Alastair Sim & Twelve Years Acting Lessons in One Night

by Robert Sidaway

From my days as an actor there are some memories that I feel come from yesterday. While some struggle to be remembered from the backstage shadows of the theater and film. Here is one that forever feels as if it happened yesterday!

I was lucky enough to act alongside the incomparable, intuitive talent of Alastair Sim in two productions that succeeded to make it London’s West End. The first was a convoluted political drama Number 10, that also starred Michael Denison, Dulcie Gray and John Gregson, and took us on an extraordinary theater journey in Manchester, Edinburgh and even Toronto before opening at the Strand Theatre in London’s West End.

The second adventure began in the tranquil retreat of the Chichester Festival Theatre in May 1969. Sir John Clements was the director and the Miguel Pinero farce The Magistrate was the perfect vehicle to showcase Alastair’s wonderful comic skills, and allow for a memorable piece of improvisation during the play. He played Aeneas Posket, a dignified court magistrate led astray one night by his young stepson. He gets to his court disheveled and exhausted, and attempts to wash himself with calamitous results. A personal, unscripted moment of pantomime that became a singular tour de force – the soap, water and towel combined in a dance of classic comedy. Alastair culminates his ablutions with an accusatory finger that he wags at his image in the mirror. “Who was naughty?” The finger hesitates, then slowly turns to point at himself, before he puts it to his lower lip with a quintessential, hang-dog look.

In rehearsals, I remember all of us in the cast felt that this moment was developing into something very special. For those who saw the show, Alastair’s performance is long remembered as one of his finest. During actual performances Maggie Smith (who was in repertory with the restoration play “The Country Wife”) regularly visited the wings to watch his magic moments of improvisation, his brilliant comic timing.

After the season at Chichester, the production transferred to the Cambridge Theatre in London, to run for a year. Apart from Alastair, the cast included Patricia Routledge, Michael Aldridge, Robert Coote and Renee Asherson. The reviews were generous, the audiences electric, the feeling onstage a rush.

During the run of the play, with my dressing room next to his, there started a nightly ritual where I would go to Alastair’s room after the final curtain, when Alastair had his wind down cigar. Shared moments of enjoyment and insight (for myself) of the profession I was in.

I’m also certain Alastair needed me there to answer the dressing room door and screen the procession of celebrities and fans who stopped by to congratulate him. Well-meaning admirers whose familiar knock on the door would produce a sigh, a raise of the eyebrows and the weary comment of “not again” from Alistair. It was part of a public aversion that included his refusing to ever sign an autograph. He was contrary – it was part of what made him.

Barely weeks into the run there was a familiar knock at the door. A familiar sigh from behind as I opened up to see who was there. On this particular night I froze, as standing in the corridor was Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward. There to tell Alastair how much they’d enjoyed the play and in particular his performance. I was of course in awe. Alastair was archly polite and politely dismissive. Within a couple of minutes he closed the door on them. They were gone and I was floored. I turned to Alastair, who simply stared questioningly back, as if mystified by my reaction.

“Don’t you know who that was?” Still a blank look, another puff of the cigar, another sip of whiskey. I continued: “That was Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward. She's an Oscar winner. Paul Newman’s new film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid has just opened and is a huge hit.” I’d seen the movie a few days before, but my enthusiasm appeared to leave Alastair with an increasingly vacant expression.

Until the following evening.

Even before I could make it into my dressing room, Alastair was beckoning me to his, firmly closing the door. He was clearly agitated. That afternoon he’d been to the cinema to see Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. How could he have been so rude to such a fine actor. He was mortified.

If I had been dismayed by Alastair’s behavior the previous evening, that was nothing to my present pleasant surprise. And this wasn’t the end of it. Amidst the swirls of cigar smoke before that evenings performance, there was another knock on Alastair’s dressing room door. This time it was a telegram delivered by the stage-door keeper. As requested, I read it aloud.

Dear Mister Sim

Last night you gave us twelve years of acting lessons in one night.

With thanks

Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward

Alastair’s face was a joy. He kept the telegram taped to his dressing room mirror for the rest of the run.