Writers/1953, Shakespeare Memorial

The class of 1953, Shakespeare Memorial Theatre and the then-after written publications through the years from Yvonne Mitchell, Robert Shaw and Michael Redgrave are large. Donald Pleasance, also of that group of Shakespeare actors, wrote a children’s book. Between them, a body of written work covers playwriting, screenplays, children’s books, novels, and biographies.

I came across Yvonne Mitchell’s novels and other written works by chance. After revisiting Robert Shaw’s books, his five novels, this brought a fascination on my part in researching Shaw’s background. Somebody I saw principally as an actor when I was young. The Royal Hunt of the Sun being my introduction to Robert, the actor. This perception of Robert changed through reading first Shaw’s The Flag, thereafter the other four works written by him. I saw Robert Shaw as a novelist, playwright, and actor.

In trying to locate a published Cato Street, a stage play penned by Robert, my research led to an article on Shaw in the Daily Mirror newspaper.. The focus of this article was on the 1953 Shakespeare Memorial Theatre. In the company, a young Robert Shaw, described as the most attractive male when looking at men this side of the Atlantic, compared with the USA actors. The actress who made the comment, Yvonne Mitchell. Also in this company of actors was Michael Regrave.

Knowing Yvonne Mitchell as with Shaw, from her acting career and now knowing Yvonne and Robert shared the stage together, my intrigue led me to look deeper into this connection. I made a discovery of quantity and talent in the written word by Yvonne. As I delved into Yvonne Mitchell’s books, beginning with her initial publication, The Actress, my admiration for her work expanded. 

The novels have distinct styles and diverse settings where the story takes place. Yvonne integrates her acting background into her storytelling with the characters, especially in A ‘Year in Time’ and ‘The Bedsitter’. The theme of seeking a sense of identity, where one can find acceptance, is prominent in both novels.

Yvonne’s second novel, ‘A Frame For Julian,’ centres around the protagonist’s strong desire for recognition. What effect this has on those close to Julian, his family, friends and Julian himself brings the story to a climactic conclusion.

Delving into the human condition is a focal point of Yvonne’s novels. You come away after reading Yvonne’s writings with a sense of the double meaning in some of her passages. A talent for the humorous and the seriousness combined is a quality quite extraordinary that Yvonne excels at. This is done with great skill in her novel, ‘But Answer Came There None’. Yvonne’s novel powerfully describes and poses questions asked by an 80-year-old lady’s interpretation of her surroundings in a elderly ward.

The mixing of the factual and fictional with dates and names, something Yvonne uses in her books, is at its most obvious in ‘The Family.’ 

This story, told through Esther, brings the reader early in the book to a place of loss experienced by Esther around the death of her mother, Madeline. A photograph of Madeline, which sits on a brown cupboard in the sitting-room, is a comfort to Esther, where she visits and speaks to her late mother. 

Yvonne herself lost her mother when young. As did Robert Shaw with his father. Yvonne and Robert both delve into the emotional impact of a parent’s loss during childhood, artfully conveyed through a character in their narratives.

Did Yvonne and Robert, while both appearing in the Shakespeare Company productions of 1953, share their stories of loss? 

Through the writing process in later life, both writers explore in their novels a loss in childhood and then its influence on their later lives. Robert concentrates on the adult where his character is now as an adult in all his novels. Taking a retrospective view. Yvonne speaks to you through the child and as an older self in her books.             

‘The Family’ brings into its storyline the family’s connections with business. This was also a reality in Yvonne’s life. Her father was involved in the J. Lyons & Co. company. Tea-drinking outlets and catering contracts, such as organising the ‘Venice in London’ fair at the Olympia, fiction here is mixed with fact. Yvonne’s father had organised functions in reality at the Olympia.

The opening of the first tea shop in Piccadilly, another example in the book where Yvonne’s knowledge of family history works its way into her writing. Dates, times, and ages come from a place of true occurrences, to be mixed and juggled, reassigned and put into the story, then onto members of the family.  

‘The Family’ brings a curiosity to certain passages. You can’t help but feel you are entering a guessing game put to you by Yvonne. To what extent do the descriptions align with reality? With the use of artistic licence, she shares her observations and thoughts.

A certainty where a character is plainly based on somebody Yvonne has met, knows well or knew is in the Albert character, Esther’s father, obviously representing in part Yvonne Mitchell’s father. The joining of Appleby’s the family business at 14 leaves no imagination needed in knowing this is a reference to Bertie Joseph, Yvonne’s father, joining Lyons & Co at fourteen.     

In fact, this direct representation as a resource, referenced in Mark Garrnet’s biography of the politician Keith Joseph. ‘The Family’ in its notes has Yvonne’s novel as a source. Keith Joseph was Yvonne Mitchell’s cousin. 

The story behind the story through her paragraphs is, as I’ve mentioned before, a wonderful technique of writing that Yvonne is brilliant at, as is also her questioning aspect. Ruth, from the Dance side of the family tree, in her questioning of the family’s lack of visiting others outside of their homes. This reason for such a limited scope, the same furnishings in their homes put into the context of the now socially mobile element of the family. Moving from the East End of London into dreamed-of West Hampstead then to Carriage Folk had brought about a conformity. 

An example written in Yvonne’s novel God is Inexperienced regards a playing radio and in her novel But Answer Came There None when describing a Hoover, being used in an old people’s ward. 

‘God is inexperienced.’

“The radio was playing Haydn, or rather, as Chris reminded himself, people were playing Haydn somewhere; and the valves in the radio had picked it up; or more likely still an orchestra had once played Haydn (in sections) in a recording studio, for a disc, and some girl in the B.B.C. or O.R.T.F. or whatever was putting the disc on the turntable.”

‘But Answer Came There None.’

The squawking only started before the first light of day, in angry remonstrance at the Hoover, which as early as five-thirty shattered our respite. It’s one uninterrupted mechanical note blared its hygienic warning for a full half-hour of torture, followed by its cranny attachments, which whooshing up the side of our coffin-cots ensured that no dancing speck of lively dust should escape its swallowing intake. Each morning a part of me is sucked up into the black hole of the attachment, dust unto dust, to follow with other motes into the voracious belly bag of the central life-swallower. I fear there may not be much of me left for button material if I stay here much longer.

‘Who wants to commemorate a soul’s mote sucked up in an attachment, a long-toe nailed useless corpse?

Put your hand up any volunteer.’