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Hugh Massingberd's
Ancestral
Voices |
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A PLAY ABOUT JAMES LEES-MILNE
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ANCESTRAL VOICES, a one-man
play about James Lees-Milne based on his diaries and memoirs, devised by Hugh
Massingberd and performed by Moray Watson, played to packed houses at London's
Jermyn Street
Theatre in November 2002, January 2003, May 2003 and April 2005, and has
also been shown at dozens of country houses, arts festivals, provincial
theatres and London clubs.
Hugh Massingberd is well-known as a
genealogist and writer on country houses, and as the Daily Telegraph
obituaries editor in the 1980s created the modern British newspaper obituary
with its anecdotal and satirical touch. In his memoirs
Daydream Believer: Confessions of a Hero |
Worshipper (2001),he writes about both his lifelong romance
with the theatre and his friendship with James Lees-Milne, one of his principal
'heroes'. (During the Second World War, JLM arranged the National Trust's
acquisition of the Massingberd family seat,
Gunby Hall in Lincolnshire, from Hugh Massingberd's
great-uncle and aunt.)
When, during JLM's lifetime, Massingberd
proposed writing a play about him, his hero was modestly discouraging. But as
JLM used to say, 'After I'm dead, I don't give a hang'; and since his death the
project has had the blessing of his literary executor, Michael Bloch.
Moray Watson, the Old Etonian actor celebrated for his
many urbane roles on stage and screen, took on the part; and the play received
its première at the
Savile Club on 2
October 2002 before opening to the public at the Jermyn Street Theatre in
November.
On Saturday 21 May 2005, Ancestral Voices
celebrated its one hundredth performance as a benefit for the Bulgarian Orphans
Fund at Fonthill, Wiltshire. A month later, the 2004-5 Touring Production came
to an end with a sensational sell-out at the Kenton Theatre, Henley-on-Thames.
Booking are now being taken for 2006. Michael Bloch (mab@jamesleesmilne.com) or Moray Watson
(telephone 020-8878 1896) can answer enquiries about the play and provide
details to anyone interested in arranging a performance.
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PRAISE FROM THE
CRITICS
| '‘A
brilliant staging by Hugh Massingberd of the diaries of James Lees-Milne, as
played with a wondrous mixture of wit and waspishness by Moray Watson.... This
is an epitaph for an era and deserves a long stage life.’ |
SHERIDAN MORLEY, International
Herald Tribune |
| '‘If ever
a play was tailor-made for Spectator readers, this is it. Lees-Milne is, by
turns, snobbish, nostalgic, rueful, splenetic, mischievous and stoical, each
mood captured by Moray Watson.’ |
TOBY YOUNG, Spectator |
| 'Something
rather special…. Lees-Milne's gargantuan collection of personal diaries
has won much praise, even drawing comparisons with Pepys. By distilling the
tomes' contents into 90 minutes of confession and anecdote, Massingberd
provides an invaluable service while laying on an emotive, whistlestop tour of
one man's richly fascinating life…. The fantastic salvage job of the
diaries is to have caught the fleeting moment, and Watson's sprightly
impersonations conjure before us the squirearchy of yesteryear as we zig-zag
from the Great War to New Labour. Here be battleaxes, the plain batty and the
downright sinister…. Lees-Milne was not above eccentricity himself, or
indeed the snootiness that can come from moving in elevated circles - Gielgud,
Betjeman, the Mitfords and Mick Jagger all get name-checked here along with
aperçus about the Queen and the Queen Mother. But it's the way
Lees-Milne directed his beautiful turn of phrase inward, registering the
confusions of his bisexual heart and the wistfulness than comes with age, that
Watson promotes best. His performances, endearing us both to actor and subject,
deserve to find a wider audience.' |
DOMINIC CAVENDISH, Daily
Telegraph |
| 'The part of
Lees-Milne was played, with a sympathy which got right into the character, by
Moray Watson…. There is no doubt that the diaries have whatever ingredient
it is that makes for addictive reading. They are gossipy, precise, candid,
intimate, sometimes oddly touching, and they have a saving sense of the absurd.
All these qualities are admirably preverved in Massingberd's well-shaped and
dramatically pointed adaptation. This is a show that deserves a much wider
airing.' |
JOHN GROSS, Sunday Telegraph
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| 'Massingberd,
inspired by Patrick Garland's production of John Aubrey's Brief Lives, has
managed the same miracle for James Lees-Milne … a shrewd commentator on
human behaviour, not least his own …. and found exactly the exact and
right voice in the actor, Moray Watson…. Watson's performance has great
authority…. The life of the man whose words we are hearing encapsulated a
whole era and brought back a vanished world, one whose values no longer
count.' |
BERYL BAINBRIDGE, The Oldie
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| 'Moray
Watson, a great actor at the height of his powers, with humanity, heart, style,
technique and trust at his command….' |
GYLES BRANDRETH |
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Moray Watson playing the youthful JLM in Act I, set
in the library at Brooks's Club.
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Moray
Watson as the ageing JLM in Act 2, set in his Bath library. (Backdrops by
Julian Barrow.)
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Hugh
Massingberd directing his play at the Jermyn Street Theatre in January 2003.
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Hugh
Massingberd arriving at the First Night Party. |
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This site has been created by Michael
Bloch, James Lees-Milne's literary executor, who is currently editing his later
diaries and writing his biography (to be published by John Murray). He may be
contacted at MAB@jamesleesmilne.com.
Many
of James Lees-Milne's papers are in the Beinecke Library at Yale. Their
catalogue can be accessed
here
James Lees-Milne's copyrights are managed by
Bruce Hunter of David Higham Associates, London. Enquiries may be addressed to
him at brucehunter@davidhigham.co.uk. |
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