The bunker was laid out like a post-trippy nightclub, with Persian
carpets, tables and chairs all mildly shrouded by the smell of joss sticks as
Donna Summer and Spaced played us in: this was the mid-seventies between
counter-culture and punk. At around that time as a 14-year old I was buying LPs
in Liverpool’s Probe Records and used to be fascinated by ads for The Science
Fiction Theatre of Liverpool and a mysterious play called Illuminatus! I still have the flyers in a box complete with
programmes for the Playhouse and Everyman, my Eric’s membership cards, old
NMEs, Zigzags (a punk fanzine) and a
collection of the mind-expanding Brainstorm
Comix!
Forty years on and finally I get to find out more about the
man behind this arcane theatre, Ken Campbell, a radical presence who influenced
not just a generation of off-beat actors such as Bill Nighy, Jim Broadbent and
Sylvester McCoy but also the Liverpool scene in general including Bill Drummond
– member of the seminal Big in Japan (a scouse super-group – look ‘em up, la!),
manager of the Teardrops and Bunnymen and from there to the KLF. Campbell was an
instinctive iconoclast with an energy that brought out the best from some and
drove many others away.
For playwright Terry Johnson he was “…my friend, champion
and occasional nemesis…” and the man who placed his finger directly on his
sternum and told him that he needed to turn his “switch” on! It was a moment of
intense personal connection and one that Johnson still cherishes; it helped
drive him on to success as a director and innovative writer himself – I’d seen a
revival of his Insignificance only a
few months back and its star, his daughter, was in attendance tonight.
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| Terry Johnson |
Johnson wrote and acts in this play and it is as disarmingly
personal portrait of Ken that shows the good and bad of their relationship.
Lisa Spirling directs with real style and has Ken (played by another former
collaborator, Jeremy Stockwell) positioned in the audience ready to spring up
when we least expected and from there on to break the fourth wall into so many
pieces.
It’s a bold production that makes the most of the intimate
energy this direction generates. Johnson’s words flow so beautifully well on occasion
but they’re also from the heart and it is hard to imagine that they are all of
them so easily said. But, his switch is “on” and he is infused with the spirit
of his friend, emboldened into telling us all of Campbell’s call to just do it!
The play starts when Terry met Ken and ended up being cast
in one of his plays, this time the sprawling 24-hour The Warp based on the life
of Neil Oram. After Campbell had decided
Oram’s original play was rubbish, he told him he wanted to “write him” and,
together (maybe) they produced a script 14 inches deep that was to be performed
in just six days in Edinburgh at the run-down Regal Theatre which the crew also
needed to renovate. The result still holds the record for the longest play ever
performed and being such a marathon, once required moving cast and audience to
a tennis court to keep everyone awake.
Campbell was famous
for the greeting “good evening seekers!” and was always on a journey to find
new experience and to challenge those daydreaming through life. He was
surrounded by a gang of talented eccentrics, John Joyce, a woman called Mia who
Johnson considered the most beautiful he has ever seen (even as he doubts her
existence as a single entity…), Daisy (his daughter with actress Prunella Gee,
who is now also a playwright), not to mention Hoskins, Conti, Lord James
Broadbent and Chris Langham.
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| Terry Johnson and Jeremy Stockwell |
Ken was full on and sometimes would look straight in you challenging any wayward complacency
or phony thoughts. He was also a one for grand-scale pranks and once re-titled
the RSC the Royal Dickens Company on the grounds that they did more 19th
than 16th Century work. He contacted the actors and issued press
releases succeeding in convincing enough people that Trevor Nunn had to come
out and deny that it was happening.
It’s an intensely personal exercise for Johnson and a brave
one as well he’s acting himself through some of the most important moments of
his life and the barrier between performance Terry and actual Terry must be wafer
thin. But you know that Ken, if he is anywhere else, and who knows, maybe the
Illuminati spirited him away…, would nod in approval before launching off on
yet another scheme.
Jeremy Stockwell is so energetically convincing as Ken that
the great man might as well be in the room. It’s good that the role is in the
hands of another friend and he does his old pal full justice with outrageous
eyebrows, eyes on full twinkle and a cackle that is straight from deepest,
darkest Campbell.
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| All photographs courtesy of Robert Day |
Ken is life-affirming, and because it plays around us, the message
also infuses us as watchers… watchers can only do one thing and, you just know,
we have to start being seekers!
Ken runs at The
Bunker Theatre until 24th February and if you don’t go you’ll simply
never know how to turn yourself on!
IThankYouTheatre Rating: ***** It has to be for Johnson’s bravery and for Ken the Seeker.
