Ken

Ken Campbell was memorable. I find myself remembering his quips and musings often. Only a couple of days ago, I was recalling one of his comic directorial diatribes as I watched a theatre production.

“Most theatre,” he said, “is so boring, you’d rather be watching traffic.” He went on to complain that most plays feel four times as long as they are, an effect intentionally striven for in Germany (he claimed) thus maximising their arts funding.

But Terry Johnson’s play (or, perhaps, slice of memoir) KEN at the Hampstead Theatre Downstairs flew by. I found myself flung out in the Swiss Cottage night clinging on to the magical sense of paradigms shifted.

“What I wanted to do was take people back,” says Terry. And as the play draws to a close, we see Ken watching the video of the 1970s Warp transfixed, remembering it as “a time when I still had hope.”

KEN certainly takes us back. I was perched on the side of the stage, dangling in a hanging basket seat, and when Jeremy Stockwell turned his Ken eyebrows upon my (“like nodding yaks”), I was back in 1997-1998, rehearsing at Fatty Towers and in Epping Forest, performing at Three Mills Island, Hoxton Hall and the Deptford Albany.

Rehearsing with Ken & Alan Cox in Epping Forest 1997. I’m playing Eveline, one of the founders of the Findhorn Community. Hence the wigs.

Terry takes us on a ride through his experiences with this unforgettable man. People have called Ken Campbell a maverick, comedic innovator, an inspiration, a towering figure in the underculture of British theatre. Certainly true, and graduates of his alternative drama world include Jim Broadbent, Bill Nighy, Bill Drummond, Bob Hoskins, Sylvester McCoy, and Terry Johnson himself, and later Nina Conti, Alan Cox, Dallas Campbell and Eliot Levey.

But Ken was also goading, irascible and demanding. A key moment in the play – and in Johnson’s life – was Ken tapping his sternum and saying, “You’ve got a switch, and it’s off.”

I could understand; rather like Terry, I was a writer bamboozled by the stellar talents around me in the late 1990s production of The Warp (though I couldn’t plumb a toilet). I’d retreated to the band (along with a couple of walk-on parts); Terry stuck it out long enough to suffer as Zaphod’s second head in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, then struck out to pursue his writing.

It was a tough school, and we all suffered from the wrath of Ken:

“Rubbish! Go away and come back when you’re better.”

Jeremy Stockwell captures Ken uncannily. His rasping voice and impish gestures transported me back in time. While the wild directorial japes reduced the audience to giggles, I found myself close to tears. It brought it all back: the anecdotes about poet Neil Oram in a 2cv garage, the substance appreciation, the paradigm shifts and diaphanous costumes, Shutters defiant; and a glorious evocation of the 24-hour marathon play, with Russell Denton, Alan Cox, Oliver Senton and the other souls brave enough to take on the main part, Phil Masters.

We Who Have Been Through The Warp salute you, Terry Johnson. And thanks for the third act – a mischievous mystical treat.

“Just 2 weeks left @Hamps_Theatre A delight & an honour to play Ken Campbell with Terry Johnson. Book if you can xJ” Jeremy Stockwell on Twitter

Broadbent and Co.

Dallas Campbell, Elliot Levey and more Seekers.

More impish pics at: hampsteadtheatre.com/news/2016/april/ken-campbell-a-career-in-pictures/