I don’t really remember much about this one, which suggests it was not so memorable an evening at the theatre.
Bobbie might remember it better, but I doubt it.
Excellent cast of National Theatre usual suspects. Ron Cook, Marion Bailey, Sally Rogers, Paul Moriarty, Peter Wight, Gillian Barge, Karl Johnson and many others. William Gaskill directed. The Theatricalia entry for this one can be found here.
Michael Coveney absolutely loved it in The Observer:
I do recall Bobbie telling me about her imaginary friend, some time before this production. But as far as I know that didn’t all go horribly wrong for her. I certainly don’t remember this production generating additional revelations from Bobbie.
I loved this wonderful monologue, written and performed by Wallace Shawn. At the time, in my log, I declared it to be:
Excellent.
Thirty years on, writing in late January 2021, I remember it vividly and now, in the time of Covid and dysfunctional politics, it seems so apposite and prescient.
This was the first time I saw Wallace Shawn and/or his work live. I had previously enjoyed his film work, not least My Dinner With Andre, so was thrilled to see him perform.
I saw this original, authoritative performance with Bobbie Scully. It was a National Theatre/Royal Court Theatre joint production. Why don’t they do this more often? Here is a link to the RNT archive record for it. It showed at The Royal Court Theatre Upstairs and at the Cottesloe – we caught it at the latter.
Strangely, the text of the piece is in the public domain – I assume by design – so if you want to read the draw-droppingly still-relevant piece, it can be read here. Or if that link ever fails, try this scrape here.
If you click through the 2009 piece to Michael Billington’s review of that production, he confesses to having been smitten with the piece the first time. That tells us that Michael Billington goes to see stuff at the theatre even when it isn’t his turn to write the review. Now THAT’s a theatre enthusiast! Nicholas de Jongh – you’re outvoted!
That was my verdict in my log and that is my recollection of this production, which I saw with Bobbie.
I also saw the Donmar production in 2003 with Janie. I preferred the 1991 version. Perhaps it was the version or perhaps I had outgrown the play a bit by 2003. Both were excellent productions. I shall write up the Donmar production in the fullness of time.
Meanwhile, in 1991, Alan Cumming played the lead and won the Best Comedy performance Olivier award that year for his trouble. Cumming was involved in the adaptation for the version performed, along with Tim Supple who directed it..
That visit to the theatre was part of a highly active weekend, by the looks of it.
I test drove a Honda in the morning before the play – this was presumably to ascertain whether it would make sense for me to take the souped-up automatic Honda Civic (which subsequently became known as “Red Noddy”) from the Binder Hamlyn car pool, in exchange for my less impressive Renault stick-shift. The answer was yes.
On the Sunday I had lunch with Jilly Black (location lost in the mists of time) and went to Pam & Michael’s place in the evening – possibly for bridge or possibly just supper.
It was my “get out of jail” weekend. Michael Durtnall (my chiropractor) had insisted that I “lock down” for a month to enable my back to start healing – otherwise he wouldn’t treat me. More on that elsewhere, but basically this weekend was the end of my confinement and boy did I make the most of it with Bridge on Friday, this theatre visit on Saturday and a wedding on the Sunday.
I am very keen on David Edgar so we (me & Bobbie) will have long before booked to see this just after press night. I was very pleased to have negotiated my way out of lockdown to see this.
All I wrote in my log is:
Very good. Neil Kinnock and his entourage were there the night we went.
At the time Neil Kinnock was leader of the opposition. I don’t know whether he and/or his entourage took notes during this paly, but it was a political drama to be sure.
It is set in an unspecified former communist country that resembles the former Czechoslovakia.
Excellent cast; Karl Johnson, Stratford Johns and Katrin Cartlidge standing out in my mind.
My log says “little recollection” for this one, so I guess it didn’t make a big impression. Bobbie was with me.
Pirandello is one of those playwrights whose work I want to like more than actually do like. Or perhaps it is more accurate to say that I tend to enjoy reading his plays, because the ideas are fascinating, but many of them are difficult to produce in an entertaining way – at least to the eyes of the modern audience.
Man, Beast And Virtue is an early Pirandello, written in 1919 (100 years ago as I write in 2019), about two years before his breakthrough play, Six Characters In Search Of An Author.
…but for sure I got back to London in time to see this preview at the Cottesloe.
Bobbie might say, “more’s the pity”, as my log notes that Bobbie absolutely hated it. I merely found it long and hard to follow. That’s how I remember it and that is exactly what I wrote in my log.
Super cast – Tilda Swinton is always very watchable but does often do weird stuff. Also Aidan Gillen, latterly very well known indeed. David Bamber was in it too – thirty years on I tend to watch his son, Ethan, bowling for Middlesex instead.
The play is described as a dramatic poem in the English language text and/but it was basically a family drama.
I wrote the above piece on 14 February 2019, basically because it had been on my mind after writing up Music At Oxford a few days earlier. By strange coincidence, Bobbie Scully turned up at the Gresham Society Dinner that evening, as Iain Sutherland’s guest.
I mentioned the coincidence. Bobbie started to quiver with indignation:
I’d forgotten the name of that darned thing, but it was surely the very worst thing I have ever seen at the theatre…I think we walked out at half time…
…she said. Actually I don’t think we did walk out at half time. I’m sure I would have recorded that fact in my log whereas instead I recorded that the play was long and impenetrable.
I think we stuck it out tho the bitter end…
…I said. I also volunteered to dig deeper into the programme to see if there were in fact two halves.
Yes, there were two halves and they added up to a whopping three hours of hurt for Bobbie.
I’m not sure why we did stick it out. Perhaps I was still wet enough behind the ears to imagine t hat such a piece might yield in the second half all the answers it withheld in the first. I know not to do that now. Perhaps I was so tired and hungover from the joys of Oxford the night before I was reluctant to move on yet.
More likely, we had booked a late night eatery and jointly thought we might as well see the thing through rather than kick our heels somewhere.
Anyway, the whole experience clearly had a profound effect on Bobbie who was shaking with the trauma of recalling that evening and remembered it so well she even said…
…I seem to recall it was only on for a short run…
…which indeed it was.
Nearly 30 years on, Bobbie might wish to read the short essay from the programme too. The least I can do, upload the material, after all I put poor Bobbie through with regard to this play/production.
Postscript Two: Bobbie Chimes In With A Recovered Memory
An e-mail from Bobbie 24 hours after our encounter at the Gresham Society:
I was casting my mind back to that dreadful so-called play (it wasn’t, it was a string of tedious monologues) and had a recollection of being there after the interval in a (suddenly) half empty theatre. So I reckon that, although we did not leave at half time, about half the audience did.
And, indeed, I think that is why we stayed. We came out at the interval, intending to leave, but had pre-booked interval drinks to consume. As we did so, we watched more than half the audience exit the building. I think we went back out of sympathy/solidarity/courtesy towards the cast.
Does this ring any bells with you? Did we really watch the second half because we felt sorry for the actors? Personally, I can think of no other reason …
My response to Bobbie’s considered recollection was as follows:
Yes, we were young and foolish back then. We might well have stayed on for compassionate reasons. There’d be no such snowflake nonsense from this quarter these days. I do recall the second half seeming to drag to an even greater extent than the first half. I also remember an incredible sense of relief when the ordeal ended.
Postscript Three: Here’s a professional view…I don’t think Nicholas de Jongh in the Guardian exactly liked it either:
I noted that this was a very good production and I’m sure that was true. Richard Eyre in charge of an infeasibly good cast in that intimate little Cottesloe Theatre.
…David Burke, Michael Bryant, Jeremy Northam, Graham Crowden, Sarah Winman, Stella Gonet, Selina Cadell, Suzanne Burden, Wendy Nottingham… it was difficult to work out which names from the cast list to leave out from this highlights version of the list.
In truth I don’t think Granville-Barker is really for me. I find his plays stylised and very Edwardian – which is, after all, what they are.
This one is at least replete with interesting moral dilemmas but in truth it’s not Ibsen.
But I do recall really enjoying this particular evening in the theatre and I suspect that this is the best Granville-Barker experience I have ever had and ever will.
I don’t recall exactly what Bobbie thought of it but I think she, like me, was much taken with the production. I also don’t recall what we did (i.e. where we ate) afterwards. Bobbie might just remember.
My log suggests that we thought this production was good. I’m not a huge fan of Wesker’s plays; in fact this one sticks in my memory as probably the most interesting of all those I have seen and read.
Celebrated clinching the deal for the flat with Bobbie on the Friday evening, starting with an early evening visit to the National Theatre to see a platform talk about Kenneth Tynan. I think those Platform things were a new idea that autumn…an idea that is now more than 30 years old. Our first one had been Tony Sher some weeks earlier.
This Kenneth Tynan one was in the Cottesloe and was a really interesting, varied panel: Adrian Mitchell, Jonathan Miller, Edward Petherbridge, Kathleen Tynan and Irving Wardle.
As the diary says (if you can read it) we went on to the Archduke afterwards for dinner.
On the Saturday I collected the keys to Clanricarde Gardens and did some shopping. I remember spending more than a few bob in Tylers (which was up on Westbourne Grove back then) – I probably still have one or two of the items I bought that day – I’m pretty sure I am still on my first clothes horse, for example.
I also bought food for the Sunday, but the crowd that visited that day – John, Mandy, Ali Dabbs, Valerie and Bobbie would all have traipsed to Woodfield Avenue for that meal – I must have shlepped the grub from Notting Hill to Streatham Hill on the Saturday evening – the new flat was not yet fit for habitation.
What did I cook that day? Can’t remember. Bound to have been Chinese and/or South-East Asian food though…just possibly Southern Asian for that crowd. It would have been good, whatever it was, though I say so myself. I must have been knackered by the Sunday, though. What a week it had been.
Coveney on Black Snow Sun, Apr 28, 1991 – 56 · The Observer (London, Greater London, England) · Newspapers.com
Billington on Black Snow Sat, Apr 27, 1991 – 21 · The Guardian (London, Greater London, England) · Newspapers.com
