Peter Viney's Blog

Forty Years On
By Alan Bennett 

Directed by Daniel Evans

Designed by Lez Brotherston
Musical Director & Arranger – Tom Brady

 Chichester Festival Theatre

Saturday 6^th May 2017, 14.30 

CAST:

Faculty:
Richard Wilson – Headmaster
Alan Cox – Franklin, the incoming headmaster
Danny Lee Wynter- Tempest, a teacher
Jenny Galloway – Matron
Lucy Briars – Miss Nisbitt, school secretary

Pupils:
Michael Lin – Crabtree
Joe Idris-Roberts – Headboy and lectern reader
Thomas Bird – Skinner
Martin Sarreal- Charteris
Martha Waddington – Boy
Oliver Marshall – Rumbold
Silas Wyatt-Barke – Wigglesworth
Michael Hamway – Tredgold
James McConville- Tupper
Crispin Glancy – Foster

Ensemble
Fifty-two locally cast boys

The opening school assembly with the set – note In Memoriam boards either side

Alan Bennett’s first play was produced in 1968, and takes place in Albion House, a public school on the South Downs, fortuitously close to Chichester in reality. It’s the headmaster’s last day (after forty years) and he has been asked to appear in the annual school play. The problem is that he has not yet read the script, and the play, Speak for England, Arthur, has unexpected content.

This Chichester production is a year short of “fifty years on” from the original production. As the 1968 headmaster recalls being a pupil as World War One ended in 1918, it’s odd that it isn’t “fifty years on” in the first place, though maybe forty is his length of service as a teacher. The title of the play-within-a play Speak for England, Arthur, started me thinking of The Kinks 1969 album Arthur, or The Decline & Fall of The British Empire. Ray Davies has maintained an interest in theatre.

Alan Bennett was lampooning a public (= elite private for non-British readers)  school culture, which like me, he knew from comic books and Boys’ Own tales, and in his case, people he met at university and in the theatre. The broad brush satire is 1968 … Beyond The Fringe, Oh, What A Lovely War, How I Won The War and so on. Lindsay Anderson’s If …. the best of the era on the topic was written by “insiders” in the system, public school boys, and based on Canford School, though filmed at Marlborough. Like Alan Bennett, I attended a state grammar school. Even in my state grammar school, some teachers were wannabe public school teachers with Mr Quelch black gowns and snotty attitudes to foreigners. We were only just past the era that Bennett is satirising when classrooms had maps of the British Empire, then later, Commonwealth … a world map with satisfying swathes of pink for “our lot.” Geography explained how cheerful happy Ghanaians sent us cocoa, cheerful happy Indians sent us tea, cheerful happy Jamaicans sent us bananas, cheerful happy Kiwis sent us lamb, cheerful happy Canadians sent us lumber. Jolly Yanks were not quite the ticket, not having the queen, but were cheerful and happy about fighting shoulder to shoulder with us and buying our whisky and luxury vehicles. In other words it’s the post-Brexit fantasy of the Brexiteers. Let’s set the clock back to 1956.

The play stars Richard Wilson, at age 80, taking the role John Geilgud played in 1968 (Geilgud was sixteen years younger). Alan Bennett took the role of Tempest, the young rather effete schoolmaster, himself in 1968, here played brilliantly by Danny Lee Wynter.

Even before the play started we were lost in the set detail. A massive pipe organ dominates the school hall. A row of canvas seats for the boys surrounds the stage (the audience are “the parents”). Beyond the stage, there is a huge war memorial board on each side. These are later used for projection. The speakers, hanging from the ceiling, have been encased in 1940s wooden fretwork.

This is Daniel Evans debut production as Artistic Director of Chichester Festival Theatre. The direction and production are of the highest possible standard … there are FIFTY-TWO extras in school uniform, and at the end of Act One, in CCF (Combined Cadet Force … see If ….) uniforms. They are choreographed with precision throughout. The massed hymn singing is wonderful to hear. There are ten professional actors as “the pupils” and a faculty of five.

There is the play within a play. Criticism suggests it’s more of a frame for a revue (like Beyond The Fringe) as Speak for England, Arthur is episodic. The play-within-a-play is based around a group of four as World War Two starts … a politician (played by Mr Franklin), a nurse (Mrs Tibbert), a female Women’s Auxiliary Service person (Matron), a “son”, Christopher (Mr Tempest) who goes off to war. However it flashes back and forth between World War II and a history of the whole 1900 to 1945 era. These flashbacks include lampoons of an Oscar Wilde play (Mr Tempest as the lady aristocrat), a lecture on T.E. Lawrence aka Lawrence of Arabia by Mr Franklin  (the headmaster fears it’s D.H. Lawrence) , a satire of the Bloomsbury set around Virginia Woolf (Mrs Hibbert), a lampoon of an extract from a detective novel with John Buchan’s Richard Hannay, a scene with Bertrand Russell, and a court trial of Neville Chamberlain for appeasement.  Then there’s the school chaplain (played by Mr Tempest) giving a talk on sex education to a boy. It’s based on the headmaster’s long-used talk.

They’re invaded from time to time by the school’s rugger team.

Invasion of “The Rugger Hearties”

The headmaster comments in shock on the content, and is roped in for some parts. Yes, it is a frame for a revue, but I see nothing wrong with that. It’s a sturdy frame, and the contextualisation worked.  It’s well signposted with the years under review / or rather revue (1900, 1908, 1914, 1922 etc), projected on both sides. This makes it far clearer than the play text, which is somewhat short of such desirable markers.

Left: Mr franklin (Alan Cox), the Headmaster (Richard Wilson)

There is a lot of music. Hymns, stuff of the era, a fantastic I Vow To Thee My Country as 1960s vocal group (the programme says The Drifters). All the professionals have to play … organ, drums, bass, trumpet, guitar. There is a splendid tap dance from Michael Lin. James McConville as Tupper has a stellar singing voice.

Mr Tempest (Danny Lee Wynter) acts as one of The Bloomsbury Set

All the faculty were brilliant. When the play opens, and the headmaster was waffling on,  it felt exactly like our school assemblies. Mr Franklin (Deputy Head) and Mr Tempest (young, dramatic) were seated and never stopped scanning the boys and us with eagle eyes. At our school, it was the same. We’d go back to class for registration, and our form master would fly into a rage because he’d spotted someone “not praying” or picking their noses in assembly … just as Alan Bennett’s script. Danny Lee  Wynter did such a wonderful pompous, but very theatrical young master as Mr Tempest. Alan Cox was Mr Franklin, directing the subversive play within a play, waiting to take over and change things, just as happened in 1968. My favourite speech is the headmaster (Richard Wilson) on his impending retirement:

Matron: I don’t know what Mr Franklin will do without you.
Headmaster: Don’t you? The first thing he will do is abolish corporal punishment, the second thing he’ll do is abolish compulsory games. And the third thing he’ll do is abolish the cadet corps. Those are the three things liberal schoolmasters always do, Matron, the first opportunity they get. They think it makes the sensitive boys happy. In my experience, sensitive boys are never happy anyway, so what is the point. Excuse me.

Matron (Jenny Galloway) makes up the headmaster for his part. Mr Franklin looks on.

Jenny Galloway’s Matron was a force throughout, accompanied by the only other woman, Lucy Briars as Miss Nisbitt (who wants a cardie). Both are tremendous as the lone females in this man’s world.

It has moments of extreme drama … Act One ends with gun explosions in Flanders, with all the boys in cadet uniforms. Matron comes on with a trolley (with the third of a pint bottles of milk the government used to issue to all schoolchildren, until Mrs Thatcher (Margaret Thatcher- Milk Snatcher) abolished it. Matron announces the interval.

In memoriam: the boys with wreathes

The end of Act Two runs a picture collage from 1968 to 2017 on the side screens … bringing it up to Brexit.

I think the critics, mainly three star, were harsh, and those on two stars, vicious.  Though maybe an extra week until we saw it had smoothed it out. They note that Richard Wilson was using various crib sheets for his part, but often that’s part of the story … the headmaster has no idea the play’s content. OK, earlier on, he was using the lectern with notes, then a book with notes, but first he’s eighty, secondly he had a serious heart attack last year, and third, it didn’t bother us in the slightest. He is perfect casting and gave a great performance.

I’m with Domenic Cavendish on ratings this time. The set, the production values, the direction, the extras, the actors were all as good as you can get. Maybe the play itself has a few flat spots, inevitably given the passing of time, the changing of targets (the Bloomsbury set don’t feature highly in my list of potential 20th century targets), so not five star.

But overall:

****

TRIVIA

The 1968 production had twenty pupils, and named all of them. According to Wiki, Bennett’s friend Russell Harty was teaching at a boys’ school and the names come from his class. I’m not so sure Harty’s class list wasn’t amended. Alan Bennett knows his popular culture. Alf Tupper was the “Tough of the Track” in The Rover boys’ comic.  Leslie Charteris was the author of The Saint novels, hugely popular on TV in 1968. Harold Skinner appears in the Billy Bunter school series as “the cad” (played by Melvin Hayes on TV). Major Rumbold is a character in A.A. Milne’s classic detective novel The Red House Mystery. 

WHAT THE CRITICS SAID:
4
Domenic Cavendish, The Telegraph, ****
3
Michael Billington, The Guardian ***
Clare Brennan, The Observer ***
Ian Shuttleworth, Financial Times, ***
Henry Hitchings, Evening Standard, ***
Mark Shenton, The Stage ***
2
Dominic Maxwell, The Times, **
Jane Edwardes, Sunday Times **
Sarah Crompton, What’s On Stage **
LINKS ON THIS BLOG:

PLAYS BY ALAN BENNETT
People by Alan Bennett, National Theatre on Tour, Milton Keynes

DANIEL EVANS
American Buffalo, by David Mamet, Wyndham’s Theatre, London

RICHARD WILSON
Fracked! Or Please Don’t Use The F-Word. by Alistair Beaton, Chichester Minerva 2016 (DIRECTOR)

LUCY BRIARS
Ivanov, by Anton Chekhov, version by David Hare, Chichester Festival Theatre
The Seagull, by Anton Chekhov, version by David Hare, Chichester Festival Theatre

DANNY LEE WYNTER
Comus, by John Milton, Wanamaker Playhouse
Much Ado About Nothing – Old Vic 2013