Theatre
Arden of Chichester
By DAVID PRYCE-JONES The Workhouse Donkey. Chichester Festival.)
WITH its final production, The Workhouse Donkey, the Chichester Festival is re- solved into a coherent whole. Uncle Vanya is concerned with the effect on a secluded community of a disruptive influence arriving from the world at large. So is The Workhouse Donkey. But from the outset the nature of compromise is made clear : a chorus of policemen come marching on to a jolly brass band; the laying of a foundation stone is an occasion for a Labour alderman to say to a Tory rival, 'All that lies between us now is a few political differences,' and these turn out to be the Labour opposition to a local Tory-sponsored art gallery. This is what the exercise of power has come down to, and the give-and-take of daily existence is exposed by the arrival of a new chief constable whose frigid personal integrity is the counterpart of the communal self-interest, hypocrisy, pathos and ineptitude of the citizens.
Uncle Vanya makes its impact by creating a drama of character. Generalities are concealed behind personalities. The Workhouse Donkey is an inversion of this, with a cast manipulated to create a drama. Arden's characters are not working and scheming in their own right: they are theses. When he tries to get to grips with human beings, he becomes trivially anecdotal. The Workhouse Donkey is a compendium of small stories: the affair between the superinten- dent and Gloria who manages the town night- club, the relationship between Gloria and the Tory Sir Harold Sweetman, the affair of the Sweetman son with the doctor's daughter, the activities of Dr. Blomax, who is used as a kind of stage narrator. In a play of this length and complexity, with a cast as diffuse as a carnival, it is a weakness to depend on sub-plots in order to establish the main imaginative theme, It is like scattering stones on fertile ground.
In Sergeant Musgrave's Dance this flaw was overcome by the mystery, even the obscurity of Musgrave himself, with his God-identification, his true-blue qualities and compulsiVe self- confidence. One felt that he was not called Black Jack for nothing. But many of the other parts were almost caricature; Annie, for instance, is the figment of soldier's slut, Sparky is the cliche of a cocky soldier. The old people of The Happy haven are also guyed; they are.the comic props of the plot even in their names, Golightly, Crape, Hardrader, while the doctor is a hearty bluff ragbag, pieced together from odd prejudices and impressions without the skill Dickens would have used on such a caricature. It is worth noting that Alderman Charlie Butterthwaite of The Work- house Donkey has featured before in the Arden panorama, under the same name and under the same description as 'the Napoleon of Local Government' in The Waters of Babylon. Arden can afford such thinness of characterisation be- cause he seems to see men in terms of their office, providing a series of aldermen, MPs, doctors, mayors, policemen, officers. The central Arden situation could be summed up like this: incom- patible retinues and/or aspirations, symbolised by appointed officials, clash until higher authority intervenes to disperse them.
In other language then, Arden is an expres-
sionist. If the characters are going to be card- board, to serve merely as dramatic conveniences, then they might as well drop all pretence to realism. They can break into little songs, they can try a music-hall dance number, they can interrupt the action to explain themselves to the audience. They can borrow lines and rhythms from Shakespeare and Ben Jonson, and be as literary and derivative as Arden chooses to make them. Sometimes this is far-fetched, as when Lady Swcetman urges her husband to action as a kind of contemporary, and therefore incom- petent, Lady Macbeth. Sometimes it is effective as when the chief constable says, 'Only alone can I know that I am right,' or again Charlie Butterthwaite, You can't by individuality hold up props against the overtoppling world.
Yet it is incongruous that Arden should have chosen so involved and minute a subject as this municipal political rivalry. It becomes defiant,. a private and very English, even north-country, challenge to local government to produce an epic theme. The sixteenth century wrote about the fall of princes, and today the parallel is the council squabble, and here is a playwright who will show the connection or go bust. It does not suit his technique, it strains the conventions he is imposing, and it calls for every resource of staging. The inventiveness of the production is almost a criticism of the play in this context. Sergeant Musgrave's Dance was a close-knit play with a careful climax in which all the threads were pulled tight. When Arden tries for the same effect here, the play as such falls apart, but it is a measure of his literary skill that the final scene stands as an entity, a kind of whirligig poem.
Alderman Butterthwaite has finally got himself so embroiled that he is forced to burgle the town hall's safe, with the unwilling connivance of the doctor. This in itself strikes a false note, for Arden has to introduce, almost apologetically, some realistic explanations for such behaviour. All we know of him up till then is that the General Strike was his great moment of emotion, and he has been a bit of a card locally, elected mayor nine times. The scene of his downfall is nevertheless as dramatic as Musgrave's moment with the skeleton and Gatling gun. 'Out he goes, the poor old donkey,' he says of himself, draping a table cloth round his shoulders and assuming the mock postures of a king. But he has discovered in his life that 'I am no donkey, never was. I am a naked human being.' This prompts his final question as he is led off: 'Who can tell what beast was, here?' Order is restored, compromise returns, the chief constable has resigned. But again, as in Sergeant Musgrave's Dance, the crux has been a change of side from someone who should know better : in the former play it is the Bargee, here it is the doctor, who says of himself, `I am a corrupted individual.' Compromise then, rests on betrayal, and betrayal is a matter of expediency. Judas was an intelligent man. A decent action is relative, for it will damage some- body, and in the last resort even idealism is at the mercy of power and so on a footing with corruption.
One imaginative difference from the former play is that power is here shown with a soft underbelly. The chief constable epitomises power, and his refusal to join sides precipitates the issue. But behind his inflexibility there is a need to be loved, and he compromises himgelf with a proposal of marriage. Anthony Nicholls manages to bridge the awkwardness of this contradiction by appearing as offhand as possible; no quaver in the voice for a man who knows the course of duty. The same no-nonsense approach of Frank Finlay to the problem of Butterthwaite is not quite so successful. For Butterthwaite power is not an end in itself but a means. For the chief constable it is almost a religion. Like Musgrave, he knows what he believes, and the law takes the place of a god, although it lets him down.
To distract us, there are many incidents of • farce and parody, often very funny, such as the night-club • scene with hostesses and bunnies singing, 'Poppetty, poppetty, pop-a balloon,' and a cheap imitation of a Spanish bolero. 'A vulgar melodrama' was what Arden intended to write, and if so, he should have made it more 'base, common and popular.' For, as it is, we are shunted into too many sidings, or clatter over too many points only to be switched back again. Realism and expressionism do not mix like this; nor do slapstick and serious poetic diction; and finally the imaginative basis of the play is too strong both for so extended a cast and for so uninteresting a peg as this local intrigue.
7'he Workhouse Donkey must be accounted a failure: 1 do not think that more than a small (and necessarily) highbrow minority will, or should, make allowances for Arden's intentions. In the process of evolving his style, Arden has given us yet another experiment. His handling of the final scene is another proof of his capabilities, but they are not yet mature. Talent and imagina- tion have not yet fused; it will require discrimina- tion and a degree of artistic self-consciousness to bring this about. Of all the younger playwrights though, Arden gives exceptional evidence of an imagination and an intuitive feeling for the stage, which may well break the current strangling fashion of naturalism.
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