Alan Rickman (30 page)

Smoke began to issue from various heads. They smelled conspiracy, or at least incompetence. Six leading theatre critics – the
Guardian's
Michael Billington, the
Evening Standard's
Nicholas de Jongh,
The Times'
Benedict Nightingale, the
Daily Telegraph
's Charles Spencer, the
Independent
's Paul Taylor and
Time Out
's James Christopher – felt sufficiently strongly to write a letter of protest to the
Evening Standard
about the conduct of the Riverside Board in selecting Jules Wright as its director-designate.

This thunderous missive, published on 6 August 1993, blamed then councillor and Riverside Board member Jane Hackworth-Young for failing to pass on the Rickman submission to the selection panel until after shortlisted applicants had been interviewed.

‘The board's choice as the next director of Riverside was herself on the board of directors until just before the deadline for
applications,' they fulminated. ‘Miss Wright, Riverside Studios has admitted, helped draw up the job description for the new director. We believe it may be a conflict of interest . . .' They urged the Riverside Board to revoke its decision.

William Hunter, chair of the Riverside Trust, wrote a languid reply to the
Standard
on 10 August: ‘It was the Alan Rickman et al consortium's own fault that the application arrived so late – not only after the closing date but after the interviewing panel had completed interviews. The commonsense thing to do would have been to send the proposal straight to Riverside, not use an intermediary. This is what everybody else did.'

Further foot-stamping was to come: ‘The reason we did not interview the consortium was that its application was unconvincing administratively, artistically and financially.' Very damaging, if you take William Hunter's artistic credentials seriously (he's a barrister).

Hunter has since refused to talk further about the entire episode, saying pompously: ‘It's ancient history.' But Rickman and Co. took their rejection as a Philistine slap in the face for some of London's best-known actors.

Indeed, Nicholas de Jongh wrote in the
Standard
on 12 August: ‘Perhaps one should conclude that the Riverside Board has a phobia about stars.'

Catherine Bailey later became convinced that it was a simple case of the turkeys not voting for Christmas. ‘The Board interfered all the time: had we got in, the first thing we would have done was to dismiss the Board. It's weak. They knew that, that's why they refused us. The Board is full of councillors wanting to hang on to their honorary positions.

‘The idea was to generate our own income from high-profile productions, plus companies and well-known directors from abroad such as Peter Brook and Peter Stein. They were too small-minded to see our vision. Thelma is the only true impresario of our time, a new Lilian Baylis. Thelma and Alan are both such larger-than-life characters. Alan has put a lot back into the business, and people really rate him.'

But such a mythology has grown around ‘Rivergate' that someone from outside the Rickman camp even gave me the initial impression that Jane Hackworth-Young was a Tory councillor, as if the scuppering of Rickman's bid was a wicked Conservative plot. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Enter the first Rivergate scapegoat: a neat figure with cropped grey hair and a rather pukka accent. She apologised for that plus the double-barrelled name; people were always leaping to the wrong conclusions about Jane, the Labour councillor for Addison Ward in the borough of Hammersmith and Fulham. She also had a useful background in theatre: ‘I worked with Donald Albery, then I was the director of the British Theatre Association for ten years. And I was on the Board of Riverside at the time the bids were invited.

‘It happened like this. Jacqueline Abbott, our Mayor, was the original contact for Catherine Bailey. They couldn't get hold of her, so they contacted me instead. I had met Alan originally at the BTA; I liked him enormously. He has a nice sense of humour.'

So far as her left-wing credentials are concerned, she was an impeccably correct contact for the Rickman consortium. A member of Hammersmith and Fulham Miners' Support Group, she had joined protest marches by the Women Against Pit Closures. Jane's family comes from Sedgefield, a former mining community. ‘I'm left of centre. I'm not a Blairite.' Until she talked exclusively to me for this book, she had stayed silent on Rivergate, taking the rap at the time because there was grave doubt about whether the council could continue to cough up cash for both Riverside and the Lyric Theatre in Hammersmith.

For this small London borough is unique in having three high-profile theatre venues – the third being the small but innovative Bush Theatre – within a square mile of each other. Keeping them all afloat is a nightmare for any council.

But it seemed there were grounds for paranoia over the decision on who ran Riverside. The reason why Alan Rickman's consortium chose, unlike any of the other bidders, to use a go-between was because, according to Jane Hackworth-Young, they were absolutely convinced that Jules Wright was the favourite for the job of Artistic Director. So they felt they needed, to put it bluntly, some special pleading on their behalf in order to get a fair hearing.

‘They thought their bid might not be taken seriously for several reasons,' claims Jane. ‘The proposal from a consortium would not answer Riverside's specific job specification. Jules Wright was on the Board, and they believed that the Chair William Hunter supported her very much. Indeed, I had that impression too, and perhaps at the cost of other bids – although I had no objection to
Jules. And Riverside had a deficit of £250,000, a debt they didn't want to take on. So they felt they needed an intermediary to smooth the way and put their case.'

Jane met Alan and Catherine over lunch in a French restaurant in Kensington Park Road on 10 June 1993.

‘They showed me their draft. They said they would tidy it up a bit; I made a few suggestions, such as extra figures here and there. It was not absolutely clear at that time that Thelma Holt was committed to the project.

‘Time was already very short, because I understood that the shortlist was to be drawn up on 15 July. I said I would take their bid to lain Coleman, the Leader of the Council, to canvass him on the monetary situation and also because he was quite close to the Chair of the Riverside Trust, William Hunter. That was how it was left.'

What Alan and Co. did not understand were the manifold pressures on councillors with so many causes clamouring for cash. Given that Alan's partner Rima had been a councillor in the neighbouring Kensington & Chelsea for seven years by then, one would have thought she might have advised them. But anyone with any integrity – and Rima prides herself on that – would take care not to get involved with an issue in which there was a personal interest. So she stayed well clear.

‘I didn't get the bid document from the Rickman group until 22 June, because I had been away for a long weekend,' says Jane. ‘I arranged to see lain Coleman on 24 June. The main gist of that meeting was on another subject, but I left him the Rickman submission.

‘We set up another meeting to discuss the matter on 5 July. To be fair to lain Coleman, we didn't talk at length about the Rickman bid. I asked him to look at it and hoped that if he considered it worthwhile, he would speak to William Hunter.

‘One of my main reasons for seeing him was to sort out whether we were going to be able to fund all three venues for the same year. Both the Lyric and Riverside had a deficit, and we are the smallest London borough after the City.

‘I was really deeply concerned that we weren't going to be able to fund both of them. There were rumours every day about what was going to happen. I used my contacts in the theatre to see if there were other options to fund the two of them. The selection
process was going on for the next elections; I had to go up north; and I was also writing a paper on the future of the libraries, because I was anxious that we were going to have to cut them.

‘I wrote to Derek Spurr, Director of Hammersmith's Leisure and Recreation, on 28 June. I was still scared that the Lyric would have to go. Catherine and Alan thought I was working against them because I was talking to other organisations, but I was trying to explore all the options for both the Riverside and the Lyric.

‘At very short notice, lain cancelled our meeting on 5 July. He's a very busy man. I spoke to his PA because I said all the submissions have to be in and I had to see him.

‘The earliest we could set a meeting was for Tuesday 13 July at 6 o'clock. I thought to myself, do I approach Hunter directly? I had previously indicated to him that there might be another bid. I was in a quandary. Then during that week I heard there had been a meeting of the leadership of the Council – and it had been decided not to fund either of the two theatres. I felt I must clarify the situation once and for all with Coleman.

‘In the interim Catherine Bailey had confirmed to me that Thelma Holt would be involved, which had not been absolutely certain up to that time. And because of my knowledge of her work, I became even more convinced that the consortium could administer and develop Riverside.

‘I saw lain Coleman on 13 July. He was very candid and confirmed to me that the council could not fund Riverside's deficit. He said “We will definitely be funding only one of the two theatres in the forthcoming year.” I pushed him on it and asked if it would be Riverside. He said it would. I tried to ring William Hunter that night, but he wasn't in.'

What appeared odd to Alan Rickman was the legal situation. Jane explains: ‘Because both theatres might become insolvent or be liquidated and there were councillors on both boards, there had been concern about councillors renewing their membership of the board. The Council's Legal Services recommended that councillors should resign.

‘Subsequently I think that Legal Services rather changed that view, but the important thing about it is that I resigned because the Council suggested I should – not because of any dealings with Alan, Catherine or Thelma.

‘Jules Wright was definitely offered the Riverside directorship,' according to Jane Hackworth-Young, ‘but my understanding is that
she had decided not to go ahead with the financial risk. What was ironic was that she must have known more about the financial risk than anyone else, because she had been a member of the Riverside Board.

‘To be fair to William Hunter, he did ask me whether the bid was coming in. He behaved honourably; and when I finally reached him on the morning of the 14th, he agreed that he and members of the Board would meet me before their “shortlisting” meeting the following evening. But I was still aware that he might be biased towards Jules.

‘The council officer who was dealing with Riverside also spoke to me on the morning of the 14th, as he had been approached by Catherine Bailey who gave him a copy of the bid. I explained to him what had happened – and about my conversation with William Hunter – and we agreed to go down together to see Hunter and members of the Board. The officer's advice to the members of the Board that evening was that they should consider the Rickman bid, and the members agreed to consult with the Board.

‘We were informed that the Board had agreed to consider the bid over the weekend, yet within hours Jules had been approached about running Riverside.

‘lain Coleman had even said to me that he didn't think the Rickman bid was a particularly good one, though I thought it was very businesslike. But I think lain was terribly busy with the decisions on cuts for the forthcoming year.

‘I categorically did not withhold the bid. I passed it on. Alan, Catherine and I had agreed I would take it to lain Coleman, but I hadn't had dialogue with him. It was not a case of withholding the bid, but of not being able to put their case in good time.'

The timing of the actual decision now seems terribly vague.

‘Hunter said the Rickman bid was in late; I said “I thought you were looking at all the bids, not making a final decision,”' says Jane. ‘I had opened Rickman's bid on 22 June and passed it on. There were other bids from the Royal Opera house, the Old Vic, Carnival Theatre, Jules Wright's WPT and the English Shakespeare Company.

‘I was a bit of a scapegoat because I felt that lain Coleman didn't support me in processing the bid or subsequently when the matter got to the Press.'

When the public storm broke, Jane was frustrated by the fact that she had to stay silent. ‘I could not tell the Press that the council
had made a decision to fund only one of the venues. Other funding bodies, such as the Arts Council, would have withdrawn funding from the Lyric, as some funding was dependent on the local authority matching it.

‘It would have produced a disastrous domino effect. So I couldn't say a thing publicly without endangering the Lyric. Since that time, the Lyric has launched an appeal which has resulted in attracting funding that has wiped out its deficit.

‘I had given the Rickman proposal to lain immediately I received it. The only reason I had then delayed was because I had understood there would be no funding for theatres at all, which might well not be made public until after people had committed themselves to Riverside.'

In retrospect, Jane could be said to have panicked from the worthiest of intentions. Clearly she didn't wish to lumber Alan's team with a building that carried a deficit of a quarter of a million pounds and had just had its funding withdrawn . . . otherwise she might have been guilty of dropping them in it.

‘I think the Rickman application was good; I also think some of the others were good. I didn't think Jules' application was amazing.

‘My sadness was that I wasn't able to explain fully to Alan, Thelma and Catherine what had happened. I did try Catherine's phone and left a message; she never rang me back. She was away on and off during that time.