Regular theatregoers will be familiar with certain commonplace happenings backstage. For instance, you know it’s the last night of a production when there’s an articulated lorry or two or three parked round the corner from the theatre, ready to whisk everything away that very evening. Crews and stagehands, to my mind, always seem to work at considerable pace, always in a hurry. But as Eden Phillips’ memoirs would have it, there was also, at least in the Sixties and Seventies, a fair bit of downtime, enough for a drink at the nearest pub (that stagehands drank on the job in the first place was news to me). And, of course, having worked out how long it takes to do whatever they had to do before / during / after a performance, it wasn’t long before they could time with exquisite precision how long they could sit in the pub for.
This book is not strictly in forward chronological order, although there is, so to speak, method in the ‘madness’ in spending much of the book by beginning each chapter with a theatre and various productions that took place in them (that, of course, the author worked on in some capacity or other). As Phillips’ work takes him out of the West End and into regional theatres, he expands both vocationally as well as geographically. Having begun backstage, he wasn’t content to be in the wings, studying drama and then securing acting roles.
There’s more – and why not? It would be a bit of a dull memoir if it was all about getting sets from Theatre A to Theatre B and everything going tickety-boo apart from the odd show stop. Phillips also works for a publishing house and has even written musicals in collaboration with others. His various vocational journeys have had varying results. No spoilers here as to which ones were more successful, suffice to say Phillips’ passion for theatre remains undimmed despite so many, well, challenges and encounters.
There were plenty of good times, too – not for nothing is a chapter called ‘(More) Name Drops’, and while it’s probably not going to convert anyone who doesn’t already take a keen interest in all things theatre, for those who do, this is a fascinating, forthright and candid account of life on and off stage.
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