The Late Great Peter Gill

Some personal words

I’m 15. I live, not happily, on the Barnes side of Hammersmith Bridge, first on the left overlooking the river. From our first-floor rented flat we can see the Riverside Studios. At the top of my road I never turn left, I always turn right, walk over the bridge and the first building I see is Riverside. Its 1979, there are no luxury flats above the theatre, the current promenade hasn’t been built, there is just plain brick wall lapped by the Thames. More Dickens than Richard Rodgers. The entrance to the theatre is round the back on Crisp Road and once I’m in, it’s the most intoxicating place I have ever known, sawdust on the ground, cheap tea at the café and tables of people talking art, politics and telling dirty jokes. I want to stay here forever. The late great Peter Gill who died this week, is directing Measure for Measure starring Helen Mirren. My mother Maria Charles is playing Mistress Overdone and I’m allowed to sit at the back and watch rehearsals. 

Peter loved talent, no snob he. To begin with, he has cast my mother in his Shakespeare production and she’s not a ‘classical actress’. Maria had spent most of her career performing in musicals. Peter sought charisma, discipline and timing in an actor - none of which can be taught - he could do the rest. Silently, formatively, I absorbed this attitude; you didn’t have to be a Fiona or a Juliet to earn your place on the stage. At Riverside, Peter and David Gothard created a theatre of high art, with Samuel Becket, Juan Miró, Michael Clark and Tarkovsky working and rehearsing, sitting with everyone else in that café. Alongside this and equally so, it was a theatre of total inclusivity. Doors open. In you come. What you got? Let’s dance. Silently, formatively, too shy to speak, I absorbed. 

I’m 19. I work, not happily, at the National Theatre. I’m playing Jean Seberg in Peter Hall’s ill-fated musical Jean Seberg on the Olivier stage. Here’s the most famous director on the planet, who gave the English-speaking world the first production of Waiting for Godot, founded the Royal Shakespeare Company and had been the Director of the National Theatre since 1973 directing a musical written by Broadway and Hollywood superstar Marvin Hamlisch, he of A Chorus Line and recipient of three Oscars. He who sported a full-length mink coat and appeared to arrive at the stage door of the National Theatre in an actual limousine. Marvin is reported to have said “get me the Amadeus guy” when looking for a director for his musical and Peter Hall had insisted that they produce it at the National. It was unheard of then, subsidised theatre collaborating directly with the commercial sector. In 1983, this production hung in the balance between the old-world ideology of theatre being a necessary and essential part of cultural life with ‘need first finance second’ attitude and the oncoming Thatcherite world of the commodification of all art, leading to success being measured through what you can ‘sell sell sell’.

And there was me. In the centre of what became the biggest flop the National Theatre have ever staged. And there was Peter Gill, now associate at the National directing brilliant productions. And he remembered the shy silent daughter of Maria who had sat absorbing the best of times in the café at Riverside Studios not four years earlier. And he’s really truly kind to me. ‘Cos I was a kid. And we’re both having lunch at the National Theatre company restaurant every day. Prices dirt cheap, food great, same talk of art and politics and pretty much the same actors telling dirty jokes. Peter was my haven.

Jean Seberg was an unmitigated disaster from start to finish. I sprained my ankle ten minutes before curtain up of the second preview and Peter Hall decided I should perform the show in a wheelchair in a spotlight at the side of the Olivier stage while the cast pretended that I was where I was meant to be, and I would pretend I could see them. It was a snap decision. He wheeled me on to the stage himself and all I could actually see was an audience with jaws agape, not unlike they who first watch Springtime for Hitler in Mel Brook’s Producers.

Once opened, Jean Seberg was a critical disaster and Peter Hall moved quickly on. The good ship Hamlisch vanished, Broadway contracts turned to dust and the company and I were left to perform the thing until we read in the Evening standard that it was to close early. True friendships were forged, gallows humour emerged. During those months of performing a failure I experienced profound disappointment, loneliness and shame but showed it never.  I learned the excellent lessons of life, the lessons of kindness, honesty and courage. And Peter Gill was at the centre of those lessons. He  alone asked me directly how I was feeling. He alone asked me what I was interested in, and he alone told me not to worry. He looked out for me. I felt it. And again, I found myself absorbing what he had to offer. And as much as possible in my career and life, I have tried to emulate these lessons, I learnt from him that form can falter, luck can wane but talent stays.

I stayed on at The National Theatre for the next three years quite literally learning my craft and nowhere was more important for me in that time than the National Theatre Studio run by Peter, which he founded in 1984.  There he purposefully created a haven for writers and actors and directors where obvious economic results were not the goal. There, I actually had a chance to do some acting and to feel like I had worth, because Peter understood what actors actually need. I may not have gained my confidence had it not been for him. When he was summarily dismissed from The Studio by the subsequent Artistic Director of The National, it caused one of a series of rifts between myself and a colleague of which I may write more sometime.

I was an actor for at least two decades and I’ve been a director for at least two more decades. For a bit in the middle I was both. Peter was also both. His influence on me as a person, a leader of people and artist has been profound. He understood people because he was naturally genuinely interested in people. Four years ago he and I sat in the café (much changed) at Riverside for a whole afternoon, talking about everything and everyone, past and present, his insatiable appetite for life and landscape of references barely dimmed. I visited him last year at Denville Hall, frail in body but full of curiosity. I walked by the bridge this morning and thanked my lucky stars that I knew him. I’m very lucky to have had him in my life.