| Valuable Addition to History of Theatre of Wales |
At the Royal Court |
| Daryl Leeworthy: “Fury of Past Time: A Life of Gwyn Thomas” , Parthian Books , September 29, 2022 |
WRITERS OF WALES AT ROYAL COURT BELOW:ED THOMAS 2019 & 1998 GARY OWEN 2017 & 2015 TIM PRICE 2014 Cities are organisms; flux a condition of normality. The London of 2022 is a place transformed from just a couple of decades ago. Sloane Square may look the same but it is not. Around the corner a plaque records the residence of Jennie Lee and Aneurin Bevan. Nearby Eaton Square was once a home for actors, singers, playwrights. Admittedly names like Connery or Rattigan had to be successful, but nonetheless they were connected to city and country. Now the grand stuccoed buildings are largely unlit by night, their owners shadowy figures veiled behind curtains of offshore companies. Their London homes feature on a popular “Kleptocrat tour”. But one place retains its constancy through the buffets of change. The Royal Court remains the centre for playwriting. The plays have changed; they are shorter in the main. But to be there, to have been there, marks a writer out The writers of Wales who have been there this century are not many: Ed Thomas, Gary Owen, Tim Price. The history of theatre of Wales is one of fragments. Daryl Leeworthy has performed a service to theatre's history that fills a gap. His new biography of Gwyn Thomas- following on from his earlier book on Elaine Morgan- is a richly researched, elegantly written and impeccably edited biography of weight. Within its 447 pages chapter eight runs to ten thousand words. It can be read as a stand-alone essay in its own right on the theatre of Gwyn Thomas. Thomas wrote theatre that was a hit at the Royal Court. ‘I wonder if you could find time to have lunch with me one day,’ George Devine wrote in a letter in June 1956, ‘as I would like to discuss with you the possibility of your writing for the theatre. As you know, it is our policy here to introduce writers to the theatre, and I would be interested to know your views on the matter.’ The result was “the Keep”, scheduled for 7 August 1960 and delayed for a week by a flood. It was ‘worth waiting for,’ recorded one reviewer, "a funny and highly effective piece of theatre." Another: "I haven’t heard such continuous, happy, feeling laughter in a playhouse for as long as I can remember.’ The critic of the Birmingham Daily Post declared Thomas the Welsh Sean O’Casey and the play ‘the English Stage Company’s most important find’. The Sunday Mirror critic: ‘what a relief to hear an audience laugh at the Royal Court! It’s a rendezvous for those who, like the moody, message-sending works of young playwrights, the new wave has washed up. But Gwyn Thomas, with his witty play about a Welsh family, even had the earnest ones laughing.’ The People: ‘the wittiest show of the season … as sparkling as a glass of champagne’. The cast included Mervyn Johns, Glyn Owen, Windsor Davies and Jessie Evans. Incidental music was written by Dudley Moore. It won Thomas an award jointly for most promising playwright of the year. "The Keep" returned for a second run at the Royal Court in February 1962. ‘The audience were magnificent, very quick and appreciative", wrote Thomas, "and they gave the cast so many ovations that I thought we would never get away from the theatre." It transferred to the Piccadilly Theatre in the West End. three weeks and a national tour started in Birmingham. Over 1963-1964 venues included Coventry, Sheffield, Chesterfield, Windsor, Harrogate, Bradford . Productions continued until 1970, when it was performed at the King’s Theatre in Glasgow and at the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre in Guildford. The result of a hit were several commissions. But only two made it to the stage, one to London, and neither enjoyed the same success. "Jackie the Jumper" in 1963 was declared by the Daily Mirror "a delight. The Stage made comparison again with Sean O’Casey; and the Western Mail thought it "a triumph." But there were detractors. Bernard Levin in the Daily Mail. "There are so many words in Mr Gwyn Thomas’s new play with music." Alan Brien in the Sunday Telegraph: "Neither in his handling of thought processes nor in his use of language does he get under the skin of the past. He scores easy points by allowing some characters to wield latter-day enlightenment against cardboard opponents rooted in nineteenth-century prejudice. More seriously, Mr Thomas is a comic rhetorician, not a poet; here he is writing seriously, and the effect is often the kind of feverish eloquence which, on other occasions, he himself has turned to delicious parody.’ J. C. Trewin included the script in his compendium "Plays of the Year" and declared Thomas "quite the most arresting of the new dramatists." "Loud Organs" was an experimental musical drama, it setting a Tiger Bay club. The s producer was Richard Rhys, Baron Dynevor. Still in his twenties, Rhys struck Thomas as "charming but totally inept." "Gwyn Thomas has added fog to the well-known Celtic twilight,’ said "The Stage". The director had done his best to get ‘the sparkle out of the comedy punch lines’ but could not ‘wholly rescue the piece from a basic amorphousness’. It played a week in Blackpool and transferred to the New Theatre in Cardiff "where it spent an unhappy fortnight." "Sap".was delivered to Gerry Raffles in November 1962. Read by Joan Littlewood and other members of Theatre Workshop it was rejected for "telling us things we already knew." In Wales the Welsh Theatre Company toured toured "the Keep" from Colwyn Bay to the New Theatre, Cardiff. A three-week tour followed the next year in Ireland, beginning and ending at the King George VI Youth Centre in Belfast. The company staged the Welsh premiere of "Jackie the Jumper" in the summer of 1965 as part of its festival of plays held at Bute Park, Cardiff. The Welsh Drama Company put on "Sap" in 1974, its success leading to a commission of "The Breakers." The play, set across 1776, 1876 and 1976, followed the Bowen family from Pennsylvania to the Rhondda. "Contemporary audiences, however, whether in Cardiff or in Mold in the north", writes Leeworthy, "failed to grasp the complexities of the writing and could not cope with the length of the play, either." Jon Holliday in the Stage: "The jokes are as good as ever, the iconoclasm spot on, but it all falls away because the plot does not interest, the characters do not convince, nothing develops.’Bernard Levin was one of the few national theatre critics to view the play at the Sherman, enthused: "It is a splendid piece of work,’ he wrote, ‘unhurried and profuse, but rich and sly, funny and content, inquisitive, virile, digressive and bright." This chronicle of a piece of theatre history is captured in a wealth of richness and detail by Daryl Leeworthy. “Fury of Past Time” is published by Parthian Books on October 1st. |
Reviewed by: Adam Somerset |
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