Michael

Pennington

This site is maintained by Mary Hunwicks on behalf of Michael Pennington

TO MY FRIENDS:

Long before summer, I'm sitting in the sun today, thinking that there's not much difference in me from that 1977 traveller on the legendary trans-Siberian Railway from Khabarovsk to Moscow, looking forward to seeing his Mum and Dad in London but for the time being in spontaneously deep consultation with a learned and friendly fellow-traveller Lucien Stryk (a most marvellous zen-influenced poet and eminent teacher who, on the second or third day, taking note of my deep absorption in Ernest Simmons's autobiography of Anton Chekhov, urged me prophetically to devise a solo performance of the great writer, whom we both much admired, and present the idea of my playing it at the National Theatre (Cottesloe). I loved but dreaded the ambitious thought. For the moment I couldn't help looking forward more to seeing my Mum and Dad again and some friends whom I’d left for my bout of Japan and Russia a month back.

Having not much courage about this, when a few years later (by the time in fact that l'd recorded my Russian idyll for BBC Television) I emigrated to the RSC (the Japanese trip had actually been disguise for a tour of The Hollow Crown, John Barton's marvellously animated history lesson) not long after, in 1976, much looking forward to playing Mercutio and Hector and also bracing new plays by David Rudkin and in David Edgar's Destiny (and every night raring to go and never really leaving the company until at least 1981); but these were, as Cleopatra might say, my most happy salad days - despite my age. 

In Stratford, having once turned myself into a freelance producer inside the company as well, I would ultimately remain on the premises for ten years, self-publishing the story of my Russian travels, persuading my dear Roger Rees to do vivid illustrations from my descriptions, all  culminating after some dozen years when last year as a self-publisher. By that time I had published by my old friend Nick Hern my User's Guides to Hamlet, Twelfth Night, A Midsummer Night's Dream; a solo show about the lives of Chekhov and Shakespeare that I was able to tour and after all that to gather cumulative strength with Michael Bogdanov to become the breakaway English Shakespeare Company.

Many things followed, but I've reimagined that after a few of such written publications i found myself trying to some degree in helping younger actors with my advice Let Me Play the Lion Too - How to be an Actor (published by Faber), and King Lear in Brooklyn (by Oberon). And others.   At this point I was stuck - for new subjects in a Lockdown but tried to pick the brains of my very long standing friend Richard Eyre and with Lady Antonia Fraser - Harold Pinter's widow among other things; at the beginning of 2020 they both recommended that I should set about me unexpected self-publishing (as I had Rossya) - in a time of Lockdown; and since I'd achieved some quite good prose then, and they talked me up into some very useful associations. 

That initial book about the Siberian journey would be hard to find nowadays, though I have about a dozen left that I chuckle over between the runs of various subsequent shows - I'm glad it memorialised to one side for my beloved Roger Rees and his glorious drawings, illustration and tenderness that he furnished. God rest him.

Halfway through Lockdown in 2020, I decided to try. I was besieged by my own study since I found I had every conceivable production photo that had incurred.

Do look out for a copy among the booksellers, but the most reliable are either with or - like the theatres - less so. I hope you'll resist that. It begins sturdily in the 1980s and turns back on schooldays etc when I once won a prize (at 11) by reciting a 40-line resignation speech of Wolsey in Henry VIII for the Verse Speaking prize at Arnold House prep school. 

And now I hope you'll read In My Own Footsteps - and there will also be, all being well, a voice recording of the entire book that I've recently completed with the brilliant Leo Whetter, who is a genius. In the days of DVDs and CDs he'd be selling lots of Footsteps,  as it is everything like a lending library. All this has been for me the greatest joy and pleasure, and opened doors for me in live shows - not least my three hours with Chekhov and then Shakespeare which I've for instance done in Bretferton, and will soon in Folkestone and Bewdley and other venues if anyone will listen - I also played these in Jermyn Street Theatre , filling in a gap left by The Tempest which was more or less barred by Boris Johnson who tried to pull us off. Consider your vote..

As far as the written Memoir (I recommend the CPI order from this website run  by the indefatigable Mary Hunwicks below as being as good as any - if you bump into me on the street with it I'll certainly be carrying a copy for you. And as well as CPI, maybe Amazon too if you know your way around it. And hope that the bookshope and Event Centres and more Festivals in due course follow suit. Or I'll just have to sell you one in the street or when you're doing your shopping.....

Many thanks

Michael Pennington

May 2022


My memoir IN MY OWN FOOTSTEPS, published June 2021; ISBN 978-1-5272-9077-8; can be ordered through the following link:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/My-Own-Footsteps-Memoir/dp/1527290778