21 MAY 1977, Page 28

Theatre

Unreal worlds

John Peter

Destiny (Aldwych) The Kingfisher (Lyric)

David Edgar's tough, brave and desperate play is that familiar spectacle: the English left-wing intellectual barking up the wrong tree. Yet Destiny, which comes to the Aldwych after a few performances in the RSC's tiny studio theatre in Stratford, deserves a wide hearing because it is a play of enormous courage: its subject is fascism in Britain, and after the spectacular performance of the National Front in the recent local elections it is chilling to watch Edgar's imaginary body, Nation Forward, burrowing efficiently away in the undergrowth.

A few weeks ago Stephen Poliakoff's Strawberry Fields surveyed the same grim landscape, and there is something bracing in the fact that the youngest generation of our playwrights have the intelligence to identify the nastiest aspect of British political life and the daring to expose it. And yet I wonder if an English playwright can ever be equal to the job. Most Englishmen who consider the matter at all regard racism as an unpleasant aspect of the National Debt. Thirty years ago, they would say, politicians behaved as though the British Empire had been the Roman Empire: they tried to make up for the mistakes of colonialism by offering the privileges of citizenship to the natives. The result was coloured immigration and racism, racism being our protective reaction for which the politicians are to blame. Such a view is not without some truth, but it has a moral weakness: it shifts the blame. For the really disturbing thing about racism is that it exists in perfectly ordinary people and is compatible with being what is vaguely called a nice person. Racism is not the same as Nazism; and when Edgar presents us with hate-filled freaks at a Nation Forward meeting or with a blond bully-boy spouting ghastly Nazi slogans, he is taking the easy way out. Racism is not only the creed of monsters; and it is not enough for the wife of a Labour candidate (the play centres on a by-election in Enoch country) to remind her husband that a lot of ordinary people loath immigrants. In the theatre hearsay is not the same as dramatic fact.

The point is that racial prejudice is not political but psychological, however much political capital may be made out of it. But Edgar is a political playwright, and Destiny, which is far and away his best play, is undermined by the narrowness of his outlook. That explains why his characters speak a tough identikit language: they are the means of hammering home the play's message. (Though I still don't know how a Tory factory foreman comes to quote front. a poem by Brecht.) It also explains the curious onesidedness of his presentation a politicians. We only see the Laboni candidate at home with his wife; he is a personality; the Tory remains a type. He has a conflict of conscience; the Tory IS merely in a spot. And Edgar's political narrowness probably explains his appalling vision in which Nation Forward links arils with right-wing militarism under ihe benevolent eye of Conservative Central Office. That, I'm afraid, is fatuous rubbish: it is deep'y insulting to a serious audience to present them with such a crass piece af political naiveté. All Edgar's virtues — his daring, his perception, his ability to see' however briefly, the terrifying similarities between left-wing and right-wiag extremism — are almost thrown away in this culminating scene of immature scaremongering. The truth is both simpler nastier: but I do not expect an Englisi,' playwright, full of muddled puritan gobt and horribly worried about upsetting people, to be able to portray it. The play is directed with brisk, uncoil.'" promising toughness by Ron Daniels. Its 'epic' technique of short punchy scenes limits the actors' scope; but Ian McDiartnnt Clyde Pollitt, Paul Moriarty and Choi! Lunghi still turn their roles into living ow mercilessly observed creatures.

To move from this play to

Douglas Home's The Kingfisher is II" stepping from a battlefield into a secItthe English garden. But what is wrong viD, sedate English gardens? Douglas WTI; gets a fearful hiding from most seri°11' critics every time his curtain rises and rel; als an upper-class person, probably titled' I f a personal dilemma. True, the world ,c), Destiny would seem utterly unreal to people in The Kingfisher; but then Tie world of The Kingfisher would seem tro same to the people in Destiny. But here I a, comparing them, whereas there is no e°d'''; parison whatever between a garden a°, to battlefield except that both need people is make them what they are. The Kingfishero a light comedy about three rather sillY °s. people who had made a mess of their Ve Can they repair the damage? •ve/Y Douglas Home writes with clecepti, casual elegance: he is saying fairly ser`°.tis things about his characters but he is Olio them lightly, in a soothing tone. Richardson, Celia Johnson and Alanrteitig collaborate with polished expertise,1101:0" 5, at sad little lives behind disciplined faCa.co The whole thing is poised affably betvtiv real life and make-believe, which is exac1 where a lot of people like to be when iheYaily to the theatre. Is this wrong? What is re.nto real? Even Destiny, which bites deep 1 to the national consciousness, seems to avoid some very unpleasant truths. To e" his own kind of reassurance.

Ted Whitehead will resume his theatre e°1' umn in next week's issue.