This Much Is True

I’d seen the London production at Her Majesty’s Theatre, Haymarket. It had been running very successfully for three years and I loved it. Topol and Miriam Karlin played the leads. Many years later I made a film with Topol (Left Luggage with Isabella Rossellini) and served on the Equity Council with Miriam. She was a truly magnificent person — a terrific actress with powerful political convictions. I honour her memory. But back to 1970.

I was asked to audition for the role of Yente, and it was a part I was born to play, but she has a song, and I can’t sing. The fact that I cannot carry a tune has been a blight on my career because I look as if I can sing: I’ve got the breasts for singing; I’ve got the face for singing; I’ve got the pipes… for spoken word, yes, but not for singing, alas. Unlike Mummy, who had perfect pitch, I am tone-deaf. I feel sure I would have had leading roles on the musical comedy stage if I’d been able to hold a tune, but there it is. You have to make the best of what you’ve got; and for this production, I could become Yente, but the song had to be cut.

We were what’s called the Number One Touring Company and the contract was for a year, going to Manchester, Bristol, Nottingham, Birmingham, Liverpool, Newcastle, Glasgow, Aberdeen, Edinburgh and Leeds, which for a young person is huge fun. Such tours don’t happen much any more — they’re too expensive. We were a big company — about forty of us — including dancers, plus the orchestra on top. This makes for a significant financial undertaking.

We rehearsed in London at Her Majesty’s Theatre for five weeks. Our director was not Harold Robbins, who’d directed it on Broadway, alas, but Tommy Elliott, who was the company manager of the show in London. His job was to copy exactly the London production; he was grumpy and devoid of artistic flair. He shouted nastily at Mollie Hare, our oldest company member, whenever she didn’t get something right. The choreographer was Irene Claire, very good and patient with people like me, who weren’t good dancers. I thought that I was much better than Cynthia Grenville, who was playing Yente in London — how ridiculous to cast a non-Jewish actress in this most Jewish of parts. But then again she did sing well.

During rehearsals the cast got to know one another, working out who we liked and who we didn’t. Then we were off on tour.

We played Manchester for two months, then to each city for two or three weeks. The whole troupe went everywhere en masse by train, and I immediately palled up with my understudy, a witty Australian called Andonia Katsaros, also a lesbian. She had been famous in TV in Australia for The Mavis Bramston Show. At the time, I didn’t know I would also make a career in Australia. She and her partner, Maureen, are still my chums. It was a great adventure, meeting up on the station platform at Euston, getting our stuff together in a babble of chaotic excitement and giggles. And a wonderful opportunity to see the great cities of England and Scotland, which we did on our days off. Some people travelled with their spouses. Chris Saul brought his wife, Diana Eden, a blonde actress from Darlington, with a deep voice and a wicked wit. She has remained an important friend to this day. Enid Blackman brought her chap, Nick, whom she later married. Julio Trebilcock from Chile brought his wife and little baby. And Andonia brought Maureen.

We opened at the Palace Theatre in Manchester on 13 April 1970. Of course, the unknown factor about touring is the accommodation, and who you’re going to share with. For the Manchester run, five of us rented a house in a quiet little country village called Handforth (which is now apparently where all the footballers from Manchester United live). I shared with Sean Hewitt, Kim Braden who was Chava, one of the three eldest daughters, and Rita Merkelis who played Tzeitel; Rita is Lithuanian-Canadian and married to Johnny Lynn, a clever chap who wrote Yes, Minister and is the nephew of Abba Eban, the Israeli politician. I had been at Cambridge with him, and knew him from Footlights, where he was a gifted percussionist; I didn’t like him then, and I don’t like either of them now. I had a little kitten on the tour; I begged Rita to keep our dressing-room door shut, and she never did. Typical! Luckily the kitten survived and eventually came back to London with me. Rita had an inflated idea of her own importance and was very snooty with the company. In Manchester one day, at the swimming pool, I said to her, ‘Rita, if you look down your nose much more, you’ll go blind!’ They live in Beverley Hills now; Rita left the business and became a psychotherapist; I believe she has a flourishing practice.