Just Me Page 17

  Was Hitler so charismatic? Mesmeric? Even in the bunker, at the desperate end, this ranting maniac's orders were heeded, and surrender not allowed, so thousands more died unnecessarily, and Berlin was destroyed. Maybe we would be saved from such blind devotion by our British cynicism and our habit of mocking our leaders. It is a cross that has been borne by Blair, Thatcher, even Churchill. And long may it continue. Imagine what we would have done to Hitler. Did, in fact. I can remember marching round the playground singing

  Hitler, has only got one ball.

  Goering's got two but very small.

  Himmler's got something sim'lar,

  But poor old Goebbels has no balls at all.

  We must always satirise and joke about and send up those in authority. One of the best bits of news I've heard about Israel is that Mel Brooks' The Producers is playing there. I wish this consummate mocker of evil would tackle Osama bin Laden and his thugs.

  In the Resistance Museum, on the site where an attempt to kill Hitler was planned and the would-be assassins shot, there is nevertheless much to cheer one. Stories of people that were prepared to die rather than surrender their self-respect. One in particular took my breath away. There is a photo of a laughing girl with a briefcase, fooling around with a group of youths in soldiers' uniforms, who is the spitting image of my best friend Brenda Barry – she of the Dancing Ledge idyll. She was a university student named Sophie Scholl, a member of the White Rose group that fought vigorously to make people see reason. Condemned to death for treason she said, 'Such a fine sunny day and I have to go. But what does my death matter, if through us thousands of people are awakened and stirred to activity?' This young rare creature was beheaded for distributing leaflets.

  The fact that Berliners have survived at all is a tribute to human endurance. What must it have been like? Living in cellars or hovels made out of rubble. Starving. Freezing cold. Thirsty. Probably ashamed. People wandering around with no home, no future, defeated, reviled, terrified and maybe realising the enormity of what they had been party to. The denazification programme of the occupiers saw to that.

  The Allies may have made mistakes but many tried to help. A director I worked with had been one of the first group into Belsen. He was eighteen and was shovelling corpses into a pit with a bulldozer and told not to put any food into the outstretched hands as it would kill the skeletal owners. These lads could spend only ten minutes at a time in the huts, full of dying rotting people and excrement, before they were vomiting at the stench and filth. Very young men saw horrors that people who do not experience war cannot imagine. But they did what they could.

  Seeing the scale of the problem, the Allies were generous. I can remember, despite rationing continuing, our school sent food parcels to Germany. The English and Americans operated an airlift to feed cut-off Berliners when the Russians closed the food routes. And the Allies, especially the Americans, poured in aid. Whether for political reasons or not, it was sent to an enemy everyone despised. Surely to be admired.

  Out of this chaos, Germany miraculously recovered. Unlike after the previous war, with the Treaty of Versailles, they did not use their poverty and destruction as an excuse to become resentful and belligerent. They are part of the European Union and that will ensure that there will never be another war with Germany.

  Whilst I was in Berlin, they were preparing to host the football World Cup. Everywhere there were banners saying in English and German 'time to be friends'. A quality I found in both my new women friends was naïvety, a sort of innocence. A trait that can be disastrous or productive. It implies an ability to open yourself up, to expect the best. I was afraid the Germans' childlike plea to be friends would be rejected. Thankfully it wasn't. The younger generation, without all my wartime hang-ups, accepted the invitation. They danced in front of the screens by the Brandenburg Gate, oblivious of its past history. Families from all countries had fun together. The inspirational choice to use the Olympic Stadium, built as a propaganda weapon for Hitler and his crew, and turn it into a symbol of the new Berlin that welcomes strangers of any race and colour was a total success. I was so glad for Ilona and Irina that everyone loved their city.

  I left by train from the beautiful new Lehrter Stadtbahnhof station. Actually I missed my train. It was a revelatory moment for me. The realisation that it didn't matter; I was on my own. Great. I had no responsibilities. No one would be angry, or have to be looked after. That was a relief. I could sit and wait for the next train. What the hell? Time to enjoy the fabulous view from this brand-new shiny station. This city that I blamed for causing a blight on my childhood had enlightened my old age. A city I have come to admire, and, yes, after a lifetime's alienation, feel affection for.

  What good is sitting alone in your room?

  Come hear the music play.

  Life is a cabaret, old chum,

  Come to the cabaret.

  From Cabaret by Joe Masteroff,

  lyrics by Fred Ebb

  11

  Manchester · London

  I WAS GLAD TO get home. My visit to Germany had been pretty traumatic one way and another. I felt better though. It was a murky corner of my mind that had needed spring-cleaning. My blind hatred of all things German had been swept away by the people I met and the stories they had to tell and it was a relief.

  I had to visit the City of London on business, and walking through the streets on a summer's day lifted my spirits. Lovely girls with swinging hair, baring their brown tummies to the world in their croptops. Smart young businessmen, full of energy. This area that, like Berlin, was flattened by bombs and fire is full of life again, with modern buildings melding in with the restored old remains. St Paul's is a symbol of survival in the middle and nearby the Eye, the Millennium Bridge, Somerset House fountains, Tate Modern and the ridiculous Gherkin are glorious new fun. Berlin has more to recover from, and has had less time to do it, but it is getting there.

  I went up to Manchester to record a radio play, and there, too, they have rallied since the IRA bomb in 1996. The opportunity was seized to rejuvenate and modernise the city into becoming one of the most vibrant in England. Some of the venerable old Victorian warehouses have been converted into glamorous flats and restaurants. I was, however, appalled that the hotel I stayed in was adapted from the historic Free Trade Hall. A crucible of political reform and later home of the Hallé Orchestra, it also housed some significant modern music artistes. It was here that Bob Dylan used an electric guitar, and someone shouted 'Judas' from the audience, implying he had betrayed his folk roots. Now, it's a tacky bar, full of men in tasteless leisurewear, on office freebies, swilling their beer under red plastic mock chandeliers.

  I don't think I have ever approached a part with such commitment as I did in the musical Cabaret. Rufus Norris, our brilliant young director, was given more or less carte blanche to reinterpret the show. It was clear from the first rehearsal that anyone expecting anything like the fabulous Liza Minnelli film version was in for a big shock. Numbers were cut, and the order changed, and even some of the book rewritten. All great pieces of work can constantly be reinvented. Anna Maxwell Martin was far more like the original Sally Bowles in Christopher Isherwood's story on which the show is based. She was English for a start.

  In approaching my character, Fraulein Schneider, who runs the boarding house in which a lot of the action takes place, the main objective was to cut away any twee sentimentality in the part, and make her the grimly pragmatic woman who provides perhaps the most realistic storyline in the show.

  Actors usually speculate, as part of their study of a part, on the life of their character before and after the space of time depicted on the stage. I am convinced that Fraulein Schneider would have used her wits to survive the war, and would certainly have been one of the rubble women clearing up her neighbourhood ready to start business again. A Brechtian character. She would never be happy after her rejection of Herr Schultz, particularly as he almost certainly ended up being gassed and incinerated in a
n oven.

  The number when Fraulein Schneider confronts the naïve young American man, Chris, with her decision to reject the love of her Jewish friend got to me every night, particularly as Rufus had me come out of the scene and confront the audience with the question I personally had been agonising over: 'What would you do?'

  Whether it was my absolute involvement in the subject matter, or one of the benefits of age, it was the first show in which I suffered little or no nerves. All of my professional career I have been dogged by stage fright. Crippling, vomiting, paralysing fear. It has been a considerable drawback never to be at my best, indeed frequently to be very bad on the night when the critics are appraising the show. Most people are scared on first nights but, once they get on stage, forget their fear and often give their best performance, fuelled by adrenalin. My fear always continued until the curtain call, which I felt ashamed to take. I would spend the whole first night telling myself I was rubbish. So I was.

  I have tried everything to overcome it. I still go cold when I remember the first night of the revue I did with Kenneth Williams, One Over the Eight, when I dosed myself with a combination of beta-blockers, supposedly to slow my heart rate and subdue the accompanying panic, and amphetamines, to give me energy. In the opening chorus my mouth and throat were parchment dry, my tongue sticking to the roof of my mouth. Before the next number, I took a slug of brandy, and I began to froth at the mouth. Not the best performance of my career. I was barely noticed, although I was the leading woman: a terrible missed opportunity to break into the big time. Or, as Kenny put it, 'An early promise not fulfilled.'

  Eventually, late in my career, I discovered hypnotherapy, and it transformed my work. In Cabaret, although I still needed a booster session with Ursula James my hypnotherapist, the first night was a doddle. The confidence I had acquired on my travels probably helped. The wider perspective.

  When I was young, it all mattered so much. I wanted to be a star. I wanted everyone to love and admire me. But I never really thought I was clever/beautiful/classy enough to succeed. It took me a long time to acknowledge my ability. To try new things, and not be frightened to fail. No one likes criticism. Only the other day, I checked the Amazon critiques of my last book to give my confidence a boost, because they are so complimentary, only to discover some nutter from Lincoln had added a diatribe of condemnation. He was barely literate and boasted that he couldn't be bothered to read most of the book, but for a while I was gutted. The difference was, it was only for a very little while. No lying in bed, staring at the ceiling for days on end crippled with self-denigration. Life is too short. Particularly when you are over seventy.

  The Cabaret company were particularly nice. Most actors are, but in this group we became very close, maybe because we all had to lay our emotions bare. The choreography of Javier De Frutos was demanding and dramatic and he required the ensemble to be naked in some sequences, leading up to a final searing image of people stripping as they entered the lethal death-camp showers. The curtain always came down to shocked silence, before the audience erupted into cheers. Nudity is not something actors or dancers like undertaking, and it was approached with sensitivity in rehearsal. When the company stripped off for the first time, I was full of admiration for their chutzpah. Very soon all the inhibitions went and it became quite normal. The ensemble and principals were good friends, which is not always the case; when you have been acquainted with people's willies on a nightly basis, there is little room for the usual niceties.

  All my working life I have been puritanical about conserving my energy for the show. Protecting my voice and keeping fit during the day, in preparation for the quite considerable physical and mental effort required for eight shows a week. I feel a great sense of responsibility to the audience, who have paid a lot of money and maybe come a long way to see us. Strangely, on this show, when you would have thought I needed, at my age, to conserve my energy to sing and dance, I took to going out a lot. We discovered that many of us in the cast were alone for Valentine's night. All these beautiful gay and hetero lads and lasses spent so much time rehearsing and doing class, as well as working unsociable hours, that they found it difficult to meet partners; alas, the theatre is not the high life the outside world imagines. Still, as we were raucously dining, we eyed a morose couple in the corner, and decided we were having a much better time, particularly when I went downstairs and caught the man locked in a passionate embrace with a very young lady who was drinking in the bar below.

  Despite my hectic and hugely enjoyable social life, I never missed a performance, which made me regret a lifetime of misplaced self-discipline. I was beginning to make something positive out of my absence of responsibility. Instead of regretting having no husband or kids to rush home for, I was using my new-found freedom to enjoy myself.

  One night, during the performance, rushing to tell a piece of juicy gossip to our stage manager in the prompt corner, I stumbled on an unfamiliar step in the wings. My already dodgy knee gave way, and I crashed to the ground, breaking my finger and pulling a piece of scenery on my head. I managed to finish the show, and was then carted off to A&E in the nearby hospital by my very handsome director and stage director. Unfortunately, it was New Year's Day and the place was full of wounded drunks. After over two hours' wait, during which I filled in numerous forms, I was interrogated by a young trainee doctor, who was also considerably the worse for wear. After wearily examining my lumpy head and dangling finger, he produced two more forms for me to fill in to get a head scan and finger X-ray.

  'And how long will that take?'

  'Another couple of hours.'

  'Sorry, I'm off.'

  Whipping out another form, 'Well, you'll have to fill in this.'

  Then he said rather leerily, 'And will these two young men be with you tonight?'

  Chance would be a fine thing.

  Having signed my form exonerating him of any responsibility for my subsequent death, I agreed to bind my finger to the next one and not let myself go into a coma, though he was nonplussed as to how I should distinguish between that and going to sleep. I played the rest of the run and, indeed, will live the rest of my life, with a crooked finger, as a result of my amateur bone-setting. A rather sadder consequence is that I can no longer wear my wedding ring. It has to go on a chain round my neck. In a way, this is symbolic. Forced upon me, but maybe timely. I was no longer married, but that marriage is still close to my heart.

  The subject matter of the show did not allow for too much of the usual high-jinks that keep you sane in a long repetitive run. But we had the odd giggle. One night a piece of scenery flew in too soon, narrowly avoiding killing the dancers. The following night the audience must have thought it another bit of sexual deviance that two of the cabaret nudes were sporting builders' hard hats.

  I had a line in my opening number: 'When I had a man my figure was boyish and flat.' One day I aberrantly sang 'When I was a man my figure was boyish and flat.' It convulsed the cast, but the audience took the idea of Fraulein Schneider being a transsexual in their stride, along with all the other sexual ambiguities going on in the show. Or indeed in Soho.

  As I wandered around Soho on a Saturday night, looking for a taxi, I wondered at the queues outside clubs that provide a world I wot not of and have left it too late to explore. I have a touching school sewing book belonging to my Aunty Ruby from 1921 that amuses me. It is full of meticulous examples of stitches with names like faggoting and whipping. If I ran one of these Soho clubs, I'd call it The Sampler. Except that only old gits would know what that was. Nobody does dressmaking or mending these days. If socks get a hole in, then we throw them away. How the world has changed. Most people would say for the better. On Christmas Day 2006 I was not so sure.

  I spent Christmas Day at Kids Company, where we served lunch to about 800 kids who had nowhere better to go. Families broken by division, prison, violence, drugs and alcohol result in bewildered, deserted youngsters – the feral children, as the press has disgraceful
ly christened them. I had a wonderful time with them all, full of love and cuddles, fiercely protected from any potential trouble by Karen, a beautiful, streetwise girl who has become a friend.

  I struck up a similar relationship with Sandra, a sixteen-year-old from the area in Manchester where John too roamed the streets as a child. Although I have sometimes harassed her with unwelcome advice, we two have formed a bond. Her upbringing has been the polar opposite of mine. It has been difficult for me, with my obsessive Protestant work ethic, to get my head round Sandra's lifestyle. I took her to the newly sparkling canal area for lunch. Suggesting we look at the menus of all the cafés before we chose where to eat, she flounced about a bit, telling me to decide. She didn't care. So good had been her act up until that day, I had not realised she can barely read.

  When I gently prodded this out of her, she flew at me. 'What do you think it's like? Can't read where the fuckin' bus is going or text or use a computer.'