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| From veg stalls to Broadway |
Three years ago it was threatened with closure,
now the Angel Puppet Theatre is off to the Big Apple, writes Peter
Gruner
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Bernard Kops pictured in his garden in West Hampstead
Actor Warren Mitchell
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AFTER 38 years in his home in West Hampstead you might have thought
Bernard Kops would have got used to his neighbours.
“I’ve written a poem this morning,” says Mr Kops
– East End fruit seller turned internationally renowned playwright
– with a mischievous grin as he pulls out his morning’s
work.
“I can’t tell you who it’s about but they live around
here. It’s probably libellous.” At the grand old age of
79, Mr Kops – who still wakes at 5am to pen poems and conjure
plays – thrives on, as he describes it, “the shock of
inspiration”.
Speaking from his ground floor flat, the East End legend spoke frankly
about his work, youthful exuberance and why he feels lucky to be
alive.
Mr Kops’ first job was selling fruit from a wheelbarrow in
the East End. He began writing plays at the end of World War II
but it as not until 1958 that he hit the big time.
His 1958 play, The Hamlet of Stepney Green, received international
acclaim – the break that set the fruit-selling wordsmith off
on a writing career in 1960s Soho.
Mr Kops remembers Soho well – and will appear in a BBC documentary
to be broadcast in October about the period – but he soon tired
of Bloomsbury and moved to the relative tranquillity of Canfield
Gardens where he has lived with his wife Erica since 1968.
“Soho was desperate, earnest, fantastic,” he says. “But
it all began to change – with The Beatles particularly. After
a while we decided to move on. We just got out the map and decided
on Swiss Cottage. It seemed like as good a place as any. Now I couldn’t
live anywhere else.”
Mr Kops has built up a mini utopia, complete with his wife, children,
and grandchildren, all living around the vast green space within
his block of mansion flats.
The setting has been as much an inspiration to him as the East End,
and not just for his enemies.
In 1988, he wrote the anthology Barricades in West Hampstead –
which includes a short poem about the importance of his family and
his “ridiculous oasis” away from the “heartless conversions
that threaten to engulf West Hampstead”.
But despite the world changing around him, Mr Kops resists lamenting
the collapse of society – and prefers to look to a brave new
world.
“We are moving towards the big mix,” he says confidently,
referring to London’s emerging multiculturalism. “The
differences between then and now are in people’s expectations.
When I was growing up it was out of the question for a Jewish boy
to have any ambition.
“Now I have a drama class with many British Muslims and they
all believe they can succeed. More and more people realise they
are capable of art and beauty. There is genius in every one.”
Mr Kops tells of a number of brushes with death, the pick of the
bunch being aboard a coach in the Amazonian rainforest.
“We were making our way down a mountain when the coach skidded
off a ravine. A man was catapulted on to me. He had a white shirt
on and when he got up it was covered in blood.
“I thought ‘this is a banal sort of death’.”
Banal or not, Mr Kops near misses have become part of his identity.
“I’m a survivor – that’s my real success,”
he says.
From the outside, Mr Kops “success” will be judged on
his extensive bibliography.
With three plays debuting in New York this autumn, and the 79-year-old
seemingly pushing 18, Mr Kops looks unlikely to let up anytime soon.
“I get up at 5am every day. I write until 8am,” he says.
“You can’t be creative for longer than that. And then
I go for a walk on the Heath with my wife. I’ve been doing
the same thing every day for 25 years.
“Health is so important. That’s part of the reason why
I walk.”
He grew up in abject poverty in Stepney Green. He had seven siblings
who shared two beds in an attic. They had no money and in his biography,
Mr Kops writes of a hungry childhood. But every cloud has a silver
lining.
“My doctor says all the years of starvation have helped me
in the long run,” says Kops, “I never got fat and I don’t
really feel old – and I’m lucky I can still go for walks
with my wife everyday.”
But Mr Kops looks back on the misery of his past with optimism.
“My doctor says all the years of starvation have helped me
in the long run. I never got fat and I don’t really feel old.
“We usually drive to White Stone pond and then go from there.
For 25 years we’ve never taken the same route. Today it was
Parliament Hill because we wanted to see that enormous table and
chair – The Writer.
“That really blows the mind – the sheer size of it. It
makes you feel wonderfully insignificant.”
Any mention of the Heath and Mr Kops’s eyes light up. The enthusiasm
and inspiration he takes from his surroundings helps to understand
why he still wakes each day so religiously to write. “The Heath
is a miraculous place,” he explains. “When you walk through
North Woods or the Heath extension, it’s like Queen Mab is
there, or Ill Met By Moonlight. It’s a brooding mystery. A
lot of people do not appreciate what they have on their doorstep.”
Mr Kops is equally excited by the gridded city of New York.
And his work is comfortable there too. With his next three plays
moving away from their spiritual home at Hampstead’s New End
Theatre to the Big Apple.
“I have become accepted in the US now. It is so difficult to
get anything on in England at the moment.
“Most theatres are booked three years in advance – it’s
very unusual to squeeze anything into their schedule.”
And how does Mr Kops feel about his new relationship with the USA?
“Things are very different now. In the old days everything
was black and white. We were fighting for good against evil –
socialism against fascism. Now everything is so blurred. It’s
hard to tell where anyone stands.
“Acquiescence is the greatest danger facing the world at the
moment.”
Judging by Mr Kops’ morning poetry tirade, acquiescence looks
unlikely in West Hampstead.
Next week, Warren Mitchell – who played the lead in Mr Kops’s
play Moss but is best remembered as the irascible Alf Garnett –
will read excerpts from Mr Kops’s work at East London Synagogue
in tribute to one of the greatest playwrights to emerge from the
East End.
• An Evening with Bernard Kops takes place at the East London
Synagogue, 30-40 Nelson Street, E1, at 5pm, Sunday, September 11.
Tickets are £10 from Clive Bettington on 07941 327 882. |
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