Christopher Gray reports back after attending the Oxford Playhouse production of The Caucasian Chalk Circle

Last week’s admirable production of Bertolt Brecht’s The Caucasian Chalk Circle at Oxford Playhouse was one of many given over the years by student theatre groups. The very first was in 1959 and was the subject of some controversy. The story is told in fading clippings I found in a file at Newspaper House while hunting out my previous reviews of the play. I think the tale worth retelling today, not least for the opportunity to air some well-known names involved in it.

An unusual feature of the production was that it was not put on by Oxford University Dramatic Society, the Experimental Theatre Club or any of the college theatre groups. It was the work of Oxford University Labour Club.

Brecht, of course, has always had a strong appeal to the left, though his own politics are not always easy to divine from his writing. In this case, the impulse to stage the piece would appear to have come from the fact that the club’s chairman was one of the leading Oxford actors of the day.

This was Dennis Potter, a New College undergraduate later to find fame as a writer for television, one of the best there has ever been. He was also taking the leading role of Azdak, the boozy proletarian judge who settles the custody battle over a child that is central to the action.

The play was first in the news when a ban on performances, which were scheduled to be given at the Town Hall, was imposed by the Proctors, the annually elected officers whose role is to see that Oxford University operates in accordance with its statutes.

Their action was never officially explained but appeared to arise from a belief that all clubs should confine themselves to activities relating to the reason for their formation, in this case politics.

Their decision was first reported in the student newspaper Cherwell on January 21. In the report, Potter was quoted as saying: “This play will be produced whatever happens.” Cherwell’s Godfrey Morrison supplied telling detail when he wrote: “Support has come from some Labour members of Parliament who have sent financial assistance.”

Who these political ‘angels’ were — one of them at least — only became known after the ban was lifted. The power of the gentleman involved may have had something to do with the fact that this happened within a day of Cherwell’s report.

On February 19, with the production still two weeks away, a number of national newspapers reported that a student actress involved in it was none other than the elder daughter of Hugh Gaitskell. Dennis Potter said the Labour leader had given “two guineas” to the production (ah, those long-ago guineas!) and “had a whip round the Commons smoking room to raise more”.

It was noted with amusement that Julia Gaitskell was playing ‘against type’ in the play as the aristocratic wife of a corrupt governor. One of her lines was gleefully quoted from the trial scene: “At least there are no common people here, thank God. I can’t stand their smell. It always gives me migraine.”

Political columnist Simon Ward wrote (where, I am unsure, since the cutting isn’t stamped): “I shall be looking forward to Mr Gaitskell’s facial expressions on the first night when Julia speaks those limes [sic — comically so].”

The Oxford Mail of February 19 said it was “rumoured” that Gaitskell would be there, in the company of a galaxy of other Labour stars, including Lord Pakenham (later Longford/Porn), John Strachey and Hugh Dalton.

I think it unlikely he did, though, for no mention was made of his presence in the first night review of the production which was penned by Peter Sykes, who later edited The Oxford Times.

In fact he scarcely mentioned Julia, merely stating that she had “a minor role”. Peter praised the laughter-making of Potter as the judge (a quality shared with last week’s Azdak Luke Rollason). As one of “two performances that saved the night” he cited the work of Margaret Forster, as the baby-rescuing maid Grusha. She later wrote the novel (soon filmed) Georgie Girl, among much else. The child was played by a loud-bawling Jane Nimmo-Smith, aged five, whom I would get to know in the Oxford of the 1970s.

Julia Gaitskell gave up the stage soon after to work on her degree at Somerville (where her younger sister Cressida studied too). She gained a second in PPE in July 1961, as did her fellow Somervillian Margaret Callaghan, the daughter of another Labour leader, ‘Sunny Jim’ Callaghan.

Both women bettered the showing in the same school of another child of a famous dad. David Dimbleby, the son of the BBC legend Richard Dimbleby, achieved only a third. Perhaps he had spent too much time editing Isis.