Wednesday 24 October 2018

REVIEW: The Habit Of Art - The Playhouse, Liverpool.



Oh Luvvies, this is one for you. Written only in 2009, Alan Bennett’s The Habit of Art is an observational piece of theatre on the process of theatre making. In effect it is metadrama where actors (in this case well-known actors) play actors playing characters in rehearsal running through a play. 

Sharp characterisations of insecure actors, bossy stage managers and sensitive, cerebral writers are recognisable caricatures of the theatre world. Playwright, Neil (Robert Mountford) is the author of the play Caliban’s Day and we meet up in a theatrical rehearsal room. Designed by Adrian Linford, the room is typical of a draughty, dusty rehearsal space cluttered with bits of furniture that can be moved to create an impromptu set. It could be anywhere, literally setting the stage for the premise that art comes from habit.

The idea begins with the scenario that four actors appear for rehearsal of a play, but two others have not turned up. The stage manager, Kay (Veronica Roberts) and Assistant Stage Manager, George (Alexandra Guelff), who are incidentally the only two females in the cast, stand in for the absent actors. Kay also runs the rehearsal as the director has also failed to turn up. The writer, however, has turned up only to find there have been changes to his script. The actors run through the play challenging the writing and searching for meaning while Neil, the writer despairs, ‘Why can’t the actors just say the words.’

The internal play is set in 1972 in Oxford College rooms where a time-obsessed grumpy, elderly poet WH Auden, wonderfully portrayed by Matthew Kelly, is living. After some preamble silliness about a rent boy, interviewer and biographer Humphrey Carter (John Wark) is dismissed and becomes the narrator. An equally ageing composer Benjamin Britten (David Yelland) arrives and they meet for the first time in thirty years. The remaining cast sit around the sides ‘helpfully’ interjecting but mostly just observing the rehearsal of the play that examines the history of the two. Like us the actors become the audience. The encounter between the two great literary and musical giants (and gay icons) of the 20th Century makes up most of the entire play which begs the question for many, why not just perform Caliban’s Day?

While Matthew Kelly and David Yelland are brilliant as Auden and Britten, the play fails to excite anything more than an historical interest in two old men in conversation, with an awkward tension between them, musing on sex (there is a liberal amount of ‘dick’ humour), art, fame and death that is the habit of art. It’s all a bit too intellectual to translate to live theatre. Perhaps this is the point that Bennett is trying to make. Theatre continually taking itself so seriously that it fails to excite an audience.

Matthew Kelly playing Auden carried the most lines and kept up a good pace. The double roles by the rest of the cast were also played well, clearly distinguishing between their dual characters. It may have been more interesting spending time with the actors and the rehearsal process but that wouldn’t have provided the opportunity to create two great roles for the lead actors. Something that helps draw the crowds to this touring production. There was some good humour that was appreciated by the mainly over 50s audience but not enough to save this rather dull play. The Liverpool Playhouse Theatre audience intellectuals will no doubt enjoy The Habit of Art (pun intended) and the star performances but it is unlikely to court mainstream theatregoers. As I said strictly one for the ‘Luvvies’.

Reviewer - Barbara Sherlock
on - 23/10/18

No comments:

Post a Comment