Theatre
Twenty years on
Mark Amory
Serjeant Musgrave's Dance (Cott esloe) The Caretaker (Lyttelton) At the National Theatre last week two of our most famous playwrights had their most famous plays revived. Each of them is now 50 and looks out of his programme with a wariness that is close to hostility. The two plays opened .,within six months of each other, bracketing the beginning of the Sixties, the brave early days of the new realism, yet neither is remotely swinging or naturalistic. One writer disappeared to Ireland ten years ago and has had almost nothing produced in London since; the other is our reigning Top Playwright, now that John Osborne has retired hurt and while Tom Stoppard is still only fingering the crown.
Serjeant Musgrave's Dance was the sort of flop that brought out the best qualities of the Royal Court. Harold Hobson later recalled, 'An evening of such intolerable boredom that even today one yawns to think of it.' It lost more than their annual grant. Filling only 21 per cent of the theatre for 28 performances it was less successful than his previous play (Live Like Pigs) but not as dire as his next (The Happy Haven). Nevertheless, support remained constant, the play continued to be acted, was on television in 1962, was revived successfully and profitably in 1965 and here it is again among the most interesting and intermittently gripping plays in London.
A white sheet is drawn back to reveal four soldiers. It is cold and they are playing cards on a drum, another white sheet behind them. Throughout the evening the dominating colours are black, white and the scarlet of soldiers' uniforms; the few objects are made of stone, wood or steel. The language too is of the sort people too easily call 'muscular' or 'sinewy' and at first it seemed self-conscious in its straining after a strong simplicity. When the soldiers reach an inn, a girl says to Musgrave, 'Well I'm looking at your face, mister serjeant. Now do you know what I'd say? . . The North Wind in a pair of millstones was your father and your mother. They got you in a cold grinding. God help us all if they get you a brother.' A bit much even if she is daft, but the atmosphere establishes itself and by the end I did not even mind the same character halting the powerful climax in order to burst into song as people constantly do all evening.
Everything builds towards that climax. Arden constantly drops hints, usually ominous ones, as to what is going on; this works brilliantly. The audience is always fed something to puzzle over and always satisfied later. Who are these soldiers and have they come to break the strike as the town fears? Why must the daft girl not talk about her lover and the child he gave her? Is the play going to be about the strike and the strikers getting arms? What is Musgrave going to say when he makes his speech in the market-place and does indeed dance (though only just, it is more a rhythmical lurching from side to side)? John Thaw manages here to pull off an electrifying moment but, like Wagner in my experience, the moment goes on too long, the thrill fades, and it has to he admitted that anti-climax and even boredom have crept in. The speech is a pacifist one and Arden has given his four soldiers different motives for their revulsion from the unspecified colonial war in which they have been fighting. He cannot resolve the complications without becoming fatally wordy. There is a whole extra scene of chat after Musgrave has revealed that he is, in his own opinion, filled with a divine mission of revenge. A comrade was murdered (the incident was taken from Cyprus, but now cannot fail to evoke Ireland). Five men were killed in reprisals. So five must be killed for each of them, 25 of the ruling class from the original victim's home. He fails and it is the forces of law and order that dance in their turn. This sends us out muddled and let down after we had been geared up for the vicarious thrills of stage violence. Arden breaks Chekhov's rule by introducing a gun — a magnificent Gatling — and not firing it. The trouble is not that he does not commit himself, although he has apologised for his timid advocacy of total Pacifism explaining that he does not `care to preach too confidently what I am not sure I can practise'. The trouble is that he cannot simplify his thoughts to produce a slambang ending.
In 1960 The Caretaker was a great success and we were proud that the West End could support such a highbrow and enigmatic play. Did the three characters represent the Ego, the Superego and the Id, or was The Holy Trinity more likely? Now it seems to be about two brothers and a tramp. Harold Pinter's preoccupations and trademarks are not just part of the play, they are the play, but it also has a story and characters with recognisable motives. There is a struggle for territory with shifting alliances. When Mick terrorises the intruding tramp, Davies, with pauses and contradictions, it is not just HP sauce, it is a calculated tactic. If you cannot trust a word Davies says, well that is what he is like. A black cast has taken over and it is surprising (and rather gratifying) how little the colour change upsets things. Mick, a sharp London boy, could as well be black; Aston, rather a surprising brother for him, surely quite a bit older, is a strange figure, Possibly a political refugee from Africa, but that is fine. He is meant to be a bit mysterious until, in one of the few Pinter Speeches that you feel you should take at face value, he explains himself. Norman Beaton is an enjoyable if not a formidable Davies and has the lines that might seem strangest; but Davies can take to himself any amount of oddity. It seems characteristic that he should rail against blacks without apology or reference to the colour of his skin. Those papers at Sidcup obviously had something to do with immigration.
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