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Helen McCrory, Julie Walters & Rory Kinnear in The Last of the Hausmanns by Stephen Beresford
Helen McCrory, Julie Walters & Rory Kinnear in The Last of the Hausmanns by Stephen Beresford
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The Last of The Hausmanns by Stephen Beresford
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Stephen Beresford
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The Last of Hausmanns
Stephen Beresford - Playwright
Most playwrights start small: they have a play on at a small venue, sometimes not even a theatre and then build over years to getting their big chance to appear at a prestigious theatre, such as the National in London.
Not so Stephen Beresford, formerly Stephen Roberts of Dartmouth. He sent his first ever full-length theatre script, The Last of the Hausmanns, to the National Theatre and had it put on in the 890 seat Lyttleton Theatre with Julie Walters, Rory Kinnear and Helen McCrory.
So, not the normal manner for getting your work seen by the public for the first time.
“I sent it to the National, received a call asking me to come in to have a chat and then got the confirmation it was going to be put on from Nicolas Hytner, the National’s Director. I’ve been working in TV for years with nothing being produced, if I’d known about this I would have done it years ago!” he said.
I ask him what it was like to be walking into the National Theatre as a first time playwright.
“The first few days were an exercise in managing my terror,” he laughs. “The rehearsal rooms in the National are enormous and the production department had created a mock full size version of the set in the middle of it. Going in there on my first day on the job as it were, and Julie Walters walks up and introduces herself: it was very intimidating.
“It sounds a bit strange to say it, but when I was there I kept thinking ‘I have to make the words better because Julie, Helen and Rory are going to be saying them’. It was a both wonderful and terrible few days of realising I had to step up to the mark. But after a little while I began to absolutely love it and have the time of my life.”
Born in London, Stephen and his family moved to Dartmouth when he was very young. The family moved around a lot in the area, living in Higher Street, Above Town, South Town, on Browns Hill Steps and Kingswear.
He recalls being ‘slightly unmanageable’ as a young child.
“I was frustrated, unruly and bored,” he said. “My mother and stepfather didn’t really know what to do with me – I was very demanding.”
Then he met the Dartmouth woman who ‘transformed’ his life.
“When I was about nine I met a woman called Judy Lewthwaite,” he said. “She ran a group for children called the Strolling Playhouse and it was a revelation. I was transformed pretty much from the minute I met her. She wasn’t judgemental in the way many people are – she was interested in anything that showed someone expressing themselves.
“She was an extraordinary and inspiring person, who was very alive and a total libertarian.
She would ask me about the latest pop bands or whether gangsta rap was any good – she could never sit there and reminisce. She was unique.”
Stephen found his calling through the work he did with Judy, “throwing” himself into the productions the group of children put on in the Guildhall and around the town.
A true Dartmouth character, Judy had an incredible ability to get children excited and was dubbed ‘the pied piper of Dartmouth’ for good reason.
Thanks to her help and support, Stephen made it to RADA and became an actor for 10 years - appearing at the National Theatre and other major venues.
But something was missing.
“I realised I wanted to do more – after a while I wanted to write,” he said.
He put together some ‘spec’ scripts – or scripts written without a commission - for TV using a contact he had - and Channel Four commissioned one.
“That was wonderful, but they never produced it,” said Stephen. “I kept producing ideas which the channel loved, bought, but never made. I was constantly in development with nothing to show for it!”
A change in direction beckoned, and inspiration appeared from the place by the sea he had left when he was 18.
“I realised I had an itch, a compulsion, to write about Dartmouth. It has been a huge influence on who I am and so I let that out. It has more than its fair share of remarkable, rough and unique characters - I’d met so many of them through Judy and I started to draw on them prodigiously.
“I sat down and banged out The Last of the Hausmanns. There is a bit of lots of people I’ve known in the characters, so Judy Hausmann is NOT Judy Lewthwaite: she has a lot of her qualities, but they are very distinct.”
The play has been well received and Stephen has been asked to write another play for the National – and he will again return to the ‘world’ of Dartmouth.
“I’m hoping to write three plays about Dartmouth actually,” he said. “There is so much colour and depth to the people I’ve known in Dartmouth I think there is more than enough material. I have the basics for the next two, and each play will reference characters in the others, so it will build up this extra layer of sub plot for those that see all the plays.
Stephen is currently “horrendously busy” with various projects – including the next ‘Dartmouth’ play – and he said that he loved the chance to work with some of the best names in the business.
“The level of professionalism I’m seeing is just staggering,” he said. “From the director and actors of course, but the set is just remarkable: it’s on a revolve, completely computer controlled huge set, but they are so good at getting the tiny details right too. All the letters on the set have the correct address and postcode on them, in case one falls into the audience and is picked up! I walked onto set one day and they had got hold of the ferry timetables to put on the wall of the kitchen! It’s an extraordinary time and one which I’m very thankful for.”
First published in By The Dart magazine, May 2013