Radical Stages

8/9/2019 Radical Stages

1/6

Introduction

In 1956, in the play that inaugurated the New British Theatre, John

Osborne's Jimmy Porter looked back in anger at what he considered

to be his country's spiritual decline. In the years that followed, many

British dramatists were also to reveal an acute consciousness of his-tory, particularly of English history, and were repeatedly to exhibit

an almost reflexive tendency to evoke the past in their dramatic

exploration of hitherto neglected areas in the social and political life

of their country. As Edward Bond has written, "Our age, like every

age, needs to reinterpret the past as part of learning to understand

itself, so that we can know what we are and what we should do." 1

Indeed, in a theatre that was attempting to chart the kind of new

territory referred to above and was to associate itself predominantly

with those ideals of social democracy which marked the early years of

the post-war period, the examination and use of the past was to

become as important as the analysis of the present. Most signifi-

cantly, in the 1960s historical drama increasingly began to reflect the

aspirations and activities of ordinary people rather than the lives and

achievements of their rulers and in the 1970s was to become closely

associated with the political aspirations of the New Left. It is with

the nature and evolution of this radical British historical drama over

three decades that this book is concerned.

It must be admitted from the outset that the post- 1956 dramatisa-

tion of history has in many cases proved controversial. As might be

expected from a theatre born in a period of social protest and associ-ated with youthful rebellion, its opposition to the values and assump-

tions of the previous generation was also to extend to the re-

evaluation and even outright rejection of that generation's percep-

tion of the past. A nation's history is not simply a record of events but

is an agreed version of the past which embodies present values. As

such it is a facet of what Marxists have described as that "ideological

superstructure" which encompasses other art-forms, the communica-

tion media and the education system and is employed by the ruling

group to perpetuate its power and dominance. To question or toattack that mythic history is, therefore, according to one's political

viewpoint, tantamount either to mounting a revolutionary assault

upon a bastion of the establishment or to committing an act of trea-

son. Any variation from that myth--or, worse still, any intentionally

alternative interpretation--may in consequence provoke a quite inor-

dinate and even hysterical degree of censure from whichever interest

group perceives its values to be threatened. In 1987, for example, Jim

Allen'sPerdition was to provoke accusations from Zionist organisa-

tions of prejudice and factual distortion. In response Max Stafford-

Clark, the artistic director of the Royal Court Theatre where the play

was scheduled for performance, took the decision shortly before its

opening night to cancel the production. There was some irony in the

fact that, as a director of the Joint Stock Theatre Company, Stafford-
http://read/26233704http://read/26233704http://read/26233704


2/6

Clark had during the 1970s been one of the foremost promoters of

plays that offered an "alternative" view of history.

The problem with Jim Allen's play was that it suggested that, with

the aim of building up a case for the establishment of the new state of

Israel, Hungarian Zionists had collaborated with the Nazis in send-

ing Jews to the gas-chambers. In spite of attempts by Allen to draw adistinction between Judaism and Zionism, there were accusations

from the Jewish lobby of "anti-semitism" and the dramatist was

accused of employing factual inaccuracies and out-of-context quota-

tions in an attempt to mount an ideological attack. While disputing

the validity of such accusations, Allen was prepared to admit that his

socialist sympathies for the oppressed had indeed in this instance led

him to sympathise not with the Zionists but with the dispossessed

Palestinians. In common with many left-wing dramatists during the

previous thirty years, Allen had himself come face to face with that

sacred cow, agreedhistory, assault upon which would, apparently

inevitably, always be taken as an attack upon a whole culture.

Edward Bond, more than any other recent dramatist, has

repeatedly attracted the kind of criticism heaped upon the unfortu-

nate Allen. His iconoclastic portrayal of the Royal Family, politicians

and other national figures of the Victorian era in his nightmarish

historical fantasy,Early Morning( 1968), and of Britain's most re-

vered national dramatist, William Shakespeare, inBingo ( 1974), in

fictional contexts that were clearly pertinent to Britain's political andcultural present, provoked more than their fair share of critical

resentment. Indeed Gareth Lloyd Evans, in his introduction to his

collection of journalistic theatre criticism,Plays in Review 1956-1980, deemed it necessary to devote some time to illustrating andattacking Bond's treatment of history in general and of Shakespeare

in particular. He claimed that

Any consideration of Bond's plays drops us bang in the middle of the

whirl-

pools aroused by the dramatic use of history, the uncertain eddies it

createsbetween fact and fiction and the critical assessment of them. Bond is a

nota-

ble example of the buccaneer's way with history. He doesn't ignore it,

but he

makes it walk the plank of concepts, values, shibboleths, opinions--of

which

those contemporary with the events knew nothing, or knew them in

forms

very different from the modern shape he gives them. 2

While allowing that dramatists have always exhibited a normally tol-

erable "beguiling waywardness with historical record", Lloyd Evans

nevertheless considered that Bond had gone too far in wanting "both


3/6

to have his cake and eat it, to use history as the handmaid of modern

ideology, while at the same time claiming a sort of objective truth for

his visions".3 This is not the moment to argue whether Bond, in the

preface toBingo to which Lloyd Evans is referring, was in fact claim-ing to present "objective historical truth" or even whether "visions"

may be considered to be expressions of anything so concrete, but it is

certainly worth noting that, particularly during the 1970s, Bond wasnot the only dramatist to employ what might be considered to be "a

beguiling waywardness with historical record" in that many others

could likewise be accused of quite calculatedly and perversely offer-

ing "at best" an alternative and "at worst" an iconoclastic interpreta-tion of history.

Let us not run away with the idea that it is only the Establishment

which seeks to maintain and if necessary defend its own version

of history. As Trevor Griffiths was to discover from the critical

responses to his own play, Occupations ( 1970), those who are opposed

to the Establishment are as keen to maintain their own mythic his-tory as they are to deconstruct that of their political opponents. In the

wake of the Royal Shakespeare Company's production of Griffiths'

play at The Place in London in 1971, in an article in 7 Days Tom

Nairn criticised its portrayal of the Italian Marxist, Gramsci, and its

dramatisation of the potentially revolutionary factory occupations

that took place in Italy in 1920. Griffiths' letter of response to Nairn

is appended to the published text of the play. As in most other

debates concerning historical drama, the argument centred upon the

play's historical accuracy and/or its "symbolic" representation of the

historical forces at work within the events. The opening paragraph of

Griffiths' response, itself prefiguring arguments that were to be aired

again in the case of Jim Allen'sPerdition, clearly outlines the natureof that controversy which is so often, and sometimes intentionally,

provoked by historical drama. Griffiths wrote:

It's important to respond to historical plays as art-works, not as selected

documentary accumulations containing historic-political speculations

evalu-

able largely in terms of "known" historical and political reality. And wemust

learn to look for "historicity" more as Lukacs finds it in the histories of

Shakespeare. As for example when Lukacs says: "Shakespeare states

every

conflict, even those of English history with which he is most familiar, in

terms of typical-human opposites; and these are historical only in so far

as

Shakespeare fully and directly assimilates into each individual type the

most

characteristic and central features of a social crisis." Nairn's it's-either-his-

torically-"accurate"-or-it's-purely-and-only-"symbolic" is just too crude
http://read/26233704http://read/26233704http://read/26233704http://read/26233704


4/6

and

unfruitful a measure of the value of a play (or, indeed, of anything else).4

Although of major importance, discussion of the significance for the

modern historical dramatist of such concepts as "typicality", "his-

toricity" and "symbolism" will be deferred to the more appropriateand expansive context of later chapters.

If then there is disagreement amongst critics of all political persua-

sions about how history should be represented, such disagreement is

only exacerbated by the vagueness that obscures even the term "his-

torical drama" itself. What is, in fact, fascinating about the genre is

that its form and emphases alter with the social and political changes

that are themselves the constituents of history itself. Indeed the very

aim of this book will be to interpret one in terms of the other. But to

return to the problem of definition. At the most fundamental level

the settings ofallplays will, of course, inevitably become historic inthe eyes of succeeding generations simply in consequence of the nor-

mal passage of time. Each and every play would, however, even in

the loosest application of the term hardly qualify as historical drama

simply because its previously contemporary setting had now been

superseded. Even a play set in a period earlier than that in which it

was written may not, however, be considered to merit the description

of historical drama for, normally, such drama is expected not only to

be set in times past but also to resurrect actual historical personages

or reconstruct actual historical events. It is also assumed that the

dramatist will approach the facts concerning the recreated period or

figure in a spirit of "serious scholarship". It is nevertheless usually

considered too prescriptive for even the most scholarly of critics to

demand that historical drama should confine itself only to the drama-

tisation of those characters known historically to have taken part in

the events described. Were such prescription to be enforced, the por-

trayal of the lowliest orders of society for which there is normally

precious little historical evidence available would be banished from

the stage, as indeed it has in some periods of historical drama,

other than as bearers of either messages or spears. Perhaps, then, allthat can be agreed upon about historical drama is the requirement of

historical factuality in either or both character and event. It is there-

fore not surprising that historical dramatists have so often found

themselves the target of censure when, owing to the very insubstan-

tiality of the genre, almost limitless areas of potential disagreement

are made available to the critic.

So comprehensive has been the reference to history in the post-

1956 British theatre that to examine the historical drama of the

period is at once to take into account plays by many of Britain's lead-

ing contemporary dramatists, to recognise the influence of the fringe,mainstream and national theatre companies, and to refer to the work

of theatre groups motivated by politics, community issues, education


5/6

and, to a lesser extent, feminism. A high level of historical con-

sciousness may indeed be seen as one of the precious few common

factors detectable within a theatre whose claim to novelty was its aim

to reflect social change and to explain, if not Britain to the British, at

least England to the English.

In setting out on such an examination I am therefore only too con-scious of the potential vastness of the enterprise. Although my con-

cern is primarily to identify the peculiar nature of the historical

drama which emerged in Britain after 1956, in order to illustrate

what changes have taken place I must inevitably offer an appropriate

context by discussing both the nature of historical drama as a genre

and by illustrating how, why and from what the new drama

developed. Immediately it becomes necessary to establish boundaries,

to decide, for example, how far to venture into the history of drama

itself without in consequence losing sight of the particularities of the

period under examination. I have, therefore, attempted as far as pos-

sible to be present-minded in my approach and to refer to the his-torical drama of the past only in so far as it can be used, through

contrast or comparison, either to illustrate aspects of the present form

or to establish its immediate antecedents.

I have also been consciously selective in the choice of plays

employed to describe the progress of the drama and to support vari-

ous contentions. This selectiveness has meant that I have confined

myself to those dramatists who have exhibited something more than

a passing interest in history. In relation to the wide range of his-

torical drama which characterises the period, I have therefore been

able to refer in detail only to a relatively small number of plays. My

selection of such plays has been governed primarily by my perception

of their typicality rather than purely of their aesthetic merit, and I

have no doubt that readers will be able to supplement or even replace

them by others applicable to my argument. I am sure that this is

unavoidable. Nevertheless, if the reader is able to accept the basic

premise that the cited illustration is intended to support we must

otherwise agree to differ over the precise choice of plays.

My particular aim in the following chapters is to outline the dis-

tinguishing features of the historical drama which emerged, at first

unsurely, within the new British theatre of the late 1950s and early

1960s. By the 1970, it had absorbed and modified influences as vari-

ous as the historical drama of George Bernard Shaw, the formal

devices of the Living Newspaper and the work of Bertolt Brecht, had

been fuelled by the rise in extra-parliamentary left-wing political

activity and, by the middle of the decade, had successfully established

its presence both in the "fringe" and in the "institutional" theatres. In

an attempt to find a point of focus and to do justice to a very complex

topic, I shall centre upon what would appear to have been its unifyingelements, a concern with ordinary people rather than their rulers and

its associated attempt to shift the emphasis from an essentially indi-


6/6

vidualistic view of history to one that would illustrate the inter-rela-

tionship between private and public experience. Guided by the

increasingly political tone of the historical drama of the period I shall

also attempt to set my examination of the plays within their peculiar

theatrical, social, political and aesthetic context.

For the sake of clarity and mindful that some readers may notalready be acquainted with the overall development of the British

theatre of the period, I shall, as far as possible, work chronologically,

dividing the book into two parts. The first is concerned with the ante-

cedents and evolution of the post-1956 historical drama up to 1968;

the second, with the years of its consolidation during the 1970s, con-

cluding with a reflective glance at the 1980s. Firstly, however, to the

modern British theatre's interpretation of the genre itself.

Documents

Radical Stages