Pressure
By David Haig
Directed by John Dove
Designed by Colin Richmond
Ambassadors Theatre, London
Friday 6thJuly 2018, 19.30
CAST
David Haig – James Stagg
Malcolm Sinclair- General Eisenhower
Laura Rogers – Kay Summersby, Eisenhower’ssecretary
Andrew MacBean – Air Chief Marshall Trafford Leigh-Mallory
Mark Jax – Commander Franklin / General “Tooey” Spaatz
David Killick- Electrician / Admiral Bertram Ramsay
Philip Cairns – Colonel Irving P. Krick, USAF meteorologist
Robert Heard – Naval rating / Hamilton
Molly Roberts – secretary
William Mannering – Lieutenant Battersby / Captain Johns
Bert Seymour – Andrew
Philip Cairns as Krick, Laura Rogers as Lieutenant Summersby, and David Haig
We missed this play in Chichester 2014, and couldn’t find a suitable date for the earlier 2018 tour, so finally catch it as it lands in the West End. After seeing David Haig in Racing Demon and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead last year, we were very keen to see him again.
David Haig as writer combines British obsessions: the weather, World War II and the brilliance of our back room boffins: the scientists like Turing and Hawkins who have featured in recent major biopics. The story of a tiny cog in a major event who actually caused it to succeed appeals. It’s the “For want of a nail the shoe was lost …” in reverse. A virtually unknown backstage tussle in June 1944 had enormous implications. One of the best books I’ve read on World War II is Patrick Bishop’s Bomber Boys . RAF bomber crews had the proportionally highest loss rate of any British servicemen in two World Wars. If you were 18, had reasonable eyesight and had a studied maths and science to that age, you were straight into the RAF, and later in the war, probably into Bomber Command. Geography at that level? Navigator. So many were killed that the idea comes up- we killed a vast proportion of the lads who were good at science, the lads like Dr Stagg and Turing, which meant a lack of science ability in the 1950s and 1960s that had repercussions up to the present. It struck home when I read it.I did Geography A level.
To the play. We are in the days leading up to D-Day in June 1944. It covers the territory that the 2017 film Churchill later mined (and quotes the same story about Churchill, Eisenhower and George VI), but in a far narrower focus … the weather report that would allow the invasion fleet to set off across the English Channel. It’s an event I’m fascinated by. We live in Poole. There are wrecks of landing craft in Poole Harbour. My dad spent the first days of the invasion in a flat-bottomed landing craft just off the Normandy beaches with the BBC unit. The result was that even looking at a boat made him feel seasick ever after. The perils of flat-bottomed landing craft are often mentioned in the play. I was at Paris airport with American veterans returning from the 50th D-Day Anniversary. All our flights were delayed. We got talking. They’d been visiting the beaches where so many of their comrades died. The emotions were running strongly.
We start on 2nd June 1944. There were two windows of appropriate tide, essential for the landing. June 4th, 5th, 6th then nothing until June 19th, 20th. US Air Force meteorologist Irving P. Krick believed that the weather would be calm for the next five days, allowing the crossing and landing. The British chief meteorologist, James Stagg (played here by the play’s writer, David Haig) predicted bad weather on the target day, June 5th and wanted to postpone the landings. Krick was thinking in 2D and quoting precedent. Stagg was thinking in 3D – he factored in the Jetstream at 28,000 feet, even though it was not yet accepted as a key to weather. Stagg also knew the volatility of British weather and insists you could only predict 24-36 hours ahead. The argument ensues, and it is clearly vital to the success of the invasion. 350,000 lives are potentially at stake (including my dad!) Eisenhower has to decide who to follow. In actuality, a Norwegian meteorologist, Sverre Petterssen was the first to raise concerns to Stagg, but he does not appear in the drama – it would dilute the power of the play. So we have a play about a weather forecast, and we already know the ending. And it is still absolutely fascinating.
In a Time Out review, Andrezej Lukowski says:
It’s an old fashioned show with a large entirely white cast telling a story about plucky Brits and impetuous Yanks triumphing over the odds. But it’s also got a big, beating human heart and a deft avoidance of actual jingoism.
OK, but with so many films and TV series this is well-known recent history, and it has to appear realistic. How many non-whites were in Allied high command in 1944? Perhaps 2018 theatre would prefer (say) Michelle Terry as Eisenhower once she finishes doing Hamlet, though maybe a BAME actress would be better. “All white male” is a ridiculous criticism. Mr Lukowski’s generally positive review is a lone 3 star among all the 4 star reviews, but … we both came out saying ‘Actually his 3 stars is right.’ Maybe having seen a 5 star all-out brilliant Jerusalem at the Watermill the day before (and the 5 star Lieutenant of Inishmore the day after) threw it into the shade. It was never designed to compete with that kind of vigour and flat-out hilarity. Pressure is conventional in staging and progress.
Apart from General Eisenhower saying “fuck” a lot, it could date from the 1940s or 1950s. That’s a good thing in that it feels “of the time. A play of the 1950s could not have used “fuck,” but I wondered whether Eisenhower really did? For example, a senior officer might well say “fuck” to his peers, and judging by all accounts he might have wanted to address it to Montgomery, followed by “off.” But as a General, would he have used it to a mere Group Captain? The etiquette of swearing means you should avoid it with people “lower in the hierarchy” as they dare not reply in kind. Certainly Eisenhower was more circumspect as President:
Eisenhower cursed privately’ on occasion, but only in light blue, not dark blue four letter words. Anyone who made the mistake of using scatological or vulgar language in Ike’s presence regretted it, as did anyone of his friends who made the mistake of telling an off-color story. Ike could launch a more impressive verbal broadside using `Hell’s Fire,’ than most men could using a string of dark blue, four letter words. Eisenhower was certainly familiar with the rough language he encountered in his Army days. However, in reading his diaries when he was a young officer, he’d write `d – – ‘ rather than `damn’ for emphasis.
Douglas R. Price, member of Eisenhower’s staff.
David Haig as James Stagg
The flashes of intense drama are outside a side window. A returning plane crashes. On Sunday 4th June a massive thunderstorm erupts. Hmm. OK, there was a storm as predicted but was it really such sudden Donner und blitzen! Sorry, like all Brits of my age I read too many World War II comics. Achtung! Schweinhund! Alles kaput! Also, I thought the command was in the downs above Portsmouth, not on an airfield. The play text says they can see over Portsmouth Harbour. I know the D-Day Command Centres were tunnelled into the chalk downs above Portsmouth, you can see where they were from the motorway. They accommodated 70 staff. Eisenhower was said to be secreted in a wood with tents and a mobile home in the days leading up to D-Day, which is as it is shown in Churchill.
It set me looking up the actual weather on June 4th 1944: trees swaying and a hard rain on the Sunday evening. So the drama has been added. A little Googling finds that the British commander, Montgomery was also present at the meetings, but he has been eradicated, or rather reduced to a mention that he was not there. Wisely, because otherwise they would be going over the same Montgomery v Eisenhower grounds as the film Churchill.
David Haig’s Dr Stagg was Scottish to the core. Haig maintained a tight-lipped Scottish mouth shape throughout. It is a cliche, the bottled up Scottish emotion held under a control that seems impossible to maintain in the circumstances.”I inadvertently sat on my wee dirk, and it has penetrated six inches into my rectum, but I will nay flinch nor cry out.” As Eisenhower demanded a definite decision, and Stagg buckled under triple pressures (Eisenhower, atmospheric pressure AND his wife is about to go into Labour) he was shuddering from head to foot, forcing himself to give definitive advice. Suddenly in my mind, Eisenhower morphed into Captain James T. Kirk demanding action, and Stagg became Scotty, about to venture into the Warp Drive (The Enterprise cannae take any more than Warp 9, Captain) armed only with a small Philips screwdriver. Then Kate Summersby as the peacemaker was Doctor Bones McCoy. I had to shake my head to return to the story without casting the rest of them in Star Trek.
There are some weak points in the script. I was perplexed by the time devoted to Stagg and Eisenhower comparing rugby and American football in particular. It came late while they were waiting for the invasion to start, and I guess it showed a bonding (just as Eisenhower had earlier invited Krick to play tennis) but it had no dramatic progress in the storyline for me. Much better was Eisenhower talking about the loss of a child, and the responsibility of sending 10,000 men, or would it be 50,000, to their deaths.
Dr Stagg (David Haig) and Lt. Kate Summersby (Laura Rogers)
The three strongest parts are Stagg (David Haig), General Eisenhower (Malcolm Sinclair) and his British driver, Kate Summersby (Laura Rogers), who was rumoured to be his lover. That’s a good subplot. The way Ike just gets rid of her on D-Day is powerful and moving, but then she perhaps tells Stagg he is “a good man” too often.
Malcolm Sinclair as Eisenhower, Laura Rogers as Kate Summersby
Online, you can find links and quotes from Air: The Restless Shaper of The World by William Bryant Logan. It’s worth reading the extract, because it shows that Haig moulded and shaped a coherent drama, rather than simply recounted the facts. In reality, there were three competing teams on the forecast: Krick’s Americans, the British Met Office and separately, the British Navy. Stagg was the leader and moderator of the three. Some of the weather information came from ENIGMA – having cracked the German U-Boat codes, the British Navy team was tapping into the German radio information from out in the Atlantic. More interesting was the German angle, which of course no one in the play would have known, so could not be used. The German team used exactly the same method as Krick – past charts of patterns rather than current readings. However, they (like Stagg) knew Northern European weather patterns, and came to the directly opposite conclusion to Krick, that the weather would be bad for all three days making an invasion impossible. Rommel went off to Berlin for his wife’s birthday. Half the commanders were in a War Game exercise in Brittany. The torpedo boats were tethered up in harbour. The genius of Stagg was that he predicted a narrow window on June 6th and the navy believed it was possible in a Force 4 swell (which the Germans had discounted as impossible). So while the landing craft had soldiers vomiting for the 17 hour crossing (as my dad recalled) and most of the tanks for Omaha Beach were lost in the surf, they did manage to get there, and thus totally surprised the Germans. No expects the unexpected! The German chief meteorologist, Lettau, later praised Stagg, saying the German team would never have dared make such a narrow prediction.
The theatre on a Friday evening was less than half full in the stalls. We bought side seats because they were cheaper than the middle, as were the front few rows. Everyone made the same choice – the premium centre was virtually deserted. OK, it’s the West End, but it was close to FOUR TIMES the price of Jerusalem at Newbury the day before which had an equally good and well-known cast in an even smaller theatre with a much more elaborate set. The Ambassador can beat even the worst West End theatre for dire Ladies loos too, though with such a small audience, queueing was not an issue. That audience size on a Friday is really bad news. The half empty theatre may have contributed to a general feeling that it was good, worthy, very well-acted, but over-rated in early reviews, and only 3 stars. We were under-whelmed, but three DOES mean “worth-seeing”.
Like the Turing and Hawkins tales, it would make an excellent film.
***
WHAT THE CRITICS SAID
5 star
Douglas Mayo, British Theatre *****
4 star
Michael Billington, Guardian ****
Paul Taylor, Independent ****
Dominic Maxwell, The Times ****
Sarah Hemming, Financial Times ****
Peter Yates, London Theatre com ****
Nick Wells, Radio Times ****
3 star
Andrzej Lukowski, Time Out ***
LINKS ON THIS BLOG
DAVID HAIG
King Lear, Bath Theatre Royal, 2013
Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, Old Vic, 2017
Racing Demon, Bath Theatre Royal 2017
WILLIAM MANNERING
A Woman of No Importance, Classic Spring 2017
As You Like It, Globe 2015
Julius Caesar, Globe 2014
LAURA ROGERS
An Ideal Husband, Chichester 2014
MALCOLM SINCLAIR
Quatermaine’s Terms – Theatre Royal, Brighton 2013
Peter Viney's Blog 