A case of noises off, but laughter within.

of Perth Theatre. Joan Knight tells Jackie McGlone of her philosophies.

WITH valedictions like these, can canonisation be far behind? Even

allowing for the theatrical profession's alarming tendency to do a

Richard Attenborough and come over all luvvie-ish at the drop of a

safety curtain, the fact that no one in the Scottish theatre has a bad

word to say about ''Saint'' Joan Knight of Perth, must mean something in

a world also renowned for its bitchiness and back-biting.

Indeed, the only carping on the lady's retiral later this month from

the artistic directorship of Perth Theatre, a post she has held for the

last 25 years, comes from the critics. Critics? Joan Knight? Well, there

have been a few. There is a view in certain critical circles that Joan

Knight is a bad thing, that she is populist, popular, and unoriginal.

This is not just a vague sensation -- there is empirical evidence in The

Herald editorial library's buff envelopes that hold old cuttings, often

jaundiced in colour and content, by Scotland's theatre reviewers.

Is it a crime to be popular? Is it a sin to put posteriors on seats?

Is it politically incorrect to have brought so much mirth to Perth? Is

it morally indefensible to run a theatre which is a model of good

housekeeping? What's so terrible about giving people a good night out?

This is a theatre where the books balance, the 500 seats are blissfully

comfortable, the brasses shine, the woodwork gleams, the mirrors

sparkle, and even the pile on the carpet stands to attention. Oh, and

some of the shows have been quite good, too.

A warm welcome awaits the visitor to Perth Rep. The joint is jumping,

even at 12.30pm on a mid-week afternoon. In the restaurant, the linen is

starched, you can see your reflection in the cutlery, and the waitress

service comes with a big smile, as does the outgoing artistic director.

''Hello luv,'' says the lassie from Lancashire, ''first things first,

what would you like to drink?'' And Joan Knight, a small, round Mistress

Quickly of a woman, bustles off to the bar.

So what does she say to her critics? Can you be too popular? ''Well,

I'm a very middle-of-the-road person anyway. I never wanted to do

wall-to-wall Brecht, and I'm not one for tricks. I actually like

Ayckbourn plays and musical comedies and Ben Travers' farces and

thrillers by Agatha Christie, which are often a load of old codswallop

but great fun for audiences. [She once acted as play-doctor to that

weary old West End war-horse, The Mousetrap.]

''It's the audiences that are important to me. I don't believe you

should ever do anything you'd be ashamed of, but I do think it's sad

that popular theatre is so much derided these days. I hate intellectual

snobbery. It's awful, just awful! But I suppose it is because critics

are often very young and they simply don't know how difficult it is to

balance the books and to keep a theatre going, and how hard it is to

choose plays. I can only say that it has been a great joy for me to see

this theatre come alive and be full all day, every day.'' Okay, there

have been a lot of lightweight comedies, but her critics forget there is

tragedy in laughter, she maintains, as well as laughter in tragedy.

''We have done everything here,'' she tells you. ''We even had the

first nude on a Scottish stage, and being my theatre, ha! ha! ha!, it

was a male nude.'' But, Knight points out gently, in her three decades

at Perth she has staged nearly 40 new plays, as well as work by Anouilh,

Brecht, Sophocles, Ibsen, Shaw, Shakespeare, Poliakoff, C. P. Taylor,

Sondheim, Stoppard, Wilde, Gogol, Moliere, the Davids Storey and Hare,

Wesker, Alexander Gelman . . . and new writing by Scottish playwrights.

The critic Cordelia Oliver notes, for instance, that ''more of Tom

Gallacher's beautifully crafted plays have been staged at Perth than at

any other theatre''. In particular, she speaks of ''his best and most

ambitious'', the re-telling of Don Juan with Stephen MacDonald in the

title role. And it was Joan Knight who persuaded Jimmy Logan to ''go

straight'' (in Harvey) after a lifetime in all those lost Empires. For

her swansong production last season, she staged Shadowlands, the moving

story of the elderly academic C. S. Lewis falling late in love with the

American poet, Joy Davidman, and losing her to cancer. The magnificent

Tom Fleming was lured back onstage by Knight to play Lewis brilliantly.

''Even before she took over on Tayside, Joan had been to Eastern Europe

on an Arts Council bursary, an experience that had made her aware of the

visual, metaphoric theatre to be seen in Warsaw, for instance,'' recalls

Oliver, who has visited Perth regularly as a critic since the sixties.

She remembers with pleasure ''an imaginatively updated Romeo and

Juliet in a Highland setting with ancestral Raeburn portraits, and an

uncompromising staging of the Oedipus plays of Sophocles, with Lesley

Mackie -- of Piaf and Judy fame -- as a poignant Antigone''. What these

young-in-experience critics don't know is that Joan Knight has often

been in the vanguard of theatrical experiment, says Oliver. By the time

Knight first arrived at Perth in the fifties, she had already directed

Chekhov, O'Casey, Ionesco, and Osborne. When Bill Gaskill started the

Royal Court in London, the home of all the avant-guardians of new

writing, it was Joan Knight whom he invited to join him. Not Joan

Littlewood or Wendy Toye.

Yes, says Knight, but she had just left Farnham Rep where she had been

running the fifties' equivalent of the fringe, a club theatre, for

five-and-a-bit years and she had committed herself to going to Torquay

''of all places''. In some ways, she concedes, she does regret that she

had to say no to the Royal Court. ''Anyone who tells you they have no

regrets in their life is a fool, despite Edith Piaf. It would have been

fascinating to be part of Bill's team, but then again I don't know how

much real directing I'd have got or whether I'd just have been hanging

around for years.'' Joan Knight is not good at hanging around.

In her no-nonsense Lancastrian way, she likes to get on with things.

She likes to be up and doing. ''I've been working, you know, since I was

15-years-old and I shall be 69 in the autumn. I'll never stop as long as

people ask me to do things. They'll probably have to pension me off when

the memory goes! Ha! ha! ha!'' Currently, she is directing a Jeffrey

Archer play, Beyond Reasonable Doubt, at Pitlochry, then she will do

Ayckbourn's Joking Apart, ''which I love because there is such a sharp

bite underneath the laughter''. In the late autumn she will direct

Anne-Marie Di Mambro's Tally's Blood at Perth. She has also joined

Equity's council for directors and will be one of the assessors for the

ITV scheme for trainees. There will be some work in the community,

''because I want to make myself useful as well'', and she is planning to

learn Russian.

''I pray that my mind doesn't go, because both my mother's and

father's did before they died, so I suppose it's in the family. I do get

quite panicky when I can't remember things. Learning Russian will

probably finish me off because I'm terrible at languages. Ha! ha! ha!''

she chortles merrily. While she is still physically fit, though, she

will travel as much as she can afford, and then there's the garden of

the house she bought last year on the outskirts of Perth.

When Joan Knight left her Lancashire home in the 1940s, she swore she

would never touch the soil again. She is from a gardening family, her

father was a farmer and market gardener, until he suffered a mental

breakdown, and now here she is proving that she is her father's

daughter, after all. Indeed, that very morning with Perth bathed in

buttery yellow sunshine, she had almost phoned me and asked me to join

her in the weeding. Born in 1924, she was an only child, a great reader.

Her Cumbrian father was 17 years older than her Irish mother, who was

also well struck in years when Joan came along. Her mother was a great

lady for having people to stay, so she grew up in a house which was

always full of people being ''wonderfully entertained''.

Educated at a convent school for 10 years, where she was taught

elocution, she left when the war started, determined to work in the

theatre. ''I wanted to be a tap dancer, but I was a large little girl

with no sense of rhythm. It was a revelation to me when I saw people

just standing on a stage and talking,'' she recalls. Nobody in the

family had the slightest connection with the theatre. She ended up

teaching elocution and drama at a private girls' school for three years.

At the same time she taught at an adult education centre and it was

there that she first did amateur productions.

''From the age of 17, I wanted to direct. Of course in those days,

women didn't produce or direct. Acting bored me; it was all right doing

it once, but night after night . . . I suppose I was a born director

because even as a child I used to boss people about.'' Does she still

boss people about? ''Oh yes, although as a director you have to beware

of being too bossy. When I say I'm a bossy-boots, I think what I mean is

that I would never have fitted in well with any big organisation. For

instance, I had been in Perth for just three months when Laurence

Olivier invited me to meet him. He was looking for a new assistant. But

again I turned him down because I didn't feel I'd be very good at it.

I'd have had to play second fiddle and I'd probably have ended up as a

dog's body. I must say, though, it was nice to be asked.''

In 1953 she was given her first professional job, after training at

Bristol Old Vic. She became wardrobe mistress at Coventry, before the

Belgrade was built. ''As I couldn't sew, it was a nightmare,'' she says.

But she must have thrived on it because she graduated to stage manager,

and when she came to Perth, immediately after, she did her first three

professional productions, touring the length and breadth of Scotland in

all weathers. ''Oh, the stories I could tell! You had to start from

scratch, helping to unload this great pantechnicon. If there's one thing

I can still do, it's load a lorry. I really ought to have gone into the

removals business.'' Thereafter, she made more moves than Pickfords,

with summer seasons at Whitby and some hard times in between until she

became director of the Century Theatre. She freelanced before heading

for Farnham, and then did more freelance work in London before coming to

Perth, a theatre founded by a woman, Marjorie Dence, but which in 1968

was stuck in the theatrical doldrums.

Twenty-five years ago Knight came to Perth for a year. ''I suppose I

stayed because it's the size of town I love; I'm a country girl at

heart. At first it was great, but after seven or eight years, I got

really restive. We'd got the audience figures up a certain amount, but

the theatre was looking very shabby and I thought we're never going to

get out of this rut. The place was looking terribly dilapidated and it

was a real uphill struggle. I got very depressed. I inherited my

father's depressive streak, although I remain an optimist at heart. When

the bottle's half-empty, I believe it's half-full -- until I've had a

swig! Ha! ha! ha! But in the seventies the then theatre chairman,

Charles Lang, suggested what we needed was a restaurant and that cured

my depression about the future.''

The first phase of the #1m refurbishment programme in 1979 took in the

auditorium, new workshop, and the restaurant. Local councillors weren't

convinced, but when the time came to plan the new kitchen she took

herself off to work with a team of professional caterers at Henley

Regatta. ''I love cooking -- and eating, unfortunately,'' she pats her

hips, ''but I wanted to see exactly how long it took to prepare things

and to find out where the pressure points were. I thought it would have

been a disaster to rent out the restaurant. We had to run it. It was a

bit of cheek on my part, but it showed them I meant business.'' Someone

reminded her the other day how passionate she was that the theatre

should become a meeting place for the townspeople. ''Do you always mean

what you say?'' he asked. Always, she replied firmly.

Phase two of the refurbishment, and a further #1m, went on rebuilding

backstage, which was extended with a studio theatre, and the theatre now

boasts the only computerised wardrobe in the country. In between all

this expansion and activity, Knight energetically zoomed off to guest

direct in England, America and Russia, held several Scottish Arts

Council appointments, won a David Thomson award, and received an OBE

eight years ago. She was forever being profiled in the eigthties as ''a

cigar-smoking career woman''.

Justifiably proud of her achievements, she believes there is nothing

elitist about her theatre, 20% of her subscribers come from council

estates. Perth is not a rich town, she reminds you, but it does have

Scotland's most successful repertory theatre, which last season played

to an average capacity of 90% and a total audience of 106,000. The

subscription scheme has around 5000 members, and they have been given

three years and ''a certain sum'' by the Arts Council to achieve an

audience of 75%. They have been doing 65% and, she says, more people

than ever before have been coming into the theatre. Last season she also

launched a new policy of running each play for three-and-a-half weeks

instead of two, mainly because people complained that the theatre was so

successful they could not get in to see all the shows.

The jolly, round face beams over the salad at you -- ''another day,

another diet'' -- and she admits, yes, it was a point of honour that she

should hand the place over to the new artistic director, Andrew

McKinnon, whom she trained, in the black. She has said she would have

died of shame had it been otherwise because she has always run a tight

ship. She likes things to be tickety-boo, just so. ''I think I'd have

liked to run a hotel, you know, and having the restaurant and the coffee

bar has been a bit like that, without having to change the sheets and

make up the beds every day.''

Knight has never married. ''I never think about it. I've never sat

down and thought, my God, I wish I had married. Never. There have been

times when I have been depressed, but not about that. I have had periods

of black depression which sometimes lasted for a couple of years when I

was younger. There were some very bad times when I was young,'' she

says, thoughtfully. Did she ever come close to marriage? ''Yes, once.

But he didn't want to marry me. Ha! ha! ha! Well, twice really, but the

other time would have been impossible because it was someone abroad, so

it would never have worked. But yes, the other time . . . I have a

wonderful title for a short story I shall write one day, 'Tis Better to

Have Loved and Lost, that's how I see it.'' There will be no memoirs,

she says, she has no time for theatrical autobiographies. ''They are

very boring, but I would like to write some short stories, because I

have so many funny tales to tell about my family and people I have met.

There has been so much laughter and not a few tears.''

All her maternal -- and paternal, she says -- instincts have gone into

mothering her theatre and her companies. ''I like children, within

reason. Ha! ha! ha! I like teenagers because they are so interesting,

but I have never, ever regretted not having any of my own. No, I

couldn't be doing with babies. It's an awful thing to say, isn't it? But

I do get on well with children of a certain age.'' So well that one of

the most unforgettable highs in a long career was the night a couple of

years ago when 150 children from all over the world gathered for the

musical Peace Child, brought together by Joan Knight and the people of

Perth, with the help of local churches. ''It was such agony to organise,

but it took off in the end and it was just marvellous. It is the one

thing that I am most proud of achieving in the last 25 years.''

Anyway, she says over the coffee, she isn't one of nature's wives and

mothers. ''I'm more like Stevie Smith, I'm a friendship sort of person;

I've got some very good friends, four godchildren, and at least two or

three 'daughters' and six or seven 'sons'. All my assistants, in fact.

Because I have always looked on Perth as a training theatre, my

assistants have become my family.'' Consider the roll call of the lady's

little helpers -- Clive Perry, Giles Havergal, Mike Ockrent, Liz

Carruthers, Patrick Sandford, Catherine Robins, and Ken Alexander, to

name but several of her ''children''.

There is an exhibition in Perth Museum & Art Gallery at the moment

called The Time Of Our Lives, ''an introduction to the history of the

district''. A tiny section, headed Pure Theatre, is devoted to Perth

Rep. ''Today Perth Theatre has regained its independence but is still

supported by the local authority,'' boasts the literature, but there is

not a single mention of Joan Knight. Shame on them! They ought to have a

whole exhibition devoted to the life and work of the woman who has

indeed given the people of Perth the time of their lives.

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* EDITH MacARTHUR.

In 1955, when I joined Perth Rep to play Prince Charming in

Cinderella, Joan Knight was stage director. It seems to me that in the

years since she became artistic director she has also become its fairy

godmother. Actors and audiences alike owe her thanks for continuing and

prospering this lovely theatre, and for giving us all much great

pleasure, and such great fun.

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* TONY ROPER.

Joan Knight is a marvellous teacher, an excellent ambassador for Perth

Theatre, a great cook, and a wine connoisseur extraordinaire. A gifted

director, she wears lovely clothes, takes a marvellous suntan, has nice

even teeth, and has exactly the right hair-do to frame her face, and

that only covers her bad points . . . Yes, I'm a fan.

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* RIKKI FULTON.

What is it like to have a million friends, the love and respect of an

entire profession, the ability to look back on a long career of positive

achievement and total success? Ask Joan Knight. We thank her for her

continued friendship and join with everyone in saying of her stewardship

of Perth: ''Boy, what a Knight that was!''

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* ALEC HEGGIE.

Joan Knight was not only responsible for employing me in my home town,

Perth, but also for introducing me to my wife, Jenny, who was her

secretary in 1974. Since then, both Jenny and I have been recipients of

her many kindnesses and thoughtful gestures. She is a special lady.

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* UNA McLEAN.

Joan Knight is one of the great ladies of the British theatre. She has

been an enormous influence in my career, always available to listen and

advise. We have over many years shared laughter, sorrow, good meals, a

few glasses of wine, and many diets. I love and admire her very much.

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* RUSSELL HUNTER.

I was in Joan Knight's first production at Perth Theatre with Jane

Cain and Tom Watson, since when I have never worked with them again. Was

it something I said? Dear Joan, I send my love, admiration, and respect.