Butlin’s to Broadway: there’s Been nothing like this dame
Will She Do? Act One Of A Life On Stage Eileen Atkins
Virago €22.99
★★★★★
Eileen Atkins has had quite the life as a beloved star of the West End and Broadway, a winner of multiple awards, a co-creator of TV’s Upstairs, Downstairs and a British Dame. But as this disarmingly frank memoir reveals, the route she took to the top involved hardships and humiliations that are scarcely believable now and were barely survivable then.
Raised on a London council estate, the young Eileen performed in working men’s clubs as Britain’s answer to Shirley Temple (creepy) and was talent-spotted by an instructor named Mme Yandie (a fraud).
Elocution lessons and an encouraging headteacher paved her way to the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, though ambition was always at war with her insecurity: ‘I never had the right clothes or the right look or the right background.’ A quick temper would also get her into trouble: Peter Hall once gave her the boot for being rude to him.
Her touring in repertory recalls a 1950s of freezing winters, dismal bedsits and Spam fritters. Yet there are happy interludes, like dining on sausage and chips with Ronnie Barker, holidaying with Vanessa
Redgrave and tap dancing with Gene Kelly.
At Butlin’s in Skegness she meets future husband Julian Glover, whose raffish ease and bohemian family set off a deep yearning: ‘I was overwhelmed by the sense of what a family was, and I wanted to belong. This was, of course, unfair of me and snobbish. I had a family. I just preferred this one.’
What distinguishes this from other stage memoirs is the author’s forthright telling of her tale. She is as clear-sighted about her faults as her good fortune and looks back on 65 years of acting with a wry smile.