Well
if you must go whoring in Hollywood, make sure you
give good value and get the going rate on the street
. . .
The woman who gave this advice to a writer who
had been offered the job of writing a screenplay for
a Hollywood film is Margaret Ramsay, best known as
Peggy. She was a woman with a gift for spotting a
good play and fostering new talent and who over
several decades represented the best and the
brightest British playwrights -- among them Alan
Plater who has made her the subject of his new play.
What Plater has given us is an attractive,
bittersweet comedy, a quick sketch of the essential
Peggy Ramsay. It limits itself to a single day's
events during the late 1960s when Peggy would have
been in her fifties (she died in 1991) and does not
compete with Colin Chambers' lengthy Ramsay
biography or Simon Callow's book about his
passionate but unconsummated relationship with her.
The play's two acts divide into two moods: the
first is very funny, with many outrageous
pronouncements establishing Ramsay's eccentricities
and prejudices; in the second act the laughter
quiets down as Plater shows us Ramsay's less
attractive qualities. Maureen
Lipman, an accomplished comedienne, does not
resemble Ramsay physically but gives a striking
portrayal. She embodies this eccentric, mercurial
and opinionated agent, delivering her often
outrageous lines barely pausing for breath. Her
advice ranges from Shakespeare references to telling
a young writer to write a novel to "get all the fine
writing out of your system" explaining that you
write a novel for yourself while a play is written
for the audience. She addresses Tessa (Selina
Griffiths), one in a succession of long suffering
secretaries, by the name of the previous secretary.
Under Robin LeFèvre's direction, Lipman is all
action and energy, whereas the three playwrights who
visit her tend to sit still or stand, making them
foils for what consequently amounts to a one woman
play.
When we first meet Peggy, she has just returned
to her office off St Martin's Lane in London's
theatreland. With its clutter of books and typed
manuscripts and its walls lined with playbills and
certificates of play awards, designer Liz Ascroft
has given it the look of a place where it would be
difficult to find anything. The play begins and ends
with Peggy's involvement with one of her playwrights
for whom things are not going well. After spending
the night at a police station to get him out of
jail, she is asleep on the office chaise longue.
This sets the scene for the day's events in the busy
office, punctuated by the visits of three
playwrights.
The first to arrive is Simon (Tom Espiner) an
ingenu with tousled hair, denim jacket and numerous
badges who has a reading of his play planned that
night above a pub in North London. He's somewhat
awed by the great lady who gives him a great deal of
her time, if not one hundred percent of her
attention. (She seems to be doing at least four
things at once). The second playwright
is the successful Philip (Crispin Redman). He also
has an event scheduled for that night, the opening
of a an adaptation of Uncle Vanya. Philip has come
to take Peggy out to lunch and tell her that he is
getting married - for which he won't get any
applause from Peggy who believes that wives
interfere with the creative process.
Thirdly, there is Henry (Richard Platt), a gruff
northerner who won most promising playwright awards
some years before but who is now finding it
difficult to get work. It is Henry who moves things
to the more serious second act when he returns to
tell Peggy that he has decided to leave her agency.
He openly criticises her for forgetting his latest
play. She tries to change his mind, explaining her
admitted shortcomings to the fact that it's hard to
keep all the manuscripts arriving each day in her
head. Henry's announcement is followed by more bad
news. It seems that the writer she got released from
jail has committed suicide. She sheds no tears, her
reaction seeming impassive and unconcerned. As a
result the lively, successful woman of act one is
revealed a doubly flawed, an agent who tends to
neglect of writers who no longer have novelty value
and a woman detached from tragedy. She seems not to
care neither for Henry or the dead playwright.
However as the newspapers phone for a story, Ramsay
as ever the agent, gives Henry the job of writing
the obituaries. She also opts to spend the evening
not with her successful client but going to the
reading of Simon's new play.
As I've indicated for a more in-depth
understanding of Peggy Ramsay's contribution to the
world of stage and screen, you would do best to read
the books that have been written about her. But if
you want to laugh, there's Peggy For You.