Chapter 11. War of the Worlds
The show that never was...
The story of this is chronicled in great detail on Chris's entry, and I don't really have anything further to add myself, except to confirm my own disappointment that it never materialised in the end. After 'Tommy' we spent the next 18 months remounting 'Stag' and subsequently recording it for Mike Mansfield (as described earlier). It felt that 'War of the Worlds' was the perfect choice for our next production and rehearsals were going most promisingly. I had done a great deal of research and preparation beforehand, including being in touch with the North West Film Archive (based at what was then Manchester Polytechnic, now the Manchester Metropolitan University) about incorporating early 20th century footage of Edwardian England (the time in which H.G. Wells' novel is set), which we were hoping to incorporate into the live action on stage. Allan Taylor was going to portray the Richard Burton narrator's role and things were going really well before we lost our sponsorship agreement, and we no longer had the finances to afford the rights or the production costs.
In retrospect, I believe that this marked the real end for Genesis, (although we carried on for another two years). But a sea change happened at this point, from which I don't think we ever really recovered.
As John Lennon so prophetically said, “Life is what happens while you're busy making other plans...”
The fact was that we were all of us changing. As I said right at the outset of this memoir, the years of Genesis Theatre were highly formative ones for all of us involved: friendships were forged; values espoused; marriages were made, and babies were born. But also some marriages ended; people moved away; careers somehow became more important. It was as though we were all of us turning into those imagined projections of ourselves several years on at the end of 'Hair', when we threw aside our rebelliousness and took up the mantle of respectability. And also the world was changing. I don't think it was chance that the best years of Genesis coincided with a group of what were dubbed “Kennedy's Children” coming together at a time when the hopes and ideals of the 60's were still very fresh, and then ended just a year after Thatcher came into power.
I think, too, that several of us were very tired. Just speaking for myself, when 'Stag' finished finally in 1979, as well as having written and directed that production, I was still working at The Garrick, doing 12 productions a year, as well as working full time as a teacher (at William Hulme's GS and then later at South Trafford College). I rehearsed three nights a week at The Garrick, plus Sunday afternoons and running the youth theatre on Saturday mornings, three nights a week with Genesis, marking and preparing lessons from midnight, and then in June 1980 our son was born, who never slept! Similar situations were being played out by many of us, and I think we all knew that, with the failure of 'War of the Worlds', that was probably that, but that we didn't want to admit it.