Laughing all the way to the South Bank

By Julie Myerson, FT.com site

Published: Mar 08, 2008 

The first time I ever went to London's National Theatre, it was just for a drink. In London for the weekend, I was taken by a boyfriend - a man whose glamour only seemed enhanced by the fact that he knew his way around the South Bank. As we sipped vodka on those vast terraces overlooking the muddy Thames, I sensed that I was in a mammoth place, a mysterious, unfathomable complex. A place I would never find my way around - or even, possibly, out of.

The second time I went there was for a job interview. I got the job - my first job. And though I would never have predicted it, over the next few years, the "mammoth place" became as comfortable and easy to navigate as any home I'd ever had. In some ways, more so.

Because, while I nomaded my way around a series of not very enticing London flats and bedsits (as described so often in these pages), I came to regard this huge, concrete piece of modernist architecture as the one reliable thing in my life: my comfort, my rock. First, it was big and exciting and crammed with clever, creative people. I was only a secretary in the press office but it seemed to me that I suddenly had unfettered access to some of the most fascinating souls in the world.

And then, there was always something going on. Always! This was no nine to five place. All day the building buzzed with energy and activity but at night - just as most of my friends who worked in offices were trudging off home - the main action here was just getting going. The shows. The whole reason we were there in the first place.

I saw them all, some of them several times over. I loved them all, too. I was in love with theatre and when I watched those shows, everything made sense and, almost for the first time in my life, I felt as if I was really part of something. It was very hard, some nights, to find any motivation at all to go back to my bedsit. If I'd been allowed to sleep the night there, I definitely would have.

Because this place, this beautiful, gracious, concrete building - its public spaces somehow magically designed to spring to life as people flowed in - had everything a home could possibly need. There was food - the subsidised canteen stayed open all day and evening. And warmth - it was always warm. Often in the winter months, living in bedsits without central heating, I rushed to my office early, an hour or so before everyone else came in, just to warm up.

But it wasn't just about food and warmth. After a few months I realised I was getting to know my way around this place which only a year ago I'd found so daunting. One of the benefits of being in the press office was that we, probably more than almost anyone else, had to liaise with every single department. My favourite task - in those days before e-mail - was to be asked to deliver a memo. Fifteen or sometimes 20 copies (laboriously typed, then photocopied by me) would need to be distributed into pigeon holes around the building.

It could take half an hour. Casting, directors' office, stage door, post room, education, marketing. And then the fun ones: rehearsal rooms, costumes, wigs and - best of all - right on down to props, an enormous warehouse-type space in the building's heart where sets were built and (or so it seemed to me then) bearded men in overalls just sat around next to piles of Roman helmets, making jokes and drinking tea.

The only space that always eluded me, the only place I always got lost, were the dressing rooms. So many of them, and so confusingly numbered. Long lino corridors where you could take a fatal wrong turn and find yourself right back where you started. Once, attempting to lead the actress Julie Walters to a dressing room where she was to be interviewed by a journalist over a large plate of sandwiches, I lost my nerve and tripped, throwing the entire plate over the floor.

Her response - "Oh never mind, let's pick them up, they're never going to know" (laughing and grabbing bits of buttered bread and cramming the fillings back in as quickly as she could) - was every bit as generous and kind as my experience of the whole building. Everywhere you went, people helped you, inspired you, saved your bacon. I had never been so at home and happy in a place.

Meanwhile, though, there was something else. I loved the theatre and everything about it but, deep down, I really wanted to be a writer. And here, finally, wondrously, I had access to an electric typewriter. So on those early freezing mornings, I didn't just come in to warm up, but to write. Short stories. Poems. The beginning of what might one day be a novel.

It never once occurred to me that this might be a strange thing to do. Here I was in a place where people didn't just talk about art, they got on and did it. And here was I, doing the same. Looking back, it was that unequivocal sense that I had as much right as anyone else, that deep excitement, that the building conveyed to me. No place could have been more homely and inspiring to a 23-year-old would-be writer, and I feel today that I owe it a large debt of gratitude. Not to mention a few typewriter ribbons.