Critical Comment for Apr 06
Why don’t we properly celebrate our dramatists? We give them gongs, statuettes and lifetime achievement awards. We endlessly profile them in newspapers. Sometimes, after they’re dead, we even put blue plaques up outside their houses. But the one thing we don’t do – at least not while they’re alive – is honour them with seasons of their work and serious discussion.
These thoughts were prompted last month by an extraordinary four days in Turin where Harold Pinter received the European Theatre Prize. Roger Planchon directed six of Pinter’s late political plays. Michael Gambon, Jeremy Irons, Charles Dance and Penelope Wilton performed a brilliant anthology of Pinter’s poetry, prose and drama. A two-day conference included papers from British critics – John Peter, Benedict Nightingale and Alastair Macaulay – as well as academics from America, France, Germany, Italy, Chile and Brazil. I even conducted a public interview with Pinter in the beautiful, baroque Carignano Theatre that was heralded by a moving, four-minute standing ovation. As fellow London-based critic Carole Woddis asked me later, “Why couldn’t this happen in Britain?”
To be honest, I’m not sure of the answer. It may be that dramatists, like prophets, are only honoured outside their own country. It may also be that our theatres, committed to a rapid turnover, have neither the time nor inclination to celebrate a living dramatist. That responsibility falls elsewhere. Mark Batty, a lively young academic from Leeds, is in fact planning a big Pinterfest at the university for April 2007. Michael Colgan, the exuberant director of Dublin’s Gate Theatre, has also staged two Pinter seasons modelled on his exemplary Beckett retrospectives. But very few British theatres ever celebrate an individual dramatist: that’s an honour we reserve for Shakespeare (as clearly evidenced by the RSC’s year-long Complete Works, which launches this month).
Admittedly, these things take time and money. I recall a year or so back attending a Sarah Kane symposium at the Schaubuhne in Berlin. Kane, of course, had to wait until she was dead to be canonised. But it was moving to discover that the Schaubuhne was presenting all her work in repertory.
The Schaubuhne also flew people in from all over Europe to discuss her plays and their lasting significance. James Macdonald, who directed many of them, talked brilliantly about the woman as well as the work. None of this, of course, could have happened back home – we don’t have the money and most theatres are too locked into the production assembly line to put a single writer in perspective.
Maybe it’s time all this changed. The more I travel, the more I realise one stark, simple fact: Britain is celebrated abroad not for its motor-cars, fashion models, football teams or pop stars but for its writers. Above all, for its dramatists. Outside limited professional circles, I don’t think we have a clue about the way Pinter, Bond, Churchill, Hare, Stoppard, Ravenhill and many more are regarded as cultural icons. I recall once sitting on a panel in Madrid where I was asked to talk about the impact of Howard Barker’s plays in Britain. I nervously explained that Barker was ignored by mainstream theatre and that it was only his own company, the Wrestling School, that kept his work before the public.
As a critic, I’m not suggesting we should fawn sycophantically over living writers; but I certainly think it’s high time we saw their work in context. And I have one simple, practical solution to offer. Instead of randomly programming plays, why don’t more theatres put on seasons of work by a single writer? The National Film Theatre explores individual directors. The Barbican annually devotes a weekend to a single composer. What on earth is to stop our theatres from examining the work of a living writer and surrounding the event with debate and discussion? Nothing except fear and habit.
A few tentative steps have been made in the right direction. Under Michael Grandage, the Sheffield Crucible devoted short seasons to Peter Gill and Caryl Churchill – and it was fascinating to see Gill’s latest play in the context of his earlier work about Cardiff’s working-class life. But I’d like to see other theatres following Sheffield’s fine example. How about a Pinter season in the Cottesloe, a Hare cycle at the Almeida, a Stoppardfest in Bristol where the dramatist began his working life? The result would certainly be an event – something our theatre craves – and a reminder that dramatists’ careers have an organic growth.
I admit the idea of programmed seasons can be taken too far. Kenneth Tynan once told me that Jonathan Miller had proposed a “disguised Duke” season at the National. Ken, with his usual witty pragmatism, had tried to envision a potential customer glancing at the evening paper and saying “Oh, look darling, there’s a disguised Duke play on tonight at the National.” Needless to say, it never happened.
But I still think the curse of the British theatre is its lack of long-range planning. The only dramatist who benefits from seasonal exploration is Shakespeare. And it’s notable that Michael Boyd’s attempt to group the plays logically – under obvious headings such as Shakespeare’s Tragedies and Comedies – has paid rich box-office dividends. I simply want to know why living dramatists can’t benefit from the same attention as dead ones. In Turin, it was deeply touching to see the respect and affection in which Pinter was held by a predominantly European audience. Why can’t it happen here? You tell me.