REVIEW OF THE ARTS
Kenneth Hurren on acceptable implausibilities
The Case. in Question by Ronald Millar, "suggested" by C. P. Snow's novel, In Their Wisdom (Theatre Royal, Haymarket)
Murderer by Anthony Shaffer (Garrick Theatre) Happy Days by Samuel Beckett; National Theatre (Old Vic) Alphabetical Order by Michael Frayn (Hampstead Theatre Club) There were times when The Case in Question gave me quite a nostalgic glow. The people up there on the stage are living in our own day, or so it is said, and indeed their conversation is tricked out with many a popular beef (the uncertain time schedules of British Rail are mentioned at one point, and I caught, too, an acerbic reference to the activities of Mr Wedgwood Senn) to draw approving nods and even spontaneous applause; and when one of the characters — a lady who chanced to be under cross-examination in the High Court — launched into a protracted speech about the usefulness of money, a tribute to the virtues of the middle class and a bitter lament over the cavalier treatment of both at the hands of the state, there seemed a distinct possibility that the stalls customers would all stand up and cheer. Nevertheless, the play in which all these fine sentiments are imbedded — and eventually, it is fair to say, ambiguously questioned — is warmly redolent of an earlier, more innocent day, an age of astrakhan coat collars and bustles and key winding watches, a delightful Edwardian business with a story as calculatedly contrived as anything by the late Pinero, nearly every scene producing its set-piece of theatrical surprise right on cue.
Speaking of scenes — and just to give you a further whiff of those carefree days before the commercial drama was overtaken by austerity — there are five of them, requiring four different sets, elegantly designed by Hutchinson Scott. We begin in the office of a solicitor, who is seen reading a will to the assembled beneficiaries, the chief of whom is a raffish young fellow, son of the lady who had nursed the deceased through his terminal illness; we then move to the office apartment of some sort of tycoon, who is seen persuading the dead man's disinherited daughter, rather against her own inclinations, to contest the will on the grounds that her father was clearly subject to undue influence in making it; thence to the Royal Courts of Justice where the case is heard; and finally, after a return visit to the solicitor's office to discuss the outcome, to the Court of Appeal.
It is a busy story somehow absorbing enough to rise above its abundant implausibilities; with a cast accomplished enough to suspend disbelief in most of the characters, even through some especially sticky patches in which Millar has tailored the dialogue so smoothly that its resemblance to actual human speech is almost imperceptible. As if you were not persuaded already of the reckless old-time extravagance of the enterprise, let me add that it employs no fewer than twenty players. They include John Clements (who directs the play with a precise appreciation of its valuable theatricality, as well as playing the tycoon figure with agreeable panache), Zena Walker as the young woman he encourages to contest the will, Simon Cadell as her bounderish opponent, Margaret Courtenay as his mother, and Peter Cellier, Donald Pickering, Charles Lloyd Pack and Brian Hayes as various legal gentlemen. I commend it fervently to everyone who feels the theatre to have been going to the dogs since they stopped playing the national anthem. It is still played, of course, at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket. Carriages about half past ten.
If the quotations from the daily newspaper reviews that are being used to promote the fortunes of Murderer are even distantly indicative of the full texts of my confreres' opinions, I think the stite of their heads might bear a little investigation. While it is customary to write indulgently of thrillers — the reviewers recognising the inscrutable appeal of so many of them, though perplexed themselves as to why anyone in the world would want to spend a night of his precious life watching cardboard characters involved in events that would be distressing if they were in the least credible — it is beyond ordinary comprehension that any responsible citizen, reviewer or not, would not feel some moral compulsion to warn even the most retarded addict not to waste his time on Murderer.
It is, as you may well have been apprised, the work of Anthony Shaffer, who has had a spectacular success with another piece called Sleuth. That one, to be sure, had its genial ingenuities and seemed to beinformed by a sardonic disdain for the genre, and it may be that Shaffer has tried to recapture the formula that served him so profitably. I am only guessing about that, though.
All that might be suspected from the stage proceedings is that his right hand was at work on a sinister melodrama about a murder buff keen on putting his theories into practice, while his left hand was busy with a devilish parody of the same idea, and that the director, though aware of these conflicting rather than complementary purposes, somehow got them the wrong way round, The result, I'm afraid, is a ghastly mess, dismaying beyond your darkest fancy. It has four players: Robert Stephens as the protagonist, looking fearfully care-worn; Caroline Blakiston as his wife, looking chillingly bored; Patricia Quinn as his mistress, looking as though her hairdresser bears her a grudge; and Warren Clarke as a village policeman who has the daunting assignment of looking stupid enough to believe any nonsense told to him but not stupid enough to miss the vital clue. In the light of the likely influence of those review quotes, to say nothing of the reputation that has accrued to Shaffer from Sleuth, I have little confidence of their release to more rewarding employment in the near future, but if it will cheer them as they go about their paltry work, I'll keep my fingers crossed for them.
About the best thing I can think of to say about Happy Days is that I'm glad the National Theatre has got it out of its system at the Old Vic before the day comes for Peter Hall and his company to move into the lavish new premises being built for them on the South Bank. At least, I hope it has. Whatever splendours may be being prepared for us over there by McAlpines as hopeful year follows upon hopeful year — whatever miracles of marble and hydraulics, of chandeliers and lavatories — the prospect of that long-delayed curtain ultimately rising, in that great hush of expectancy,, upon a stage occupied solely by a mound of ash, in which one of our theatre's most distinguished ladies is buried up to her ribs, has about it the aura of an anti-climax of such nightmarish absurdity that it might be wondered whether the institution could ever recover.'
It might have been worse. HapPY Days is a work fifteen years old or so. Beckett has progressed since then, via pieces in which the actors were allowed to have only their heads visible, protruding from dustbins or urns (Endgame and Play), another played in total darkness (Cascando), and yet another in which only the lips of the solitary speaker are seen (Not 1), to, his masterwork (Breath) which has neither dialogue nor players and consists only of the cry of a new-born baby followed by the gasp of a dying man, issuing from a stage loaded with "miscellaneous rubbish." Worse? Or better? At least Breath got his view of life, not to say drama, stripped right down to the irreducible minimum. In Happy Days we have to sit there miserably listening to its elaboration in the form of a monologue from the unfortunate actress (m this case, Peggy Ashcroft) as she sinks, eventually, chin-deep into the mound, her head resting there like a bunkered golf-ball, rabbiting away banally. It is a formidable feat of memory for Dame Peggy, for the sporadic interruptions by her partner, Alan Webb, are scarcely intelligible enough to be called cues and her own lines have roughly the dramatic impetus and continuity of a column of classified advertisements. She handles it unflinchinglY and as far as I know gets all the words in the right order, although the importance of that is arguable.
leave till last and to the briefest of mentions the Michael Frayn comedy, Alphabetical Order, set in the reference and clippings library of a provincial newspaper; but only because there will surely be a further opportunity of discussing the piece when it comes to the West End for the extended run it deserves. The Hampstead cast — led by Billie Whitelaw, Barbara Ferris and Dinsdale Landen — will, I hope, come with it.
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