Elisabeth Sladen: The Autobiography

It was so naughty!

He would do things like that to me all the time. Every night it was something else, just to see if I would start giggling. So, what did he say when I told him to stop?

‘It’s for your own good – you should learn some control!’

There was another classic Brian moment a few months later which still makes me laugh – just as it did at the time, even though I got into a lot of trouble. I was playing a dead body in Friedrich Durrenmatt’s The Physicists, which isn’t a great part – in fact it’s a pretty dull play – but it meant I could still do the book as well. That would have been fine except Scase, the bugger, decided he wanted to have the curtain up so the audience could see the murder scene when they took their seats. That’s all very well, but it knocked half an hour off my meal every night because I had to eat, then tear around getting everything set on the stage, get dressed in the dead nurse’s outfit and lie on the stage behind the sofa. Horrible! Just lying there, stock-still, with my legs sticking out from behind this sofa for half an hour, listening to the audience oohing and aahing about what was about to happen when all I could think about was, ‘Have I set this? Have I set that? Is the clock in the right place? Did I put the lamp out properly?’ Pure torture.

The only plus side was I was carted off soon after the show started. But who was playing the doctor? Brian. He gets bored during good plays, so he was going crazy in this one. Every night he’d vary his lines a little bit, or do something a tad different to keep it fresh for everyone. We’d been doing it two weeks, just one week to go, and he came on as usual to take my pulse.

Now, the line he was meant to say, was ‘Respiration – nil.’

But this night, he added quietly, ‘Aston Villa – 2.’

I could have killed him! Everyone could see this corpse twitching with laughter and they had no idea why.

*   *   *

Once I’d had a taste of performing, of course, I just wanted more. The problem was, I was so useful to Jenny that she was loath to release me for bigger parts.

‘No one does the book as well as you,’ she said. ‘We couldn’t do it without you.’

The only way I would ever get out of it, I realised, was if I started making mistakes. But sorely tempted though I was, I could never have jeopardised the production.

Not intentionally, anyway.

But unintentionally, a few nights later, I achieved the same result. I had all my notes – mostly memorised – and all the bells and buzzers at my fingertips: cue for lights, cue for curtain, red for standby, green for go … Over the other side of the stage Fred was on the curtain waiting for my cue. I pressed the red light for standby, as usual, and then a few minutes later, when everyone was in place, hit green. Up went the curtain and on with the show.

Now, Fred was a man of fixed habits and, like me, he was pretty bored of the show by then. So after the interval he would raise the curtain then disappear to the pub for an hour or so until he was needed to bring it down again. This night would have been exactly the same except while I watched the crew set up during the break for the second act, I found myself wondering, What would happen if the curtain went up now?

Well, we soon found out. We needed about a minute to clear the props people off the stage so I hit the ‘standby’ button. Or so I thought.

Over in Fred’s area a green light – for go – started flashing so he did what he always did: pulled the curtain up, then vanished out the back door. We were such a tight, slick outfit by then that Fred didn’t even look at the stage – he just trusted me to tell him what to do. So he didn’t witness the surprised looks on the audience’s faces when they saw half a dozen men and women, including a furious-looking Sally, still shifting furniture around, completely caught out by the premature curtain-up.

Panicking, I started hitting the ‘curtain down’ light but Fred had already cleared off to the pub.

Oh Christ, I thought, what now?

Then I heard frantic footsteps under the stage and sighed with relief as Chris Bullock appeared by the curtain ropes, swinging on them with all his might. Sally came storming over and let me have both barrels. A minute later a panting Chris appeared in the doorway.

Here we go, I thought. Get your coat, Sladen.

But Chris just shook his head, smiled and said, ‘Who is my favourite ASM?’

Accidents happen, he knew that. Funnily enough, I got out of doing the book a lot more after that, though.

*   *   *

The very last play we did at the Playhouse, in April 1966, was Mirandolina. Tony was the raconteur, the front man in it, with David Scase directing. Brian and I played the two little lovers, Berto and Brigida. It was a big moment for me, and I’ve still got a splendid picture of us kissing.

With the Playhouse due to close for refurbishment, Tony asked some of us if we’d like to take some plays under him to St Helens’ Theatre Royal. There was Brian, Jimmy Hazeldine (who later starred in The Omega Factor and London’s Burning), me, Geoff Brightman, and a few others. We would all meet up in the car and go to St Helens, do the play, then travel back along the motorway at night. It was all a bit gruelling but we must have done about four or five plays. My performance in one of them, Pajama Tops, drew kind words from the local paper, which pleased Mum no end. There can’t have been many neighbours who didn’t have ‘the amorous maid, splendidly portrayed by Elisabeth Sladen’ quoted at them when they visited.

At the time I was still living with my parents, so most of my wages were spent on clothes and treats. I don’t think it occurred to me to save anything. Brian was in digs with Mrs Burns in Faulkner Street – she was the theatrical landlady who everyone used. Every time I popped in, I would see Lynn Redgrave and people like that. Warren Clarke stayed there as well, I think. It really was the place to go.

There was only so much of this commuting I could take, so when the opportunity to do a summer season in Lytham St Annes came along, I grabbed it. Duncan Weldon, who had been Kossoff’s manager, was starting a rep company in St Annes and there was a space for me – as an actress! Not an ASM, or a dogsbody. There’d be no shifting costumes or making tea. I was so happy I didn’t even care that it was going to be the workload from