Arts
Gaining access
Giles Gordon
Tom and Viv (Royal Court) Rents
(Lyric, Hammersmith)
Q ince seeing the film E. T. I've been haunted by the extra-terrestrial being's first word to the boy who gives him suc- cour, 'Ell-i-ot'; spoken thus, in three long drawn-out syllables, a voice from the dry grave. It was a little time before I realised where I'd heard this voice before: T.S. Eliot on record reading Four Quartets. Thus 'Time present and time past/Are both perhaps present in time future,/And time future contained in time past' makes sense in terms of the poet's life when we know about the poet's life. But this has been kept from us. In Torn and Viv Eliot wonders 'Is there an alien culture?' He should know. The poet seems, until now, to have delivered his tablets from the mountain- top, without reference to an ordinary life lived, people known.
In Michael Hastings's play, Tom is Thomas Stearns Eliot (1888-1965) from Missouri aspiring to and achieving coupling with Old England; Viv is Vivienne (1888-1947), daughter of Charles and Rose Haigh Wood, an upper-middle-class English family traceable back to the Protec- torate. Advance publicity suggested that Mr Hastings had done a sullen hatchet job on the way in which the young banker, publisher, essayist and poet — though not that young: Tom and Viv were 27 when they met — consigned his increasingly batty wife to the bin. It's a moot point whether poets are attracted to dotty women or wives driven mad married to poets. Perhaps it's less risky to marry your secretary, as Eliot did second time round. Yet had he not separated from Vivienne he could not have gone on living, or partly living, the life he did, more English than the English. It's equally clear, from Tom and Viv and from Peter Ackroyd's towering biography to be published in the autumn, that Vivienne was a most able helpmeet, and that there was a singular and private love between them that foundered when a third party became witness.
There is an alarmingly funny scene when Eliot confronts Vivienne with having poured a tureen of melted Bourneville's chocolate through Faber's letterbox, wreck- ing an unsolicited translation from India of the Bhagavad-Gita and a manuscript by Roy Campbell. Vivienne's response, if not justification, is that Campbell's poetry is over-rated. (Certainly, hot chocolate is a less luke-warm reaction to some manu- scripts than rejection slips but maybe this explains why Andre Deutsch, not Faber; has lent the books on Antony McDonald and Jock Scott's rather awkward and scruffy set.) It is not important whether the first Mrs Eliot did do this — there's no evidence that she did — but that Michael Hastings easily persuades us she might have done: it is consistent with her imaginative character. She knew it would upset Mr Eliot of Fabers just as she was upset before their marriage that Tom declined to dance with her. Their relationship was a terribly corn' plex, brittle thing. Eliot, according to Tom and Viv — arid Mr Hastings's subtle and brilliant achieve- ment is to invade and occupy the clamPee- down mind and body of the poet — w"'asi mortified, agonised and haunted by the n" cipient madness of his wife. As played hY, Tom Wilkinson, he behaves through°' (the time-span is 1915-1947) with dignitY and humanity, appearing more than once te be on the precipice of sacrificing the inner life of the writer to her spiritual well-being. Mercifully, this is not one of those Plar about famous writers where the writer is shown at work. Mr Wilkinson, tall as a, pillar of black salt in dark suit and overcoat with bowler and brolly, moves as if each step is programmed, every sentence Pr'_ ordained. His accent shifts down the years from St Louis drawl to the familiar raven: croak. As he stands and stoops over 11.1; wife he seems a figure out of Magritte. J111,12 Covington as Viv ages, astonishinglY, years as the tragedy progresses. Her vet, body seems diminished. This most seiner. of actresses sacrifices her character's artistic tendencies on the unemotional altar of husband's uniqueness. She recognises "e genius as much as do Bertie, Ottolint; Virginia, Katherine and Co. Yet Lc dialogue between Tom and Viv is increas- ingly like Glen Baxter's captions. Margaret Tyzack as Mrs Haigh NY°°di.aits terrifying in a haughty speech to Elicit preaches the family's history and Pectigri,at an England of privilege and mediocrity b._ will not lie down. Nicholas Selby as her f.'ob ble husband, who obtained for Tom his if. a in the bank, gives a poignant rendering ° as father's disillusionment. David Haig ut Maurice, Viv's younger brother withairr much grey matter, is gentle, saintly and .ay creasingly a good friend to his brae is brother-in-law. Max Stafford-Clark dir'the a little frantically, roughly sawing offing. end of each scene. Tom and Viv, amai in. ly, makes Eliot's life and poetry more telligible, more accessible than before.. a Michael Wilcox's Rents, revived 1110, hard-edged production by William Gas tea is set in an Edinburgh less of Earl GreY The Spectator 18 February 1984 than of Sir Walter Scott vaseline. Osten- iblY about homosexual prostitutes living and cottaging in the shadow of the Castle (Dermot Hayes's set incorporates a geographically slightly eccentric silhouette of the skyline), it is as much about the loneliness and the isolation of the unattach- ed in our cities. Phil (Stevan Rimkus) and 18-Year-old Robert (Douglas Sannachan) live. together in digs. Lovers they are but obliged to use a single bed. Richard (Paul .lesson), never called Dick, is a wet Eng. Lit• lecturer seconded from Newcastle and Mesmerised by the boys. Kenny Ireland is a
i gross psychopath who roams the streets, in search of Robert whom obviously he fan- cies:
for his pains he's stabbed in the hand '3' Spider (Robert McIntosh, who provides four tellingly differentiated vignettes of queers plus an appearance as Phil's lorry driver father). The action is awash with bank notes: no cheques in this world. There are some funny and unselfconscious homo- sexual jokes, though non-U Edinburgh doesn't use the word `loo'. However, next time Pm in my home-town I'll know which Pubs and lavatories to avoid. When I was
at brought up, the Gay Gordons didn't mean w it might do now.
Previous page
