Theatre
Such dexterity
Mark Amory
The Shoemaker's Holiday (Olivier) The Worlds (New Half Moon) While the other shoemakers are still at work, one of them, who has been to the wars in France, appears at the back of the stage, throwing open the top half of the door to the workshop. His comrades, a friendly bunch, are delighted to see him again and start forward in welcome; he throws open the lower half, revealing that he has lost a leg. It is a theatrical moment characteristic of John Dexter, our most brilliantly theatrical director (from the orchestrated bustle of Wesker's The Kitchen in 1959 to the unsettling horses of Equus), exciting in itself but also stressing the real pain of what has happened. Poor Peter Lovstrom, apart from presumably having his leg strapped up, is knocked over constantly for the rest of the evening to make the same point; but such undercutting does not prevent the overriding mood of Thomas Dekker's bestknown play being one of benignity. The shoemakers are given gigantic clubs at the only moment when they almost take to violence, but we know they are goodnatured chaps really. From the very beginning when Andrew Cruikshank tells us his son is in love with an unsuitable girl, it is clear that all will end well and no one will be deeply unpleasant. The plot slipped by without my ever quite grasping it. The son pretends to be a shoemaker, which involves his adoption of a funny foreign accent. His genial employer makes a deal with a Dutchman, who also has a funny foreign accent, and immediately becomes ostentatiously rich; but perhaps that is because of his rapid progress as a civic dignitary, which soon has him Lord Mayor of London, amusing his king with some unusually drab drollery. The disapproving father has a servant called Dodger who skips three steps forward and one backward to get anywhere and perhaps a laugh. The clothes, which look authentic and expensive rather than beautiful, get brighter and brighter and people say things like 'He is as proud as a cod in a doublet' or that their buttocks went jiggy-jaggy like a quagmire' (at least that is what my notes seem to claim, but my notes are fallible. I was well on my way to writing down that the Prologue had informed us, oddly, that this was an 'American-seated' comedy before realising that it was 'a merry conceited' one). All this is instead of jokes. There is little to laugh at and the characters are Pleasant rather than interesting; so that when Brenda Bruce has trouble getting through the door in her new finery and makes elaborate faces of first dismay and then triumph, I thought she was overdoing It a bit and was grateful all the same. I was grateful without qualification to David Yelland, who pops up at the end as the tolerant monarch who can supply a happy ending. It is, I suppose, the duty of the National to present high, wide and handsome productions of neglected classics even If they leave most of the audience mildly bored most of the time; and no amount of dexterity can avoid that here.
Edward Bond writes as a socialist. He thinks that 'the primary function of the artist is to help people understand society', Which does not mean that he has to write about new towns or comprehensive schools. However his new play is set in contemporary England and does set out to explain, but does so many other things at the same time that I think it is his fault not his director's or mine that I got into a muddle. In a country hotel the members of the board of a firm that is on strike are indulging in complacent and sycophantic chat, even philosophy: Neck out then, If we're being philosophical and there's no harm in that when it's past midnight as long as you don't make it a habit — then be philosophical. It might not be Spinoza but it's worth a thought. How d'you Judge a chap? You said JT: "Not from the eyes". You're right JT. You're not often not.' This is enjoyable, recognisable caricature. Then, swiftly, the chairman (JT) is kidnapped and his captors demand that the strikers be given what they want. The police effect his release but the directors have taken the chance to vote him out; he gives a !Inner party for them and their wives and insults them. The kidnappers strike again (as do, I think, the workers) but this time they get a chauffeur by mistake. JT, who is now a recluse wandering about in a blanket like recluses do, meets his ex-captors and asks them to stay. The police arrive andJT, inexplicably to me but it is clearly the whole point, shoots the chauffeur.
During all this, credibility has evaporated. The dinner party dissolves into chaos, one director sobbing, the wife of another doing a strip. Perhaps it can be taken as a propaganda piece with the bosses, workers and kidnappers, who are given less individuality, playing out their class roles? There is a message, which is underlined and repeated: 'The real world of money contains the whole of the apparent world.' But there is also a reworking of Timon of Athens — Bond has already examined Shakespeare's dubious moral position over property in Bingo and given us his version of Lear. So JT has become almost a seer and he greets the message with 'I didn't listen. I've heard it before. Better said. There are two worlds. Yours and mine. We're in mine.' Furthermore, there is a whodunnit: who is the traitor among the kidnappers? At least I thought there was but I never discovered the answer and nor did the nice girl next door to me. Still further there are changes of style so that a girl not meant to be demented says, 'There was a heron wandering about in the sky. A heron is a bird. It flies. But it was lost.' Me too, but it was more interesting than being on holiday.
Previous page
