Kenneth Hurren on Stratford and Shakespeare
It's probably a vain hope, but I coquette now and then with the wishful idea that somebody, quite soon, will somehow discover positive proof that William Shakespeare, author of many Well-known plays, was not at all the same fellow as one of similar name born and buried at Stratford-upon-Avon. (I have myself the strongest suspicion, amounting almost to certainty, that the Stratford man was not the author of the plays; but that is not quite the same.) Other people, of course, have the same thought, feeling, as Henry James put it, "a sort of haunted by the conviction that the divine William is the biggest and most successful fraud ever practised on a-patient world", and would like to see an end of it. Their motives are various, ranging from a simple belief that the historical record should be tidied up, to the impish thought that it would be rather fun to see the whole Shakespeare industry of Stratford come tumbling about the heads of its citizens.
My own – though J freely concede they have embraced all such notions, the proper and seemly and the merely entertaining – are essentially, nowadays, somewhat different. I should like to see the Shakespearian productions at Stratford, liking them or not as their merits demand, but not feeling that the people putting them on bore a special responsibility and owed a decent respect to the work of the man whose genius had bought them their livings. This, I'm afraid, is how I do feel, and although the ideas of setting A Midsummer Night's Dream in a gymnasium or Romeo and Juliet in a shipyard, or of exploring Twelfth Night in terms of some psychiatric theory, or 'improving' King John by substituting material from other sources, would tot easily be tolerated anywhere; their implementation at Stratford adds an extra dimension of pain to such experiences.
There is, of course, a further reason why the works of Shakespeare should not be regarded by the Stratford people as vehicles for their little eccentricities, precious experiments and bizarre theories of Interpretation'. It is a commercial one, but nonetheless valid–if the sordid may be allowed to impinge for a moment upon the rarefied lives of artists who have been largely relieved of any necessity to heed the Johnsoriian dictum that "they that live to please must please to live."
It is fair to say here that the RSC's Arts Council subsidy, going up to £450,000 next year, is small beans by the way these things are now measured in the upper echelons of the arts, and also that the company – unusually in this area – has been managing to meet nearly four-fifths of its costs from boxoffice receipts. Nevertheless, it is clear, from the way things have been going, that the company is heading into rough financial waters, and that the subsidy is not going to be enough to bridge the gap between receipts and expenditure.
This is only partly because of the inflationary situation; it is due quite as much to the falling-off of audiences at Stratford which have plummeted well below the 90 per cent capacity to which the house had become accustomed, and it is a fair guess that the fall-off has been due to the word getting around in this count' : • and also abroad that the Stratford productions are more likely to outrage than to please those who revere Shakespeare. That means, I suspect, most of those upon whom this particular theatre depends. Regular theatregoers in capital cities and university towns, it might be argued, have seen Shakespeare's plays in performance often enough to indulge and even welcome some fashionable director's 're-interpretations'; however wayward, for their novelty value. This is hardly the case with the tourist pilgrims who have flocked to Stratford in the past, but have done a great deal less flocking of late. Stratford's directors, bored and jaded by their own familiarity with the plays, might advantageously bear in mind that they are employed principally to please their audiences rather than themselves (or similarly bored and jaded reviewers), or they will have little prospect of narrowing that ominous financial gap, or of encouraging a sympathetic public ear for the centenary appeal the theatre plans to launch internationally next year with an optimistic view to raising a quarter of a million pounds for a renovation and modernisation programme. All this has rather carried us away from the reviewing business but, as you doubtless guess, it was prompted by another dismaying experience at Stratford, this time with Macbeth, the latest fancy of
• the RSC's artistic director, Trevor Nunn, whose whim it is to locate the piece in a church and to see most of the action in the ritualistic terms of some species of black mass, or perhaps as a contest between God and the Devil: in the white corner, the saintly Duncan (blind for some reason, though no reason would altogether explain his references to things he sees); in the red corner, Macbeth (scarlet robed at the outset, but revealed later in black shirt and jackboots), a born loser, not too close to his trolley, and sweating with apprehension even before his sexy little wife gets into him.
Given the ecclesiastical scenery, certain tiresome difficulties with, say, the blasted heath and Birnan Wood may have crossed your mind; they did not cross Nunn's (or, if they did, they tarried not). The witches – I feel foolish telling you this in a relatively serious journal – are discovered swinging on a chandelier, and, bereft of a cauldron, are obliged to make do with the font. Birnan Wood is not to be seen; nor, oddlier, is the ghost of Banquo; though, as some weird kind of compensation, when Macbeth, far round the bend by now and out of sight of Shakespeare's bereaved philosopher, is on about that "brief candle," what should he have at hand but the candle itself, ready for snuffing.
Nicol Williamson, burdened with the task of fitting Shakespeare's words to the behaviour of Nunn's protagonist, gives the impression of still worrying about it (he has always been a thoughtful actor, and he has plenty to think about here) between outbuists Of frenzy; it is one of the more distressing aspects of the show that the estimable Williamson finds few opportunities to touch on the fundamental character and tragedy of Shakespeare's Macbeth, a part so many of his admirers have been long looking forward to seeing him play. Helen Mirren, who appears as his lady, is regarded by many of my colleagues as the epitome of sexuality, and it cannot but be my misfortune that I am impervious to her endeavours in that line, though, goodness, she does put on a steamy show.
How I envied, and not for the first time, the Sunday Times's venerable Harold Hobson his transports on being confronted with Miss Mirren with it all turned on. I'm bound to say, though, that my confidence in
OpeCIALLOT November 9, 1974
the sporty old fellow's recognition of good acting was a touch impaired last week by his failure to recognise bad. In another production, that of the late John Whiting s Marching Song at the Greenwich Theatre, there is one player – whose privacy I shall tenderly not invade – palpably so wholly innocent of the art of acting in any professional sense of the term that no director in all the world could disguise it; but Mr Hobson's word for the player is `accomplished' and his implication was that if the performance seemed less so the fault lay in the lethargic direction. As it happens, the director, Ewan Hooper, has a lot to answer for (his production tends to look as though the party suggestion of Elaine Stritch in The Gingerbread Lady – "Let's get some fluid and embalm ourselves" — has actually been acted upon), but that particular performance is only his responsibility in that he probably cast the player in the first place. There are different opinions about Marching Song. Mr Hobson, and others, believe it has been over-rated. I am inclined to take an opposite view; but I should be surprised if anyone seeing it for the first time here – in this indifferent production, and with that disastrous and indefensible piece of casting – would agree with me.
Kenneth Hurren is Associate Editor of The Spectator.
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