PAT FRANCIS was a fine singer and DJ who recorded under various aliases – Jah Lloyd, Jah Lion and Jah Ali – which reflected his Rastafarian beliefs. I liked it when it was whorish, welcomed you with open arms and you could visit the long bar whether you were seeing a show or not, so the place was always buzzing.Last week I returned for the first time in many years to see De La Guarda A spectacle inspired by Meyerhold and Artaud The building was alive again It was beaming It was shocking! Sacrifices were once again being offered.. When, in later years, the Roundhouse was “cleaned up”, it seemed to lose its character and, becoming more respectable, its aura seemed to go. A temple where you could worship whatever god you wished and offer what sacrifices you will.. as long, mind you, as they were metaphorically bloody. I recall many good nights there seeing Joe Chaiken’s Open Theatre, as well as the Living Theatre, though sadly past their stunning best.
I have never received one quite like it, and was almost embarrassed by riches. He described the beetle leaving its room and approaching the audience as an effect as terrifying as Irving’s might have been in The Bells when performing a particular piece A giant picture accompanied the review. From then on we were sold out, practically the only London theatre to be so during a heatwave.We finished in euphoria and were glad to get to the end since the two shows daily were exhausting for a virtual theatrical novice. We returned in 1974 to perform Kafka’s The Trial and in 1980 with Hamlet.The Roundhouse, like its name, had no edges or boundaries and seemed to accept you as long as you had no boundaries either.
On the last Sunday, with just a week to go, Hobson’s piece was like reading one’s review by flashes of lightning. On the Sunday, the Rolling Stones were doing their gig since Sunday was rock’n'roll night.We ambled along until Harold Hobson’s Sunday Times review came out, unfortunately missing the first Sunday. Even so, The Observer was enthusiastic, with good, quotable chunks. We were occupying the great and tremendous Roundhouse where, just a few weeks earlier, the Living Theatre had been frightening the life out of the audience with their politicised version of Frankenstein. One by one the reviews came out and they were positive to a man. We could breathe again, and no one was more exultant and relieved than me.
No one could have been more proud to see it wrapped round the curve of the Roundhouse.Just to make life a little more difficult, I performed as a curtain- raiser an adaptation of Kafka’s In the Penal Colony, a sweaty tour de force written with Kafka’s usual, almost supernatural imagination for things not of this world, such as an execution machine which inscribes your sentence on to your body.Bookings were slow since the sunshine is a great deterrent to the theatre, and we waited patiently. The poster went up, conceived by Alison and myself and in suitably Gothic Sixties style, but plastered right over the central panel of the building. Wesker’s amazing vision had got the whole Roundhouse thing going, although by then he had slipped out and George was commander-in-chief. He had allocated a three-week stint to us in the beginning of July, an almost dead-zone for starting a new show. We were that convinced that after a month we would be able to pay it all back.
We were invincible.George Hoskins, the then administrator, used to run the egg- marketing board and had been recommended to Arnold Wesker by Harold Wilson. Martin Beaton and I went to a money-lender in Leicester Square and borrowed the capital at an interest rate of 49 per cent. So confident were we after the Lamda experience and the positive comments from the audience, we were sure that we could achieve just double the Lamda audience to break even. (Chris was a student of mine when I taught at drama school.)After a rather nervous try-out at Lamda early in the year, we became bold and decided to rent the Roundhouse.