The Stage

Rulers of the airwaves: 70 years of the BBC Radio Drama Company

Published Monday 1 March 2010 at 12:30 by Nick Smurthwaite

As the BBC’s Radio Drama Company celebrates its 70th anniversary this year, Nick Smurthwaite reflects on how the institution has evolved to keep pace with the times and the unrivalled opportunities it gives to young graduate actors

In these days of stringent cutbacks and downsizing, it is a minor miracle that the BBC’s Radio Drama Company - better known to most actors as “the Rep” - is still going. Although not quite the mighty beast it was in its heyday, it still offers training to young actors out of drama school and the opportunity to work with some of the country’s top actors.

The Rep, which this year celebrates its 70th anniversary, was set up in 1940, partly as a response to the outbreak of war. Rather than risk the dangers of traipsing across London during the frequent air raids, the group of actors who made up the Rep could camp out in the stronghold that was Broadcasting House’s Concert Hall (now the Radio Theatre) and be on call for show after show. Back then, everything was transmitted live, so it was advantageous to have an ensemble of actors available at a moment’s notice.

“It was the only place where you were paid to learn on the job,” recalls veteran actor Ted Kelsey, better known as Joe Grundy from The Archers, who joined the rep as a drama school graduate in 1954, having won the Carleton Hobbs Bursary Award (offering students a six-month contract with the Rep) at the Royal Academy of Music and Drama. The actor, known for his ripe Borsetshire brogue, was often called upon to play exotic foreigners.

But, as you would expect, one of the great advantages of radio drama for actors is it affords them an opportunity to play roles that may be denied them on stage or TV, relying as it does entirely on vocal dexterity. David Timson, a Rep stalwart since winning Carleton Hobbs in 1971, is famous for his ability to play any age, any gender and any accent. “Luckily your looks are irrelevant to your suitability for a role,” he says. “One of the first things I was asked to do, as a 21-year-old actor straight out of drama school, was Dr Finlay’s Casebook, playing an elderly Edinburgh surgeon. I finished up doing a rather bad impersonation of Andrew Cruickshank.”

Similarly, Timothy West enjoyed the chance to play “a number of handsome, lusted-after juveniles” - an opportunity, he says, he was rarely afforded in other media.

However, not everyone was so eager to test their vocal versatility. During the recording of a Sherlock Holmes story, Kelsey remembers John Gielgud snapping, “I don’t do funny voices”, when he was required to play a Cockney coal man, one of the detective’s disguises.

Gielgud was appearing as a guest performer, but in the forties and fifties the Rep created its own stars - Carleton Hobbs, Norman Shelley, Stephen Murray, Grizelda Harvey, Felix Felton, June Tobin, Marjorie Westbury among them. Westbury was probably best known for playing Paul Temple’s quick-witted young wife in the Francis Durbridge mysteries.

The actor Martin Jarvis, whose love affair with broadcast drama began with the Rep, remembers being captivated by Westbury’s ability to transform herself in front of the microphone. In his autobiography, Acting Strangely, Jarvis writes: “Her imaginative technique, harnessed to her understanding of character and situation, was breathtaking. I was spellbound by her skill. Really she could be anyone she wanted within the radius of the microphone.”

Jarvis was one of a group of younger actors in the sixties and seventies - others included Prunella Scales, Nigel Anthony, Derek Jacobi, Ronald Pickup and Miriam Margolyes - who took over the mantle of the earlier generation of radio drama all-rounders.

And, in 1976, Jarvis was recruited by Martin Jenkins to play Prince Hal and Henry V in one of the most ambitious drama projects ever undertaken by the Rep - Vivat Rex, a 26-part serialisation of Shakespeare’s history plays, with a star-studded cast of guest performers, including Michael Redgrave, John Gielgud, Peggy Ashcroft, Paul Scofield, Anthony Quayle and Flora Robson, as well as the regular Rep personnel, then numbering more than 30.

Jenkins and his collaborator Gerry Jones were determined to show that radio was a suitable medium for epic as well as intimate drama.

The Rep was also responsible for instilling in its younger charges an unwritten code of behaviour. “I learned how to be professional,” says Carole Boyd, who plays Linda Snell in The Archers. “There was a pecking order and you had to observe it. You learned how to respect your fellow actors, how to work quickly and under pressure. One of the most important lessons for the young actor is to watch, listen and learn.”

In the mid-eighties the Rep was renamed the Radio Drama Company and scaled down to less than half the original 30 to 35-strong company. These days it consists of a core of award-winning youngsters straight out of drama school, complemented by four or five more experienced cast to provide a good vocal range. And Alison Hindell, the BBC’s head of radio drama, believes the RDC still serves a vital purpose.

“Because we produce a vast amount of work with a very fast turnover, it would be a nightmare to start from scratch with a new cast every time,” she explains. “The acting skills we can tap into with a honed company are absolutely priceless.”

Radio drama has survived because it has moved with the times and tackled subjects like incest, racism and paedophilia, that would have been unthinkable in its early years.

In the absence of provincial rep, the Radio Drama Company continues to offer young actors a rare opportunity to have a go at a wide range of dramatic expression, from cutting-edge contemporary drama to Shakespeare to solo reading. Its role in the cultural life of Britain is unique and unassailable.