Brose in the Boilerhouse
By MALCOLM RUTHERFORD
Eh? (Aldwych.) — Hay Fever. (National Theatre.) 'BIM, barn, born on his brain pan.' The line is offered to anyone attempt- ing a coherent explanation of Mr. Henry Livings's new play at the Aldwych. It is spoken Out of the black by the hero, Valen- tine Brose, and so far as I noticed this deviation into sounds without words is unique in the text. And the odd thing is that, say it again, and it is obvious that the line is pregnant with sug- gestion. There is the half-rhyme, the all but complete alliteration, the image of sounds and meanings falling on an empty but strangely receptive mind. Do they bounce off or are they trapped? Do they fall gently like rain or fiercely like a hammer? Are they a comfort or a threat? The area between acquiescence and menace (sometimes we can hardly distinguish between them) is at the heart of Brose's character, as it is at the heart of the play, and Eh? is a very re- markable play indeed.
The set, designed by John Bury, is central: the boiler room of a dying and dry cleaning factory, and the boiler is all. It is an enormous Piece of work, very tall and broad, capable of hissing out steam from the most unlikely places, flashing with fire and raining coke. Yet it is also noticeably antiquated, relatively easy to control and nothing like as menacing as the man who is set to run it, Valentine Brose. Brose and the boiler have a deal in common. Both can go through periods of seeming quiet and routine, both are liable to give way to sudden and terrifying irruptions. Brose, however, is totally incapable of controlling either himself or the boiler.
It should be clear from the start that, far from being stupid, Brose has an intelligence and imagination so rare they might almost be called unrecognisable. He is a very questioning man. His mind is full of random scraps of knowledge which can lead him to alarming deductions. If he appears not to have eyes in the front of his head, he certainly has them at the back and in the sides. He could have picked up everything he knows between dozing in the average secondary modern. If he is a man whom technology has left behind, it plainly cannot write him off.
Brose's stillness and apparent lack of fire are deceptive; even When he irrupts he still seems partly inanimate. His language is extraordinary; he will come out with the weirdest archaisms, as when he appeals to his wife, Betty, to 'cleave to' him. When he threatens the foreman, Price, with the consequences of his not getting the job, he produces an image of frightening clarity: There won't be much blood to speak of— just an agony and an ache, and you not being able to drag yourself along the wet pavement.
On occasions •he has the , most retentive of memories, recalling word for word the analysis the personnel officer, Mrs. Murray, has made of him and repeating it to his wife. 'I think you should know Betty that I'm an undifferentiated schizophreniC, etc. . ."Are you?' she asks. 'I don't know, it's hard to tell.' He has an innate suspicion of other people's questions, a feeling that though he knows his mind moves slowly he will get to their motives in the end. 'A gorilla could do this job,' Price tells him in the inter- view. Brose giggles, pleased with his own in- spiration: `I know what you want me to say now. I can't,' it's too silly. Why don't you get a gorilla—' but he can't complete the question. His fascination with words comes out in his own crazy derivations. 'Id, that's Latin, meaning "that." Hence id-iot—"that idiot," id-iot-ic "that twitching idiot."' He is also something of an industrial rebel, distributing leaflets with calls to action against employers. He wears the most bizarre suit and boots, has the infuriating habit of puffing in and out his cheeks in silent whistling and though he can easily picture himself as a rapist,. he is incapable of making the first sign of love to his wife.
What plot there is is largely an excuse for Brose to work his powers of destruction. To the world of the boiler room he introduces his bride, having 'forgotten,' he claims, to arrange the week in Southend. 'There's just one thing,' he warns her, 'don't let anyone see you here.' They sleep on single bunks one on top of the other through his night shift with the alarm set for four o'clock so that he, or rather she, can get up and oil the bearings. Just before eight in the morning he packs her off : 'come back at 11.55.' His obsession, his reason for taking the job in the first place, is his giant mushrooms. 'M.U.SHROOMS, it's a brand name,' he ex- plains to the prying Price, and when the boiler misbehaves his first thought is to get the boxes safely out of the way. Gradually, however, the characters gang up against him, including Mrs. Murray, who at first has been ready to fall into his arms. He is a dangerous enemy and at one stage tramples back and forward over Price's prostrate body. But the mushrooms suddenly start visibly sprouting and the play ends with everyone tasting their magic properties. 'Do you like happy endings?' Brose asks, and that's what we get.
There are moments of supreme comedy. Once Betty lingers too long and is superbly pushed by Brose up and over the boiler. He himself scrambles wildly across it in panic at the sudden scalding outbursts of steam. Another time Betty places a cup of tea into the wrong part of his hand as he lies on his back on the top bunk. Brilliantly he lowers himself to the ground, then when he is safely there pours it down his sleeve. This is largely business; in the text there is humour, pathos and an alarming share of sheer terror. David Warner as Brose takes them all perfectly. He uses his great lean weight, his wandering hands, his quiet voice to their fullest. When he peers down at another character, perhaps with a quizzical smile, we are aware of an extraordinary power. He can irrupt at any moment; no one can tell how and no one will be able to stop him.
Inevitably there are moments of tedium, where inventiveness seems lacking, and one character, the Reverend Mort, while well enough played by Nicholas Selby, does not come off. Of the play as a whole I do not think the coherent explanation is possible, though there are hints and suggestions in plenty. Eh? is a play about a man not so much rebellious as un- predictable and untamed. However different he is from others, his words and actions have a logic of their own. However menacing or de- structive the machine, the man can out-act it throughout. It is a startling and thoroughly suc- cessful piece of theatre.
Noel Coward's welcome production of his own Hay Fever, at the National Theatre, is more glittering than his text, and indeed it is not a play whose text is so important. The situa- tion is weak: as the Bliss family have no stan- dards, it does not greatly matter who is dis- covered making love to whom. After Virginia Woolf, even the continual quarrelling seems tame, the more so as it yields no skeletons, and the weakest line has become the family refrain, 'Wouldn't it be nice to be normal?', meaning 'Aren't we glad we're not?' In fact, three out of four of them are normal to the point of dullness, but they have invented a family. mystique 'Whoever said its all in the eye of the beholder ought to have his head examined.'
as a way of living with the impossible Judith. It is totally apt that they shohld choose to play the ad- verb game, since she has impressed upon them all that it is only the manner of doing things that matters. They are playing it all the time. Louise Purnell lies across a settee deliciously, Maggie Smith rolls a glass round her forehead divinely and Dame Edith Evans at times over- acts abominably, but always enchantingly. Some people have said that Dame Edith is too old for the part, and plainly she is—a little. But the way she plays lines like 'I don't flaunt, I never have,' or (of her husband), 'he's not dead; he's upstairs,' I shall remember for ever. Maggie Smith's equally memorable 'this haddock's dis- gusting' must already be written on the heart of anybody who reads reviews.
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