks Goldfish.  An interesting read.

Sadly, my mum put the foot down and wouldn't let me go to Atkinson's show at the Playhouse.  A crushing blow, especially when my cousins got to go.

He's right, though.  The place is a ghastly old barn..