Matthew Krouse JUST THE TICKET! by Percy Tucker (Jonathan Ball, R94,95)
IT has been a year of commemoration in theatre publishing, with retrospection and introspection from diverse quarters. Perhaps part of what triggered this small spate of nostalgia were the deaths of two industry giants – Barney Simon and Leonard Schach.
Simon’s story, along with that of Athol Fugard, received personal attention from Mary Benson, and Witswatersrand University Press has just launched a collection of Simon plays (see review below). Schach’s own memoir, The Flag is Flying, was published just before he died, and now we have this dense tome, Just the Ticket! by showbiz mogul Percy Tucker.
Such backward glances are filled with contradictions. Under apartheid, while the country deteriorated into isolation, there were encampments of artists, and promoters, who revelled in “Eurocentric” values they would ultimately have to forsake. Later, there were the conscientious ones who, in tandem with the cultural boycott, played abroad to tumultuous praise while the country blazed.
The reality of South Africa’s cultural confusion is obliquely present in Tucker’s story of his 50 years in the business of selling entertainment to a public whose needs have been extremely disparate and in flux.
Tucker is the genius behind Computicket and its predecessor, Show Service. He began his career as an accountant while moonlighting as an assistant stage manager for one of the country’s best amateur companies, the East Rand Theatre Club. There he served his apprenticeship under the likes of Schach, Leontine Sagan, Taubie Kushlick and Leon Gluckman, people who would become his closest friends and colleagues in the decades which followed.
From the war years to the 1960s South Africa seems to have been in a state of denial: white neo-colonials obviously had a smashing time restaging West End and Broadway hits with amateurs, some of whom went on to achieve comfortable fame at home.
Predictably, Gilbert and Sullivan, Oscar Wilde, Bernard Shaw and Nol Coward were mere preludes to the year’s highlights – the Christmas pantomimes.
At this time of ticker-tape parades for visiting stars, royal tours and full touring companies performing in foreign languages, the Benoni-born Tucker found himself camping out in Johannbesburg’s streets one night, outside His Majesty’s Theatre, desperate to purchase tickets for an Italian opera company. Seeing the general frustration with booking facilities, he decided to open an agency to “offer a comprehensive service, giving all customers equal opportunity and choice”.
Investing all he had, he and Gluckman started Show Service, which eventually became the backbone of the entertainment industry, a service that managements were obliged to consider in planning shows and events.
He describes, in great detail, the intricate systems he had to employ prior to the onset of the computer age – and it was primitive, to say the least. But his success led him to the heart of show business where he came into contact with everyone from Margot Fonteyn to Marlene Dietrich (whose chauffeur said that “she treated everybody as if they were black”).
He also became a main player in the South African Association of Theatre Managements. A liberal institution, the SAATM tried unsuccessfully to resist the local authorities, who descended to unsavoury tactics to overcome the growing British Equity ban. Managements also stood by helplessly while the government put an end to mixed audiences, and began to censor artistic expression at home.
This long and arduous tale of decline is, however, coupled with the rise of indigenous theatre, which came into its own in the difficult boycott years.
Tucker, however, was never a supporter of the cultural boycott. He is quick to admit that, in those tough times, his saviour was Sun City, that much-lambasted symbol of apartheid for activists worldwide.
Emerging from those years, we see the return of international theatre and sport to South Africa, to a much-changed cultural environment with unique new needs.
One thing has however endured: the need for proper and effective management, a “fair deal” for all entertainment consumers. In this, Tucker’s legacy is still very much with us and, by the looks of things, will be for many decades to come.