Peter Viney's Blog

8 Hotels
by Nicholas Wright

Directed by Richard Eyre
Designed by Rob Howell

Minerva Theatre
Chichester Festival Theatre

Thursday 8th August 2019, 14.45

CAST
Tory Kittles – Paul Robeson
Ben Cura – José Ferrer
Emma Paetz – Uta Hagen
Pandora Colin – Margaret Webster, the director of Othello

This is the story of Paul Robeson touring America in 1944 in a production of Othello in which he played the lead. José Ferrer played Iago, and Uta Hagen played Desdemona. Ferrer and Hagen were married. The play’s director, Margaret Webster, also played Emilia, Iago’s wife in the Broadway run, but not on tour. It’s based on the real production which started in New York City in 1943 and became the longest running Shakespeare play on Broadway, then toured the USA until 1945.

The original production: Jose Ferrer as Iago, Paul Robeson as Othello, Uta Hagen as Desdemona

While the actors work together, in 1944 America tensions build, with the onstage Iago-Othello plot spilling over into their real lives. Robeson and Hagen’s growing relationship inflamed Ferrer. They divorced in 1948.

Robeson was twenty years older than Hagan. In Paul Robeson by Martin Duberman, the author reports:

Hagen had not initially thought of Robeson romantically or sexually – “I thought of him as a fabulous older friend,’ she later recalled. Then one night they were standing in the wings waiting for an entrance and joking together. “Suddenly with boldness and confidence, Robeson took his enormous hand – costume and all –  and put it between my legs. I thought, “What happened to me?” It was being assualted in the most phenomenal way, and I thought, “What the hell?” and I got unbelievably excited. I was flying.”

That would have been a good scene, but this play starts sometime later with the relationship established..

After the war, Robeson, Hagen and Webster were all placed on the infamous Hollywood blacklist for left-wing sympathies, after José Ferrer denounced the three of them to the House Un-American Activities Committee. It changed their lives, screwing up Robeson’s career for a decade without a passport. Uta Hagen became one of the great acting teachers, and later said the blacklist helped that … she couldn’t work in films.

Revenge. I researched the Hollywood witch hunts era from the point of view of writers in Hollywood for my research thesis on Hollywood & The Novel nearly fifty years ago. Much more has come out since. I knew Paul Robeson had been blacklisted, but I didn’t know this fascinating background story. To be fair, Robeson had enough previous to fall under the attention of the witch-hunters without Ferrer’s testimony. Hagen and Webster didn’t and it was Ferreer who implicated them.

Original 1943 play bill

Robeson had first played the role of Othello in 1930, opposite Peggy Ashcroft in London. Sam Wanamaker played Iago to Paul Robeson’s third version of Othello in 1959 at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in Stratford, a production which is commemorated by a photo at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse at Shakespeare’s Globe. The theme of Shakesperean roles falling over into real life occurs in the three seasons of the Canadian TV series Slings and Arrows not that they got to Othello.

Nicholas Wright, is an actor as well as a writer. He saw Robeson perform Othello in 1959, and says he auditioned for Margaret Webster who was charming. He  knew Uta Hagen who played the lead in his play, Mrs Klein.

The set is a large hotel room, with the ceiling sloping steeply upwards. Either side are projection screens for black and white films which link the eight scenes. It’s not just Hollywood’s beloved speeding train with town names on top either (though we do get that). Each filmed piece is appropriate to place and time, so later we have San Francisco as the war ends and then the House Un-American Activities Committee.

The scenes are changed with different bedspreads while the film rolls … they don’t list it that way, but I’d say one stagehand was the bedspread technician, and another was the scattered underwear technician. 1944 pre-dates the ubiquitous chain hotel … nowadays you’d accept that one identical Holiday Inn Express / Premier Inn / Travel Lodge / Ibis room was in different cities.

I’ve read a great deal about black and white musicians travelling together in the South with separate dining rooms, entrances etc. That went through to the 1960s, when The Band describe being run out of town for playing with Sonny Boy Williamson II. Somehow I never extended that kind of racism to the theatre. As Nicholas Wright’s programme note tells us, the Othello tour avoided the Deep South, which would have been impossible, but that racism was still very apparent. Paul Robeson was the first black actor to play Othello in a professional American production with a white cast. Right up to Laurence Olivier in 1965, audiences expected the Moor to be a white man smothered in greasepaint. I thought that would be the major theme, but while it was there, it was peripheral. The strongest evidence of prejudice is the first hotel in Indianapolis.

JOE: This town’s the northern headquarters of the Ku Klux Klan. Don’t be surprised tomorrow night if the audience throws rocks at the stage when Paul starts smooching a white woman and feeling her up.

Mainly the play focusses on the eternal triangle of José (Joe), Paul and Uta echoing Iago, Othello and Desdemona. More often we only see two or three in any one scene, and characters briefly introduce each segment with linking narrative.

Tory Kittles as Paul Robeson, Emma Paetz as Uta Hagen

The play has a lot to say about acting. I felt all the actors managed to convey not only the character, but something of the described acting style. Emma Paetz’s Uta is frustrated by Paul’s inability to delve deep into the emotions of the character. Emma Paetz gives a powerful performance, “Method” if you must. Tory Kittles’ Paul Robeson has learned the hard way to suppress anger and emotion and does so in his life in the hotel rooms just as Uta ad Peggy (Margaret Webster) complains that he does on stage … Nicholas Wright describes the 1959 Othello in the programme:

Some of his earlier magic was apparent, but not much of it: one had to make allowances for his age. 

In the first scene with Uta, she begins tutoring him on how to show real feeling on stage. He tries but she dismisses it as fake. This is subtle stuff for actors – they’re working on at least three levels.

Tory Kittles as Paul Robeson

Tory Kittles shows us the broken Paul Robeson so brilliantly in the last scene. Ageing, the unsteady near fall at the desk is superb acting. As portrayed, Robeson was pretty much a fellow-traveller with his visits to Russia and praise for the Stalin regime, but also a hypocrite in refusing to admit what he came to know of the oppression and cruelty of the USSR.

Then Ben Cura’s José Ferrer is full of swaggering confidence and good looks, never more so than when Margaret confronts him about his testimony to the McCarthy witch hunters, and he’s there in immaculate white suit, full of power and charisma – a star.

Emma Paetz as Uta Hagen, Pandora Colin as Peggy (Margaret Webster)

Margaret Webster was a director who lost her ability to work in the States because of him. A fine director, Wright says. Pandora Colin is beautifully English.

An irony I realized afterwards, is that Robeson, the black guy, is actually the only born American in the group. Margaret Webster is English. Uta Hagen was born in Germany (and moved to the USA at age five). José Ferrer was Puerto Rican.

Emma Paetz as Uta Hagen

The play works on all levels, and Wright has found a fascinating story. The climax is when Robeson loses his temper totally (at last letting all that suppressed anger out) and throws Uta on the bed and tries to strangle her then put a pillow on her head … just as he had been doing nightly in the theatre for months to her Desdemona. The focus on acting technique in the script comes out when she later describes using that memory of sheer terror to act out the rape scene in A Streetcar Named Desire with Marlon Brando (and yes, she was in that play with Brando in reality).

Tory Kittles as Paul Robeson, Ben Cura as José Ferrer

One little thing I remembered. Joe and Paul play chess. Paul sets up the board with white nearest him. Just before they start, he significantly swivels the board so he has black and José has white. The chess game is played out under vital dialogue, and there are many moves, and I’m sure they’re all “right” moves, leading to “Check.” They’re not scripted in the play text. I realized that the actors had to memorize all those moves along with their parts to resolve it. The vital dialogue in the chess game brings in the racism issue. Ferrer says there were people of colour in his extended family (but not direct family) … and that’s because his family were slave owners. Important point. Let’s not spoil the plot.

I loved the mention of Robeson hating to have to sing Old Man River wherever he was.

It circles around. All three actors betrayed each other sexually. Ferrer betrayed his fellow actors politically, but then Robeson equally betrayed the American in Moscow who asked for his help.

A couple of minor negatives on anachronism. First is persons of color, actors of color, women of color. (The American spelling is deliberate here). The expression dates back to Colonial times, but used to only refer to mixed race people, “brown” and “light brown” if we have to be explicit. It extended to include all non-white people. Martin Luther King used it in a speech in 1963 which definitely included all African-Americans or Blacks. As other terms all became rejected as racist, persons of color became the favoured term within my career as a text book writer in American English. Wikipedia has it growing in the late 70s and then in the 1980s. Early 90s was around when authors were advised to use it. Whatever, it was not used in 1944 to refer to African-Americans, by either others or by themselves. The Civil Rights Museum in Memphis has all those old signs. It would have been coloreds or negroes. I noted it as an anachronism. Karen disagrees me with and says that if it’s the respectful term for a modern audience, does it matter? Well, yes, because racism in 1944 is part of the theme. I also thought the number of uses of fucking were more modern. It’s impossible to tell. There are idiolects, and film sets have always been heavy on the F-words in my experience. Maybe stage actors were equally free with the F-word in 1944, but I’d think somewhat later. As my running note on hating it when actors get rained on gratuitously in productions (not here) I didn’t think Tory Kittles had to get out of bed naked and put on his boxer shorts in front of us. No objection, but I don’t feel actors (from their own point of view) should have to do that unless it’s necessary in the script, and it’s not scripted. It probably increased impact though. OK, an afternoon audience probably enjoyed it …

Having complained recently about inaudible actors at Bath, what a joy it was to have every single word delivered crystal clear by this cast at Chichester.  The Minerva’s acoustic helps, but it still is down to acting and projection.

It’s a very good play. Thought provoking. All four actors are superb both individually and working together. The many scene changes are smooth and efficient.

I’m sure it will follow other Chichester productions to the West End.

****

WHAT THE CRITICS SAID

4 star
Michael Billington, Guardian ****

A lot is packed into 100 minutes and Richard Eyre’s production whips the action along speedily … But the signal virtue of Wright’s play is that it explores not just the emotional intricacies of backstage life but also the racial divisions scarring the American nation.

Paul Taylor, Independent ****

Elegantly provocative, alive with wiry delicacy, 8 Hotels cries out for a transfer

Ian Murray, What’s On Stage ****

Director Richard Eyre has created an immensely strong, tight one act work that holds the audience gripped. Full credit to designer Rob Howell for simple set changes and use of dramatic giant video screens to create the movement through cities and datelines. At its heart 8 Hotels is a piece about betrayal, but not just of love and fidelity. As the story moves from prejudice of colour to prejudice of politics, it is the betrayal of ideals and freedoms that haunts, as they still haunt the United States today.

3 star
Bella Todd, The Stage ***

Wright’s clever decision to confine the action to a string of hotel rooms is brilliantly served by Rob Howell’s period design, which could well see the play renamed 8 Bedspreads.

2 star
Sam Marlowe, The Times

During an argument an enraged Paul almost throttles and smothers Uta – an unearned moment that while mirroring the Shakespeare tragedy feels like a crass stereotype of black male aggression. And the suggestion that this violently ugly incident becomes a ‘Method’ acting tool is unpleasantly reductive.

(There you go – I thought this was a powerful moment, as was the re-telling with reference to the scene with Brando. We might also ask given the references to Duberman’s interviews with Uta, as well as the writer knowing her, whether it had actually happened in spirit … the violence, rather than the specific mirroring. Can you not have any black person do anything bad then? Sam Marlowe should probably avoid any performance of “Othello”!)

LINKS ON THIS BLOG:

RICHARD EYRE (DIRECTOR)
Long Day’s Journey Into Night, Eugene O’Neill, West End 2018
Mary Poppins, Norwich, 2016
Quatermaine’s Terms by Simon Gray, Brighton 2013
Blithe Spirit, Bath 2019