2nd October 2021 

The remarkable Léonie Scott Matthews founded Pentameters Theatre in Hampstead in 1968. Her fifty years of services to British theatre and to the community of Hampstead have been rewarded with a British Empire Medal (BEM) in the Queen’s New Years Honours list 2020. The presentation, deferred because of Covid, went ahead at Westminster Abbey on 27th September 2021.

In the hallowed halls packed with the somewhat subdued 129 recipients and their guests, Léonie miscalculated the number of steps off the platform after receiving her medal and ended up half in the laps of two burly soldiers in the front row. As she exclaimed,“I always do it! Drama queen!“ the gathering erupted into foot stamping, relieved, hysterical laughter. 

A break in encouraging the work of aspiring actors, poets and musicians due to the enforced closure of theatres has given Léonie time to publish a monologue, a play and her first collection of poetry called Excelsior. The poems have been set to music and appear on her brand new double CD entitled Give Me More, a captivating compendium of spoken word and music. 

Since the re-opening of theatres Léonie is back expertly running Moon at Night at Pentameters, a relaxed Sunday evening open mike event with Godfrey Old, her partner of 36 years. The couple had provided an hour of socially distanced entertainment every day over the lockdowns to their community. Godfrey, a doyen of experimental electronic music and a mean harmonica player, was hand picked by Léonie along with several regular Sunday night Pentameters performers to set her hauntingly beautiful words to music, the results of which are mesmerising.  

Her poems with themes of life’s fragility: addiction, depression and death blend with the metaphysical journeys to redemption and resurrection making each track unforgettable. But if I had to single out one, it would be the raw emotion of the titular track Give Me More with music and vocals by Zimmy van Zangt. However, the opening song Love Was set to music and sung by actress Zoe Aronson is worthy of the soundtrack to any good romantic comedy. And, the quirky Locked Ward performed by Frankie D, gives an insight into mental illness and is a tribute to the poet Sinclair Beiles.

Léonie’s daughter, who she was pregnant with at 47, the singer Alice Old closes the CD of songs with an ethereal and skilful rendition of her mother’s poems L’Idee Fixe (after Paul Valéry) and Gold of the Morning Light. Godfrey provides his eclectic mix of harmonica and electronica as well as his voice to Monologue to a Mouth, inspired by Léonie's mouth, which was drawn by a well known theatre director in Léonie’s youth.

Today, Léonie is radiant; oozing inclusivity, inspiring confidence in others and dazzling in her “national dress” of Pentameters t shirt and sequinned jackets and shoes. Her mother was an actress and her father taught her about poetry and how to play the piano resulting in her training in speech and drama at the Royal Academy of Music and Drama. 

Having decided that she wanted to dedicate her life to poetry Léonie took a set of what she thought were simple steps. She won the Poetry Society Gold Medal for Verse Speaking in 1967, then worked for the Poetry Society, became Norman Hidden’s secretary for his readings at the Lamb and Flag in Covent Garden, and his New Poetry magazine originally called Workshop. She started editing poetry books, the first of which was Bedsit Girls by her close friend Pat Jourdan, a contemporary of John Lennon at Liverpool College of Art. 

The impressive list of poets and performers to tread the boards at Pentameters include Harold Pinter, Stephen Spender, RD Laing, Ted Hughes, Roger McGough, the comedy duos Rik Mayall and Ade Edmonson, French and Saunders, as well as Arnold Brown, Ben Elton. and more recently Russell Brand.

Léonie has no plans to retire and is so adept at developing aspiring performers and audience members, that I felt inspired to have a go at Pentameters on a Sunday night and thoroughly enjoyed the experience. After years of helping others to develop their stagecraft and realise their dreams  Léonie is well on her way to realising her own dreams and more! 

To order a copy of the double CD, and for more info on what's on at Pentameters, please see www.pentameters.co.uk