Actors act. Directors direct. Critics criticise. Right? Well no, not exactly. Sometimes we invade each other’s patch. I’ve just emerged from a month directing LAMDA (London Academy of Music and Drama) third year students in a triple bill of Harold Pinter plays. And, while I couldn’t possibly comment on the quality of the finished product, I can honestly say I’ve learned a lot about Pinter, the theatrical process and possibly myself as a result.
My point is that people with a passion for theatre shouldn’t be confined to a single role. Antony Sher acts, writes and paints. Michael Pennington and Simon Callow have as great a talent for putting words on paper as they do for projecting them from a stage. Mark Ravenhill is an adroit columnist. But, when a critic ventures into new territory, there is invariably shock and surprise. A decade ago, four critics, including myself, were invited to direct a season of plays at the Battersea Arts Centre. We were treated by the media as a freak show. And although Nicholas de Jongh earlier this year wrote an excellent play, Plague Over England, there was faint astonishment that a critic could challenge regular practitioners on their own turf. Why on earth not?
After my own experience, I think critics should break out of their cages more often. I chose to direct Pinter’s Party Time and Celebration plus a rehearsed reading of his Nobel lecture, Art, Truth and Politics. I guess the invitation arose because I was supposed to be an authority on Pinter, having written his biography. But it was as much a voyage of discovery for me as my actors. And, if I learned one big thing, it is that it’s nonsense to divide Pinter’s plays into the “personal” and “political”.
Celebration premiered at the Almeida in 2000 and takes place in a posh restaurant where a group of brash diners converge. Originally it was seen as a jolly satire on the vulgarities of the nouveau riche – a holiday, if you like, from Pinter’s more overtly polemical work. But there’s a moment in the play when Lambert, celebrating his wedding anniversary, invites ex-lover Suki and her husband to join his party. We found, in rehearsal, that the resulting tensions caused all sorts of shifting alliances. Everyone tried to put down Suki, while Lambert and his brother abandoned their sibling rivalry to gang up on her upstart husband. It was open war round that table. And we learned how a dinner party can be used to launch weapons of domestic destruction – something I’d never grasped before.
But the real joy of directing is that you are involved in a collaborative venture. My actors were young, talented and inquisitive. Every day they’d ply me with questions about Pinter. But they also wanted to know all about the play I’d seen the night before, about actors and directors I’ve met, about the workings of the industry. For them, the Pinter productions were a vital showcase in their bid to impress agents and casting directors. My job, I felt, was to make them look as good as possible and instil in them a respect for the minutiae of Pinter’s language and an awareness of his moral and political fervour.
I needn’t have worried. They became fanatical about the text and, from working on the Nobel lecture, started bringing in stories about the way Obama and McCain deployed “the American people” as a catch-all, emotion-tugging phrase. By the end of the process, we had become an extended family, of which I felt privileged to be a part.
To other critics, chained to their desks and laptops, I can only recommend the directing experience. It teaches you more about how plays work and the joys of collective endeavour than months of dedicated aisle squatting ever can.
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