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" I fell in love with the 'Music Hall' when I was about six years old, just a short while after the end of the Second World War. Strictly speaking it wasn't 'Music Hall' that I fell for, but 'Variety'. the final flowering of a popular entertainment, which had begun in the music halls of London a hundred years before. I have never thought of it as 'Variety', however, and I still don't. In our house it was always referred to as the 'Music Hall'.
I'd been out shopping with my Grandmother, in the centre of Leeds, and she'd ducked into the Empire Theatre half way through a matinee performance, in the hope that the rain might have stopped by the time we got out. I was enchanted. There was a red curtain that glided in and out, as the various acts came and went. Numbers lit up on either side of the stage, so you could check the number of the act in the programme. There were singers, dancers, acrobats, jugglers and comedians. Music floated from the orchestra pit, white faces grinned in the limelight... there was colour, sweat and sawdust, jokes I didn't understand, and the occasional glimpse of cleavage and bare leg. As a child I'd had problems with the cinema, if the story looked like it might end unhappily, I was in floods of tears, if a gun was pulled out, I was under the seat with my fingers in my ears, but the 'Music Hall' suited me fine. And with each act predictably following the next, I was lulled into a sense of security. I felt at home. And I remained a fan until Rock 'n' Roll exploded into all our lives in 1954.
It didn't occur to me to write about the 'Music Hall' until 30 years later. During the intervening years I had worked with the comedian Billy Russell, and I had become good friends of Max Wall, playing opposite him in a wilfully anarchic production of Ubu Roi at the Royal Court. Nor was I alone in my fascination with this form of popular culture, both Tony Harrison and Trevor Griffiths were equally drawn to it; particularly to the character of Frank Randle whose subversive and uncompromisingly vulgar approach to comedy had at one time made him a working class hero.
It was a desire to write about such a hero that finally drove me to start work on the play. The character of 'Reg Henson' isn't exactly a portrait of Frank Randle, but it's very close. Reg, however, identifies with the class that have put him on a pedestal. And yet deep inside there's a contempt for the fact that, unlike him, they haven't been able to get out of the gutter, a contempt which he keeps hidden, even from himself. It's as if his ego is unknowingly feeding off the privations and the suffering of the class he represents. A working class hero is never an easy thing to be. Sentimental affection can often mask an inner hostility. Adulation can quickly turn to resentment. Violence and sentimentality are never far apart. " - Jack Shepherd, 2008
Jack Shepherd was born in Leeds and studied art at King's College Newcastle, after which he went to the Central School of Speech and Drama, and was a student founder of the Drama Centre.
He was at the Royal Court in the sixties, starring in plays by Edward Bond and David Storey. A decade later he joined the Bill Bryden Company at the NT, playing leading roles in works by Eugene O'Neill and David Mamet, featuring in the by now legendary production of 'The Mysteries'.
As a writer, Jack began devising plays for the theatre in the sixties, yet it wasn't until 1989 that he wrote his first play for the theatre: 'In Lambeth', a play about William Blake and Tom Paine, which won a Time Out award. As did his jazz play 'Chasing the Moment', five years later.
He has since written 'Half Moon', a play about artists in wartime; 'Through a Cloud', about Milton and Cromwell; and the epic 'Holding Fire', first performed at Shakespeare's Globe last year.
'Only When I Laugh' is a reworking of the play 'Comic Cuts' written in 1996 and first performed by Triptych Theatre in the same year. The original play was commissioned by Triptych, and was very much a group piece. In this version the focus is much more on the central theme: the fallibility of the Working Class hero.
Nicky Henson will direct. As well as having a long and very successful career in the industry, Nicky's father was a famous Music Hall Comedian - in fact Jack named his lead character, Reg Henson, after Leslie.
On stage he has performed for many major theatres including The National Theatre and the RSC; having leading roles in Look Back in Anger , Man and Superman , Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead , She Stoops to Conquer , Noises Off and many Shakespeare plays. He made his Broadway debut in a production of An Ideal Husband , opposite Stephanie Beacham. He was nominated for a 1998 Laurence Olivier Theatre Award for Best Supporting Performance in a Musical of 1997 for his role in Enter the Guardsman. As a founder member of the Young Vic Company he played Pozzo in Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot .
Some of his most notable television roles include the Fawlty Towers episode The Psychiatrist , and playing DS Harry Finlay in A Touch of Frost. He later joined EastEnders in February 2006, playing 'Jack Edwards'. His film appearances include Witchfinder General (1968), There's a Girl in My Soup (1970), Psychomania (1971), Vera Drake (2004), and Syriana (2005).
Nicky's directing includes Funny About Love for Chichester & Tour; and Bedroom Farce for Little Theatre Sherringham.
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