The Chalk Garden
By Enid Bagnold
Directed by Alan Strachan
Designed by Simon Higlett
Music by Catherine Jayes
Chichester Festival Theatre
Wednesday 30thMay 2018, 19.30
CAST
Penelope Keith – Mrs St Maugham
Amanda Root – Miss Madrigal
Oliver Ford Davies – The Judge
Donna Berlin – Nurse
Matthew Cottle – Maitland
Sarah Crowden – Third Lady
Emma Curtis – Laurel
Caroline Harker – Olivia
Victoria Willing – Little Lady
Enid Bagnold wrote National Velvet in 1935, and the subsequent film introduced Elizabeth Taylor (aged twelve) to the world. She wrote more novels than plays, and The Chalk Garden dates from twenty years later in 1955. I have to admit I’d barely heard of her, and my mind went back to an elderly drama teacher we knew in the 1970s who had serried ranks of “Best Plays of 1932” and “Best Plays of 1951” etc. plus two long shelves of 1920s and 1930s stuff I’d never heard of either. The Chalk Garden was a success and revived several times. It debuted on Broadway in 1955, and in London in 1956. There was a film version in 1964 with Hayley Mills as Laurel and John Mills as Maitland, the manservant. As in the 1956 production, Edith Evans took the lead role.
See: THE CHALK GARDEN (1964) film review
Chichester Festival Theatre is an appropriate setting for a play which takes place in Sussex, where Enid Bagnold lived.
In a Telegraph review of Grandage’s Donmar Warehouse production,which revived it ten years ago, Charles Spencer said:
Enid Bagnold’s The Chalk Garden opened in London in 1956, just a few weeks before John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger. More than half a century on, it now seems the greater play.
Well, Look Back in Anger and the kitchen sink plays fell to television which from Coronation Street to Eastenders did that sort of thing so much better. Compare the number of productions of Rattigan and Coward in recent years with those of Osbourne and Wesker.
In a review of the same production, Michael Billington said it is known as “the last drawing room comedy.” The programme notes, which draw fascinating parallels between Bagnold’s life and the play, mentions it as the (missing) link between Coward and Rattigan on one hand, and Ayckbourn and Frayn on the other.
L to R: Miss Madrigal, The Judge, Mrs St Maugham, Laurel, Maitland
The set by Simon Higlett is meticulously detailed, and follows on from his brilliant set for The Norman Conquests at Chichester last year. The garden creeps off the stage into the auditorium (meaning front of house staff continually had to ask people not to walk on the pebbles!) We were seated slightly to one side (stage left) and never saw the blasted garden visible in the picture above. It is a Chichester issue. It is a semi-circular rather than thrust stage, and in most productions we try to get central seats, because there are inevitable blocking issues with some important parts where you view the back of head. On a strongly thrust stage as at Stratford, they have to work more to avoid too much back to audience..
Mrs St Maugham (Penelope Keith) and Laurel (Emma Curtis)
The play takes place in the Sussex house of Mrs St. Maugham. We start with three ladies apparently waiting to be interviewed for the post of governess to Laurel, Mrs St Maugham’s sixteen-year old granddaughter. Not an easy child. She starts fires. There was positive use of back of the head here with Miss Madrigal (back to audience) monosyllabic while the other two wittered on. She gets the job by default. Maitland is the manservant (NOT butler). As he explains, the butler, Mr Pinkbell, had a stroke but rules house and garden from his bedroom. The nurse is the line of communication. Like the mother in the Norman Conquests he is an unseen brooding presence who we never meet. Everyone is terrified of this unseen butler deity. He was so strict in his interpretation of social rules and so severe that when the judge appears for lunch, he admits he modelled his courtroom stance on Mr Pinkbell.
Act One: Miss Madrigal (Amanda Root) meets Laurel (Emma Curtis)
Gradually we wonder about the past. We learn that Maitland spent five years in prison as a conscientious objector and is addicted to real crime stories, particularly murderesses. Why does Madrigal know so much about gardening? This is her key to entry to the household … Mr Pinkbell has ruled planting and gardening for years, which is why everything is so unsuccessful on the chalk soil. She knows better and is prepared to confront his authority. Laurel has mother issues and fled to join her grandmother after her mother, Olivia, remarried. But is Laurel telling the truth about her reasons? Olivia (Caroline Harker) arrives and is fended off from meeting her daughter. After four years, she wants her back, and is planning to take her to Aden, where her second husband is an army colonel. There are some great lines between Mrs St Maugham and daughter … in particular asking why she would wear orange with a face her colour.
Olivia (Caroline Harker)
The judge, an old friend (presumably beau) of Mrs St Maugham arrives for lunch. He has no name, though Mrs St Maugham calls him “puppy.” We realie that Miss Madrigal and the Judge have met in the past … no more plot spoiling.
I was fascinated by the language. Mrs St Maugham speaks in Wilde one liners or epigrams. The enigmatic Miss Madrigal though is approaching Pinteresque. Maitland, the manservant, also gets oddly enigmatic utterances. The language is formal, deliberately stilted. The play apparently has no contracted forms: I did not … I have not … The judge uses Shall you …? in a question twice. In British English, shall is first person in formal style, and switches to second and third person in emphatic, legalistic statements. The US Constitution is full of shall in that sense. But shall in a second person question? Very odd.
Act 2: Laurel (Emma Curtis) and Maitland (Matthew Cottle) puzzle over the initials on Miss Mardrigal’s pen box.
I thought Bagnold lost out on the teenager Laurel’s lines though. Cultural references enjoy saying that the teenager was “invented” in 1955 or 1956 just as this play came into being. The designer here points it with her costume – jeans and top in rebellious Act One mode, but in a plain salmon frock in Act 2 once Miss Madrigal has influenced her. But she doesn’t get the language differentiation which might have happened. Given 1956, that might be a good thing. If Bagnold had stuck See you later, alligator or Daddio onto the script it would have aged badly. Whatever, the teenager doesn’t ring true in this production. The Times review blames the actor. I don’t have a text, but I couldn’t hear “a voice” in the intrinsic writing of the part.
Constant references to the ill butler upstairs as the old bastard might even have caused them notes from the Lord Chamberlain, and I swear I heard a single fuck mid-line which I know can’t have been done on stage in 1956.
Penelope Keith as Mrs St. Maugham
Penelope Keith was utterly marvellous. In the original British production, Mrs St Maugham was played by Edith Evans and it was directed by Sir John Geilgud – so very high profile. We had seen Penelope Keith in Edith Evans role as Lady Bracknell in Bath and it was “easy casting” as she carried over the aura of Margo from The Good Life effortlessly. This role gave her more to play with as Mrs St Maugham is somewhat potty as they would say in the 1950s and the eccentricity gave more scope for originality. There is good material to work with. Like the terrifying Mr Pinkbell, Mrs St. Maugham is hidebound and confused by esoteric social rules. She reminded me of a neighbour who was driven to fury because we had painted our connecting garden fence chestnut brown. Hadn’t we realized, she explained, that any person of any social standing would only ever permit black creosote on a garden fence? A STAIN was so appalling. I think she meant “non-U”. I was tempted to re-do it in turquoise and tangerine stripes.
Amanda Root as Miss Madral
Amanda Root, as in Racing Demon last year, gives a masterclass in acting too, as does Oliver Ford-Davies as the judge. We enjoyed Miss Madrigal’s range of guilty expressions, and every part of her stance radiated inner tension. Oliver Ford-Davies judge was nuanced, with his usual splendid projection with his rich tones. He is in the area as a circuit judge, and as he begins to recall more about Miss Madrigal, we see his inner struggle. A lot in the play is about truth; from the truth or lies game Miss Madrigal and Laurel play, to the real story of Laurel leaving her parents, to Miss Madrigal’s past and to the judge’s view of his decisions of fifteen years earlier.
Oliver Ford-Davies as The Judge.
It is definitely an interesting play. In some ways, it subverts the “drawing room comedy thriller” genre. As mystery goes, there isn’t much you can’t predict. It also doesn’t go flat out for comedy either. It has pointers to drama from later. The deliberately cold language reminded me of Max Frisch’s The Fire Raisers at times, or even Peter Barnes. Without any fore knowledge I had been expecting something along the Rattigan / Coward line. It’s not. I’d agree with reviews that it dips a tad in Act 2, but it makes up for it.
Annoyingly, Chichester had no play texts on sale. They said many people had asked for them. I ordered the DVD of the 1964 film, and the playscript, and will add more once they arrive.
****
See: THE CHALK GARDEN (1964) film review which compares the acting in the two. The stage play wins!
WHAT THE CRITICS SAID
4
Dominic Maxwell, The Times ****
Steve Turner, Reviews Hub ****1/2
3
Domenic Cavendish, The Telegraph ***
Patricia Nicol, Sunday Times ***
Rosemary Waugh, The Stage ***
Maxwell Cooter What’s On Stage ***
Fiona Scott, Broadway World ***
2
Arif Akbar, Guardian **
LINKS ON THIS BLOG
It was interesting for us to see two actors who have featured in our ELT comedy video series: Amanda Root was in Grapevine 3 with Jim Sweeney and Steve Steen, and Matthew Cottle was in the My Oxford English series some years later.
PENELOPE KEITH
The Way Of The World, Chichester
AMANDA ROOT
Racing Demon, by David Hare, Bath 2017
MATTHEW COTTLE
Neighbourhood Watch, by Alan Ayckbourn, Bath 2012
Quatermaine’s Terms, by Simon Gray, Brighton, 2013
Communicating Doors by Alan Ayckbourn, Menier Chocolate Factory, 2015
OLIVER FORD-DAVIES
Richard II, RSC, 2013
Henry V, RSC 2015
CAROLINE HARKER
Present Laughter, Bath 2003
EMMA CURTIS
Comus by John Milton, Wanamaker Playhouse 2016
Peter Viney's Blog 