The Times, 3rd
July 1981, Ned Chaillet
Howard Brenton’s new play is probably the first digital Shakespeare, the first ‘Macbeth’ with television jingles for a chorus and assassinations timed by a digital watch. Although there was a solemn reception for the first performance at The Warehouse, it may not be necessary to see it as a tragedy. Mr Brenton subtitles is ‘Dream Play’ and even if it a very serious satire, it is also distinctly comical.
After ‘The Romans in Britain’ he has not exactly
abandoned historical precedents for ‘Thirteenth Night’, but instead of casting
the play in the mould of the past he has pushed it ahead in time, making it a
sort of future fiction. We are past the time when Mr Brenton could be called a
promising playwright; his general stage mastery is increasingly obvious and
there is a profligate display of it in the new play as he moves from a brief
scene of highly accomplished naturalism, showing a group of Labour Party
politicians menaced and attacked by thugs, to droll poetic pastiche evoking
‘Julius Caesar’ as well as ‘Macbeth’.
Michael Pennington appears in the centre of Mr
Brenton’s stark fantasia as a politician called Jack Beatty, and he holds it
together with a magnetism that is political, that evokes Robert Kennedy while
he harangues a crowd. The words of that crucial speech are not quite
inflammatory enough to do the dirty work that Mr Brenton suggests they do,
which is to unleash a mob on the American Embassy in Grosvenor Square and to
instigate the death of the American Ambassador, but it is not their actual
effect that is being measured, rather the effect on the mind of Beatty and the
projected effect on the British people.
Beatty’s discovery of his power combines with
manipulation from his mistress and urgings from a security chief to transform
him into a mixture of Macbeth and Brutus, characters of proved literary
respectability. Dispensing with qualms, he personally assassinates the Labour
Prime Minister and takes part in an armed coup which raises him to absolute
power: from being merely a promising puritanical socialist, he follows the path
of Stalin to cruel implementation of his vision.
There is much ingenuity in Mr Brenton’s
exploitation of Shakespeare, and it goes beyond his skilful echoing of famous
lines. He uses the characters of Shakespeare to find the elements in the
British character which could transform an Englishman into a Stalin, and closes
in on his creation with an overall with to match his horror.
Throughout the performance, the actors of the Royal
Shakespeare Company colour the words with literacy and modern meanings. Much
credit must go to the serious atmosphere established by Barry Kyle’s
production, which resounds with classical distinction and moves with the pace
of a thriller.
The comedy is harsh, and the aim of the work is
high. While Mr Brenton projects an absolute state of the left, it is clearly
not his intention to attack the left politically. His concerns are with
democratic participation and justice. The complexities of his structure are
such that the witches, disembodied female voices in an underground car park,
may be seen to goad Beatty to power for the good of the people and later gloat
at his destruction meanwhile sounding like Deep Throat of the Watergate case.
Among the admirable performances, and in addition to
Mr Pennington’s domination of the stage, David Waller registers strongly as a
Ted Heath of the left while John Bowe makes a compelling Banquo. On the
evidence of ‘Thirteenth Night’, Mr Brenton has not let recent events restrain
his imagination.
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