The Theatre Royal opened its doors on 17 December 1884 with a production of Lytton Strachey’s Richielieu,and Stratford East has been celebrating its 140-year history. This commemoration of Joan Littlewood, who made such a big contribution to that history after she brought her Theatre Workshop company to the then-derelict theatre in 1953, was commissioned as part of the anniversary celebrations.
Joan is written by Robert Hayman, who has a long association with this theatre. He was musical director for 1998 panto Cinderella and has been involved as MD, lyricist or composer (sometimes all three) with shows ever sInce. He may not have known Joan Littlewood personally, but his script, making her tell her own story, captures her spirit.
It doesn’t just cover the Stratford years, but traces her life from her birth in Stockwell and her first exposure to theatre via making a blood-drenched school production of Macbeth that aimed to outdo one she had seen, through a brief time on a scholarship at RADA before decamping to Manchester to follow up invitation from a BBC producer to joining Jimmy Miller’s agitprop theatre group. After her marriage to Miller, they formed Theatre Union, which postwar morphed into Theatre Workshop, aided by members' demob gratuities, but there were tough years to follow before they found their home in Stratford.
We get a glimpse of the development of Joan’s concept of theatre, the influence of Laban on her development, her treatment and training of actors and her scorn for the theatrical establishment. It is a picture of a person, not just a director, a woman who deeply cared for her “birds” (her actors), and who fell hook, line and sinker for tall, posh Gerry Raffles, who became the company’s manager, often its saviour and her support always.
Jodie Jacobs, playing Joan, captures her ebullience and charisma, but frustration and despair too. As a young woman, an abortion is no problem, but Raffles’s death breaks her, and Jacobs makes this very moving. It is a performance, strongly sung and fully shared with the audience, that somehow reconciles her nice home with Gerry and her taste for luxury products with her socialist fervour, not least when she is scrubbing the floor before holding an audition.
Robert Hyman doesn’t just provide words and music. He is in the foyer before the show mingling with the audience disguised as a doctor with white coat and stethoscope before moving into the auditorium to start joke cracking and then on stage at his keyboard leading a singalong with a rousing "Happy Birthday" to Stratford East and then pitching in as needed characters (including playing Joan herself when Jacobs briefly becomes Barbara Windsor).
Tessa Walker’s direction does a good job: you don’t notice it. With a stage littered with any needed prop and some objects that may be secretively symbolic, she creates a convivial theatrical ambience and facilitates a free-flowing performer pairing that also includes the audience and gains lots of laughter.
Quite a few of that audience looked old and engaged enough to have brought their own memories of Workshop and this theatre with them, and they clearly thought Joan did Joan justice. It got a standing ovation from everyone capable of standing. This was a one-off performance, but I hope not the last one. I believe it was being filmed. If there are no live performances planned, when will that film become available?