Tony's Bench

This beautiful bench is now in Bury Knowle Park in Headington, near Geoff and Phil's home and near where Tony died in Oxford. It is part of a story tree, with three other benches, and was carved by artist Matt Cave. The inscription reads 'There's a great spirit gone' Tony Church 1930 - 2008. These photos were taken on Tuesday 14th April.

Geoff

Memories from Martin Best

What a long way we go back. That’s my first thought. 1963 it was, when Tony was playing Lockit in Peter Wood’s production of the Beggar’s Opera for the RSC. It was in that experience that I first started to acquire my practical musicianship and stagecraft. I watched, listened and digested in rehearsal, and cannot forget the time when Tony was fed the contents of a prop bottle by, I think, Virginia McKenna, not realising that the contents hadn’t actually been checked. His reaction was, like so many of Tony’s reactions, understated but vivid – which is why I remember it today.

Then, in 1965, I joined the RSC as permanent member of the musical part of the ensemble, and I will never forget the feeling I had on being told, by John Barton, that I was to re-arrange the music for the Hollow Crown and play the Angel Gabriel in the Second Shepherds’ play, as well as compose the music for it. Tony was going to be one of the Wise Men; and he was going also to be part of the Hollow Crown cast. We performed that new version for the first time in the Conference Hall in the summer of 1966. I was terrified, but not so much so that I was unable to appreciate again Tony’s ability to understate to the maximum effect. His Henry VIII was so perfect, and so true. As he swept the pen to one side to get rid of imaginary drops of ink, as he paused to add the afterthought of ‘and heart’ to the earthy reality of ‘body’, the person who was Henry came to life in all his humour and cruelty. When he bent his knees ever so slightly to underline Walpole’s statement that ‘the guards were magnificent’, you caught an immediate sense of the man and his period: military, Regency, and utterly English.

I went on to do more performances of the Hollow Crown than almost anyone else, and became something of a connoisseur of how these remarkable vignettes coincided with the personalities of the performers. The thing about Tony was that he was always fresh and vital in his line of characters; he was always poetic, by which I mean that it was always clear that his poetic values guided him to the truth of the weight, period and style of the text; and he was always unerringly economic.

The same was true of his Polonius to David Warner’s Hamlet, which I was able to observe as one of the musicians. His cry of ‘you talk like a green girl’ to Ophelia seemed to summon up the whole of Polonius’ nature, and I hear it now as I write, clear as when he did it in 1965. Only Tony could do it quite like that, because it projected the kind of Pooterish assumed authority which Tony could mimic so perfectly, and which Polonius surely possesses. Tony was not called The Established for nothing. He understood about the backroom boy’s interests, the spy’s priorities, and the courtier’s sources of irony. Of all the Poloniuses one is likely to see, Tony’s is a benchmark.

Then Tony gave me one of the great opportunities of my life, to go to Exeter and create, with Robin Phillips, a new version of the Beggar’s Opera for the Northcott Theatre. This was in 1968, and comprised the loveliest of all the experiences I have ever had in the theatre. The theatre itself was perfection, the company was outstandingly happy, and the houses were always full. Tony gave his Lockit again, and every performance we looked forward to him singing ‘What gudgeons are we men’ in his inimitable faux cockney and his instinctive sense of musical humour. It was just the way he did it that made you laugh, and delight in it. It was perfect.
And it was Tony who gave me that chance to develop as a writer and musical director in the theatre; to prove myself in uncharted territory. When the run was over I was bereft. It was one of the happiest times of my life, and our daughter, born during rehearsals, is called Lucy so as to keep it alive in our family memory. I went on to two more versions of the Beggars’ Opera, each one grounded in that early experience made possible by Tony – one at Chichester, and one for the National Youth Music Theatre.

Tony was always a great appreciator of people and their talent and their performances. Reviewers have remarked that he was a supporting actor, without recognising fully the nature of that support. Tony had a deeply educated understanding of text; a profound influence on any play he was in that sprang from his holistic understanding of its structure; and an ability to make a unique mark with the utmost judgement.

And he was a good mate, a good friend, and of course I’ll miss him, dear old Established. He will be up there now, telling them all how he was the first to hear and share the latest gossip (“Oh yes, well of course I was there when the serpent first tempted Eve, and you what really happened….oh? didn’t you know?). He is part of the common currency of those of us who remain. We all think of him, we’ll all remember him, and we are all privileged to have been part of his life, and to have had him in ours, as an artist and as a human being.

Martin Best
28 May 2008

Message from Amy Alexander

In 1996, I was privileged to give birth to Tony’s first grandchild, Max. I remember Tony first coming to see Max at our home. He took Max in his arms, held him up and laughed in delight.
“ Oh what a fine boy” were his words.

Tony was an excellent grandfather. He gave his two grandchildren, Daisy and Max so much of his attention, so much care, so much wisdom. Although Tony lived out of the UK, Max was especially close to his grandpa, and the connection that they shared was magical. Max loved going to Greece to visit his Grandpa Tony, and the first time Max ever saw snow was with his Grandpa when Tony lived in Denver.

I know that Max feels the loss of his Grandpa Tony deeply. Max will miss him, and cherish the memories they created together with his entire heart.

Tribute from Stephanie Cozart

Stephanie Cozart, Actor

I was in the last class at NTC for which Tony was active dean (and teacher). I'll never forget his phone call that came in the spring of 1994, inviting me to come to the conservatory. My roommate (in a thick East Texas dialect) shouted, "Oh my GAWD! There's a British guy on the phone!" It was my future calling. (That call led to everything--my career, my best friends, even my marriage). And for 3 years Tony stood as the shining example of the only way you can conduct yourself in the theatre: with total respect for yourself and your fellow artists, with ABSOLUTE, childlike delight and enthusiasm towards EVERY SINGLE THING you attempt, and with humbled, breathless awe that you've been given the opportunity to participate. No room for petty people. He made us feel we were above all that; we were ARTISTS. And we felt that, through him, we were connected to legends: Edith Evans, John Gielgud, William Shakespeare, for God's sake. We were a part of this great tradition, so we'd damn well better conduct ourselves accordingly! Months after I graduated, I was cast in my first Equity show: as Hypatia in Misalliance at the Denver Center, with Tony as Lord Summerhays. THE Tony Church was proposing to me onstage, and I was flirtatiously rebuking and tormenting him. It was a giddy thing. A feeling of arrival. In recent years, when I come back to Denver, I've been given the privilege of teaching NTC students myself. On the first day of class I tell them about this grand tradition they are joining, and how Tony Church showed me what that means.

Tribute from Kate Clarvoe

Kate Clarvoe, Actor

I worked with Tony over a dozen years ago at the Denver Center and the memory is fresh in my mind and brings a warm smile to my face – Tony is just not a person you forget! His knowledge and passion were bottomless. I had the pleasure of acting with his brilliant Einstein in Uncertainty and his turn in Dancing at Lughnasa as the wild Uncle Jack was a joy to behold. Most of all I remember how much he loved his work and living.

Tribute from Patrick Stewart

The first time I saw Tony Church act he was doing what he did best and almost without equal; bringing into life a complex text, speaking the blank verse with precision, sensitivity, irony and truthfulness. He was Polonius in Peter Hall’s great Hamlet, with David Warner as the Prince. His Councilor to Brewster Mason’s towering Claudius was shrewd, manipulative, dangerous, misleadingly comic and silky smooth. He was, for me, the Polonius of my generation. One day, I suppose, I might be fortunate to play the role and though I will struggle to find a fresh insight into the tragic/foolish figure, Tony’s interpretation will constantly tug at my sleeve and memory will draw me towards what I witnessed in 1965.

Sitting in the audience at The Aldwych Theatre, the Royal Shakespeare Company’s London home, I was an outsider, a young, provincial actor pressing my nose against the window pane that displayed the dazzling work of the greatest Shakespearean company in the world. That Hamlet, audacious, provocative, intelectual, chalenging, exciting, real, was only the second time I had seen the recently created RSC at work. A year or so earlier I had seen John Barton’s glorious ‘sandpit’ Troilus and Cressida with Ian Holm, Peter O’Toole and Max Adrian – breathtaking. Now with this Hamlet before me, I knew that I had one ambition, and one ambition only; to become a part of this company, this collection of talent, this asemblage of brilliance – and six months later, I was.

Following a gruelling audition with Peter and John I had been offered one season of modest work; to understudy Paul Rogers as Falstaff and to play Sir Walter Blunt and Lord Mowbray in the Henry IV’s, The Dauphin in Henry V and take over the First Player/Player King in that same Hamlet in its revival at Stratford. Now I could watch these actors in close up and Tony I learned was to be the King in Henry IV. That meant I would be on stage with him in several scenes. Him, and the awesome, intimidating Ian Holm. In fact at the very start of the first day that I showed up for rehearsals ( that rehearsal room being what is now the Donmar Theatre), we were to read and put on its feet the opening scene of Henry IV Part 1. “So shaken as we are, so wan with care…” Clifford Williams was directing the rehearsal – this was the season of a triumvirate of directors – and after one simple read through of the scene, he turned to the handful of us actors – Michael Jayston as Exeter being one – and said; “So, what do you think?” What did we think? What did I think? Nothing. Nothing at all. No director had ever asked me that question before. But while my brain was still in shock, Tony Church had started talking and although I must have missed it, I am sure his first word was “Well…?” Over the years I got very familiar with this word in Tony’s mouth. Exasperated, querelous, somewhat patronising. Yes, Tony was talking, and talking….and talking. I had never heard so many words emerge from one actors mouth so articulately and passionately. He was talking about the scene, about Henry, about the back story, the objectives, the context, the language, the imagery, the line endings, even the other characters in the scene. What a nerve.

I had gone from shock to mouth agape amazement and finally to terror as I realised Clifford would shortly look in my direction and it would be my turn to ‘say what I thought.’ What I thought? I was an actor. I had come to act, not to think. But now the other actors were joining in a free for all discussion, half of which went right over my head. It was clear that just like Tony, they had been reading, studying, researching, preparing, though none of them with the thoroughness and analytical dissection of T.Church. It was not for nothing that Tony was known in the company and for all his life as The Established Church.

But I was ashamed and humiliated and that morning, mouth dry and perspiring, I made a promise to myself that I would never, never be caught in such a situation again. I would be ready. And my first lesson in readyness would be to get Tony Church in a corner of The Duck, put a pint in his hand and ask him how he did it. Well… I did it and he did it and that is how Tony became my mentor all through that long, thrilling spring, summer and glorious autumn in Warwickshire.

I listened to Tony and I watched him. I studied how the brain and the heart and great language can be fused into ‘life’ on stage. I also began to learn what it means to be a ‘Leading’ actor. What the responsibilties are and where the dynamic lies. That you lead from the front. Not just talking about what you are going to do, but doing it, boldly and fearlessly, never looking over your shoulder to see if anyone is following. And doing it with humour, something I put into practise every night as my company hack and hurtle themselves through Rupert Goulds fantastic Macbeth. There must be room for laughter, for the twinkle in an actor’s eye that the audience never sees, for the ‘in-joke’ and accident that will be giggled over for the rest of the evening. Like last night my being caught by the lights going up for the interval trying to walk through a wall, instead of through the down left exit.

I was the victim of Tony and Ian Holms ‘twinkling’ at the end of the great confrontation scene in Henry Part 1 between the King and Prince Hal. I would stand in the dark behind John Bury’s great iron clad door, waiting to make Sir Walter Blunt’s entrance at the end of this stupendous scene, acted by Tony and Ian with ferocity and eye blazing anger and pain. On cue I would stride through the door - and only once did I let it close on my cloak, thereby pinning me to the wall, at which the two of them just laughed out loud – annoucing some boring rebel troop movements, the King and Hal would share a look and after an interminable pause Tony would say, with mockery dripping from his lips; “Sir Walter Blunt, this news is five days old.” The audience would laugh (relief after the flesh tearing scene they had just witnessed), Tony and Ian would twinkle and I, for the whole long season, never found a reaction appropriate to this put down.

I only acted twice more with Tony at the RSC. Once when he took over from David Waller as a wicked Pandarus in an ill conceived Eurpean tour and again replacing the same actor as Tubal to my Shylock.

And there are other reason for my gratitude towards Tony. One being that on that same European tour, in a restaurant in Geneva he insisted that I order Osso Bucco, of which I had never heard, but which has become my immediate dish of choice whenever I see it on a menu.

However, there is nothing I shall be more grateful to Tony for than inviting me to join him, Lisa Harrow, Bernard Lloyd and Charles Keating in a six week tour of American universities under the title Actors in Residence (AIR). This programme, created by our dear friend and visionary teacher, Homer D. Swander, Professor of English at The Universiry of California at Santa Barbara, put RSC actors into classrooms to share with students their passion and knowledge of Shakespeare. Now Tony was a Cambridge graduate and I left my Secondary Modern School at fifteen without even a diploma, but he convinced me that I could walk into the classroom of a distinguised university English Department and not only have something to say, but believe I had reason and right to say it.

And that brings me back to where I began. There have been many people over the years who have reached out a hand and given me a hoist up to the next level of work and living. But Tony did it to me all through the years of our friendship. And recently, from his hospial bed, he cheered out loud when I told him I was going back to the RSC, at last to give my Claudius in Hamlet. In Oliver Ford Davis I know there will be another brilliant Polonius, but Oliver you will have to live with the certainty that, for me, whenever I hear you speak, there will be a faint echo of a predecessor, friend, teacher and fine actor, the too soon gone, Tony

Tribute from Chris Wiger

Chris Wiger, Publicist, Denver Center Theatre Company

Tony was a friend and mentor to me. More than anyone in my life, Tony Church made me proud of my profession. He made me understand why I love to tell people about the theatre.