Bard on the run
The Independent, 3rd April 1991
Michael Pennington, actor/manager of the ESC, pauses before the last lap of an international
tour
The English Shakespeare Company was playing ‘Coriolanus’ in Helsinki when the US
deadline to the Iraqis ran out and the war began. The Finns remained neutrally aloof,
their attention on Lithuania: even after 74 years of independence, Finland is wary
of where Russia’s westward eye may settle next. For us the major chords sounded as
Volumnia came to plead with her son to spare Rome:
Thou know’st great son,
The end of the war’s uncertain,
That if thou conquer Rome the
benefit
Which thou shalt thereby reap
is such a name
Whose reputation will be
dogg’d with curses…”
Deep in the purdah of touring, how could we gauge the news? Selfishly, did it mean
we shouldn’t leave for India in 10 days time? Identified by the British High Commission
in Delhi as a “relatively high-risk terrorist target”, we nevertheless took the view
and went: after all, it wasn’t Pakistan.
Nothing prepares the novice for India, as everyone knows: the affronting heat, the
battered buses, the persistent air of 1947. The ride in from Bombay airport is a
fair summary – row upon row of men defecating by the side of the road, wretched lean-tos
made out of billboards declaring that “Surf Washes Whitest” or bearing blandishments
from American Express. The code of the road encourages a speed too fast for safety,
too slow for progress (James Cameron’s words, not mine); since a pedestrian casualty
could lead to the driver being lynched, his vehicle burned and the police stoned,
this is high ante. Through the confusion and pity of it all, images of blazing beauty
suggest an infinite world beyond these horrors.
The biggest theatre tour to visit India in 30 years, we played a week in Bombay at
the Homi Bhabha Auditorium, named after the greatest physicist who, in the splitting
of the atom, dreamed of the rapid modernisation of India. The place is falling apart.
Then Bangalore, where we worked around a family of rats, under a cluster of bats
hanging in the flies, and in spite of a chipmunk that on one occasion dropped on
to the stage at the feet of Tullus Aufidius. In Delhi, the incoming audience could,
while being vigorously frisked by security, ponder at leisure a large poster announcing
out hotel, daily schedule, and details of our ongoing flight. Finally in Calcutta,
a beggar described by Geoffrey Moorhouse in his magnificent book on the place is
still on his mat on Chowringhee Lane 20 years later, his helpless cheek to the pavement
as if listening to the earth, his four stumps quivering. Vultures wheel above him
Meanwhile the war escalated. Aufidius continued to tear up the proffered peace treaty
over the dead body of Coriolanus; in ‘The Winter’s Tale’, the deluded intransigence
of Leontes seemed characteristic of all parties in the conflict. Movie-star portraits
of Saddam Hussein, a visionary gleam in his eye, began to appear in the Indian street-markets
and one or two of us got spat on. We got used to this; observed ‘Coriolanus’ becomingly
slightly the more popular of the two shows, came to love the audiences paying a maximum
of 30 pence a ticket and discussing the play throughout, not bothering to applaud
at the end despite their evident excitement. We were phlegmatic when an interviewer
from ‘India Times’ demanded to know why we had dressed the Volscian army as Muslim
fundamentalists – was this quite a tactful thing to do? – and left this astounding
country with our minds thrown open but also with a seductive feeling of have done
some minute good. After an overnight stop in Bangkok on the day of the military coup,
we flew into Australia for a more sedate four weeks in temperatures of over 100 degrees
– by which time the war was over and the struggle to win the peace beginning: a sequel
to ‘Coriolanus’ that Shakespeare never wrote.
In a way, he barely finished ‘Coriolanus’ – a masterpiece that explains why idealism
may be incompatible with good politics and how dangerous it is for a man to change,
but which is then allowed by certain faltering in the last act to drop just short
of ‘Macbeth’. ‘The Winter’s Tale’, on the other hand, demands change – towards personal
candour: its acceptance of sexuality as the basis of all behaviour anticipates psycho-analysis
by centuries, and in its unflinching description of jealousy it even dares to do
without a Iago.
Doing these plays, we are once again finding that there is no such thing as two unrelated
Shakespeares: even two such diverse pieces show more links than differences. Once
again, we are assuming that the plays were written specifically for us – perhaps
even by a Shakespeare who is somewhere in the company, working for us alone. The
sense of taking the plays direct from the pen, unprocessed by time, is our necessary
aim, since Shakespeare’s vocabulary needs to be preserved not just as an icon but
as a common coin. At the same time, these breathing works that are our articles of
faith are in ours, as in all productions, subject to certain distortion, more the
result of historical eddying than any calculated intervention of our own.
Our company is five years old next month and the pleasure of coming into the Aldwych
for our new season is great. There are signs of acceptance in unexpected quarters:
we are challenged less these days about the rights and wrongs of modern-dress Shakespeare
– what a relief to be rid of this chestnut, since there can be nothing more classically
Elizabethan than to do the plays thus, as Shakespeare’s own company would have done.
We ourselves seem to be getting terser meanwhile, more determined, less brazenly
vociferous about our aims, which is also good, since there is less and less time
to talk.
Grim resolve, in any case, seems to be the key to adapting again to English life
– what with a dearth of new plays in the West End; the Almeida, King’s Head and Greenwich
theatres hit by Council grant cuts and a new VAT rate which (unless seat prices are
hoisted once more) will probably cost the ESC £2,500 a week in lost income, and the
British theatre at large up to £5 million in the next year. But that a tour such
as ours could hardly be described as lotus-eating, we might feel a guilty sense of
advantage, since the crisis biting theatre companies with expensive buildings to
maintain leaves a light-footed troupe like ours strangely free – and able to pursue
a frankly optimistic dialogue with the Arts Council that encourages us to plan at
full throttle.
As we expand, we hope for a deepening achievement and more commitment – also for
houses as full as those midweek nights in Bradford last November when ‘The Winter’s
Tale’ suddenly seemed more popular than football.
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