Murder Unprompted

would not allow him to give up. His wife’s mother had heard some successful playwright or maybe it was a producer talking on the radio she thought perhaps on Woman’s Hour and saying that nowadays a successful play needed a star name, so often the star’s interest came first. This suggestion coincided with Malcolm Harris reading a letter to The Times about VAT on theatre tickets from that popular British film and television star, Michael Banks. Since the letter gave his address, and since Michael Banks, in the playwright’s wildest fantasies, would have been ideal casting for the main part, Malcolm Harris took his courage in both hands and sent The Hooded Owl off to the star. Needless to say, Michael Banks didn’t read it, but, being an amiable old boy, he passed it on to his agent, whose organisation had a Plays Department. They didn’t read it either, but a girl on the switchboard was having a brief affair with a young man who wanted to be a theatrical producer and claimed to be ‘on the look-out for a good property’, so she passed it on to him. The young man read the play, recognised its potential, and bought an option to produce it within six months for a sum which delighted Malcolm Harris, but which would have appalled his agent, had he had one.

The young producer’s name was Paul Lexington, and he then set about finding a theatre that would put the play on.

The Hooded Owl was an expensive production for the average provincial company. Though it only had a cast of eight and its contemporary setting limited the Wardrobe costs, it did require three solid representational sets, a very big outlay for a three-week run. Whereas a theatre might spread its budget to allow that kind of expenditure on a certain crowd-puller like a Shakespeare or the annual pantomime, it was very unlikely to invest so much in the uncertainties of a new play by an unknown playwright. Money was tight enough, and no provincial theatre wanted to hazard its local authority or Arts Council grants by rash speculation.

But this was where Paul Lexington had something to offer. He had money. No one quite knew where it came from; he always spoke airily of ‘my investors’, but he gave no clue to their identity. And no one knew how much he could raise, though from the confidence of his tone the amount seemed to be infinite.

So this was the deal that he offered round the provincial theatre companies during the spring and summer of 1979: if they would put on a production of The Hooded Owl, a good play for which he held an option, he would invest the necessary extra production costs for the expensive sets and, ideally, the import of a star name. Then, if the play did transfer to the West End, his production company would present it and the originating company would be credited and receive a small percentage. If it didn’t transfer, then the theatre would have had a more expensive production than their normal budget could run to, and Paul Lexington and his investors would have lost their money.

Only Paul Lexington himself knew how many companies had been offered the deal and turned it down before he got to the Prince’s Theatre, Taunton, but common sense dictated that he must have tried the better-known ones nearer London first. The chances of getting all the people necessary for a transfer, the London theatre managers and the big investors (whose aid, in spite of Paul Lexington’s confident assurances, would almost definitely be needed), diminished the further one got away from the metropolis.

However, the producer was determined to get the show on and was confident enough of the property to think it could make the transfer, even from this West Country base, whose record of getting shows into the West End was not remarkable. (In fact, it had never in its history had an original production transfer, though a few shows had passed weeks there during their pre-London tours.)

But there was a new Artistic Director at the Prince’s Theatre, a young man called Peter Hickton, whose confidence at least matched that of Paul Lexington. He had got the Taunton job some six years out of Cambridge and was determined to maintain his whizz-kid image and make a mark on the theatre nationally. He was ambitious to make the Prince’s Theatre a power-base and incubator of productions for London, in the way that the Royal Exchange, Manchester, and the Arts Theatre, Cambridge, had become in recent years. So, when Paul Lexington arrived with his proposal, Peter Hickton was already looking for a show with transfer potential.

His one condition for backing the production was predictable: that he should direct it. If that was agreed, he was prepared to put all his energies, even down to the enfant terrible tantrums that his track-record required of him, into persuading the Plays Selection Committee that The Hooded Owl should be one of the productions in the 1979-80 season at the Prince’s Theatre, Taunton.

Paul Lexington at first demurred. He had hoped to get a director of greater stature for his production, but he soon had to face facts. Peter Hickton was the only Artistic Director who had shown enthusiasm for the project and, if Paul Lexington Productions were to get their first major show under way at all, there would have to be compromises. (And it was not lost on the producer that Peter Hickton’s residence at Taunton meant directing the show would be part of his job. Sure, he’d have to be on some percentage when the play got to the West End, but at least a director’s fee would be saved for the try-out.)

So the two ambitious young men came to an agreement, and Peter Hickton set to work on the Plays Selection Committee. His success was not total. He managed to get a commitment that the Prince’s Theatre should do The Hooded Owl, but he could not persuade them to do it in the 1979-80 season. He tried all his tricks, being sarcastic, going dead quiet, shouting, walking out of the meeting, even threatening (carefully) to resign: but the best date he could come up with was September, 1980. Seeing that to protest further would be pushing his luck, he agreed with bad grace that The Hooded Owl should be the first production of the 1980-81 season.

Paul Lexington didn’t welcome this delay to his plans, but he was a realist and he wanted to get the show on, so he accepted it. He rang Malcolm Harris to say he had some good news and some bad news: the good news — that the play would definitely go into production at the Prince’s Theatre, Taunton; the bad news — that it wouldn’t happen for another year. He did not mention to the playwright that the six-month option he had bought on the play would be some eight months out of date at the proposed production date, nor did he offer more money to renew the option. He knew that Malcolm Harris was still in a flush of naive excitement about the play actually being produced and wasn’t thinking about money.

So for a year Paul Lexington continued with his other activities, whatever they might be. Nobody knew. Maybe he mounted another Music Hall tour, maybe a pantomime. Maybe he involved his investors in some other production; maybe he made contacts with London theatre managements, so that the delay should be kept to a minimum when the production actually happened.

The one thing he was known to have done during that period was to try to get a star name for The Hooded Owl. As with theatre companies, only he knew how many he approached with the script, how many refusals he got, how many tentative agreements dependent on dates and money. There were two main male parts and one female, so presumably stars of both sexes were approached.

All that was known was the result of his machinations. A fortnight before rehearsals were due to start, which was the time when Charles Paris was engaged to play the second male lead, it was bruited about in the business that the female lead was to be played by a young lady who had recently, ‘in order to concentrate on her career as a serious actress’, left the cast of the interminably-long-running television soap opera, Cruises.

The fact that she wasn’t much of an actress, serious or any other sort, was irrelevant. The audience would flock to see her. It didn’t matter if she just stood on stage, they would still love her. (In fact, people who had worked with her thought it might be better if she did just stand on stage; they knew the hazards of trying to push her beyond her range.)

Once Paul Lexington had his star name, he was happy to fall in with Peter Hickton’s suggestions for the rest of the cast. So long as they were cheap, competent and available in the event of a transfer, he didn’t much mind who they were. As a result, Peter Hickton cast largely from his regular Taunton company; he knew them, they worshipped him, and he fancied himself in the role of star-maker.

In the lead he cast Alex Household, an actor in his late forties, who had had early success then a rather bad patch culminating in a complete breakdown. but was now coming back, in the view of Peter Hickton, twenty years his junior, ‘stronger than ever’.

In the part of the daughter, Peter Hickton cast Lesley-Jane Decker, an actress eight years his junior, who he thought had ‘enormous potential’. And the way he looked at her didn’t suggest he thought that potential was limited to the stage.

For the part of Alex’s failed brother, Peter reckoned he had had a brainwave. There was no one in the regular Taunton company of the right age, but he remembered an actor he had worked with when Assistant Director at Colchester, who had exactly the right ‘smell of failure’ that the part required. Peter rang the guy’s agent and found,