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4118 Modern Playwrights 1
Apart from the all-time greats, we have also seen a number of plays by modern masters:
I do not really count Oscar Wilde as ‘modern’ but we have seen a number of performances of his plays. The best of these, ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’ starred Nigel Havers with Zoe Wanamaker; along with Anna Massey as Miss Prism and Judi Dench as Lady Bracknell. ‘An Ideal Husband’ was alright, but the abysmal touring performance of ‘Lady Windermere’s Fan’, in Milton Keynes, destroyed the poetic vision.
Noel Coward – is one of the pre 1950s masters of the British stiff upper lip. We have seen ‘Blithe Spirits’, ‘This Happy Breed’ and ‘Private Lives’, but also ‘Cavalcade’ at Chichester - supported by literally hundreds of amateurs. Another 1940s master was Terence Rattigan; and we have seen his ‘Separate Tables’ and ‘The Browning Version’.
I first saw a play by Jean Anouilh at school, when his modern Antigone was played by our own boys as a double bill with Sophocles’ original. It made a great impression on me. In any case, Anouilh was very much in vogue in the 1960s, when we saw his ‘The Rehearsal’ with Phylis Calvert towards the end of her career, and Maggie Smith and Robert Hardy at the start of theirs. We also saw ‘Becket’, with Christopher Plummer as King Henry. My records show that we also saw his ‘Number One’, with Alan Bates; but I have no memory of this.
‘The Devils’ by John Whiting was directed by Peter Hall for the Royal Shakespeare Company at the height of its power at its London venue, then at the Aldwych Theatre. With a cast which included Diana Rigg, Ian Holm and Virginia McKenna, it was about diabolism in 17th century France. It was mainly notorious for its graphic depiction, albeit via sounds not sights, of torture. Our performance was typical, in that someone fainted and had to be bodily carried out.
The only play by Eugene Ionesco I remember seeing was ‘Rhinoceros’, but the cast was star-studded, with Maggie Smith, Michael Bates, Peter Sallis, Michael Gough – all in their younger days – led by Laurence Olivier. I can’t really remember ‘Exit the King’, but – unusually for the Royal Court – it had a star-studded cast with Alec Guinness, Googie Withers and Eileen Atkins.
Genet was another contributor of rather dark plays. I have a record of seeing his ‘Blacks’ at the Royal Court, but can’t remember it. I do remember Samuel Beckett’s ‘Happy Days’ though, as with all his plays, I found it hard going.
The best of Edward Albee, I thought, was not ‘Whose Afraid of Virginia Wolf’, though this was an important play, but the one-acter ‘The American Dream’ which ran with ‘The Death of Bessie Smith’.
In the 1960s the main new playwright we followed was John Osborne, not just his ‘Look Back in Anger’ but ‘Luther’ (starring Albert Finney) and ‘Two Plays for England’.
At that time Arnold Wesker’s gritty plays were also popular, and we saw ‘Chips with Everything’, with a young Frank Finlay, as well as ‘The Kitchen’.
The Dublin Festival company gave us ‘The Playboy of the Western World’ by JM Synge, starring Siobhan McKenna (one of my favourite actresses).
One of our favourite playwrights is Tom Stoppard. We first saw ‘On the Razzle’, based on Johan Nestroy’s original, which has been ignored recently, but was hilarious. It starred Dinsdale Landen and Felicity Kendal (in a travesty part) as well as an early appearance of Michael Kitchen, whose idiosyncratically laid back performances I love. His ‘The Real Thing’ also starred Felicity Kendal. We didn’t see his earlier play ‘Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead’ until later. This was followed by his ‘Jumpers’, with Paul Eddington and Felicity Kendal, which was also superb; though the touring version we saw a couple of decades later in MK was awful in comparison.
We saw Peter Schaffer’s ‘Yonadab’, but it was a critical failure; and my memory of the pre-first night we went to (we usually went to these since they were cheaper) was of a dog getting out of control and being chased all round the stage by its trainer! His ‘Amadeus’, directed by Peter Hall (who I recognize as a major director, but never quite empathize with him – except on ‘Tantalus’) was, though, fascinating and his one act comedy, ‘Black Comedy’ (where light is dark and vice versa) is hilarious.
One playwright which we have regularly seen is Alan Ayckbourn, and the best of his work was – I think – ‘A Chorus of Disapproval’ with Michael Gambon, Imelda Staunton and Gemma Craven who are all favourite actors – though Gemma Craven later had a breakdown which destroyed her career. He liked to experiment, and his ‘Sisterly Feelings’ in which – depending on chance – one of a variety of different endings was played out. It starred Michael Gambon again, with Penelope Wilton, another favourite of mine, and Michael Bryant, one of the brilliant group of regulars at the NT. One of the best was his triple bill, where the same cast in the same set played three different comedies in three different performances spread over two days.
One of the funniest comedies is ‘Noises Off’, by Michael Frayn.
But I realize that comedies are in short supply on this list. In the 1980s and 1990s, however, one consistent playwright in this category was Neil Simon. Earlier we saw (mainly on film) ‘The Odd Couple’, ‘Barefoot in the Park’, ‘Plaza Suite’ and ‘California Suite’. Later we saw plays such as ‘Brighton Beach Memoirs’, ‘Lost in Yonkers’, with Maureen Lipman, and ‘Laughter on the 23rd Floor’ which are essentially autobiographical.
A monumental work, seen at MK Theatre before its London run, was John Barton’s adaptation of Eurupides’ plays; under the title of ‘Tantalus’. This was directed by Peter Hall, and was a play cycle (it was split into three performances spread over two days) of his which I did think offered a superb spectacle.
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