Hear Here for Gyles & Ted

Theatrical enterprise can create strange, or at least unexpected, bed-fellows, and none more intriguing at the moment, perhaps, than Gyles Brandreth and Edward Petherbridge rehearsing for next month’s new musical version of The Importance of Being Earnest at Riverside Studios.

My friend Gyles is an ebullient self-publicist, former Tory MP, founder of the National Scrabble Championship, author of about two hundred books (his latest stream is a series of highly entertaining Oscar Wilde fictional mysteries) and television personality.

Petherbridge, although mildly famous for having played Lord Peter Wimsey on television, the first ever Guildenstern in Tom Stoppard‘s play at the National Theatre, for founding and running the Actors’ Company with Ian McKellen in the 1970s, and for embodying the forlorn and skeletal frame of knuckle-cracking Newman Noggs in the RSC’s legendary Nicholas Nickleby, is, by way of contrast, discreet and vaguely effete.

As personalities, and performers, they are chalk and cheese, magnitude and meekness, belch and beg pardon. 

Brandreth, of course, is playing Lady Bracknell, very much in the manner and appearance of the old Queen Mary. A fearsome picture in yesterday’s Daily Telegraph suggested a galleon in full sail, bright red lipstick, little gloved finger crooked around the china tea cup, a smell of disdain playing around his nostrils. 

Petherbridge, meanwhile, will be sidling on as Canon Chasuble, quietly noting all vulgarities and discrepancies in Gyles’ performance – and everyone else’s – for the next volume of his “autobiographical anthology.” 

I say “next” because he’s just published the first, self-deprecatingly titled Slim Chances (and unscheduled appearances), and I’ve become addicted to reading several pages a day, partly because the anecdotes are so hilarious and treasurable, but mostly because the book is so gloriously undisciplined and exhaustingly, self-indulgently over-written.

In Petherbridge’s case, because he is so intelligent and so interesting, this is not a fault. Things come into his head and he immediately writes them down. The text is stuffed with long poems for special occasions, schoolboy reminiscences, analytical diversions and brilliant portraits of his fellow actors – there’s even a verbatim dialogue with McKellen – and the passages on the National under Olivier are priceless.

Precious, too, though Petherbridge is never too precious, or remotely grand, about himself. He’s had his glory days. But he started in weekly rep in Halifax (he was born and bred in Bradford) and finished in the Old Red Lion in Islington. He goes where the work is.

And Riverside Studios hold no terrors for him, nor does Gyles Brandreth: he’s been directed by John Dexter and Philip Prowse (adored the first, suffered the second), sunk with all his mimetic flags flying in the doomed West End revival of The Fantasticks, and appeared in a play by Jeffrey Archer.

One hopes another musical of The Importance – there have been several – is more successful than its predecessors. There was one with Hinge and Bracket in the West End that was beyond dire. And if Gyles launches into a Wagnerian aria called “A Handbag” we could be in for a treat in the most masochistic meaning of that term.
 
Hang on, I see that his opening number is indeed called “A Handbag”: the show must surely be at the top of every office party Christmas outing list already.

Wilde is worth hearing in all circumstances, of course, and both Brandreth and Petherbridge are nothing if not intensely audible. If you’re deaf, there are loops and signed performances. If you’re blind, I’ve lately discovered, there are audio descriptions organised by a charity called VocalEyes, and their web-site currently updates clients on new facilities at the Bush Theatre.

Regular theatre-goer John Gallagher tells me that certain theatres such as the Donmar, the National, the Almeida, Hampstead and the Royal Court are very good at providing this service of “a voice in your ear” which describes the performance as it happens.

The West End producers are less quick to do so, presumably because they cannot claim public or charitable funds to support the programme. Gallagher rang the Apollo box office to find out if there was an “audio described” performance of Jerusalem. The lady on the end of the line didn’t understand him, and Gallagher said that she was confusing audio description with the loop.

“How dare you call me loopy”” came the reply, with a loud sound of phone hitting cradle. Gallagher’s keen to see The Ladykillers but tells me that, as of now, there is no plan for any audio description performance. He’s already had several fruitless conversations over the phone. “Sometimes,” he says, “it’s difficult to believe the level of intelligence you have to deal with.”

Audio-description costs about £600 for one night. Gallagher recalls how brilliant the service was for the Donmar season at Wyndham’s Theatre, when the audio-described performance was preceded by a “touch tour” of the set and a brief meeting with the actors.

Why go to the theatre if you’re blind? “Because I love it,” says Gallagher, who was not always blind, “especially the plays of Ibsen, Beckett, Stoppard and Shakespeare.” I’m sure we can add Wilde to that list, but I fear a distinct lack of subsidy at the Riverside Studios may deter the intrepid enthusiast. He’s not all that keen on musicals, anyway.