Life is full of strange connections. In the cast of The Country Wife at Bristol there’d been Philippa Gail, the wife of David Conville. For nearly twenty years, David had been in charge of the Open Air Theatre in Regent’s Park, and was looking for a composer for his next production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Philippa, egged on by James Cairncross (who was to play Peter Quince) put my name forward. After an interview with David, who was so easy-going it was impossible not to get on with him, I got the job.
There were more connections in the cast, both with the recent past and, as I can now see, a semi-distant future. Bottom and Snout were played by Berwick Kaler and Michael Remick, who had been Dame and sidekick in the York pantomime I’d written songs for only a few months before. And in the very supporting role of the fairy Cobweb was Douglas Hodge, recently out of drama school, with whom I was to work again a decade later at the National Theatre.
The whole experience, apart from terrible hay fever during outdoor rehearsals, was so pleasant that when David kindly asked me to return for another production of the play with a different director, I accepted. That was not to turn out so well…
