Theatre
Black ties
Alark Amory
In the Mood (Hampstead) Caritas (Cottesloe) Village Wooing (New End) The programme yielded no clue as to time Or place, and when two men in RAF Uniform burst into the expensive sittingroom with cries about Churchill and Roosevelt I thought In the Mood was set in the Forties. The title is indeed from the Glenn Miller tune but the time is now and the men are veterans (though they look too Young). They are also black and longestablished residents of Clapham. Orrin Harris has prospered, and has 20 men working in his plumbing business, a Mercedes and considerable standing in the community. He makes good jokes, though it is uncharacteristically playful of him to Put watercress in his guests' whisky, eliciting the reasonable response, 'I asked for a drink not a salad.' This comes from r:D. Maxwell, an Anglophile who talks of 'liquid refreshment' and 'the Mother CounIrYi. T.D. has a white girl-friend Kate who IS writing a cookery book of West Indian "ecipes, Orrin has a formidable wife and a Tonging, drinking actor comes to lunch; :hat is the full cast.
There is a wisp of plot about who Kate as been sleeping with and whether Orrin will support T.D. as a councillor or stand limself (Labour, SDP not seriously con;Idered); but though Orrin says, 'The two nost boring topics are politics and race', hey mostly sit around, have a drink, liscuss them and are not boring at all. irevor, the actor, claims that he is on his vay to West End success as Uncle Van in Black Sisters', about three southern girls vho want to get to New York, but he 1.espises black Chekhov as much as black ■ hakespeare (Norman Beaton who plays )rrin with authority and wit has just come flit of the National's black Measure for vleasure). He is also upset about being hought of as an immigrant after all these ears, but himself refers to Guyana as 'ome. Though Orrin does have to insist at one point that 'In this street they don't sell houses to shouters,' the play is written with quiet skill by Michael Abbensetts and is exceptionally well acted. Much of the interest conies from the documentary details of what these people think and say, so it is essential that it be convincing. With the exception of some tension-raising business with a gun, my credulity never faltered.
It is not necessary to believe in Caritas, a one act play by Arnold Wesker, in the same way; which is lucky, because you do not. Wesker has transferred his story, of a young girl choosing to become an anchoress and then changing her mind, from Surrey to Norfolk and pushed it on 50 years to coincide with Wat Tyler. That is fine and none of us would have known if the programme had not told us. What does matter is that yop do not have faith in the details of behaviour as you do with Abbensetts' Clapham West Indians. Would the girl have had dirty feet at the solemn ceremony before she is shut up forever? Would the peasant family have been so impertinent to the rector? And, more unfairly, would the bishop necessarily have been so wrong and so unsympathetic? More unfairly because doubt is planted by knowledge of the playwright's beliefs.
Wesker has not had a real success in England since his fifth play, Chips With Everything, in 1962 but he remains famous. We all know that he is left-wing and Jewish and revered abroad (this play was commissioned by Danes and Swedes). The subject is, therefore, surprising and I found it impossible not to be aware when he took the line expected of him and when he did not. The scenes with her family and the clergy are broadly predictable, even perfunctory except when they deal with the character of the girl. It is as if the central image caught his imagination and the rest of the play was dutifully constructed round it.
The part he has written for the girl is extraordinary. She is walled up immediately and without a word. She then remains un seen for an hour but heard through a grill reporting or complaining. Then there is a thrilling moment when the cell swings open and we finally meet her. She is desperate, rocking on her heels, repeating snatches of prayers, braking off abruptly, and Patti Love makes her desperation immediate.
Weaker is a generously emotional writer and much of his best writing is for characters with a vision of the sublime; here the vision has departed, leaving misery and squalor. It is a fine passage and the kernel of the play — but then it goes on too long. No one can bang their head against a wall and laugh in a hysterical fashion indefinitely without becoming boring, not even Patti Love. Still the memory of the best bit remains, while the rest will fade away.
Village Wooing is also only one act, a frivolous trifle from Shaw. Written on a cruise, it is about a writer on a cruise wh,o is talked at by an unstoppable girl. The scene changes from ship to shop, where she serves him, installs him as her boss and finally makes him happy to marry her. The life force has got its way again. Michael Williams softens pleasantly but it is Judy Dench who makes the evening a delight. At first in pyjamas and with a scarf round her head and wavy golden hair she is lively enough to make you laugh at jokes about the colour of the Red Sea and the postman being a man of letters. Later she conveys her strength of purpose with a determined little nod, signals with a glance that it is quite all right for him to be masterful and strong occasionally, indeed it is really rather sweet; and near the end there were tears in her eyes when he had been spouting away, as men do, about the mystery of the universe or some such. All this skill however can do nothing with the dreary portrait of 1933 that precedes the Shaw. A giant tortoise died somewhere, they read to us from notebooks, and Larwood bowled very fast at the Australians. Meanwhile back at home Ramsay MacDonald. . . Go, but arrive in the interval.
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