24 Apr 2009: WHAT KATY DID NEXT
WHEN I was 12, I wrote to Katy Manning requesting an autograph. She was touring in a stage production of There's A Girl In My Soup at the time. Dundee was the nearest the tour came to Edinburgh, I wrote to her care of
the stage door. Sometime after the tour ended, weeks later, an envelope arrived and I had a signed photo – still do, in fact.
Katy Manning was then (and still is, for that matter) my favourite actress "in all the world". She was quirky, bubbly, cute and very sexy. An unusual combination. Most actresses manage one or two of those attributes but not all four simultaneously.
For those who don't have a clue who I am talking about, Katy Manning was a star of 1970's Doctor Who. She played Jo Grant, the Doctor's feisty assistant in the days when Jon Pertwee's Time-Lord was a dashing, gadget loving dandy who, together with the Brigadier, Cpt Mike Yates and Sgt Benton, saved the Earth from alien invasion every Saturday night.
Later she went on to present the BBC crafts programme Serendipity and to star in the film Don't Just Lie There, Say Something and West End theatre productions of Why Not Stay for Breakfast, There's a Girl in My Soup and Odd Man. She even posed naked once with a Dalek.
Now, they say you should never meet your heroes, or indeed heroines, for fear of being disappointed. As I know only too well having interviewed many famous faces who have failed to live up to expectations. So it was with not a little trepidation that I headed to London earlier this week to interview Katy.
You see, over the years I have met most of the Pertwee era stars of Doctor Who. Richard Franklin, aka Captain Yates, cast and directed me in my first professional acting job. John Levene, who played Sgt Benton, co-starred in that production. I've interviewed Nicholas Courtney who still plays The Brigadier (youngsters will know him from The Sarah Jane Adventures) many times and I even directed Jon Pertwee in a documentary about a day in his life. Katy Manning however, had remained elusive, mainly because she emigrated to Australia shortly after send me that aforementioned autograph.
Ironically, Katy is back in the UK to star in a one-woman, Me & Jezebel, which is based on the true story of what happened when the legendary Bette Davis invited herself to stay with the American writer Elizabeth Fuller, a self-confessed admirer of the Hollywood legend. Davis arrived to stay for a night in the summer of 1985 and didn't leave for a month. Chaos ensued as Davis turned the Fuller household upside down.
Thankfully Katy Manning is no Bette Davis. At just five foot tall she remains a petite little thing.
A bundle of energy that defies her 59 years, she still looks stunning, although she insists that she has a "stupid" face. Chatting, she comes across as a warm, friendly, genuine and open person, it's nice when someone turns out to be all you expected, if not more.
Katy is planning to tour Me & Jezebel later this year and there's even been talk about it coming to The Fringe, however, if you want to be sure of catching it you'll need to take a trip to the New End Theatre in Hampstead, London, before May 2.
As we parted Katy laughed, "But be warned, if we do get up to Edinburgh I'll probably turn up at your door asking to stay for the a night."
Ah! Now doesn't the Fringe run for a month? Could life be about to imitate art imitating life. Bring it on!
17 Apr 2009: MASTERCLASS
PATRICK STEWART engaged as Vladimir. Sir Ian McKellen cast his spell as Estragon. Godot failed to turn up. But then, that was a given.
What is arguably the highlight of the Scottish theatre year is currently playing to capacity houses at the King's Theatre. Waiting For Godot is Samuel Beckett's play in which nothing really happens – just as well then that this touring production boasts four actors who can take nothing and craft it into a master-class of observation.
Perhaps it is simply because so little happens that this production works so well. With more than 150 years combined experience, Stewart, McKellen, Simon Callow and Ronald Pickup use every skill in their repertoire to engage and hold the attention.
Stewart, still best remembered for his role as Captain Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek, The Next Generation, positively revels in the opportunity to show his TV fans where he is most at home – on the stage. McKellen meanwhile is surprisingly vulnerable and under-stated. Together their chemistry is electric.
Understatement is something that Callow has never done well, which makes him inspired casting as Pozzo while there's a chilling menace about Pickup as his hard done by man servant, Lucky.
If you've never seen Waiting For Godot, the story is simple. Two tramps wait by a tree for the mysterious Godot – who never turns up. As they wait, they reflect on life, the universe and everything, to paraphrase Douglas Adams.
Once voted "the most significant English language play of the 20th century", Beckett's actually wrote the play in French – En attendant Godot – as a tragicomedy in two acts. Despite the star turns on show at The King's however, there is no escaping the fact that Waiting For Godot is at best an exercise in navel gazing, and as such it's hard to imagine it engaging without the such a skilled company to bring it to life.
But then Beckett himself hinted as much. When an abridged version of the play opened in 1952, he wrote in a letter read out on the opening night: "I don't know who Godot is. I don't even know (above all don't know) if he exists. And I don't know if they believe in him or not – those two who are waiting for him. The other two who pass by towards the end of each of the two acts, that must be to break up the monotony. All I knew I showed. It's not much, but it's enough for me, by a wide margin. I'll even say that I would have been satisfied with less. As for wanting to find in all that a broader, loftier meaning to carry away from the performance, along with the programme and the Eskimo pie, I cannot see the point of it. But it must be possible... Estragon, Vladimir, Pozzo, Lucky, their time and their space, I was able to know them a little, but far from the need to understand. Maybe they owe you explanations. Let them supply it. Without me. They and I are through with each other."
If you're lucky enough to have a ticket – decide for yourself.
The full article contains 1171 words and appears in Edinburgh Evening News newspaper.
