Theatre
Royal standards
Kenneth Hurren
"Really! We might be living in Rumania," remarks Queen Mary indignantly, in Royce Ryton's Crown Matrimonial, but it is, I'm afraid, a wild piece of hyperbole — and just about as wild as anything gets during the course of this peek at the home life of a recent generation of 'royals ' at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket. Compared with the tempestuous Carol-Lupescu thing, and many other celebrated goings-on involving Europe's uneasily crowned heads, the crisis in the House of Windsor that eventuated in the abdication of King Edward VIII in 1936 was relatively small beans as a romantic drama, lacking even a proper theatrical climax. Exile to the governorship of the Bahamas, though doubtless tiresome, lacks something of the dramatic frisson of, say, that business in the hunting-lodge at Mayerling.
It is local, though; and on the principle that more British hearts are fluttered by a head-cold at Balmoral than by an assassination in Chile, the play's lack of compelling dramatic incident is unlikely to prove a fatal disadvantage. It may take two to tango, but even the absence of one half of the romantic liaison here (since the play is set entirely in Queen Mary's drawing-room at Marlborough House, there is no prospect of Mrs Simpson's being on hand) will be excused by the loyal, Crawfle-oriented citizenry when all the royal figures involved — not only the King and the Queen Mother, but the Duke and Duchess of York (soon to be elevated beyond their expectations), the Duchess of Gloucester and the Princess Royal — are represented as large as life, like an animated Madame Tussaud's, and are being called by their private first names. " Bertie and Elizabeth worked harder than anyone else in the country," declares the Queen Mother in the 1945 epilogue, discussing the nation's war effort, and the cosy domestic trivia of this order, if laid end to end, would reach from Haymarket to Pinewood, and almost certainly will.
The play, as far as it goes, is decently done. The actors, who bear plausible resemblances to their real-life counterparts (though they are, on the whole, rather better spoken), have been so astutely picked that there is no sacrifice of talent in the interest of this engaging verisimilitude. The performances of Peter Barkworth and Wendy Hiller, as Edward and Queen Mary, are especially fine, and I am uncertain only about Amanda Reiss, who plays the present Queen Mother—then the willowy Duchess of York — in a style that reminded me of the soberer moments of Madcap Maisie in The Boy Friend; but on second thoughts, Miss Reiss is probably right, for this is certainly no enterprise to encourage any parodial impishness. It is, indeed, so respectful to all parties as to seem petrified in a permanent curtsy. Ryton has put a still-living royal personage on the stage for the first time in this post censorship era, but that, I fear, is the limit of his adventurousness.
This, of course, is where his play inevitably disappoints. His devotion to royalty is so undiscriminating that it emasculates his play and virtually removes it from serious discussion. Ryton is so eager to see both sides of the coin that he focuses on the narrow, non-commital edge. The arguments of his drawing-room protagonists — the King, intent on marriage to the divorcee, Mrs Simpson; and his mother, unyielding in her insistence that his patriotic and religious duty can permit no such irresponsible folly; the Crown and the anchor — are both given a sympathetic airing, but neither is pursued to the point of conviction. Impartiality is a comfortable virtue, but I should be happier to concede the playwright's right to present the facts without weighing them, if I were persuaded that all the relevant facts are here.
I suspect, though, that the 'abdication crisis' was less a romantic affair, a family affair and a royal affair than it was a political affair. Crown Matrimonial leaves all the awkward questions unanswered. We are at a time of day when some answers should be possible, and might be refreshing. The play allows both Edward and Queen Mary to claim the support of a majority of the people, but both could not have been right and there is nothing here to suggest who was (although there may be something dangerously rueful in Edward's "Oh, you can't rely on popularity" when, again in the 1945 epilogue, his mother expresses surprise at Churchill's election defeat). The compromise of a morganatic marriage is mooted, and so unpersuasively dropped that I could almost hear the raising of eyebrows all over the house. Walter Monckton makes a token appearance, Baldwin and Attlee and Cosmo Lang are mentioned, but if they were exercised over anything other than the King's marriage plans — over, for instance, his embarrassing articulateness on matters touching the church, the monarchy and the disturbing social problems of the day — you would not guess it from Ryton's text. His romantic narrative may not put anyone in mind of Rumania, but his failure to bring into consideration the political realities beyond the apparent vacuum of his royal family circle should put everyone in mind of Ruritani a.
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