ABSTRACT
Early Morning finally reached the stage in a Sunday night performance on 31 March 1968. The publicity leaflet announced that the production ‘celebrates the twelfth anniversary of the English Stage Company’. Ironically, the celebrations were via a writer whose work had yet to receive a public performance in his own country. Despite the verbal assurance by the Chamberlain that he would not proceed against a production for Society members, John Calder, the publisher, noted that in the audience was the same police officer, Detective Chief Inspector Alton, who had served the notice of prosecution on Calder for his publishing Hubert Selby’s novel, Last E xit to Brooklyn.1 Unsurprisingly, the performance was not a success. Bond wrote to his American agent, Toby Cole, on 8 April, that on his return from filming in Czechoslovakia:
I got involved in the last stages of rehearsing Early Morning. . . . Because of rehearsing difficulties (the actors were all earning their livings in other rehearsals!), [it] was cut down to two performances. One performance was given - but after that the police visited the theatre, and the licensee banned the second performance. So a hurried performance was given for the critics in the afternoon - and it was a disaster, badly under rehearsed and unconvincing. This isn’t Bill Gaskill’s fault - if he’d had time it would have been one of his best productions. Inevitably, after this, the notices have been terrible - but I don’t care.
