Pulling it off
Asking a resting actor to review the biography of a top producer is like asking a sheep to eat a shepherd. I was trained as a boy to hate theatrical producers by my father the actor Hugh Williams. To him they were common penny-pinching bastards. But the photographs of Michael Codron at Oxford smouldering like Al Pacino remind me what a high percentage of the great evenings I’ve had in the theatre are down to him. Not for nothing is he known as El Codrone. Calm and benevolent, he has been in the driving seat of West End theatre for over 50 years. The title of the book itself is pleasingly ambiguous. Does it refer to his shows (plenty), his airs and graces (no more than the rest of us) or his weight (… a little)?
