‘Woke up this morning feeling fine. Notices for Lorca’s comedy, Jack’s the Lad, terrific (even from that goof on the Times). Rehearsals for the new Arnold Wesker a real gas. Long lunch with Aimé Planchon (hot French bombshell); short siesta; drinks party at NT for all of us with CBEs … rest of evening a bit of a blur.’
April Fool. National Service, Richard Eyre’s diary of his ten years (1987-97) at the helm of the bunker on the South Bank, reads like Penal Servitude. What a chronicle of woes, crises and wariness, of ‘panic, insecurity and inadequacy’. The mystery is why Eyre, in his father’s phrase, chose to ‘nail his balls to the wall’.
Here are a few tasters: ‘I’m not sure I like the theatre enough to act as its propagandist and evangelist. I don’t love it’; ‘I’m worried about my fear of becoming bored, of my questionable commitment to theatre, and of my doubtful endurance’; ‘Have I been neutered by the NT?’ At a party a girl from the wigs department says to him, ‘You don’t know who I am and I’ve been here for 18 months.’
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