Plymouth Theatre Royal/BBC TV
Peter Woodward as P.G. Wodehouse
Tony Slattery as Guy Bolton
Gary Yershon as Jerome Kern
The name Tony Staveacre, a West Country-based writer-director-producer, was always popping up on BBC programmes emerging from the Corporation’s Bristol studios. Someone, I don’t know who, pointed him in my direction because was looking for an actor-musician for a project about P.G. Wodehouse’s theatrical collaborations with the British writer Guy Bolton and the American composer Jerome Kern. The idea was that I would play Kern, as well as being the musical director. The show would be played live at the Plymouth Theatre Royal for a limited run, during which some performances would be recorded, edited down and in due course broadcast by the BBC.
Fellow cast members included Peter Woodward as Wodehouse and Tony Slattery as Bolton. I’d been in a couple of shows with Peter at the Bristol Old Vic. Tony was already well known for his brilliance on the improv comedy show Whose Line is It Anyway? The cast got on well, although a few had reservations about the script, which perhaps contributed to a certain lack of sparkle in the broadcast programme.
I recall not being particularly happy either, but not because of the show, which was a good opportunity for me — I had a nice acting role on TV for the first time. I should have been far more bouncy about it than I was. I guess my disenchantment with performing was growing more acute.
When the programme was eventually broadcast, it came and went without fanfare or comment. Tony Slattery and I kept in touch for a while by letter, but soon lost touch. He was such a charming guy, so clever and talented. The inner torment he was suffering, which emerged after he had returned a little to public life, following his withdrawal due to mental illness, had been completely invisible to me, not least because I was at that time utterly self-absorbed in my own insecurities. Like a lot of people whose lives he touched, I was shocked to hear of his death.
