The Habit of Art
by Alan Bennett
About
20 seconds into this play, just long enough to understand the setting, I
realised this was already a piece of genius. I don’t know how Bennett comes
up with such simpleand clever
devices, but he does seem to manage it. In many ways this is a dry, academic
portrayal of the later life of W H Auden (I had no idea until this play that
the W stands for Wystan – what sort of name is that?) and his relationship
with Benjamin Britten. And indeed there is just such a play – often not a
very good play – called Caliban’s
Day. Our play, The Habit of Art,
is a rehearsal of this play. Not a very good rehearsal to be honest. The
director is in Leeds, two of the actors are doing the Chekov Matinee and the
writer has appeared to the irritation of all. Proceedings are run by Kay, the
Stage Manager played by Frances de la Tour, who keeps the rehearsal on the road
by calling everyone ‘Darling...’ a lot and putting her arms round
them. The genius is that Caliban’s
Day is not very good. It doesn’t have to be. It has some appalling
moments – the talking furniture, the dialogue between Auden’s words
and Britten’s musical notes even between the famous creases in Auden’s
face. And it doesn’t matter. Just when the play within the play gets
overly didactic the actor suddenly says starts to argue with the words he has
to say, the ideas he disagrees with. So the play, in early rehearsal, becomes a
discussion as much as a performance. While much is about Auden and Britten,
some is about the mores of the time – such as Alex Jennings’ Henry,
who plays Britten (and stands in for the missing Brian as a janitor) explaining
the finer points of being a rent boy in the 60s - because he had a friend who was one. It is a complex web of identities, yet
it is never complicated.
Auden is played by an irritable
Richard Griffiths. He is unhappy with how unsympathetic the portrait of Auden
is, and is constantly trying to persuade the writer, director or fellow cast
members to paint him in a more loveable light. He is particularly aggressive
towards the writer for giving him such a difficult part to play. As a result,
he has really not learned his words, to the utter disgust of the writer. Auden
is talkative, arrogant, incredibly scruffy, smelly and uncouth. He talks easily
and uncompromisingly about sex and pees in the sink. He asks Stuart, the rent
boy (a rather fine performance from Stephen Wight) what he knows about.
‘Just dicks really..’ and Auden, to Henry’s disgust, then
holds a conversation about the dicks Stuart has known. Another central
character, rather bizarrely, is the 
ex BBC producer Humphrey Carpenter. Carpenter wrote biographies of both
Auden and Britten and almost (but never did) interviewed Auden in 1972, the
starting point for the play within a play. Donald, who play Carpenter (and is
played by Adrian Scarborough) is uncomfortable playing this narrator role and
is constantly unsure what he should be doing. On his own initiative he dresses
up in women’s clothing and does a comic song with a tuba. The writer is
unamused.
But for me the acting triumph was
Alex Jennings fantastic performance as Henry and Britten. His portrayal of the
great composer is restrained and aloof. He is pompous, perhaps priggish. One
wonders how he became so close to Auden, since he is the opposite of the
egotistical, opinionated, uncouth, dirty and openly homosexual poet. Jennings’
Britten has not a hair out of place, and struggles to talk even remotely
personally. But perhaps it really is down to sex in the end, for while Auden
broadcasts his homosexuality to anyone who would hear, Britten appears the
aesthetic, innocent, the monk to his art. Yet he liked little boys a great
deal. A very great deal. ‘Sometimes the fathers seemed concerned, but
never their mothers...’
At the time the play is set Auden is
a spent force and he knows it, but Britten is working on his final opera, Death in Venice. Auden says he writes
from habit, but he has nothing to say. Britten fears he is making a poor choice
with ‘Venice’, the same old purity corrupted by innocence. They are
older, becoming unwell, struggling to match the achievements of their youth. It
is a last meeting, a final attempt to see if they can work together or even
support each other.
Or not. The cast and writer argue
about the final scene, of the importance of Stuart to the play the amount of
poetry to be included. The utterly magnificent Frances de la Tour somehow keeps
everyone in place with hugs and promises of what the director will say
tomorrow. The writer leaves wondering why ‘putting on a play has to be
such a drama’ and Fitz goes off to do a Tesco commercial voice-over (I
have indeed done voice-overs with Richard, though not Tesco as I recall) and
Kay turns out the lights.
Tomorrow the play will be different,
and better, for they are inching towards a version of Auden’s late life
which will have the right balance and tell the audience what they need to know.
Bloody brilliant.