Man who played many parts
ALL the world’s a stage, but Bernard Esquilant was no mere player.
While best known as the cofounder of the South Island’s first professional theatre company with his partner of 65 years ,William Menlove, Mr Esquilant played many parts in 94 years lived to the fullest.
A lawyer, restaurateur, accommodation provider, gardener and latterly a watercolour painter, Mr Esquilant brought verve, vivacity and irreverence to a multiplicity of undertakings.
Titling his selfpublished autobiography Beds I Have Slept In was a sign of a cheeky sense of humour, and a nod to a restless streak which led to he and Mr Menlove travelling frequently and calling 22 different residences home.
Bernard Leslie Esquilant was born in Dunedin on October 26,
1926, the son of Alfred Esquilant — awarded the Military Cross during World War 1 — and his war bride Maude (nee Butcher).
Although not a conspicuous achiever at North East Valley Primary or Otago Boys’ High School, in the fifth form Mr Esquilant did win an award for Shakespearean reading, a sign of what was to come.
At the University of Otago from 194652, Mr Esquilant earned a BA then an LLB, before making the first of several trips to England.
While on ocean liner Strathmore, he met Australian nurse Jean Mordin, soon to play a tragic cameo in Mr Esquilant’s life.
On his return to New Zealand, Mr Esquilant practised law in Gore, where the tall, imposing and wellspoken newcomer joined the Gore Repertory Society and became badly bitten by the theatre bug.
Later in 1954, after a serious and prophetic attack of cold feet, Mr Esquilant wed Jean in Dunedin in St Paul’s Cathedral, a brief marriage which was to go radically wrong.
Having plunged into the activities of the British Drama League, in
1956 Mr Esquilant travelled to Invercargill to adjudicate a drama festival.
There he met a young actor in the Lumsden Drama Club’s entry, Bill Menlove.
They immediately struck up a friendship, which led to Mr Esquilant being asked to produce a threeact play for the club.
While working at the Menlove family farm building the sets for
Count Your Blessings, the two men discussed the dream each harboured to move from amateur to professional dramatics.
A complex man who did not suffer fools gladly, Mr Esquilant’s sometimes blunt manner was balanced by Mr Menlove’s more placid nature, which made for an enduring personal relationship and also an effective professional one.
While in the midst of immense personal turmoil — the Esquilants’ sole child, John, died age just 4 days, a tragedy followed soon after by the selfinflicted death of Mr Esquilant’s mother — he and Mr Menlove decided to take the plunge and found the Southern Comedy Players theatre company.
In a scenario which in less fraught circumstances might have been a good plotline for the comedies of manners in which the company specialised during its early days, Jean was making costumes and arranging advance publicity while at the same time agreeing terms for her divorce from Mr Esquilant.
They remained on good terms until her death in 2000.
T
HE Southern Comedy Players (later the Southern Players) was a daring, arguably foolhardy undertaking, but with Mr Esquilant as business and frontofhouse manager and Mr Menlove as stage manager, for a decade or more the company not only survived but at times thrived.
As well as managing, both men acted — notably, in 1963 Mr Esquilant took over from playwright Bruce Mason in the role of the Rev Athol Sedgewick in The Pohutukawa
Tree, a work which was a significant New Zealand theatrical milestone and which the Players were the first company to perform.
The fact the company lasted until 1969, its 12year history a record at the time for theatrical longevity, spoke volumes for its choice of repertoire and quality of its productions.
From precarious beginnings with
Charley’s Aunt, the company scraped by until 1959 when it had a genuine hit, Salad Days, which it toured nationally and which placed it on a more secure footing.
While Mr Esquilant was professionally and personally happy, caution and discretion always had to be exercised in a New Zealand where homosexuality was illegal and was to remain so until 1986.
News a police officer with a fearsome reputation for targeting gay people was being transferred to Dunedin was alarming; the discovery his new target was drinkdrivers was a relief.
The reputation of the Southern Players, which had settled into a cycle of three productions and a schools tour each year, was by now a national one.
In 1965, Mr Esquilant received an Arts Council grant to study theatre in Britain, and with Mr Menlove alongside saw more than 80 productions, as well as seeing the recently deceased Sir Winston Churchill lying in state.
Once back in Dunedin, the couple converted Forrester’s Hall into The Playhouse Theatre as a permanent home for the company, and in 1969 it hosted 10 productions.
That workload, two schools tours and a change of management structure so as to qualify for Arts Council support left the men exhausted and in need of a new challenge.
S
OMEWHAT improbably, their new venture was to buy the dilapidated and condemned former Phoenix flour mill at Waianakarua with the plan to turn it into a restaurant and accommodation.
In a build worthy of Grand Designs, the Mill House was open within six months, Mr Menlove the frontofhouse man and Mr Esquilant in the kitchen.
Their plans for a small operation were scuppered early, a team of staff having to be quickly recruited to keep the busy 86seat dining room ticking along.
After four gruelling years, the couple retreated to Queenstown before moving to England, where they owned and operated a small restaurant in Dorset.
However, Mr Esquilant and Mr Menlove were not finished at the Mill House; as second mortgage holders over the property, when the new owners fell on hard times, they reclaimed the property in 1980.
After a complete refurbishment, they once more sold the property and moved into the former mill manager’s cottage, from which the men operated a gallery, tearoom and garden centre locally renowned for the quality of its rhododendrons.
Mr Esquilant’s wanderlust had not subsided, though, and in the following years the couple bought, restored, landscaped and operated businesses out of properties in Hampden, most notably Beech Tree Lodge.
After six and ahalf years, maintenance of the halfacre garden became too much, and the couple resumed their nomadic lifestyle, before finally retiring to Brooklands Retirement Village, Mosgiel, in 2012.
While age was catching up with Mr Esquilant, it was not stopping him: he took up art, selling 61 paintings from two exhibitions, and in 2016 he performed, from memory, a selection of Shakespearean speeches for his fellow Brooklands residents.
Shakespeare described life as but a walking shadow, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
In his 94 years, Mr Esquilant, who died on March 6, made a great deal of noise, was occasionally furious, but for the generation who experienced the theatre thanks to him, and the many friends he made after he departed the stage, he signified many things indeed.