Household names Tom Conti and Gwen Taylor have a giggle in Somerset Maugham play

Appearing at the Theatre Royal from Monday, October 12, until Saturday, October 17, this new stage production visits Bath as one of just seven venues on tour. The Adver catches up with the two stars in rehearsal.

Hello Tom, hello Gwen, nice to see you, thanks for joining me today – how are rehearsals going?

GWEN: Rehearsals are going well but we’re in that very sticky place now where we so want to put our books down, we do put our books down, and then we have to pick them up again or else it will go awry. But that’s not something to be worried about at this stage of the game. It’s actually going really rather well and it’s such fun. We corpse rather a lot, don’t we? We’ll have to get over that by Windsor (where the tour starts). We do make each other giggle a lot.

TOM: We do laugh a lot. It’s a very funny play.

Tom, why this play, what was it about this particular story that appealed to you and how did you make it happen?

I directed it in 1980, I wasn’t in it, in the West End, and I liked it so much that as the years went on, I started thinking about it again. I always thought it was far too long and that it needed a little bit of modernising. Well, not modernising, as it’s still set in the same period, but there’s a style of writing then which is what we’d call overwriting today, too many sentences in the speech, too much explanation. And audiences have moved on and are phenomenally skilled at getting information from very little dialogue, so I wanted to do a lot of pruning and add a few jokes. And it seemed like a fun idea to play Aubrey, I was too young to play him before.

So Gwen, how did you get involved?

GWEN: Well, I was asked to do it, play the part of Blanche and I fell in love with her immediately. She’s ditzy, she’s annoying, she’s funny, she’s overweight – hello, that’s a good one, I can rest on that! She’s a bit of a pig, she eats all the time, and then complains about indigestion, which is very good, I like all that (laughs). And I’m going to wear nice clothes and it’s a lovely set and it’s Tom Conti – what more can I say? (laughs)

TOM: She’s a very nice nitwit, Blanche.

And as director Tom, no doubt you had a huge say in casting this production?

TOM: Oh god yes!

GWEN: Yes, he just looked for a nitwit (laughs). No, he said, “she’s a pretty woman of very little brain.” Which is rather nice.

TOM: Aubrey too has very little brain but a part of it has been schooled enough for him to be a lawyer. God help his clients! He’s probably a very solid, plodding lawyer. He’ll dot all the ‘i’s and cross all the ‘t’s and he’ll be reliable and honest. But he’s pompous and he’s an end of empire man.

For those who are unfamiliar with Before the Party, but without giving too much away, tell us about the play.

TOM: It’s a story by Somerset Maugham and Maugham’s stories always have a dark core. It was then taken by Rodney Ackland who was a very celebrated playwright of the 40s and 50s, very successful in the West End. And he took this and expanded it, because he liked the core idea, into a sort of Ayckbourn-like play. And it’s Chekhovian as well. It’s absurd characters in situations so beyond their control they don’t think there’s anything funny about them, but if you’re the audience and you’re looking and watching them and their behaviour, then it does make you laugh. It’s a funny play with a very dark centre, that’s what makes it interesting.

GWEN: There’s a great deal of snobbery and even a wee bit of racism creeps into it in the way that it did in those days.

TOM: It was automatic, they didn’t think about it.

GWEN: But it’s all funny because these people are so outrageously self-centred and lacking in any kind of world view.

TOM: Yes, indeed, or any sense of other people’s frailties.

GWEN: They really are very, very selfish people and you watch them behaving in an appalling way but they’re making you laugh at the same time. And I can’t wait for Mr Conti’s moustache to be something to be proud of, it’s on its way. And by the time we get to the provinces, it’ll look brilliant.

TOM: (laughs) At the moment it looks like a bad disease of the upper lip.

So, it’s about a family, the parents, three daughters, one of which has just returned from Africa with a shocking secret.

GWEN: Yes, and we’re about to attend a party of some very posh people, the Bishop of Cape Town and people of that gentry, a cut above us, but we think our family are pretty classy.

TOM: They are social climbers, particularly Aubrey, my character, and he now sees himself as getting on a bit and he’s done all he can in the law, so now he wants to sit in Parliament. So he’s going to put himself forward as a Tory candidate in the upcoming election.

GWEN: We have to be very careful because we don’t want any scandal attached to our family. And of course what happens is we find there is a scandal and we don’t know whether we can keep quiet about it and hush it up.

TOM: This is the thing about these people, they think they are doing the right thing, it’s in their culture, and they follow the rules of that culture. They’re terrible rules but they don’t think they’re terrible, they think they’re proper. And every culture does exactly that, whatever class, whatever social spectrum.

So despite this being set 60 years ago, will its themes relate to audiences today?

GWEN: It’s very much of its time but it’s like any classic play, it applies to any time. It’s very relevant to people today, you know, keeping up with the Joneses and not putting a foot wrong and whether your principles will survive certain things, and do what you can to get by. And that happens to everyone really.

TOM: Then there’s the whole thing about rationing which people of a certain age will remember. And it went on for a long time after the war ended, it wasn’t until the early 50s that all rationing had gone. And so this family are inevitably involved in the black market, but they don’t see it like that. They just see it that the local farmer helps them out, gives them some eggs, things that people didn’t have. A family was allowed two ounces of butter a week – two ounces! And these people have all the butter they need. But they don’t think they’re being criminals, it’s just old-fashioned barter. Aubrey will probably say, “If you’re in a spot of bother, you come and see me, I’ll represent you for nothing, just keep us in eggs and butter in the meantime. And chops” (laughs).

GWEN: I get the impression the family were fairly untouched by the war, except for the rationing. And we have a little breath of excitement when one of the daughters has a boyfriend who was a successful army officer, a guerrilla, so that’s a bit of excitement in the house, someone who’s had a different life. And he’s a bit of a dish.

As I understand it, you two have never worked together before?

TOM: No, but one of the reasons that Gwen is in this, and it’s funny how these things happen, she came to see Twelve Angry Men in Richmond on the last night, and I hadn’t seen Gwen for a while.

GWEN: Yes, it was in Richmond and I came to see Andrew (Lancel, who played Juror number 3 and was Gwen’s on-screen son Frank Foster in Coronation Street).

TOM: And I thought then she’d be a possible Blanche. Funny isn’t it? If you hadn’t come the thought might not have occurred to me. I mean, I would have found you in Spotlight (laughs) but there’s something about seeing someone.

GWEN: A pretty woman with very little brain, and there I was, just standing there (laughs).

TOM: Well, certainly a pretty woman.

So have any of this cast worked together before?

GWEN: No, everybody’s new, I’ve never worked with any of them before.

TOM: I’ve worked with two of them before. The last play we did Rough Justice, the girl who played the female lead, the barrister, is playing my elder daughter in this. And the woman who played my wife is playing my middle daughter.

GWEN: The actress in this who plays the younger daughter, Ellie, is holding her own in rehearsals, she’s terrific and well ahead of us. She has less to do, but nevertheless, what she does, she does it very well.

TOM: The great thing about her is that she already knows all her lines. The young mind is like blotting paper. The big task young people have in the business now is learning to speak properly, perfecting that accent, the cut-glass, Queen’s English.

GWEN: I have a problem with it but I am trying my hardest and I think it’ll be good once we get going. You do feel (adopts well-spoken 1950-style Queen’s English accent) awfully silly when you’re talking like that and you’re saying words differently.

TOM: You could abandon it and play it straight and modern but it’s not so much fun. And the audiences, particularly those who lived through that period, will remember how the Queen used to speak and will enjoy it, hearing that again.

Gwen, back to you for a moment. You’re probably well-known, most recently for Coronation Street but also for Barbara and A Bit of a Do, and you had the terribly sad news this week that the writer of the latter, David Nobbs, passed away, my condolences to you.

GWEN: Thank you, yes, it’s really sad. It’s funny because it was his 80th birthday this year and the people who were organising a special party for him in North Yorkshire, they rang me and asked me to send a message to him. And I was so pleased I managed to get a tape through and I sent a little message to him thanking him very much for the character he wrote for me, which was Rita Simcock. And he emailed me and said he was so thrilled to get it and he had a lovely time. He said he was still writing but he thought the powers that be in television had ceased to realise what comedy was. So he wasn’t getting anything done, which saddens me because he and Eric Chappell (Rising Damp, Only When I Laugh, Duty Free) are people that I have worked with who have produced some wonderful work, just don’t seem to be appreciated any more. It’s sad when actors aren’t appreciated but it’s sadder when a writer’s work, that has been brilliant, isn’t appreciated, so I am really sad about that. But David was a lovely man and I enjoyed working with him so much, he was sweet. He was never funny in himself at all and would be the first to say that. He was quite dour as a friend but his work was just stunning.

Back to Before the Party - you’ve been on the road before with many shows, but this time you’re only playing seven venues, that’s quite a short run.

GWEN: It’s a bit of a gift for me, because I’ve come to an age now, and I’m not sure whether Tom would agree, that every time I do a tour, I wonder if I’ll do another. I get very tired and a little bit fed up of the sight of my suitcase, and the weather changes and I’ve forgotten something and I’ve got last week’s clothes. And I thought, would I want to go through that again? But then this came up and I thought, to hell with it, I’m going to enjoy it and it’ll be really lovely. And the fact it wasn’t going to be a six-month tour was part of the appeal, it felt like it would be over in a flash.

TOM: It’s very difficult to cast tours these days. And when you’re casting a young woman, one in her 30s, for example, so many of them have children so they can’t go on tour because of that. Twelve Angry Men was five months then I re-joined for the last two dates for two weeks. It is hard because I don’t get to see my grandchildren and I really hate that, I can’t bear it.

Are there any dates on this tour you’ve not played, any cities you’re looking forward to visiting? How do you keep yourselves occupied during the day?

TOM: I’ve played them all, with the exception of Woking, and they’re all lovely theatres. I love Eastbourne, it’s like stepping back in time.

GWEN: When we’re in Cheltenham it’s the Literary Festival that week which is rather nice, because during the day you can go to the stalls and see what’s going on and who’s talking, so that’s quite fun. I’ve brought my membership to the National Trust and the Heritage Fund just in case there’s anywhere nice to see.

By Maggie Bowsworth