Eden Phillips has been many things over the course of his illustrious career: TV and stage actor, lyricist and book editor. However, it is his role as West End stagehand in the 1960s and 1970s that he has chosen to make the centrepiece of his memoire Backstage Confidential.
The Hackney-based author started out as behind the scenes at the age of 17 and worked at various theatres for a decade before his acting career took off. His chatty account gives us a delightful glimpse of one of the less-well-known roles in drama. Did you know that those in charge of sets used to pop out to the pub between cues? Or that many stagehands secretly hoped shows would do poorly so that they could earn the extra money to be had from removing one collection of scenery and installing the next?
Phillips’s early obsession with the stage extended to theatre buildings themselves, which he describes in loving historical detail. These structures have changed in the past several decades, but manipulating sets was physically very demanding work at the time, and those in the job had an unusual degree of understanding of the various complicated processes that make a production possible.
Backstage Confidential is very far from being a dry technical tract, however. On the contrary, Phillips’s narrative is replete with amusing anecdotes and wry humour. As one of the rare stagehands who crossed the line from the back to the front of the show, he regularly defied the unwritten rule that those operating curtains and props should never hobnob with actors. From an early age he befriended all manner of people in the profession and became, as a result, extremely well-connected. His unabashed name-dropping does get slightly repetitive towards the end of the volume, but his book will be treasured by theatre aficionados for the fascinating insight it offers into the culture of the Theatreland at the height of its fame.
Backstage Confidential: Secrets of a Stagehand by Eden Phillips is published by The Book Guild. ISBN: 978-1-83574-404-8; RRP: £10.99.
