Another good lad lost, Tony Cragg was a triple-threat: not only an inspired stage designer and leading light of the set
construction team but also a very useful actor in many CT productions from 1991 to 2013. But the chief threat came
from his lethally corny jokes, seemingly always at his fingertips, most of which would have been rejected as
insufficiently sophisticated even for The Beano. In this, he vied with the late lamented John Rhodes; heaven help you
if you were caught in the crossfire between the two of them in the bar.
After decades in which Bill Nuttall made CT stage design his sole province, Tony stepped up from the construction
crew, when Bill retired. Acting as the keystone of that raggle-taggle band, Tony oversaw the herd, which in its
heyday consisted of Bob Sheard, James Slater, Barrie Crossley, Mike Law, Dave Smithies with his old pal, Billy Sheerin occasionally dropping in, fresh from some Council sub-committee, in time for the post-set-build pint. He always managed to moderate the natural scepticism of the horny-handed sons of toil on his team towards jumped-up, precious directors and, as such, was a good manager of expectations for both parties. Being a regular actor himself helped build bridges, as well as sets.
I will always remember the super-stylish 18thc salon room he came up with for An Experiment With An Air-Pump in 2015; an elegant Venetian window hung at the rear, with a superbly-detailed “marble” floor of black-and-white squares, leading in perspective towards it. Certainly, it constituted one of the best translations from pencil design sketch to finished representational set I can recall; the National Trust could have sent tours round. He had a real talent for judging what would work in practice, way beyond the actual construction details. “Bus Stop” (a homely Mid West diner) was another triumph that year, a little masterpiece in green and grey. But he presided over so many fine sets in his miraculous decade of the 2010s –
He combined exactitude, pride, style and bloody hard work in putting them together.
When it came to actually treading the boards, rather than painting them, he tended to be a play-as-cast company man. He had been seasoned in Billy’s St. Gabriel’s shows and pantos, with some early appearances in Whitworth musical productions such as “Guys And Dolls”. Once he’d made his debut in 1991 at the CT in “Curious Savage”, he regularly popped up in the dramatis personae, often in comedies (“Rumblings” in 1994, as the office union rep, “Lock Up Your Daughters” and “It Runs In The Family”) but surprisingly surfacing as an Inspector in “Witness For The Prosecution” and succeeding to sainthood in “Son Of Man” as the apostle James—no more than he deserves, though he might not be able to resist putting jokes in with the parables. His best role may well have been Mr. Perks in “The Railway Children” at Christmas 1996, a rare star character part to
which he brought great warmth and a natural twinkle. For “The Champion Of Paribanou” in 2005, he even played a robot for which he designed and made his own futuristic silver-paper-swathed costume; when we had a cast trip to to see what Ayckbourn made of the SJT revival, he even compared notes afterwards with his professional counterpart about their “moving parts”. Memorably, in 2008, he was the spit of James Beck as the fly-boy, spiv Pvt. Walker amongst a delightful cast of lookalikes. An aphorism from Mike Leigh’s “Topsy-Turvy” sums up the sequence of life in the theatre: “Laughter. Tears. Curtain”.
When Craggy lost his dear wife, Ann, a few years ago, a lot of the spirit and heart left him; it was as if he was just going through the motions, as the grief sapped him. Finally, suffering his own serious health problems, he was present but diminished. His death, this week, finally robs us of his services, his company and, yes, those lamentable jokes. I’d give anything to hear one now. RIP Craggy and thanks for everything.
Peter Fitton