The Stage

Dillie Keane

Published Monday 25 July 2005 at 12:25

In 1981, I was performing at a long-defunct pub theatre in Camden Town in a show I had written. An actress I knew slightly had gathered a group of us together to put on a show but when we read her truly appalling script, I pulled out a short play I had written while temping and the cast quickly voted to do it. It was called A Slice of Life With Footnotes and it was a dear and funny little piece of nonsense set in the office of a factory, complete with songs.

Somehow we found an audience and were soon playing to respectable houses. One night, I was approached by a dishevelled American who introduced himself as Dan Crawford, artistic director of the Kings Head Theatre in Islington. He had liked the play “verrry much, it was verrry amusing” and to cut a short story shorter, we took the play to the Kings Head for a month. It was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to me. And so began a long and delightful relationship which brought me much enjoyable and badly paid work over the years. I have fond memories of the time my solo show went up 25 minutes late because someone sitting by the fire realised her chair was burning. And the occasion the lights went out because the meter hadn’t been re-filled.

Last week, on the same day the second lot of bombers attempted to bring death and destruction to London, I attended Dan’s funeral. It was a beautiful English summer’s day and the turnout was impressive. Steven Berkoff and Maureen Lipman brought the house down with affectionate and hilarious reminiscences. We sang the songs Dan had chosen himself - Jerusalem, Spread a Little Happiness, God Save the Queen and Follow the Fellow. From anyone else, such choices might have been cheesy but for the man who had fallen in love with England sometime in the late sixties, it was perfect.

There are those who could never stand the Kings Head - the endless bucket collections for the leaking roof, the awful dinners, the terrible shows he was forced to allow in because they paid the rent that kept the place going, the ghastly seating. But that’s missing the point. What came across in each encomium was the charm and decency of the man, the Quixotic bravery he showed in keeping his tatty old theatre open in the teeth of a thousand cuts, the dizzying breadth of his taste, his quiet belief in God and, perhaps above all, his love of England. As British theatre becomes more crushingly corporate, there is less room for visionary mavericks like Dan and life is infinitely poorer for his passing.