EE: June Brown's one-gran show

[faceless]

June Brown: All alone in Dot's kitchen
The 'EastEnders' washer-woman will make TV history this week in a one-hander in which art and life collide in tragedy. It is the work of an extraordinary actress
Interview by Cole Moreton
Sunday, 27 January 2008
http://independent.co.uk


Strike a light, this is strange. Dot Cotton is in her kitchen, sucking on a fag and talking into a tape machine, recording a message for her husband, Jim, who is paralysed and unable to speak after a stroke. The hardest thing, she says in a trembling voice, "is the thought of you being there... but not being there". And suddenly soap life and real life collide in a terrible and truly moving way.

Dot is just a character in the BBC series EastEnders, of course. The scene is from a remarkable episode to be shown on Thursday, in which she is the only character to appear. There has never been a solo show before in British soap history. June Brown, who plays Dot, gives an astonishing performance, with a script that owes a debt not just to Alan Bennett's Talking Heads but also to the Samuel Beckett play Krapp's Last Tape. It is worth seeing, even if you can't stand soaps. But that's not what is strange. And her own brilliance is not the reason Brown wept when she saw a playback of the recording.

She cried because her close friend John Bardon, who plays Jim, has also had a stroke. Like his character, he is semi-paralysed and barely able to speak. For her, the whole episode – and particularly that line – has a dreadful resonance.

"I miss him terribly," says Brown, in a voice like Dot's, only posher. It is unsettling to meet her out of costume on the set where the show is recorded. Dot's drab kitchen is a familiar sight, after 23 years of EastEnders. The details say a lot about the chain-smoking washerwoman of Albert Square: there's a coronation tea caddy, a tin of value Irish stew and the two china mugs she still fills by habit, although Jim is not coming back from his care home. But the fourth wall is missing, replaced by studio lights. And we're not in the East End, this is BBC Elstree, north London. And the woman who is speaking has Dot's face but she is definitely not Dot.

June Brown is much more elegant. Instead of Dot's monstrous purple semi-beehive and pink dressing gown she wears a sleek bob and a pair of chocolate cords, with a gold-embroidered cardie. "It's a terrible thing," she says of the stroke that John Bardon suffered one day last summer. "It could happen to any one of us, at any time. One minute you're doing this," she says, looking around, "the next all the movement and speech you take for granted just goes."

She usually stays with the 68-year-old actor and his wife, Enda, at least one night a week while filming. "He has always been such a big man, dear. Active. Expansive. An actor needs his voice."

Brown is careful to talk about Dot as a separate person, but there are some traits they share. One is an addiction to menthol cigarettes, so we repair to the battered old cabins that the EastEnders stars use as dressing rooms, where she can sit by an open window and puff away. "John is improving all the time," she says. "His mind is fine, but you just long for him to be able to express himself as he could. It's such hard physical work, to recover from a stroke." Can he talk? "Sometimes he will try and a sentence will come out. He is having extensive therapy."

Was she thinking about him when the recording took place over four afternoons? The look on her face at times during the episode is devastating. "No," she says. "I didn't think of John at all... Only Jim."

That doesn't mean she doesn't care, she says. "It's much easier for me to cry and do all those things on the stage than in real life. Acting is a very strange thing. It isn't about trying to feel, for me, it is about thinking." Was it a question of blocking real life out, to stay in control of every glance and inflection? "Yes. I was taught at my drama school that it's not what you feel, it's what you make the audience feel."

Her school was at the Old Vic just after the war, with the influential French director Michel Saint-Denis. But trying to get her to talk about that – or anything else – in a sustained fashion is difficult as she fusses about with kettle, coffee and those cigarettes. Focus, I plead, and she gives me a stage stare, as terrifying as Lady Macbeth.

"I played that once," she says. I know. Opposite Albert Finney. "My Hedda Gabler was better." The most beautiful creature ever to walk the stage, she was called then. "Who said that?" Nigel Hawthorne, her contemporary. "Oh, he did. Well, I was rather lovely when I was young. That is why I don't like having photographs taken now."

Very few nearly 81-year-olds look as good as she does. But very few can buy clothes with a reported salary of £400,000 a year. Dot is at the centre of the show, having evolved from a nasty gossip into a strong character for whom viewers feel warmth. She is worth her weight in pork scratchings from the Vic.

Nobody thought EastEnders would last when it began in 1985. Dot is one of two surviving characters (the other is loathsome Ian Beale). Every so often she threatens to leave. "It started out as a nostalgic programme about the olden days, but with modern problems. Like the old films, you never went beyond the kissing... and not those awful ones you see now. They eat each other. I don't want to see that!"

Nor does she like the way characters are always "sneaking on each other and interfering". She reportedly told one journalist this episode was her glorious swansong. "No," she says, cackling, "I said it was my Gloria Swanson! You see, you say these things as jokes."

I'm not sure whether to believe her. Dot could go out on a high now. Watching her talk about being evacuated to Wales, the horrors of post-war London and the agonies of seeing people you love die or go wrong will make millions of viewers think of their grans, or their mums, or themselves. It's hard not to feel emotional, watching it. And hard not to think of June Brown's real life.

She was born in Suffolk in 1927, nine years earlier than her character. Her father was wealthy, but he went bust. In London after the war she met and married her first husband, a brilliant actor called John Garley, but he suffered from depression and gassed himself in 1957. Within a year she had married Robert Arnold, who was in Dixon of Dock Green. They were together for 45 years, but since 2003 she has been alone in their big house near Croydon.

The couple had six children. One, Chloe, died a fortnight after her birth. Another, also called Chloe, suffered paralysis, but Brown says it went away after she prayed for healing. She describes Dot as "a kindergarten Christian" but has a strong faith of her own. "If I get a pain in the head I just say a prayer, dear. I put my hands on it and ask for the pure blood of Jesus to flow through it... then I say thank you. You'll think I'm mad."

I think, "you're Dot" as she shows me the little paper cross, prayer card and embroidered orange handkerchief she keeps as props in Dot's black handbag, with a bottle of smelling salts. "Anyone can become a channel of the power, but you have to be pure in heart. I could help people... before this."

She means working on EastEnders. So why has the power left her now? "You get cross and grumpy sometimes, or resentful. You know, you don't get good storylines and you hang around just to say lines like, 'I'll have a tomato juice'. Also, the notes to fans take ages."

Isn't it easier, I ask gently, than a different job in which you might not be so loved, for a much lower wage. But she just looks at me blankly. Then the mood lifts, suddenly, when a familiar voice calls in through the open door: "Hello my darling!"

It's only bloomin' Barbara Windsor standing there, beaming. Not glaring like earlier, when she had her Peggy Mitchell wig on and a look that said "Get outa my pub!" No, this is the smiley Babs that Sid James fell for. "The Independent on Sunday? Posh! And there's me doing quotes for bloody Heat magazine. Ha ha ha!"

Now it gets really surreal, as June/Dot and Barbara/Peggy squabble in high camp style about whether to go for coffee – "don't you reply in that accusatory manner, Bar!" I half expect to see Kenneth Williams. This has been such a peculiar day. "I know I'm old but I've still got a lot of energy, haven't I, Bar? I can put my knees up here," and with that June Brown performs contortions, before leaping up and heading out of the door with her pal. On the way, Babs turns back to say something about the solo show. "Listen, seriously. She is the only actress I know that is worthy of that half an hour. Don't you think she's amazing?"

[Axlsbabe]

Im looking forward to seeing this

[6ULDV8]

Part of me looks forward to it the rest of me is thinking "give it a miss".

I like June Brown, I like her as Dot Cotton, but having her face & voice on screen for the entire show might tip me over the edge.

If it were intersperesed (sp) with 'Flash Backs' and even then it'd need to be 75% of the episode would make it watchable.

That & this is sure to be sad as hell...

[Skylace]

I am greatly looking forward to this. June Brown is a such a strong actress I think she can pull this off. It will also be interesting to watch something like this on EE. I am excited to see it.

[eefanincan]

I'm with you Sky --- I think she's going to do a great job. Her closeness with John Bardon in real life will really come into play here.

[Aja]

I am looking forward to this ...I love Dot ..she reminds me of one of my aunts

Deaf old Aunt Annie .......But she was A Gem......been dead for years now ..but I loved her ......

U Go Dot

[misslisalynn]

I think she is a great actress but I'm not sure how long I'll be able to stay interested with just her talking for a whole episode.

[6ULDV8]

Well, they started the run up to the episode didn't they...

Seeing how she was struggling last night to find words, if she keeps that up we will be in for the worst EE ever.

[eefanincan]

[faceless]

Before reading, some of this is definitely SPOILER, so be warned.


EastEnder legend June Brown's rise from the stage to the Square
Jim Shelley
www.mirror.co.uk
31/01/2008

It's not often that the soaps justify their rather self-important, self-appointed title of "serial drama". But tonight's episode of EastEnders is as powerful and poignant a piece of drama as you will see on TV all year, and destined to be showered with prizes. It is the first time any of the soaps has ever given a whole episode over to a monologue. Such is the quality of the writing (by EastEnders' titan Tony Jordan) and, above all, the performance of Walford goddess June Brown as Dot Branning, it may be some time before any of them attempts it again.

Dot sits at her kitchen table smoking (naturally), recording a message for husband Jim who was hospitalised some time ago by a stroke. All week, Dot has been recording "get well soon" messages from her fellow residents of Albert Square. And it's only at the end of her own heartbreaking outpouring that we learn her decision on whether she can cope with looking after Jim at home, or whether he is going into a nursing home.

Now nearly 81, June learned her trade at the Old Vic, and played Lady Macbeth opposite Albert Finney. Nigel Hawthorne (Yes Minister) once described her as "the most beautiful creature to ever walk the stage" after seeing her in Hedda Gabler. Not many people know that she was once in rival soap Coronation Street, playing Mrs Parsons for three episodes in 1970, back in the days of Ena Sharples. And tonight, June - one of two remaining original Enders cast members - proves what the soaps can achieve when they use actors of genuine class and let them show what they are capable of.

She is the only actor in soaps capable of carrying an entire episode single-handed. And, above all, she seizes the chance to restore Dot as a character of real depth and emotion, lifting her above the caricature she has recently become. The fact that co-star John Bardon (who plays Jim) is recovering from a stroke in real life adds an extra terrible pathos to the episode.

At times, the script is as touching as anything in Alan Bennett's Talking Heads series as Dot tells Jim how she misses the sight of his razor beside the sink, or the sound of him crying, "What are you blathering on about, woman?!" After Pauline's funeral, she remembers him lighting candles for her: "I thought, 'I'm going to be all right. I don't need nobody but my Jim'."

But it is the sense of a life lost, wasted, that hangs heaviest over this episode as Dot puts her past on the record in the manner of Samuel Beckett's masterpiece, Krapp's Last Tape. Dot's childhood was so awful that when she was evacuated, she says: "I was the 'appiest I 'ad ever been. I'd never 'ad much love, you see, as a little girl. I was never 'eld or told I was special." She was sent to her aunt and uncle's: "They couldn't have children of their own so that made me special. I was their little girl. I thought that my mother didn't want me no more and that I was in a family, a real family. And I'd never 'ad that before." Tears well up in her eyes as she remembers her Uncle Bill singing the pre-war song Pretty Baby to her at night.

But the real power of the piece comes from the haunted expression that June gives poor Dot, capturing perfectly, horribly, the terror that being old - getting old - holds for all of us. She says: "When I look back, I know that, from that moment on, everything I ever cared about, I lost." Dot was sent back to London ("among the filth, people snarling at each other, drunkards"). She lost her husband Charlie. Her best friend Ethel died in her arms. And she knows she will probably never see her son "Nasty" Nick again. And now Jim is ill. "I'm on me own again. It's not fair!" she wails. "What did I ever do? What did that little girl ever do?"

The famous "dum dums" of tonight's closing theme tune are replaced with Pretty Baby. Anyone who isn't in pieces by then, frankly, hasn't got a heart. Eastenders, BBC1, tonight, 7.30pm.

From stage to Square..
1927 June Brown born in Suffolk.
1932 Her baby brother John dies of pneumonia, aged 15 days.
1934 Elder sister Marise dies from a similar illness to meningitis, aged eight.
1945 Serves in the WRENS at the end of the Second World War.
1945-1947 She trains at London's Old Vic Theatre School.
1947 First job with the Old Vic Theatre Company pays £5 per week.
1948 Appears in Dr Faustus and as Lady Macbeth at The Old Vic.
1950 Marries first husband John Garley.
1957 John gasses himself to death at home.
1958 She is described by Nigel Hawthorne as "one of the most beautiful creatures to ever walk the stage" after he sees her in the title role in Ibsen's Hedda Gabler.
1958 She marries Robert Arnold, star of Dixon Of Dock Green.
1959 Daughter Louise is born.
1960 Second daughter Chloe, born prematurely at 28 weeks, dies aged 16 days.
1961 Daughter Sophie born.
1962 Son William born.
1964 Daughter Chloe born.
1965 Daughter Naomi born.
1965-1969 Has various one-off roles alongside Robert in Dixon Of Dock Green.
1970 Appears in Coronation Street.
1973-1974 Is Eleanor in four episodes of Doctor Who, alongside Jon Pertwee.
1976-1977 Takes the role of Violet Leyton in The Duchess Of Duke Street.
1983 Plays Aunt Sadie in Now And Then.
1985 Starts as Dot Cotton in EastEnders on Leslie Grantham's recommendation.
1993 Takes a four-year break from Enders and directs the play Double D.
2003 Husband Robert dies.
2008 Today June takes centre stage as Dot, as EastEnders screens the first solo show in British soap history.

'As powerful and poignant a piece of drama as you will see on TV all year'

'June seizes this chance to restore Dot as a character of real depth'

[faceless]

just in case anyone doesn't know what Swan Vestas are... (they're mentioned in this episode).

[eefanincan]

Thanks Face...... I'm so looking forward to this.

[11antoniacourt]

Well I've just come in from a night of drinking and I watched the Dot episode. Yup, it had me crying a little bit when she was talking about being a little girl and just wanting someone to love her. She did a great job.

[Aja]

I thought she did a lovely job.......and I had a little tear......

BRAVO ....... BRAVO.......BRAVO ......


She had me watching .......and Thinking ........Thats for sure ........Bless U Dot......and all
those ladies ......That really suffered like You .....(or at least the part You play ) well done .......

[6ULDV8]

We (wife & I) will be watching this tonight...

I am still not 100% sure if I want to, she's not my fav' person in the show so I can only do her in small doses...

But if it's as good as you folkz are saying or thinking it will be... well, I will take one for the team.