by Rony Robinson
songs by Gary Yershon
Theatre Royal, Stratford East
My six-month stint in Jesus Christ Superstar was drawing to a close. The management offered to continue my contract if I would undertake some understudy work. I was glad to be asked, but I turned it down. Although it was great earning a good weekly wage, I knew it wouldn’t take long before I’d be bored, and I really didn’t want to become a cynical cog in the West End machine. Rony Robinson then mentioned that he’d been asked to write a summer entertainment for the Theatre Royal, Stratford East, and asked if I’d like to write songs for it. Somehow or the other, I persuaded the director, Jonathan Chadwick, to let me act in it as well as be the musical director.
The cast included some brilliant actors: Tom Wilkinson, Belinda Lang, Julia Hills, Alwyne Taylor…But the show didn’t work out at all well. My view may be coloured by the fact that I know I gave a terrible performance in it. I was given the role of an old man in a state of delusional and sentimental nostalgia, which I didn’t fit at all, not least because I was a half-century too young for it. I wrote the score very quickly, and from time to time it showed in weak lyrics. The standard of the music was higher.
The company didn’t like the script, and neither did the critics. The best thing about the production was the set by Pat MacNamara, who contrived to bring a corner of Liverpool Street station stylishly to life on the Stratford East stage.
I’d met Alwyne Taylor a couple of years before, and was very glad to be working with her. She became, and remains, one of my dearest friends. Julia Hills, also a good pal, was to be the unwitting agent of a major change in my life.
