Theatre
Tactful passion
Mark Amory
In Praise of Love (King's Head) Another Country (Queen's) Real Time (ICA) .
In Praise of Love was written at the height of his powers by the foremost technician of the British theatre, it concerns the ultimate subjects of love and death and was fuelled by his strongest and most personal emotions. It makes a pleasant, deft and occasionally touching evening, but no more. In 1973 when a shorter version first appeared, Rattigan was 62 and though he had been knighted and there was much talk of a general revival of interest in his Work, he had not had a real success since Ross in 1960. Nor did this one quite suc- ceed.
Sebastian Cruttwell (William Franklyn) has also failed to maintain his early stan- dard; he had written a brilliant novel, followed up with a less brilliant one and then 'joined the enemy', that is to say become a critic. As with Rattigan, his left- wing beliefs issue rather strangely from his socially adept persona. He sneers amusingly at his surprising best friend, a tame and hugely popular American novelist (`Every Rut), tells a picture') with whom he plays the most convincing game of chess I have seen onstage -7- Sebastian chatters on dur- ing the opening with which he is familiar, has to think longer in the middle game and Makes the simple but plausible blunder of Mistaking the king for the queen of his fan- eY new set. The political rows with his son are given a neat twist by the boy being the moderate. But deeper passions smoulder below; his charming wife is dying and knows it, but is determined that he shall not. In fact he does already but thinks he is keeping the news from her. Though he has never realised before how much he loves her (a banal and unnecessary extra) there is no scene where they reveal their knowledge. William Franklyn breaks down for a mo- ment and apologises, Isabel Dean's beautiful eyes shine, but that is all. Rattigan
may be in favour of naked emotion but he does not portray it here.
Rattigan might have been at the school portrayed in Another Country though five years or so before the boys we meet in the early Thirties. He was a homosexual and, if not a revolutionary, a pacifist who saw himself as a rebel against conformity; but he showed no inclination to become a traitor. The suggestion that such schools created spies by teaching the boys to dissemble, and making outsiders of the queer and the leftie, still seems to me un- convincing. In the play itself they are only excluded because a compromising note is intercepted, otherwise they are all set for conventional honours. The title comes from a line of the hymn the boys sing at the end, `There is another country I've heard of long ago', which refers to heaven, but the rest of the evening (and particularly the pro- gramme) suggests that it is Russia. But it also may refer to the beginning of The Go- Between, 'The past is another country: they do things differently there', and even another English play about one of this batch of defectors, Alan Bennett's The Old Country. None of this interfered with en- joyment of a witty and convincing story of school life in which the spectacular, perfor- mance by Rupert Everett is now buttressed by a solid and sympathetic one from Ken- neth Branagh. Branagh, with the assistance of a little cutting perhaps, and by grasping every chance of humour, has stopped the Marxist, who is supposed to bore his com- panions, from boring us. Nor need the fact that this, like Steaming, is a unisex play which may attract a specialist audience, deter the rest. , Joint Stock is a theatre group, which believes in a long preparation period during which the actors do far more than suggest or improvise a few lines. They go out and research their subject and democratically decide how it is to be treated. In eight years their productions -have included Fanshen, Cloud Nine and Borderline, their gradu- ates, Anthony Sher and Harriet Walters. Real Time is described as 'drawn from the collective ideas and experiences of the company' and was 'structured and direc- ted' by Jack Shepherd. It is about London and how horrible it is — not my view but that is not the reason that I liked it less than their previous work, at first with a violence that surprised me. Allowing an ac- tor to work on his own role must tend to produce detailed and committed character studies at the expense of shape, balance and theme. An overruling, premeditating in- telligence can conceive one character as a qualification of, or comment on, another; he can complicate ideas or feelings. At the beginning of Real Time each new entrant had a funny walk — heels hurried, knees knocked, backs bent to present a gallery of cripples. This is physical characterisation run mad. The dreariness of provincial life is being established rather easily at a 'social' given by the vicar with Pat Boone records promised. Then we go to London and meet
a selection of nasty people connected with busy art gallery. They are variously driven to abortion, suicide, madness and some curiously religious tramps. Though depress- ing overall, this gave an opportunity for some bright lines. 'I think', said the liveliest girl around, when asked to a Polish film at the Gate, 'I would rather sit in a dark room with my head in a bucket of sand.' Even so, 1 felt my laughter was of a mean and rather cheap sort. Perhaps more sympathy has to be felt for this technique to work, though Mike Leigh working along similar lines has produced some of the most vividly awful people the British stage has seen.
Previous page
