REAL TINSEL UNDERNEATH
Mark Amory is unable to find
a decent production of a worthwhile play in London
It is the sound of music that has done it. Musicals are everywhere and more are threatened. If Evita is about to abdicate, Chess will doubtless soon take a comman- ding position, if Me and My Girl may split, La Cage Aux Folks is coming to camp at least, while Cats is forever and Godspell is to be resurrected. There is something old (Guys and Dolls), something new (Star- light Express), something borrowed (Les Miserables), but surprisingly little blue. My count of musicals listed in the Times on an arbitrarily chosen evening suggests that there are more than there have ever been, but some historian will doubtless prove me wrong, so let us add 'since the war'. Nor are the shows particularly silly or tacky. There used to be jokes about putting Hamlet on ice or tunes in The Wild Duck but they fell back abashed before real projects, which often confounded all by succeeding — Eliot's whimsical poems, trains on roller-skates and the most intel- lectual of board games are recent topics. Many are lavishly mounted, none more so than 42nd Street, the biggest hit in town (it is best to leave before the curtain is fully up. It rises slowly on a forest of thunder- ously tapping feet; nothing equals or even adds to that moment.) Rock musicals, which seemed to be heralded by Hair, have not established themselves. Instead recent pop idols are used as subject matter (Len- non, Are You Lonesome Tonight?), already the second on the Beatles and Presley which neatly revives the music that made them famous. No score to write, just one to pay for.
There have been fewer spectacular flops than might have been expected, though the idea that nobody ever went broke under- estimating the taste of the public remains bizarre; it happens all the time, with Blondel for instance. If it is hard to spot any new masterwork in all this and if some aspire to the Jesus Christ Superstar award for vulgarity, there have been a couple of first-rate revivals (Guys and Dolls and On Your Toes) and a goodish time has been had by many. There is a certain irony in our espousing The Big Show just as its creator, Broadway, is deciding yet again that it is dead; and, not by coincidence, London may become, is becoming, the try-out ground for New York and the serious money. This has a humiliating, colonised feel to it but may not do any real harm. My youth was spent trying to get the record of the latest American hit — particularly remember The Pajama Game and then waiting, word perfect, for the agonisingly slow arrival of a sometimes second-rate English production. Does it matter if the process is reversed and money is wasted here? New York a few years ago I was surprised, shocked, smug — and went to a musical. The spectre of Broadway as a dreadful warning, where seldom is heard an intelli- gent word, has long been used to frighten us. Well, it is here, almost. I must make some qualifications but not many: I have not seen Janet Suzman in Gorki's Vassa, but Greenwich is scarcely central. I did not care for Phedra and have given up on Howard Barker. My favourite theatre, Hampstead, is, curiously, unlisted and was offering an excellent if slight comedy, my ex-favourite theatre, the Royal Court, happened to be between productions.
Looking around a touch less strictly, it is apparent that, while musicals surprisingly flourish without famous performers, straight plays of the most modest preten- sions and expense do not. Big names are necessary but if big plays are not found for them, the fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our stars, who are a talented and interesting bunch. The word has been hopelessly debased and the quality is established as indefinable. 'The one you watch' is the best brief description, but here I mean someone who can guarantee an audience and as a result would have his, or as it happens more often her, name above the title.
The risks with stars are supposed to be that, besides being difficult, expensive and rare, they either insist on large, flashy and lovable roles, which are specially written for them (John Osborne's and Robert Bolt's careers have been enormously helped by their habit, I am sure uncalcu- lated, of writing meaty star parts) or of distorting plays by unbalancing the emph- asis. Laurence Olivier's playful suggestion that he would like 'to play the butler in a thriller and steal all the notices' would have been an example, as would the apocryphal story of Vivien Leigh's plan to wear an 'ugly' mask made of rubber in order to appear opposite him in The Entertainer. These charges are now unfair. Vanessa Redgrave, Lauren Bacall and Glenda Jack- son have recently given disciplined per- formances in revivals. If the audience titters in the wrong bits of Interpreters, Maggie Smith, unmannered and touching, has given them no encouragement, though we know how effectively she could. Pene- lope Keith alone is in her own vehicle, so starry behaviour is positively demanded, but she does her best by a wholly implausi- ble play. Antony Sher, the newest star, is in somebody else's vehicle, and a ram- shackle mess it is, though enjoyable; he is meant to woo and charm us and can be forgiven some ingratiating ways. Anthony Hopkins is in the reverse position of having to hold Pravda together as the villain, and the role is already pitched somewhere between cartoon and caricature; consider- ing all this he is positively restrained. Far from cheapening the playwright's vision, the stars of the moment seem to me to be doing a grand job by often dubious mate- rial. Mention of Pravda brings attention to the institution that did not exist in the Fifties, the National Theatre. With an RSC hugely grown, widely praised and with a London presence, indeed two, it should render my gloom absurd; but I do not find that it does. Love for Love was on offer, a tepid copy of a past success, five new plays at the Cottesloe did not beckon and the Sheridan/Stoppard pairing of short plays about critics was a bright idea that failed to sparkle. Recently I had liked half of Coriolanus and half-liked The Duchess of Malfi, which like many film actors on stage, was handsome but inaudible. Mem- ory of Wild Honey is more vivid than any of these, but growing distant. So, a dull patch — that is forgivable. The muttered criticism of Peter Hall — his absences, the amount of money he earns, his preference for opera, his failed gamble on a musical, himself — was becoming deafening, when in a transformation as swift as that of Botham from lout to saint, he became the knight defending the arts from the bad Lord Gowrie. As with Botham, it will not last. Meanwhile the leaders of the RSC remain uncensured but they too do other things, including directing musicals which may end up on Broadway and earn them a fortune. Terry Hands got further than Sir Peter with Poppy but was stopped by union problems. Trevor Nunn succeeded with Cats is succeeding with Starlight Express and may succeed again with Les MiseSr- ables, a cuckoo in our subsidised nest, created by the French, performed by inter- lopers, aimed at America. Money is all that it offers us. Money too must be the main motive for reviving, like the National, a past success, Nicholas Nickleby. The RSC is not in a particularly bad patch, more without direction. Like a damp Catherine wheel of high quality, it splutters fitfully, sometimes throwing out something bril- liant. The (fairly) young Turks are being given their heads and are riding off in all directions. The new stars, Sher, Branagh, Pryce, only want to stay for a season or two, give perhaps three performances. The company feeling has always been, partly because of geography, far stronger than that of the National — except perhaps in the heroic early days at the Old Vic. Now it is still strong, but threatened. The shadows cast by our two great threatical bastions are, at the moment short.
The Fringe too has come into existence since the Fifties. Fringe benefits are clearly enormous but it cannot directly fill the role that I think theatre can and should fill, and 'There should be a government health warning!' at the moment doesn't. Antony Sher's career, for example, has been the very model of a modern major thespian's several years on the fringe, a television series, a major role at the RSC, West End star. Then there are those who pass back and forth, like Julie Covington and Stephen Rea, both of whom succeeded at the National and elsewhere but have the strength of purpose and, I imagine, the economic discipline, to return. Mike Alfreds of Shared Experience is about to have his second crack at The Cherry Orchard, this time at the National. This is as it should be. The fringe enables talent to get started, nurtures it till it passes on and, perhaps, welcomes it back later. It can give a similar fair wind to plays. I am not sure where the boundaries are drawn, but the best new work is likely to surface at the moment Upstairs at the Royal Court, Hampstead, the Bush and the Almeida.
Does the Lyric Hammersmith count as Fringe? If so, it is worth noting that Pinter's last play opened there at lunch- time, before being part of a triple bill in the West End. The Fringe can also achieve things which the mainstream cannot. What it cannot do by itself is put a stamp on the thoughts and feelings of a people. The runs are too short, the audiences too small. It must be through the mainstream that a playwright enters the intellectual life of the nation, helps to shape the way a generation thinks of itself, its country, the world, becomes a natural part of any educated person's thinking. Clearly the boundary is imprecise. I am not at all asking for plays about current issues, Northern Ireland, racial conflict, whatever, though the lack has been felt and conscientiously, often effectively, filled; still less do I look for plays set in crumbling buildings which turn out to be concerned with the State of the Nation. Poor State-of-the-Nation plays flooded the stage for years and it some- times seemed that only Peter Jenkins, in these pages, stood against ti -m; now their authors have retreated to the past or the future. Harold Pinter, our official leading playwright fulfills the role insofar as work that is so elusive, enigmatic and, recently, rare, can do so. Stoppard, the crown prince, seems to approach it, giggles and turns out to be going somewhere else; Peter Shaffer, whom I admire very much less and revere mainly as the author of Black Comedy, has forced himself to the front by overwhelming popular success. Equus and Amadeus set the whole country, not to mention America, arguing; but he lacks a committed vision of any power or originality. It is not clear what Shafferian would mean if it were a word people used. Ayckbourn continues to show the loneli- ness and despair of the lower middle classes. David Hare, the Rattigan of the Seventies, is still going strong and is a contender. Caryl Churchill was looking promising. But, as they say of Hollywood, strip away the false tinsel on top and at the moment, mostly, except in some patches, you will find the real tinsel underneath.
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