The Pillowman, 2024 (Final theatre production)
His struggle was hard to watch, on his hands and knees, tackling the stairs of his flat, one agonising effort at a time. He wouldn’t let me help, so my role was a kind of ineffectual spotting. But I understood his way, his method, the fierce independence he maintained. At last, he crashed on his bed. We had returned from a venue during the 2024 tour of The Pillowman, which he directed. He was overjoyed to be working again, a play he had wanted to put on for many years. He summoned huge strength amid his illness to give us the delight of his amazing presence, the customary surgical direction, security, and fun.

The onlooker prepared to bid goodnight to the beached whale, while the camera dissolved through his astonishing portfolio of work and variety of hats he wore to younger days: the tour de force, still at school, strutting about the stage in Pillars of the Community, Tybalt filling the universe, let alone Framlingham Market Square, in Romeo and Juliet, his lovely singing voice displayed as Long John Silver in Treasure Island, too sadly never after exploited in his career.

John.

Resilience
His medical conditions signalled his frailty, but surely that big warm heart would melt the grim-dwelling goblins; he would manage somehow, carve his way through, taking time out every so often to shovel away residues of their pus, and, in the intervals, sally forth? He would only need hugs for vittles.

Fawlty
The ambition of his dramatic art à la Quentin B. DeMille was evident in projects like Fawlty Towers. To create three seasons of the BBC television sitcom for the stage with minimal resources, three episodes per evening, each tour highly successful, must be, in any impresario’s book, a phenomenal achievement. 

Pied Piper
Productions banked on a fair dose of goodwill from everyone involved, but with the genial Pied Piper at the helm, that infectious enthusiasm, a cloak that wrapped every individual, they followed gladly. John’s tune was unique.

And it’s that call from his pipe I will miss; the notes that played for our conversations that weren’t landlocked but sailed on a blue-sky sea, and stowaway thoughts that could spring from the shadows onto the deck; the overture that wanted to listen to and support the deepest secrets in the hold; the adagio after a get-out with beer and confession; even the ones on a recorded voice message, where the countermelody picked under their painful strangulation, because one day they would float up, be strong again, the rainbow of dots, and the moon would beam with vibrations of familiar distant tinsel-gunpowder laughter.

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