Book Review: Gillian Lynne’s Book of Particular Cats: A Memoir

GILLIAN LYNNE’S BOOK OF PARTICULAR CATS: A MEMOIR – Collated by Peter Land (Whitefox).

Star rating: five stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Michael Darvell follows the life of Dame Gillian Lynne through her fame as actress, dancer, choreographer and director, with special reference to her work on the musical Cats.

Gillian Lynne had an amazing career. At school she was not academic and couldn’t pay attention. However, when her mother took her daughter to see a doctor, the medic found that the girl had a natural ability for movement and suggested she try ballet school. That is where the story begins and ends for young Lynne and the rest is choreographic history. She was born in 1926 in Bromley, Kent but her mother died in a car crash when she was only 13. It could be that she danced to take away the pain of losing her mother. She was asked to join the Sadler’s Wells Ballet and later when the Royal Opera House reopened after the war, she gained her first major role in Sleeping Beauty.

It was onwards and upwards after that for her at the Royal Ballet, in works choreographed by Frederick Ashton and Robert Helpmann. After leaving Sadler’s Wells she joined the London Palladium as a star dancer and began appearing in other West End shows such as Can–Can at the London Coliseum and New Cranks at the Lyric Hammersmith plus Rose–Marie, Puss in Boots etc. She even entered films in 1953 with The Master of Ballantrae, starring no less a personage than Errol Flynn, and she also began to get television work.

In 1965 Lynne’s choreography career got a boost with the musical The Roar of the Greasepaint, The Smell of the Crowd by Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley who both became lifelong friends.

Acting took a back seat as Lynne developed her career as a choreographer. She worked on Pickwick with Harry Secombe, The Matchgirls, The Flying Dutchman, How Now Dow Jones, Michael Tippett’s The Midsummer Marriage, The Trojans, Love on the Dole and Ambassador, the last with Howard Keel. Later on she choreographed Hans Christian Andersen for Tommy Steele at the Palladium, a production of My Fair Lady (where Gillian met future husband Peter Land), Once in a Lifetime for the RSC and ultimately Cats for Cameron Mackintosh, composer Andrew Lloyd Webber and lyricist Trevor Nunn.

Trevor Nunn , Andrew Lloyd Webber, Gillian Lynne and members of the cast during the launch for Cats at the London Palladium in July 2014. Picture: Dan Woolley

Now this is where the book comes into play, because Lynne and husband Land devote the beginning of each chapter to somebody in Lynne’s life and the TS Eliot cat that they resemble. The first one is Leonide Massine from the early days of Sadler’s Wells Ballet as Mr Mistoffelees, the original conjuring cat. Then comes Pamela May, also from the early days of Sadler’s Wells, “an elegant sexy founding star” who is given the name of Bombalurina one, while Bombalurina two is Sophia Loren, the legendary Italian goddess from Man of La Mancha. Chapter three gives us Patrick St John Back, Lynne’s first husband who is dubbed Alonzo one with a very masculine line. They married in July 1948, a pairing that was at times a bumpy ride.

Now, obviously Alonzo two is actor Land. They married when she was 52 and he was 25. The showbiz world thought they were mad, that it wouldn’t last, but it did. It seems they were made for each other. Land has certainly made a good job of collating what amounts to his wife’s diary material culled from all manner of sources. It is not a lovey sort of a book, it just tells it how it was and it happens that they led interesting lives together.

Electra and Demeter are two cats represented by Margot Fonteyn and Moira Shearer, chosen for their iconic place in British ballet. The name of Skimbleshanks is given to Robert Helpmann, the actor, dancer, director, choreographer and friend for his daring creative energy.

Munkustrap is personified by film star, mentor and friend Errol Flynn; Gus the Theatre Cat is shared by Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley for their par excellence work. Actor Herbert Lom is Bustopher Jones one; George Sidney, Hollywood musical director of Half a Sixpence, is Bustopher Jones 2; Rum Tum Tugger and the Gumbie Cat are personified by director Trevor Nunn and actress Judi Dench (who had to leave the original production of Cats due to injury); Andrew Lloyd Webber and Camerom Mackintosh become Mungojerrie and Rumpleteazer; while Phantom director Harold Prince is Old Deuteronomy. Finally, Bess Land, the family fox terrier, is Pollicle Dog.

Of course getting Cats on stage was initially a great problem. The usual backers, the angels of the theatre industry, couldn’t see a musical about felines at all profitable, even with the pedigree of TS Eliot’s poetry for Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats. Composer Lloyd Webber and producer Mackintosh went ahead anyway, gathering the best team they could find – director and co-lyricist Nunn (plus Richard Stilgoe), choreographer Lynne, designer John Napier, lighting designer David Hersey and impresario Mackintosh himself.

The problems of staging a musical show are immense at the best of times but Cats at the New London Theatre was a problem because of the shape of the auditorium but, to make it a more immersive show, part of the auditorium moved before the start so that everyone could see. Then there were the problems of getting the dancers into their roles which required an enormous amount of energy and stamina for a wordless, all music, all singing and all dancing show. Looking back now after 40 years it is astonishing that Cats was the immense hit, something that was repeated all over the world.

Lynne’s other big hit, The Phantom of the Opera, was less a dance musical but it still needed expert direction and choreography in the way the show moved. Casting was difficult even though Lloyd Webber had written the main part of Christine for his wife Sarah Brightman but the role of the Phantom was a problem until Lloyd Webber announced that he had found his ideal candidate – Michael Crawford. Nobody, including Lynne, really believed that Frank Spencer, the simple character Crawford played in the BBC TV sitcom of Some Mothers Do ‘Ave ‘Em, could drop all the slapstick and play the title role. However, Crawford turned out to be such a good actor, with an amazingly lengthy vocal range, that he got the part and took it with him and the show around the world to enormous acclaim.

So, the life of actress, dancer, choreographer and director Gillian Lynne is contained within these pages – the ups, the downs, the hits, the misses – it’s all there in a very readable style and was published during the week when Dame Gillian – she was made Dame Commander at age 87 in 2014 – would have been 100 years old. She died, aged 92, on 1 July 2018.