THEATRE Fear of the dark Grief


COTTESLOE, NATIONAL THEATRE, LONDON


he role of titles in theatre is intriguing and complex. Some have argued that one reason for the inexplicable failure of the mag- nificent British musical, Betty Blue Eyes(which folded last weekend, despite universal five- star reviews) is that producer Cameron Mackintosh displaced the title of the popular film on which its based, A Private Function. Mike Leigh is deeply secretive about the names of his films and plays, both from tem- perament and because he starts with nothing except a group of actors in a room. The movies, during shooting, are called “Untitled 21” or “22”, only becoming Secrets and Lies, Another Year or Naked at the point when the posters have to be printed. Taking this approach even further, the advance advertising for his new play at the National Theatre didn’t have a title at all. Now it’s called Grief and, in another illus-


T


Lesley Manville, right, as Dorothy, with Ruby Bentall (Victoria)


shape the events and a miserable Christmas is also marked. The aspects of Leigh’s work that his detrac- tors most dislike


tration of the power of titles, the word shadows the characters throughout, waiting to claim at least one of them. Set in Surrey during 1957 and 1958, this becomes only the fourth Leigh period piece, joining Topsy-Turvy and Vera Drake in cinema and It’s A Great Big Shame! in theatre. Notionally, the play’s name refers to the


fact that the central character, Dorothy (Lesley Manville), is a war widow, now bringing up her unhappy teenage daughter Victoria (Ruby Bentall) in a commuter-belt house she shares with her older, bachelor brother Edwin (Sam Kelly) who, in the period the action covers, is working out the final stage of his 45 years as an insurance clerk.


One reason we guess that the narrative will


eventually come to grief again is the presence in several early scenes of Edwin’s only friend, the local doctor, Hugh (David Horovitch), who, like many people in life and most of those created through improvisation, has a repertoire of stock expressions, bad jokes and crass mannerisms. Chekhov, who seems to be one of the play’s


two dominant influences (the other is Terence Rattigan), once sharply observed that, if you show the audience a gun in a play, they know it must go off before the end. Similarly, with a doctor in the cast, we know he must come in at the end. And so he does. As the long-delayed title suggests, the play’s underlying theme is the way that people deal with the fact that we are all heading towards death and that this progress will be interrupted by the deaths of others, not always in the expected sequence. Specifically devoid of any declared religious faith, the characters divert their fear of the dark with repetition and ritual. If Harold Pinter hadn’t got there first, Leigh might have called this piece The Birthday Party: bleak celebrations of a sixteenth and a sixty-fifth


This is iceberg acting and


writing, in which what we hear and see is only a glimpse of what is there beneath. The surname of a character or the nature of their relationship with another one will emerge glancingly and tangentially, as it generally does in life, rather than through the carefully managed exposition of a conventionally written play, a form in which it is also almost impossible to achieve the sense we have here that the actors know vastly more about the


are an underlying


misanthropy and the tendency of the impro- vised acting towards mannerisms of catchphrase, accent or physical business. Grief (which tours to Bath and Cambridge in October and November) will do nothing to convert unbelievers. But the play also displays the great strength of this writer-director’s methods, which is an accumulation of biographical and physical detail of a depth that is very hard to achieve in a script written at a desk.


characters than they are showing. For example, Sam Kelly, as the unmarried brother on the verge of superannuation, gives an extraordinary portrait of a man who has dealt with the pains and uncertainties of life by constructing a carapace of habits, involving suits, watch-chains, walks, the reading of books and newspapers and little alcoholic tipples at various times of day. Earlier this year, reviewing Leigh’s revival of his play Ecstasy, I praised him as one of the most consistently successful and surprising directors at work today, and though Grief is not his best work – the filmic structure of short scenes results in us watching a lot of stagehands scuttling around in the dark – it provides further evidence of his unique and considerable virtues. Mark Lawson


The Tablet Lecture 2011


The Most Rev Vincent Nichols is the Archbishop of Westminster, president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales.


“Holiness Today: The Formation of the Human Heart”


An exploration of the models of and quest for holiness in contemporary society.


Thursday 20 October 2011 at 6.45pm at Westminster Cathedral Hall


Nearest Railway/ Underground station: Victoria Admission is by advance ticket only at a cost of £15 (£12 concessions) and includes entry to a Tablet drinks reception


To purchase, please call: 020 8748 8484 or email: sblackburn@thetablet.co.uk


1 October 2011 | THE TABLET | 29


Tickets selling fast!


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