Writing Home by Alan Bennett

Author:Alan Bennett [Alan Bennett]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: nepalifiction, TPB
ISBN: 9780571246878
Publisher: Faber and Faber
Published: 1988-11-22T18:15:00+00:00

Even with the final dress rehearsals no alarm bells rang. The play was too long, admittedly, and ought to have been cut in rehearsal or, better still, beforehand, which is another lesson to be learned: if there are to be cuts, get them over with before rehearsals begin. But there was still a fortnight’s tour in Brighton when all this could be done. No panic.

Now Brighton is a dangerous place. It is the home or the haunt of many theatricals, who take an entirely human pleasure in getting in first on plays bound for the West End. They come round, proffer advice, diagnose what is wrong, and suggest remedies. That is one section of the audience. The other consists (or did in 1971) of playgoers for whom the theatre has never been the same since John Osborne, and if they don’t like a play they leave it in droves. Indeed, it sometimes seems that their chief pleasure in going to the theatre in Brighton is in leaving it, and leaving it as noisily as possible. In Beyond the Fringe the seats were going up like pistol shots throughout the performance so that, come the curtain, there were scarcely more in the audience than there were on the stage. On the other hand, Forty Years On had done well. Brighton was where Gielgud had got his second wind and the play came into focus. But that was familiar ground. Audiences at Brighton like what they know and know what they like, and one person they did like was Kenneth More.

Until he was actually faced with an audience Kenneth More was scrupulous about playing the part as written (and sometimes overwritten). It’s true he flatly refused to say ‘fuck’ since it would ruin the matinées, but this didn’t seem to me to be important, so long as he continued to play George Oliver as the kind of man who did say ‘fuck’ (the play maybe just happening to catch him on a day when he didn’t). Kenny himself, of course, said it quite frequently in life, but that was neither here nor there. The first night in Brighton didn’t go well, and I was surprised (it is evidence of my own foolishness) how nervous the audience made him. Nothing in his debonair and easy-going exterior prepared one for the vulnerable actor he became that night. It was plain he had been expecting the audience to love him, and when they didn’t he felt lost.

That first week the Brighton audience lapped up the jokes but yawned at the bits in between. We made some cuts, but found it hard because it was now plain that Kenneth More saw the piece as a comedy while I was trying to keep it a serious play. At the beginning of the second week in Brighton, and without there having been any warning or disagreement, he called a rehearsal to cut the play to his own taste, while instructing the management not to allow me into the theatre until this had been done.

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