The church of the theatre

This last week there was the funeral for my friend Angela, who I wrote about earlier.

It had taken a long time to arrive for a lot of reasons. One of which was that her boys wanted to have the occasion at St Paul’s Church in Covent Garden and there wasn’t a date available for all the activities they were having there. St Paul’s church is in the middle, and I mean the middle, of Covent Garden.

Designed by Inigo Jones in 1631, he meant for it to have an opening onto the cobblestones of the old fruit and flower market. But he seems he hadn’t done his research into Christian laws and since the altar had to be at the east end, at the last minute the doors were bricked up and a Portico without an entrance stands there. It is in under that same portico that George Bernard Shaw had his Eliza Doolittle meet his Henry Higgins as she was hawking her bunches of violets in “Pygmalion.” It is where Barry Foster was chased in the 1972 Hitchcock film “ Frenzy.” But now it is known as the place the magicians, the musicians and the acrobats set up to do their acts for the tourists and visitors on a daily basis. The reason why Rupert and Laurie wanted to have the service there, is because St Paul’s Covent Garden is also known as the Actors Church.

It is where Actors take their last bows, so to speak, and the place is alive with their names. It was closed to the public for Angela’s funeral. Normally the grounds and the gardens are open. I myself, sat there back in July and read the entire Guardian newspaper on a sunny Saturday. There are benches and small lawns. There are shaded areas and sunny areas. there are walkways of old slabs of stone and beds of roses. The church is open, when there isn’t a service, to everyone. There are stairs up from the foyer to the left with a sign saying dressing rooms. To the right there is the office where the vicar, Simon a bright and friendly man, who was in shorts when I went back the following day to retrieve my glasses, and his equally bright and friendly staff, have their office. Simon is quoted that if he isn’t at the church he can be found “at a bar, the theatre or the gym.” The church is square. There are windows without stained glass. It feels very simple and almost puritanical in it’s layout. There isn’t much gold or pictures of Jesus. It is full of light and it is full of wood. The pews are all wood. The walls are paneled in wood. And everywhere there are names. Names on the walls denote someone who has been given some honor by the Queen. Names on the back of the pews denote someone who hasn’t. The benches outside all have dedications to someone who was an actor or who worked with actors and is now declaiming with clarity somewhere else.

Walking round the church on the day I went to collect my glasses was a bit like that. it was a cast list of the finest. Of course Ian Holm is dead. Diana Rigg too. I knew that. And the older legends of Margaret Leighton and Kenneth More. And the odd shocking one like Helen McCrory. But being remembered on the wood of this Actor’s church, feels like the finest of clubs. when the doors are closed and the light is still coming through those windows of a summer evening, do they have one last go at “ Cymbeline” ? Does somebody emerge to sort out that second act of Shaw’s “ Man and Superman”? Do the “Lovies” collect in one corner and call each other Darling and say how good they still look. Do the heavyweights collect in another wearing black turtle necks and smoking as they discuss breath control and John Osborne. Most people who visit the church don’t know who these names are. And as time goes by those numbers will increase. They explain to each other that Helen McCrory was in Harry Potter, that Ian Holm was Bilbo Baggins. That Vivien Leigh was in “ Gone with the Wind.” But who will know John Tydeman’s name unless you worked on BBC Radio? Who will remember Brian Rix and his wife Elspet Gray, who revived stage farce?

And are there maybe a handful of people who would know my friend , Sean Arnold, who I thought was still knocking around in Jersey, but it seems left us in 2020 and is now remembered on a back of a pew. Laurie said they are going to donate money to have one inscribed for Angela along with Peter. I like that the idea of that. I will be back to stand in front of that one. And maybe I’ll sing “ Jerusalem “ to myself if I can find a patch of sunlight. “ and did those feet in ancient times, Walk upon England’s pastures green….”