Timothy West
Timothy West
Timothy Lancaster West, CBEis an English film, stage and television actor...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionTV Actor
Date of Birth20 October 1934
along club either fringe licence london openly secretly theatre until war
There was no real fringe theatre in London until way after the war, so either a play was done secretly with a club licence or it was done openly and had to be assessed along with everything else.
life people performed plays saw suddenly time
Suddenly we saw that you could do plays about real life, and people had been doing them for some time, but they weren't always getting to the audiences. They were performed in little, tiny, theatres.
avoid cross invaded meant
I got very cross with the term, kitchen sink. It just meant that you invaded different kinds of houses, where it was very difficult to avoid kitchen sink.
began brought hold lord member ordered private royal staff stop towards
Towards the end of the Lord Chamberlain's era, when his hold was being loosened, private prosecutions began to happen. A member of staff at the Royal Court ordered to stop the play, and the police were brought in.
act dinner everybody house jacket life loads owned people plays popular privileged seen third war wished wore
There were loads of plays which were very popular before and after the war, where everybody wore a dinner jacket in the third act and it was in a house that you wished you'd owned with people that you wish you knew. It was life seen through a very privileged way.
bit people sort
When you're writing about people that are not very well off, you seem to see the kitchen sink. So it was a bit of a sort of cosy phrase that got used a bit too much.
bad
Certain things were deemed to be offensive. It was usually bad language.
people groups lord
Lord Chamberlain's readers or controllers, which were a handful of people working directly to him, were a very assorted group of people and some of them tried very hard to be as liberal as they could.
war reality long
The Long and the Short and the Tall made a great impression on me because it was a very ugly tale about the reality of soldiering at a time when we were being gung-ho about the whole thing of war.
character trying playwright
A conventional playwright tries to tell you more about the characters than they know about themselves.
believe dont-believe turning-points
I don't believe in right-angled turning points.
class use reluctant
I'm reluctant to use the word class so much.
art hands theatre
In 1968 the Arts Council managed to get a grant from the treasury to buy up a lot of derelict touring theatres and put them back in the hands of the local authorities.
thinking play enough
No producer should revive a play unless they have a very good reason for it. I think there's quite enough about a good play to make it available to new audiences.