Theatre
Fox hunting
Mark Amory
Quartermaine's Terms (Queen's) If I were you I would not read this. Far more enjoyable to go to Quartermaine's Terms in complete ignorance and have only the evidence culled from the programme on which to speculate. 'A new play by Simon Gray' reveals much and little. His last, Stage Struck, was a tricky thriller that looked as if he had seen the hugely successful Deathtrap and thought, 'I could do that'; and so he more or less could, though one critic told him he had forfeited any claim to being called a serious playwright. Before that was Close of Play, almost a series of monologues in which a strong cast revealed their unsatisfactory lives to an unresponsive, possibly dead, Michael Redgrave; it was not popular. The Rear Column dealt with the behaviour, admirable, rum and evil, of a group of Englishmen in 19th-century Africa and astonished me by failing in the West End. On the other hand Molly, the drab recreation of a surburban murder, deserved to fail. Earlier still he established himself with Butley and Otherwise Engaged, in both of which Alan Bates was witty and difficult; they were directed, as is this one, by Harold Pinter. Death and the English difficulty in expressing emotion recur, with a gift for literate joking.
Quatermaine's Terms is set in a school of English for foreigners in Cambridge, but we meet only the staff. The star, Edward Fox, plays St John Quartermaine, so the action must revolve round, him and the title is probably a pun. Fox specialises in the upper classes — the name supports this, so could it be about aristocratic blackmail leading to murder? In the Sixties, in a language school, surely not. A strong cast of five men and two women, none of them married to each !other, meet on Friday evenings and Monday mornings in the staff room, several months elapsing between scenes. Babies could be born.
All that before the curtain went up. In the event a baby was born, but so peripheral to the action that I am not sure we were told its sex. The teachers we meet have been accused of being stock types but I found them merely ordinary, by which I do not mean dull. Young Mark has been so busy writing his novel about the beauty of childbirth that his wife has left him. Anita works hard at not noticing the adulteries of her husband, who will not let her have children. Eddie, in charge, is happy until his life-long partner dies and he faces a lonely old age. Derek is not yet on the staff and is clumsy (monotonously clumsy; it was with gratitude that I watched him get through z. French window unscathed). Henry's daughter has a breakdown, brought on by the pressure of 0-levels. Melanie has to look after her mother and hates her. Gray is adept at referring back to earlier remarks and at playing with our expectations. Melanie says seriously that she could kill her mother. Later the mother falls down stairs and breaks her neck. We wonder. The police wish to speak to her — we are agog. It turns out to be about something else, (about which we have also heard) so we go back tc wondering. Gray does not explain. For instance Anita says that her husband, when rejecting Mark's manuscript, made it worse by being 'completely honest. I suppose he thought as an old friend he had it coming to him.' I am not claiming that that is a profound insight; but the point is, neither does Gray.
We are given a mass of information about this group,. which is interesting, credible and entertaining. We are given almost none about St John Quartermaine, which becomes fascinating. Silent characters are effective on stage. Quartermaine talks with warmth and charm, but he does not say anything. In spite of his elegance and niceness, he is always available as a baby sitter or whatever. He seems to have no private life but to be entirely content. Things deteriorate. Absent-minded at first, he becomes almost half-witted and sometimes spends the whole of his class in silence. Edward Fox is brilliantly effective, rather as Cary Grant could be in, for instance, Suspicion. Combining discrete acting with star persona, he presents a surface of glittering charm which may or may not conceal something, possibly something sinister. But Suspicion was a thriller; the revelation here is not of the sort to make a satisfactory punch-line.
Meanwhile throughout the evening there is a theme which I cannot match to the plot. Everybody gets everything wrong. When a film is described someone says that it is, I think, Effi; it is not, it is M. A play which is thought to be Strindberg's Hedda Gabler, before the plot of The Seagull is labelled The Cherry Orchard, is actually Uncle Vanya. Names are lobbed optimistically at the wrong people. Laughs do result, but it seemed more than a running gag. Quartermaine tries to describe a scene with some swans but cannot; Henry had some unusual experience on his dreary caravan holiday, but is never allowed to put it into words. Earlier he has said that Americans name things and people before they know what they are, whereas we do the opposite and 'It makes a difference.' I cannot make this failure, to get words to fit the facts, a key to Quartermaine. Also Gray is sometimes slick at almost the same time as he is being subtle. Neither of which stops this being the most enjoyable and intriguing new play this year.
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