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Dear Elspeth - a Tribute to Elspeth CochraneDateline: 20th September, 2011On Sunday September 18th 2011, actors, writers, directors and producers celebrated the life of a much-loved theatrical agent, Elspeth Cochrane (1916-2011)
For over 50 years Elspeth Cochrane had represented and nurtured the careers of her clients. She began her agency with just writers who included Arnold Wesker and John Arden. She would go on to represent directors, designers and actors, the most famous being Ian McKellen and Robert Eddison. She went on working until the end of her life. She was 95 when she died. She had never retired.
Before she became an agent in 1957 she had been an actress (she trained at Webber Douglas Academy) and a stage manager, working with Michael Redgrave, Sybil Thorndike, Bernard Shaw, JB Priestley and also with James Bridie when he founded the Glasgow Citizens.
Tyrone Guthrie invited her to be his personal assistant when the Stratford Festival opened for the first time in Stratford, Ontario, Canada.
All the people who paid tribute to Elspeth Cochrane talked of her intelligence, enthusiasm, passion and energy. She was extremely well read, invaluable when coming to casting her actors. She always went to see them perform, regularly travelling long distances in the regions. She was always positive and she always thought ahead. She was, perhaps, the most motherly of all agents. All agreed there was no agent quite like her.
The running order of the programme at the Arts was as follows. Richard Keightley performed a soliloquy from Twelfth Night, Gawn Grainger read an extract from Robert Nye’s Falstaff and Anna Quayle did one of her own revue sketches.
Leslie Lawton gave an account of her career, Paddy Lennox did a stand-up comedy turn and Nicholas Barter talked about her influence on directors.
Nikos Dionysios recited a poem by Harold Pinter, Hannah Gordon reminisced, Bill Homewood read an American Southern version of King Lear and Samantha Bond acted a scene from Ibsen’s The Doll’s House.
Patrica Routledge remembered Elspeth’s love of gardening and read a poem by Rudyard Kipling, Peter Eyre repeated his performance of Kenneth Tynan in an extract from Janet Munsil’s Smoking with Lulu.
Trudie Styler read a letter from Elspeth Cochrane’s oldest friend, Dorothy Cairncross, and Ian McKellen (who said he was blessed to have had her as his agent when he was starting his career) acted a sequence from his famed Richard II.
The programme ended with Pamela Banks singing Someone To Watch Over Me, accompanied by Adam Behrens, whilst photographs of Elspeth Cochrane were projected on a screen. Robert Tanitch
(Elspeth Cochrane was Robert Tanitch’s literary agent and one of his dearest friends.)
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