Marriage is full of irritations...
- Publication: Daily Express
- Date: 1982-06-08
- Author: Jenny Nisbet
- Page: 7
- Language: English
The only alternative seems to be the punishing loneliness of being on your own
WHEN Tom Baker was Dr Who he never had any trouble with women.
In his role as that masterful virgin of the galaxies, he held sway over a long line of female assistants with perfect equanimity. He even married one of them, Princess Astra, the actress Lalla Ward.
But meeting Tom Baker now, in the deserted red plush stalls of the Cambridge Theatre, he is a changed man.
Separated from Lalla after only sixteen months of marriage and conducting a waspish feud with Susannah York, star of Hedda Gablerin which he is currently appearing, he seems bemusedly at odds with the female sex.
The gentlemanly Dr Who, one feels, would never have made remarks like "Everyone adores Susannah York—especially Susannah York," or pronounced happily that she leaves him, on the other hand, "totally underwhelmed."
Conflict
Running his hands through his spiky, cropped hair and drawing my attention to his impressively triangular widow's peak. Tom puts the root of his problems with Susannah down to a genuine conflict of egos.
"Don't get me wrong, I like strong women, I don't want women to be subservient and spineless," he says staring at me with those pop eyes which once stopped Daleks in their tracks. "But I don't know Susannah well enough to tell whether she's strong. She certainly has a lot of opinions about everything ..." He trails off leaving me to thaw my own conclusions about his feelings towards opinionated women.
"Luckily working here at then Cambridge isn't like working at the "National Theatre," he continues. "It's very possible here not to come across people.
"Our dressing rooms are on different floors and Susannah's very unlikely to have any difficulty about bumping into me after the show. Yes, she's quite safe there."
Difficult
A conflict of egos also seems to be the basis of his estrangement from Lalla, who claim enigmatically that Tom is the kind of person who is better off on his own.
"I do find co-existence very difficult," he admits, lighting a cigarette and staring balefully at the empty stage. " Marriage is full of mutual irritations, but the only alternative seems to be this punishing lonelines of being on your own."
Despite being a bachelor for many years, after the breakup of his first marriage, Tom does not like his sudden return to the solitary life.
"I'm not an accomplished bachelor," he says, "I'm quite good at the linen and making beds, but I don't like vacuuming and I can't master ironing boards, vicious things that always collapse on you.
"One of the prices you pay for being on your own is that very swiftly you can become old womanish and over fussy. I've seen it so often in loners and confirmed bachelors.
"Luckily, I'm very gregarious," he says rallying himself. "I still have my old haunts, the Coach and Horses, the French, the Swiss and the Colony Room." He reels off the names of his Bohemian Soho pubs like some ancient litany.
So all is not gloom and doom in Ibsen country, though playing in Hedda Gabler is perhaps not best calculated to lift the spirits or reinforce the positive virtues of hearth and home.
"I am still optimistic that we might get back together again," says Torn despite all that. "This separation is just a period to test out attitudes. Lalla wants my happiness and what is good for both of us. Anyway, actors are prone to making gestures.
"I still believe in marriage and there are masses of advantages to being with Lalla. She is extraordinarily well-read, witty, and wonderfully good company. The trouble is that it's easier to see all that from a distance rather than as one of the participants in our relationship, in much the same way that Agony Aunts can be very rational and philosophical about peoples' problems because they're not involved.
"Anyway, I'm sure that I must be very dull to live with."
Jumpy
"My greatest fault is total self-centredness," he says. "My social life if very simple, at, half past ten I leave the theatre, where I have been acting one part and go straight to the pub, where I act another. So it is easy to disconnect from reality and I do tend to melodramatise.
Any marriage is difficult, but two jumpy, insecure, freelance actors flogging themselves at work and desperately seeking approval all the time, have got less chance of making it than most."
If their marriage, conceived in the cosmos, has fallen to earth in W.C.2, then at least in their separation. Tom is trying to act with some grace.
"I ring Lalla up nearly every day to see how she is and what's happening," he continues, "I don't do it from emotional dependancy, but just as a friendly, civilised, polite thing to do.
"When one is separated you can't just excise all the, nice things about the other person. When you have been very generous to each other emotionally you must still remember that.
"The trouble is, when you separate, that although you may be united in times of happiness, it's rare to be united in times of anxiety. So that just as one person says. 'I think it would be a good idea to sever things now,' the other is thinking I'm sure it's just starting to get, better.' So it's not logical and it's very hard to be reasonable.
"But I ring Lalla anyway to see how her play is going (she is currently appearing in The Jeweller's Shop) and to see how the cats are.. I do miss the cats...."
Despite his personal skirmishes, on very different levels; with both Lalla and Susannah, Tom insists that he belongs to a small group of men who actually like women.
"I admire women for their strength, loyalty and forebearance," he says in his richly booming actor's voice. "Hedda Gabler is, of course, one of the first feminist plays. While Ibsen often mocks and scoffs at his heroine, he is, at the same time, condemning a society which has brought her to the point where she is utterly useless.
"Today, women do have a harder time in life than men and much more self-sacrifice is still demanded from them. The trouble that it is all too easy for women who want progress to sound strident and they forget that men are so much more conservative, we're frightened of swift changes."
" I often wish that Lalla was with me, when I'm alone in the flat," he says. "Thoughts of her float about in my head all the time.
"But even if we don't get back together again, I would never think of our marriage as a failure," he says, recovering his more usual exuberant spirits, as we walk to the stage door.
"We have been very happy together and that's what matters not, how long it lasted. I always remember Germaine Greer, when asked if she regretted her short-lived marriage, saying : 'No, it was a huge success — for three days!'"
Caption: Happy days Tom and Lalla
Caption: Sad days...Tom struggling with his loneliness
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- APA 6th ed.: Nisbet, Jenny (1982-06-08). Marriage is full of irritations.... Daily Express p. 7.
- MLA 7th ed.: Nisbet, Jenny. "Marriage is full of irritations...." Daily Express [add city] 1982-06-08, 7. Print.
- Chicago 15th ed.: Nisbet, Jenny. "Marriage is full of irritations...." Daily Express, edition, sec., 1982-06-08
- Turabian: Nisbet, Jenny. "Marriage is full of irritations...." Daily Express, 1982-06-08, section, 7 edition.
- Wikipedia (this article): <ref>{{cite news| title=Marriage is full of irritations... | url=http://cuttingsarchive.org/index.php/Marriage_is_full_of_irritations... | work=Daily Express | pages=7 | date=1982-06-08 | via=Doctor Who Cuttings Archive | accessdate=21 November 2024 }}</ref>
- Wikipedia (this page): <ref>{{cite web | title=Marriage is full of irritations... | url=http://cuttingsarchive.org/index.php/Marriage_is_full_of_irritations... | work=Doctor Who Cuttings Archive | accessdate=21 November 2024}}</ref>
