Skip to main content

The Man Who Lived Twice - John Gielgud, Edward Sheldon and A Bird of Paradise


As the power of celebrity dictates, when a beautiful A-list actor is 
courted by once-great writers, there's usually only one thing on both 
their minds. In the case of The Man Who Lived Twice, Garry Robson's new 
play for the disabled and non-disabled performer based Birds of 
Paradise company, it's a bit more complicated than that. As it imagines 
a real-life meeting between the young John Gielgud and the reclusive 
Edward Sheldon, Robson's play raises questions about the fleeting 
allure, not just of fame, but of the famous, as well as notions of 
sexuality and physical beauty.

Two days after Christmas 1936 when the meeting took place, twenty-eight 
year-old Gielgud was the toast of Broadway following his debut playing 
the title role in a smash-hit production of Hamlet, playing opposite 
Lillian Gish's Ophelia. Gielgud was also a closet homosexual at a time 
when such behaviour was not only taboo, but illegal.

Sheldon, meanwhile, who had scored hits with works such as his 1913 
play, Romance, which ran in London for more than a thousand 
performances prior to being made into a film starring Greta Garbo, was 
seemingly in hiding. Aged fifty at the time of the meeting, when he had 
been much the same age as Gielgud, he'd contracted rheumatoid 
arthritis, which eventually claimed his sight as well as the use of his 
limbs.

Retiring to his penthouse suite, Sheldon became a legendary figure 
somewhere between Howard Hughes and Andy Warhol, holding audiences with 
the era's beautiful people, who he would effectively mentor. Whatever 
went on at that fateful meeting in 1936, as Gielgud hinted at in two 
letters to his mother, the only known records of the liaison, his life, 
at least, was changed forever.

“I  was reading Gielgud's letters,” says Robson, “and he makes these 
two short references to this guy he'd spent a bit of time with in New 
York, who'd had this profound affect on him. I'd never heard of 
Sheldon, but I started looking into him, and it turned out that he was 
this playwright who was a kind of pre-cursor to Thornton Wilder in 
terms of bringing naturalism to the stage. The more I looked into it, 
it became clear that Sheldon was disabled in some way, and after all 
his limbs seized up, because he was quite a wealthy man, he set himself 
up in his penthouse in what almost became a portable theatre. It became 
quite a thing to be invited to see him, and he was a bit of a 
collector. If someone famous was in town, then they went to see 
Sheldon. He became this oracle, who never left his room, but stayed in 
touch with hundreds of people.”

One of these had been legendary actor John Barrymore, who Sheldon may 
have had an affair with. As a parting shot, Barrymore gifted Sheldon a 
pet macaw, who in Robson's play becomes an acerbic chorus on an an 
audience engineered by actress and muse of Bernard Shaw, Mrs Patrick 
Campbell. Whether Sheldon's intentions were honourable, however, isn't 
on record.

“It's clear he had issues with sexuality,” Robson says, “and in a way 
he was retreating from the body . He couldn't deal with his physical 
urges, and I think perhaps made himself a bit more disabled than he 
needed to be. This is a harsh version of Sheldon in the play. It's 
clear he was eminently useful to others, but somehow he missed out on 
himself.”

The Man Who Lived Twice, then, is according to Robson “about two men 
who are hiding things, and whether or not they came out of hiding when 
they met. It's also a play about how other people relate to people who 
are disabled. It's not a play about disability, but Gielgud at that 
time clearly knew a thing or two about the body beautiful, yet here he 
was, fully in tune with a man who was far from physically perfect.”

Did, one wonders, with the gossipy prurience of a latter-day celebrity 
rag, anything happen between the two men?

“I would doubt it,” Robson says bluntly. “I'm sure they got close, but 
how close is anybody's guess. Sheldon had a profound affect on Gielgud 
that lasted all of his life, but whether their meeting had the same 
affect on Sheldon is a mystery.”

The Man Who Lived Twice, The Arches, March 7-10, then tours

www.birdsofparadisetheatre.co.uk

The Herald, March 6th 2012

ends

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Ron Butlin - The Sound of My Voice

When Ron Butlin saw a man who’d just asked him the time throw himself under a train on the Paris Metro, it was a turning point in how his 1987 novel, The Sound Of My Voice, would turn out. Twenty years on, Butlin’s tale of suburban family man Morris Magellan’s existential crisis and his subsequent slide into alcoholism is regarded as a lost classic. Prime material, then, for the very intimate stage adaptation which opens in the Citizens Theatre’s tiny Stalls Studio tonight. “I had this friend in London who was an alcoholic,” Butlin recalls. “He would go off to work in the civil service in the morning looking absolutely immaculate. Then at night we’d meet, and he’s get mega-blootered, then go home and continue drinking and end up in a really bad state. I remember staying over one night, and he’d emerge from his room looking immaculate again. There was this huge contrast between what was going on outside and what was going on inside.” We’re sitting in a café on Edinburgh’s south sid

Losing Touch With My Mind - Psychedelia in Britain 1986-1990

DISC 1 1. THE STONE ROSES   -  Don’t Stop 2. SPACEMEN 3   -  Losing Touch With My Mind (Demo) 3. THE MODERN ART   -  Mind Train 4. 14 ICED BEARS   -  Mother Sleep 5. RED CHAIR FADEAWAY  -  Myra 6. BIFF BANG POW!   -  Five Minutes In The Life Of Greenwood Goulding 7. THE STAIRS  -  I Remember A Day 8. THE PRISONERS  -  In From The Cold 9. THE TELESCOPES   -  Everso 10. THE SEERS   -  Psych Out 11. MAGIC MUSHROOM BAND  -  You Can Be My L-S-D 12. THE HONEY SMUGGLERS  - Smokey Ice-Cream 13. THE MOONFLOWERS  -  We Dig Your Earth 14. THE SUGAR BATTLE   -  Colliding Minds 15. GOL GAPPAS   -  Albert Parker 16. PAUL ROLAND  -  In The Opium Den 17. THE THANES  -  Days Go Slowly By 18. THEE HYPNOTICS   -  Justice In Freedom (12" Version) 1. THE STONE ROSES    Don’t Stop ( Silvertone   ORE   1989) The trip didn’t quite start here for what sounds like Waterfall played backwards on The Stone Roses’ era-defining eponymous debut album, but it sounds

Big Gold Dreams – A Story of Scottish Independent Music 1977-1989

Disc 1 1. THE REZILLOS (My Baby Does) Good Sculptures (12/77)  2. THE EXILE Hooked On You (8/77) 3. DRIVE Jerkin’ (8/77) 4. VALVES Robot Love (9/77) 5. P.V.C. 2 Put You In The Picture (10/77) 6. JOHNNY & THE SELF ABUSERS Dead Vandals (11/77) 7. BEE BEE CEE You Gotta Know Girl (11/77) 8. SUBS Gimme Your Heart (2/78) 9. SKIDS Reasons (No Bad NB 1, 4/78) 10. FINGERPRINTZ Dancing With Myself (1/79)  11. THE ZIPS Take Me Down (4/79) 12. ANOTHER PRETTY FACE All The Boys Love Carrie (5/79)  13. VISITORS Electric Heat (5/79) 14. JOLT See Saw (6/79) 15. SIMPLE MINDS Chelsea Girl (6/79) 16. SHAKE Culture Shock (7/79) 17. HEADBOYS The Shape Of Things To Come (7/79) 18. FIRE EXIT Time Wall (8/79) 19. FREEZE Paranoia (9/79) 20. FAKES Sylvia Clarke (9/79) 21. TPI She’s Too Clever For Me (10/79) 22. FUN 4 Singing In The Showers (11/79) 23. FLOWERS Confessions (12/79) 24. TV21 Playing With Fire (4/80) 25. ALEX FERGUSSON Stay With Me Tonight (1980) 1. THE REZILL