INTERVIEW WITH NICK CALVERT ON HIS FATHER'S LEGACY

Nick’s mother Jill was the first person to take on the responsibility for the task of looking after the legacy. After her recent death, Nick continued working on it. “It was important for me to understand my dad and I am very grateful to be able to have a conversation of sorts with him through his work” says Nick. “Having become a father, (my son was born ten months after mum died), solidified how important these things are.”    

Fortunately, all the plays that have been shown at Pentameters Theatre are still in the possession of the Artistic Director, Léonie Scott Matthews. “Léonie has been very helpful; she had copies of most of the plays,” says Nick. His main fear is that that if Léonie stopped producing Calvert’s plays, they would stop forever. There are copies of some of his performed plays in the British Library, but Nick is conscious that other plays might be lost. “A lot of people have written to us about ‘Brilliantino’, a musical play with original compositions… unfortunately the music is lost but we found the only copy of the text in existence” says Nick.    

Calvert wrote from a garden shed and some of his work remained in boxes for many years after he died, proving too painful for the family to investigate. “They contained a lot of his written work including many unfinished plays” explains Nick. “One of the plays called ‘Test Tube Baby of Mine’ really stands out. It’s explores the classic themes of nature\nurture but predates a lot of the Hollywood films that also do this. It’s a dark comedy about two geneticists who create a super-humanly bright child, however there is a mix up and the child is raised by another set of parents.”

Although Nick's father died when he was 6 years old, he has good and detailed memories of him. “My childhood memories are of him being a pretty normal father” says Nick. “He was a very imaginative. He’d make up a lot of stories and we’d record them on cassette tapes”. Nick found some of these cassettes after his mother died, along with letters Robert sent to Jill which describe the two making up plays about smugglers and stories in the locality in which they lived. “Mum was in hospital while dad was touring in the late 80s, and he took me along. It seemed strange but looking back, knocking about in the tour bus with the band seemed normal at the time. I was well looked after, sitting at the back of venues while the band played, and in the van back to the hotel.”