When Kenneth Cranham performs Rudyard Kipling, he thinks of the late Josephine Hart, the writer and poetic pioneer.
At the weekend, at the Marylebone Theatre, Kenneth Cranham performed The Soldier - a selection of poems and prose by Rudyard Kipling, Wilfred Owen, Robert Lowell and JB Priestley.
The selection explores the poignant experience of being a human being in war.
The first third of the show was Kipling. His poems take me back to Bill Gaskill (1930-2018), the theatre director at the National Theatre and the Royal Court. I was in eight productions by Bill, including a role as Len in Saved by Edward Bond at the Royal Court.
The last production Bill directed was his own funeral service. For his list of chosen readings, he wrote, ‘Kenneth Cranham – Kipling’.
He didn’t say which one. So I chose When Earth’s Last Picture is Painted, with its lines:
‘When Earth's last picture is painted and the tubes are twisted and dried,
When the oldest colours have faded, and the youngest critic has died,
We shall rest, and, faith, we shall need it.’
I chose those words because, at one point, Bill tried to ban critics from his productions!
I also recited Mandalay, with its stirring refrain:
‘On the road to Mandalay,
Where the flyin'-fishes play,
An' the dawn comes up like thunder outer China 'crost the Bay!’
The poems go up to the recent past, in the shape of the American poet Robert Lowell (1917-77) and his poem on the My Lai massacre in Vietnam 1968, Women, Children, Babies, Cows, Cats:
‘We was to burn and kill, then there'd be nothing standing women, children, cows, cats.”
Looking back, I’ve done a series of poetry recitals. I shared a stage with Christopher Logue at the National Theatre, reading his poems about London. I did a selection of Samuel Beckett at the National with Peggy Ashcroft.
For a Christmas service at Westminster Abbey, I recited a text about Joseph and Mary seeking sanctuary in the dark of night. I read a three-word sentence, describing their plight: ‘Far from home’. Simple words – great power. The boys’ choir really did sound like a choir of angels.
I read, too, for the late Josephine Hart (1942-2011), the author of Damage, a pioneer of poetry recitals and the wife of Maurice Saatchi. Josephine thought that ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God’ was the first line of pure poetry she’d ever heard, as a little girl in Ireland.
In the February show, my daughter, Kathleen Cranham, will read poems found by Josephine, the great huntress-gatherer of poetry: Train by Helen McKay; Perhaps by Vera Brittain; Paris – November 11, 1918 by May Wedderburn Cannan; and Disabled by Wilfred Owen.
When I first read about Josephine, the dynamic, brilliant writer and promoter of performed poetry, I wanted to be one of her gang. Knowing she loved Elvis, as I do, I hand-decorated an Elvis cassette and sent it to her. Elvis worked his magic.
She asked me to recite Kipling at an evening at the British Library – a role previously performed by Roger Moore. I emulated Roger’s favourite party piece, Kipling’s The Mary Gloster, a 16-minute storm of words from a dying father to his son:
‘Harrer an' Trinity College! I ought to ha' sent you to sea -
But I stood you an education, an' what have you done for me?’
The start of the reading was delayed because Margaret Thatcher was due to arrive – she was now retired and suffering from dementia but remained a Kipling fan. The hall at Downing Street during her time there was dominated by a large painting of Kipling, sitting at his writing desk in profile.
Margaret Thatcher’s favourite poem was If. I’d been given the task of performing it, including the lines:
‘If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them, “Hold on!”’
John Major was also in the audience. His parents had been in music hall – a key element in Kipling.
Thanks to Josephine, I read in the Josephine Hart Poetry Hour at the Donmar Theatre in 2011. She put together a compilation of World War One poetry, writing what she called ‘introductions’ to groups of poems.
That triumphant week, she’d been battling cancer and had to be replaced by the actress Deborah Findlay. On the day of the show, June 2nd, 2011, it was announced that Josephine had died that afternoon.
Her charming, witty, perceptive introductions were beautifully read by Deborah. Our hearts wept for Maruice. The audience and we readers were blind with tears.
One of my poems was To Any Dead Officer by Siegfried Sassoon, with the lines,
‘I’m blind with tears,
Staring into the dark. Cheero!’
The Soldier, performed by Kenneth Cranham, was at the Marylebone Theatre, London, on February 5th
