In a Tribute for Bill and Sylvia (Read) Fry, published in our September issue, 2007, I expressed the hope that – notwithstanding the ending of their run’ with Theatre Roundabout over upwards of 40 years and 4000 performances, an ending taking effect on 31st July 2007 – we should still be privileged to see them in some further performances.
Little did I then imagine that in only a few months time they would be appearing on a stage on a Desert Island (whether in the Atlantic, or the Pacific or elsewhere I leave the reader to imagine) telling in some detail of Theatre Roundabout and, more importantly, of their personal lives. Whether Roy Plumeley, the inventor of the radio programme Desert Island Discs would metaphorically be turning in his grave at the sight of two, as opposed to the usual one, victims on the island we may wonder and I suspect that he would have demurred at the ploy adopted by Bill of claiming his wife as his one permitted luxury. Sylvia having told her audience that she would be hopeless on a Desert Island and not choosing Bill as her luxury must, we are left to assume, have considered him a necessity!
Those of us fortunate enough to be present a couple of nights ago at the very comfortable Hampstead Desert Island Home of Mr. And Mrs. Goodman and their family, made available to us for the purpose, saw and heard Handley Stevens deftly guide Bill and Sylvia through the fascinating story of their acting lives. The pleasures and the problems, triumphs and (at least pending) disasters with precision and an honesty to be admired. There is not space or time to elaborate, but perhaps my reader may catch a hint of what was involved from two of Bill and Sylvia’s experiences – enough surely to deter most of us from taking on, or daring to take on, such risky, if exciting role!
Firstly, a plane flight intended to carry them from one venue to another is cancelled. How are they to get to the second venue? After considering and juggling a bit, they find one plane which might get them there roughly on time, but if they take that how will they have time to make the appropriate costume changes and make up properly? They decided that the solution is to change and make up before getting on the plane. They do so, they board the plane in stiff and obviously uncomfortable Edwardian clothes and fully made up. They were upgraded (for the comfort of other passengers?) to First Class and arrived at their venue about a quarter of an hour late, the patient awaiting audience having been appraised of what was going on! In What provides a moral to us all, their near disaster ended as a triumph that evening.
Secondly, they were stuck in the middle of nowhere in their camper-van which (unlike Mercy, their subsequent one which served them faithfully for 20 years and 170,000 miles) had no loo. But Sylvia, at least, needed a loo and went to the freezing outside for the purpose. Because of the cold, she called to Bill, “Don’t come out.” Bill, however, heard only the words “Come out” and did so, only to have the door bang behind him and thus shut them out. What were they to do now? In proof(my words, not theirs) that God provides for Religious Drama actors, as well as others, Bill found one window unlocked which should have been locked and squeezed through it like a Mole or other amenable literary animal and so was able to save Sylvia’s life by opening the door at last from the inside.
Of course, an important part of Desert Island Discs is the discs, the music. Difficult for me to comment on this because, apart from a Chopin Mazurka, I had – and most of us others, I suspect – heard none of them before, but that did not make them less interesting, because through the recorded music, almost all of which had been especially composed for them and one or other of the plays which they were performing. Bill and Sylvia would have been able to relive their performances and all the more so if Sylvia were permitted to take with her as her permitted book the scripts of all their plays made up into a book Would Roy Plumeley have approved? This way, there would not have been just two on the Island, but also all the people whom they had brought to life in their performances and could do again on the beach?!
An amusing evening indeed. Thank you again, Bill and Sylvia and thank you also, Michael, for your great work in getting the music discs together. Thank you also Handley for organising the evening with Bill and Sylvia and introducing it all so well, and – let them not be forgotten – thank you to the Goodmans and to those unnamed who provided good food on our Desert Island (temporary)
Desert Island Discs
Derek Spottiswoode