Ken Campbell was one of the true outliers in British theatre. Actor, director, eccentric and dogged experimentalist, he was impossible to categorise. Indeed, with his appetite for mischief and pranks, trying to second-guess him at all was clearly a mistake, as is spelt out in this affectionate tribute by former friend and protege Terry Johnson.
Part-play, part-lecture, ‘Ken’ largely involves Johnson delivering a monologue behind a lectern in a set by Tim Shortall that’s filled with sequined cushions and psychedelic throws. It nods to a hippy counterculture that was still going strong among the thespian circles of the late Seventies, which was when a 23-year-old Johnson met Campbell by chance.
As he recalls being recruiting into the older theatremaker’s sprawling ten-hour play ‘The Warp’ – and all sorts of other escapades – the man himself (Jeremy Stockwell, delivering Campbell’s nasal Estuary with perfect mimesis) appears, seemingly out of nowhere.
What emerges is a portrait of an utterly irresistible character, one whose avant-garde, maximalist instincts were offset by a total lack of pretension: Campbell was an Essex boy who was as happy in the pub as he was in the theatre. That isn’t to say he was faultless: Johnson’s recollections point out instances of tyrannical bullying, while certain aspects of his directorial style – persuading young actors to remove their clothes – look a little icky through 2018’s scrupulous lens. Above all else, Campbell was consumed by a desire to share an extraordinary world that he alone seemed to see. It was something that proved exhaustive: he died suddenly, aged 66, in 2008.
What really lets this production live is the canny, considered stage direction, which has Stockwell dashing about like hyperactive imp, using bananas as telephones, ordering audience members out of their seats and, at one point, setting up an ‘experiment’ with a brick and several metres of knicker elastic. The fourth wall isn’t so much broken as brushed aside like an inconvenience; in this way, the spirit of Campbell lives in this warm and touching piece of theatre.