Screen plays: Theatre plays on British television 9781526115942

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Screen plays

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Screen plays Theatre plays on British television Edited by

Amanda Wrigley and John Wyver

Manchester University Press

Copyright © Manchester University Press 2022

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While copyright in the volume as a whole is vested in Manchester University Press, copyright in individual chapters belongs to their respective authors, and no chapter may be reproduced wholly or in part without the express permission in writing of both author and publisher. BBC copyright content reproduced courtesy of the British Broadcasting Corporation. All rights reserved. Published by Manchester University Press Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk British Library Cataloguing-​in-​Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 0 7190 9792 8 hardback First published 2022 The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or third-​party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. Cover credit: Michael Golden and Philippa Hiatt in Village Wooing (1946) © BBC.

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Contents

List of figures Notes on contributors Acknowledgements List of abbreviations Note on conventions Introduction – Amanda Wrigley and John Wyver 1 Stages and the small screen: theatre plays as television drama since 1930 – John Wyver 2 A duchess, a shoemaker and a knight: early modern drama, early British television – Lisa Ward 3 ‘This genuine theatre condition’: Basil Dean and the 1938 BBC outside broadcast of J. B. Priestley’s When We Are Married – Victoria Lowe 4 ‘Our other Shakespeare’: Middleton’s tragedies on television, 1965–​2009 – Susanne Greenhalgh 5 A revival, a reworking and an original: the Harold Pinter season on Theatre 625 (BBC2, 1967) – Amanda Wrigley and Billy Smart 6 Regional drama from stage to screen: television adaptations by Peter Cheeseman’s Victoria Theatre company – Lez Cooke 7 Granada Television’s experiment with The Stables Theatre Company, 1969–​70 – John Wyver 8 From radical Black theatre production to television adaptation: Black Feet in the Snow (BBC, 1974) – Sally Shaw 9 Cedric Messina: producing theatrical classics with a decorative aesthetic – Billy Smart 10 Abigail’s Party: ‘It’s not a question of ignorance, Laurence, it’s a question of taste’ – Ruth Adams

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Contents

11 Screen and stage space in Beckett’s theatre plays on television – Jonathan Bignell 12 Television’s natural disposition? An analysis of Naturalism and performance in relation to BBC productions of Ibsen’s plays – Stephen Lacey 13 Remediating the real: verbatim plays on television in the new millennium – Cyrielle Garson 14 The impact of television on scholarly editions of Shakespeare’s plays – Neil Taylor Index

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Figures

1.1 Robert Speaight as Thomas Becket in Murder in the Cathedral (1936), one of the earliest stage plays presented on British television. (© BBC Photo Library) 1.2 Jade Anouka as Ariel, and company, in The Tempest, part of the Donmar Shakespeare Trilogy (2016). (Photo by Helen Maybanks /​Donmar) 2.1 Studio One, set-​up A, for The Duchess of Malfi (1938). (BBC WAC, T5/​156, undated studio plan; courtesy BBC) 3.1 Producer Basil Dean talks on camera with Joan Miller about the broadcast of When We Are Married from St Martins Theatre, November 1938. (© BBC Photo Library) 4.1 Helen Mirren as Beatrice-​Joanna and Stanley Baker as De Flores in Play of the Month: The Changeling (1974). (© BBC Photo Library) 5.1 Flora (Hazel Hughes) embraces the silent Match-​seller (Gordon Richardson) in Theatre 625: A Slight Ache (1967). (Frame still © BBC) 5.2 Tony Selby as Albert Stokes and Anna Wing as his mother in Theatre 625: A Night Out (1967). (Frame still © BBC) 5.3 Harold Pinter as Stott and Derek Godfrey as Law in Theatre 625: The Basement (1967). (Frame still © BBC) 6.1 Gillian Brown as Anna in Anna of the Five Towns (1971), which employed close-​ups to good effect. (Frame still © ITV) 6.2 A photograph of Ted Smith, with a superimposed caption, which is accompanied by a recording of his voice as he describes his intention to fight on, in Second City Firsts: Fight for Shelton Bar (1974). (Frame still © BBC)

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7.1 Granada’s derelict building before its conversion to The Stables theatre. (Courtesy Gordon McDougall) 7.2 Interior of The Stables theatre after conversion. (Courtesy Gordon McDougall) 8.1 Jamal Ali as the Narrator in Open Door: Black Feet in the Snow (1974). (Frame still © BBC) 8.2 Open Door: Black Feet in the Snow (1974) made extensive use of colour separation overlay techniques. (Frame still © BBC) 9.1 Messina’s decorative aesthetic in Play of the Month: Pygmalion (1973): the bathroom. (Frame still © BBC) 9.2 Play of the Month: The Little Minister (1975): Cedric Messina’s direction emphasises the grandeur of the location, rather than the dramatic interest of the scene. (Frame still © BBC) 10.1 Alison Steadman as Beverly and Tim Stern as Laurence in the television adaptation of Mike Leigh’s Abigail’s Party (1977). (© BBC Photo Library) 11.1 Patrick Magee in Thirty-​Minute Theatre: Krapp’s Last Tape (1972). (Frame still © BBC) 12.1 Frame evoking Edvard Munch’s The Scream in Theatre Night: Ghosts (1987), with Judi Dench (Mrs Alving), Kenneth Branagh (Osvald) and Natasha Richardson (Regina). (Frame still © BBC) 13.1 The room of the judicial enquiry in the television adaptation of Justifying War: Scenes from the Hutton Inquiry (2004). (Frame still © BBC) 13.2 BBC Scotland’s television adaptation of Black Watch (2007). (Frame still © BBC)

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Contributors

Ruth Adams is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Culture, Media and Creative Industries at King’s College London, where she has worked since 2003. She writes about museums and heritage, youth subcultures, popular music, film and television and digital technology. She is interested in Englishness, nostalgia, the legacies of colonialism, gender and ethnicity, socio-​economic class and cultural consumption. Jonathan Bignell is Professor of Television and Film at the University of Reading. His writing includes articles for Adaptation, Media History, Screen and the Historical Journal of Film, Radio & Television. His work on Beckett includes the monograph Beckett on Screen and several articles in the journal Samuel Beckett Today /​Aujourd’hui and the Journal of Beckett Studies. Jonathan has published chapters on Beckett’s screen drama in the collections Writing and Cinema (which he also edited), Drawing on Beckett, Beckett and Nothing and Pop Beckett. He is a trustee of the Beckett International Foundation at the University of Reading and has recently led a research team documenting the histories and legacies of Harold Pinter’s work for radio, film and television. Lez Cooke is Honorary Research Fellow in the Department of Media Arts at Royal Holloway, University of London. He is the author of British Television Drama: A History (BFI, 2003; 2nd ed. 2015), Troy Kennedy Martin (Manchester University Press, 2007), A Sense of Place: Regional British Television Drama, 1956–​82 (Manchester University Press, 2012) and Style in British Television Drama (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013); co-​editor (with Robin Nelson) of a special issue of Critical Studies in Television on ‘Television Archives: Accessing TV History’ (2010); and co-​editor (with John Hill and Billy Smart) of a special issue of the Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television on ‘Forgotten Television Drama’ (2017). He was Co-​Investigator on the AHRC-​funded project, ‘The History of Forgotten

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Television Drama in the UK’ (2013–​17) and Book Review Editor for Critical Studies in Television (2007–​11), and has been on the editorial board of the Journal of British Cinema and Television since 2011. Cyrielle Garson is Lecturer in Contemporary Anglophone Theatre and a member of the interdisciplinary research team ICTT ‘Cultural Identity, Texts and Theatricality’ at the University of Avignon. She is also the secretary of RADAC (the French Society for the Study of Contemporary Theatre in English). Her research activities mainly focus on contemporary British and Canadian theatre, documentary theatre and political performance, as well as the intersection of VR and performance. She has recently turned her doctoral thesis—​for which she won an international award from the German Society for Contemporary Theatre and Drama in English (CDE) in 2018—​into a monograph entitled Beyond Documentary Realism: Aesthetic Transgressions in British Verbatim Theatre, published by De Gruyter in 2021. Susanne Greenhalgh is Honorary Research Fellow in the School of Arts, University of Roehampton, where she taught in the Drama, Theatre and Performance Department for many years. Her long-​standing interests in feminism and performance and in media and literary adaptations of medieval and early modern drama have produced many articles, an essay collection entitled Shakespeare and Childhood (Cambridge University Press, 2007) and a special issue of Shakespeare (2007), both co-​edited with Kate Chedgzoy. Her most recent publications include an essay on Shakespeare on television in The Shakespearean World (Routledge, 2017), the editing (with Pascale Aebischer and Laurie E. Osborne) of Shakespeare and the ‘Live’ Theatre Broadcast Experience (Bloomsbury, 2018), and an article on documentary representations of applied Shakespeare in Critical Survey (Winter 2019). Stephen Lacey is Emeritus Professor of Drama, Film and Television at the University of South Wales. He has published widely on post-​war British theatre and television drama, including British Realist Theatre: The New Wave in Its Context 1956–​1965 (Routledge, 1995), Tony Garnett (Manchester University Press, 2006) and Cathy Come Home (BFI/​Palgrave, 2010). He is also co-​editor of several books, including Television Drama: Past, Present and Future (Palgrave, 2000; 2nd ed. 2014), Life on Mars: From Manchester to New York (University of Wales Press, 2011) and The ‘War on Terror’: Post-​ 9/​11 Television Drama, Docudrama and Documentary (University of Wales Press, 2015). He was Co-​Investigator on the major AHRC-​funded project ‘Spaces of Television: Production, Site and Style’ (2010–​15), with Jonathan

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Bignell (Reading) and James Chapman (Leicester), and was co-​researcher on ‘Screening the Nation: Landmark Television in Wales’ for the BBC Trust and Audience Council Wales (2009–​10). He is a founding editor and current Associate Editor of Critical Studies in Television. Victoria Lowe is Lecturer in Drama and Screen Studies at the University of Manchester. Her research is in film history, specialising in British cinema, the voice in film, screen acting and adaptation between film and theatre. She has published articles in the Journal of Film and Video on the relationship between performance and stardom in British cinema in the 1930s, with Robert Donat as a case study; in Scope on Hitchcock and performance; in the Journal of British Cinema and Television on stardom and the voice; and in Studies in Theatre and Performance on stage and screen acting in British cinema in the 1930s. Her monograph Adapting Performance Between Stage and Screen was published by Intellect in 2020. Sally Shaw teaches film and media at the University of Portsmouth. Her doctoral thesis ‘But Where on Earth is Home? A Cultural History of Black Britain in 1970s Film and Television’, completed in 2014, drew on extensive archival research and interviews with filmmakers, including Horace Ové and Anthony Simmons. Sally has published articles in Critical Studies in Television, Crossings: Journal of Migration and Culture and Social Identities: Journal for the Study of Race, Nation and Culture. Most recently, she has contributed a chapter on Horace Ové’s Pressure (1975) to P. Newland and B. Hoyle’s 2019 book British Art Cinema. She is currently writing about the re-​visioning of Black British history in Steve McQueen’s Small Axe film series (2020). Billy Smart has worked as a postdoctoral researcher at both the University of Reading and Royal Holloway, University of London. He has published and presented extensively on TV versions of the classic stage play, using methodologies derived from both television studies and theatre studies, with articles and chapters about TV adaptations of Shakespeare, Ibsen, Chekhov, Brecht and J. B. Priestley. Other work has included studies of the development of Scottish and Welsh television drama, Coronation Street, representations of lesbianism in 1970s TV drama, dramas made on outside broadcast and the history of the BBC Audience Research Unit. With others, he has programmed four seasons of neglected and remarkable British television dramas at the BFI. Neil Taylor is Emeritus Professor of English Literature at the University of Roehampton, London, where he was Dean of Research and Dean of

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the Graduate School. He has published widely on Shakespeare and other Renaissance drama, including a number of articles on Shakespeare on film and television; he has also written on the twentieth-​century novel. With Ann Thompson, he edited Hamlet for the Arden Shakespeare (third series) and, with Bryan Loughrey, Thomas Middleton: Five Plays for Penguin Books. He has also edited Henry IV Part Two for Ginn and Henry VI Part Three for the new Norton Shakespeare. Lisa Ward earned her PhD at the University of Georgia in 2012, where she also served as Assistant Director of First-​Year Composition. After holding appointments at Oxford College of Emory University, first as Interim Writing Center Director and Visiting Assistant Professor of English and later as the College’s Educational Analyst, she moved into working in corporate IT. Amanda Wrigley has held research posts on several AHRC-​funded projects, including ‘Screen Plays: Theatre Plays on British Television’ (Westminster, 2011–​15) and ‘Harold Pinter: Histories and Legacies’ (Reading, 2017–​19). She has published extensively on the interlinked histories of theatre, radio and television, with journal articles and book chapters on plays (e.g. Dylan Thomas’s Under Milk Wood), playwrights (e.g. Aeschylus) and genres (e.g. medieval mystery plays), as well as on broad themes, such as the use of television in teaching drama in 1960s schools and at the Open University from the 1970s. Co-​edited volumes include a collection of Louis MacNeice’s radio drama (2013), Ancient Greece on British Television (2018), Radio Modernisms: Features, Cultures and the BBC (2018) and Harold Pinter on Film, Radio and Television (2020). She is currently writing Greece on Screen: Greek Plays on British Television, a companion volume to her Greece on Air: Engagements with Ancient Greece on BBC Radio, 1920s–​ 1960s (Oxford University Press, 2015). John Wyver is Professor of the Arts on Screen at the University of Westminster; Director, Screen Productions at the Royal Shakespeare Company; and a writer and producer with the independent media company Illuminations, which he co-​founded in 1982. His work as a producer has been honoured with BAFTA, International Emmy and Peabody Awards, and he has produced numerous television arts documentaries and screen adaptations of performance, including the RSC Live from Stratford-​upon-​ Avon ‘event cinema’ series since 2013. His publications include Vision On: Film, Television and the Arts in Post-​War Britain (Wallflower Press, 2007) and Screening the Royal Shakespeare Company: A Critical History (Bloomsbury, 2019).

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Acknowledgements

This volume has had an over-​long gestation, but it is one of the major outputs of the research project ‘Screen Plays: Theatre Plays on British Television’, which was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), 2011–​15. The project was supported by a superb Advisory Board: we are grateful to Tony Ageh, Luis Carrasqueiro, Christine Dymkowski, John Ellis, Dick Fiddy, Stephen Lacey, Luke McKernan and Billy Smart for their interest, their time and their expertise. We are very pleased that two members of the Board, Stephen Lacey and Billy Smart, are contributors to this collection. We are enormously grateful to the AHRC for funding our work over those years, of course, but also for their support of other television history projects at the time—​including ‘Spaces of Television: Production, Site and Style’, 2010–​15, at the Universities of Reading, Leicester and South Wales and ‘The History of Forgotten Television Drama in the UK’, 2013–​17, at the Department of Media Arts at Royal Holloway, University of London—​ thus encouraging deep and lasting interdisciplinary collaboration. Jonathan Bignell and Lez Cooke (in addition to Billy Smart) are colleagues from these projects who have chapters in this collection; others from whose research, publications and friendship we have benefited include Nick Hall, John Hill, Ben Lamb and Leah Panos. We thank all of our other friends in the Southern Broadcasting History Group for creating a fun and friendly space in which to share work and explore ideas. Our project found a supportive home at the University of Westminster. Thanks in particular to Fauzia Ahmad, David Gauntlett, Peter Goodwin, David Hendy, Aasiya Lodhi, Fionnuala Rose, Jeanette Steemers, Rosie Thomas and other (then-​)members of the Centre for Research and Education in Arts and Media (CREAM) and the Communication and Media Research Institute (CAMRI) at Westminster. Many scholars at other institutions also offered insights, opened up research pathways and shaped our thinking about the intertwined histories of television and theatre, and we want especially to thank Charles Barr, Judith Buchanan, John Cook, John Ellis, Jason Jacobs, Jamie Medhurst and Helen Wheatley.

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Acknowledgements

The majority of the chapters included in this volume were developed from papers presented originally at conferences hosted by the ‘Screen Plays’ project: we are grateful to our authors for their patience with us as we brought this book to press. So many of our collaborators over the ‘Screen Plays’ years (and, of course, since) have helped to shape our work by engaging in stimulating ways with our research topics and questions—​and amongst our collaborators we include a wide public who shared points of facts and discussion, as well as their own archival materials, in response to our regular blog posts, our database and our several programmes of screenings at BFI Southbank. Similarly, our colleagues at BFI Southbank—​notably, Marcus Prince and Dick Fiddy—​invested considerable time and resources in the subject of our research, enabling us to programme many screenings on diverse seams of ‘Screen Plays’ activity. Their colleagues in the BFI’s library and archive supported our work in other, crucial ways: particular thanks go to Steve Bryant, Jonny Davies, Kathleen Dickson and Lisa Kerrigan. Warm thanks, also, to archivists Louise North and Jeff Walden at the BBC Written Archives Centre at Caversham and—​at the BBC—​Jake Berger, Bill Thompson and Simon Crosthwaite. We are also grateful to Sue Malden, who facilitated access to the essential oral history resource that is the British Entertainment History Project. Much of the work underpinning this book and the project as a whole is contained within Screen Plays: The Theatre Plays on British Television Database, which holds data on 3,500+​productions on British television of plays written for the theatre since 1930 (http://​bufvc.ac.uk/​scre​enpl​ays): we owe a huge debt of gratitude to our colleagues at what was then the BUFVC and is now Learning on Screen, especially Sergio Angelini, Gabriel A. Hernández, James Fryer (Invocrown), Olwen Terris and Linda Kaye. Two professional contexts were hugely important to John Wyver as he was working on the ‘Screen Plays’ project and on this collection, namely the production company Illuminations and the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC). He wishes to express his boundless gratitude towards his colleagues at the former, including Lucie Conrad, Sebastian Grant, Todd MacDonald, Louise Machin and Linda Zuck, and he is similarly thankful for the support and interest at the RSC of Gregory Doran and many others. Among the people who have kept him engaged and smiling through the past decade of work, including the Covid-​19 lockdown in 2020–​21, are his wife Clare Paterson and their children Kate, Ben and Nicholas. Amanda Wrigley would like to thank Paul Wilson at the British Library for his support of her research into interactions between the histories of television and radio. Thanks also go to colleagues at Birmingham City University, especially Paul Long and Charlotte Stevens, from whom she

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learned a great deal, at the Birmingham Centre for Media and Cultural Research (2016–​17), and at the University of Reading, where she had the great pleasure of working with Jonathan Bignell and Billy Smart (on the AHRC-​funded project ‘Harold Pinter: Histories and Legacies’, 2017–​19) and also (thanks to Barbara Goff) of designing and teaching a course on Greece and Rome on British television. Others working on engagements with the ancient world on screen—​including Lynn Fotheringham, Fiona Hobden, Tony Keen and Joanna Paul—​have provided both inspiration and collaboration. She thanks her husband Dez and children Dylan and Matilda for boundless encouragement and delightful distraction. We are, finally, immensely grateful to Matthew Frost and Alun Richards at Manchester University Press for their interest in publishing this volume, for their care and attention throughout its production and, perhaps most of all, for their patience as we inched it towards completion.

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Abbreviations

AHRC A-​R Ard1 Ard2 ASL ATP ATV BAC BBC BBC WAC BDA

Arts and Humanities Research Council Associated-​Rediffusion First Arden Shakespeare series Second Arden Shakespeare series average shot length Associated Talking Picture Company Associated Television Battersea Arts Centre British Broadcasting Corporation BBC Written Archives Centre, Caversham Basil Dean Archive, John Rylands University Library of Manchester Cam1 The New Shakespeare series, Cambridge University Press (1921–​66) CBS Columbia Broadcasting System CSO colour separation overlay GTC General Theatre Corporation IMDb Internet Movie Database (www.imdb.com) ITA Independent Television Authority ITC Independent Television Company ITP Incorporated Television Production Company ITV Independent Television LWT London Weekend Television NBC National Broadcasting Company, USA NT National Theatre, London OB outside broadcast ORF Österreichischer Rundfunk RAPP Radical Alliance of Poets and Players, Brixton RSC Royal Shakespeare Company SABC South African Broadcasting Commission SDR Süddeutscher Rundfunk SP Shakespeare in Production series, Cambridge University Press TMA Theatrical Management Association WDR Westdeutscher Rundfunk

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Note on conventions

Each of the chapters in this volume is accompanied by a list of television productions discussed in that chapter. These lists are organised alphabetically by play title and then by date of transmission. ‘Prod.’ (‘Produced by’) and ‘Dir.’ (‘Directed by’) are both used as historically specific terms reproducing the on-​screen credits of the production. Before the early 1960s, the credit ‘Produced by’ often indicated that the identified creative had directed the actors and cameras as well as taking overall responsibility for the logistics and finances. For further information on television productions of theatre plays mentioned in passing in this volume, consult Screen Plays: The Theatre Plays on British Television Database: http://bufvc.ac.uk/​scre​enpl​ays.

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Introduction

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Amanda Wrigley and John Wyver

In mid-​April 1930, Luigi Pirandello’s one act ‘dialogue’ The Man with the Flower in His Mouth was presented at London’s Old Vic theatre with John Gielgud in the title role. Three months later, another production of the play—​overseen by the actor’s brother Val for an audience only slightly more numerous than its cast and creative team—​became Britain’s first individual television drama. In its early years, drama for the small screen was centrally defined by theatrical relationships such as this, although it also relied on close connections with radio productions and, to a lesser degree, with the cinema of the day. Until well into the 1950s, current and recent stagings as well as the wider theatrical repertoire were the primary sources for television drama, and stage techniques remained the dominant influence on small-​screen style and presentation. Indeed, across nearly a century, television has drawn extensively and in multiple ways on plays written for and staged in theatres. The electronic medium adapted existing theatre productions for studio presentations and as outside broadcasts (OBs), in addition to producing directly for the screen an extraordinary variety of plays originally written for the stage. These adaptations have enabled audiences of millions across the generations to access and experience theatre in performance in their homes. Despite the many connections and conjunctions, however, television and the theatre have both remained ambivalent about their intimate links. As early as December 1937, one critic wrote of a broadcast of scenes of an Old Vic production of Macbeth starring Laurence Olivier that ‘The conventions of the theatre must be got rid of if television is to stand on its own’ (Anon. 1937). The value attached to theatre plays by television, whether explicitly or implicitly, has fluctuated ever since. Television’s caution about the theatre increased after drama executives at the BBC and the new ITV companies began in the late 1950s to commission original scripts from writers engaged by the new medium’s potential. This was the point at which small-​screen drama sought with vigour to establish its autonomy and to achieve a critical reputation distinct from theatrical antecedents. In the process, television

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Amanda Wrigley and John Wyver

practitioners began to position the stage as a backward-​facing ‘other’ against which original drama for the newly confident medium could define itself. Plays written for the theatre were progressively marginalised and—​despite some notable exceptions—​increasingly framed as dutiful exemplars of the nation’s cultural heritage. In 1993, theatre critic Michael Billington could observe that ‘Many TV executives see theatre as old hat’. At the same time, he recognised that the theatre had rarely taken television seriously, apart from welcoming its value for marketing and as a source of revenue: ‘Theatre people’, he wrote, ‘are also guilty of an aesthetic snobbery that regards live drama as the ultimate art experience’ (Billington 1993). Over the past decade, television has continued to appropriate the older form’s cultural capital with occasional performance recordings from the stage that have in part been prompted by the proven success of cinema screenings of theatre productions. The theatre has also been a fertile source for adaptation in prestigious series drama for new streaming services such as Netflix as well as the traditional broadcasters. Moreover, during the Covid-​ 19 lockdown of 2020–​21, screen versions of stage plays, many of which had been created as live broadcasts to cinemas, attracted substantial and appreciative audiences both online and on BBC Television (Claypole 2020), and this was further recognised in early 2021 with a season of commissions for the ‘Lights Up’ festival. While the prospects of television sustaining this commitment to screened plays, and indeed to the arts more generally, are uncertain, this volume’s explorations of the historical entanglements between theatre plays and television drama seek to contribute to ways of understanding recent screened plays, the current context of theatre adaptations and potential futures. The development of a critical focus on stage plays on the small screen is long overdue in both television and theatre studies. The dominant narrative in television studies is summarised by Jonathan Bignell, Stephen Lacey and Madeleine Macmurraugh-​Kavanagh: ‘there is a way of writing the history of television drama as the story of its emancipation from its theatrical roots’ (2000: 31), echoing Susan Sontag, who noted that the history of cinema ‘is often treated as the history of its emancipation from theatrical models’ (1966: 24). This strand of television historiography adopts conceptions initially held by many practitioners: the supposed ‘emancipation’ is lauded and analysis is focused on productions of original scripts and of the contributions of their creatives, often to great effect (see inter alia Brandt 1981, Cooke 2003). As a consequence, it is drama specifically written for the medium—​from Armchair Theatre (1956–​74) and The Wednesday Play (1964–​70) onwards—​that has been most celebrated and studied. Much less critical attention has been directed towards theatre productions and adaptations for the small screen, and it was this absence that we

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Introduction

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set out to address in our University of Westminster research project ‘Screen Plays: Theatre Plays on British Television’ (2011–​15), funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC).1 For this initiative, we aimed to document all the plays written for the theatre that had been presented on British television since 1930—​totalling well over 3,500 productions. We published a database of the details of most of those productions (to which additions continue to be made),2 wrote extended blog posts on the project’s website,3 programmed public screenings at BFI Southbank and elsewhere,4 and organised academic seminars and two conferences in October 2012 and February 2015.5 The majority of the chapters included in this volume have been developed from papers presented originally at those ‘Screen Plays’ conferences. Our screenings and seminars also contributed to the shaping of the collection Ancient Greece on British Television, edited by Fiona Hobden and Amanda Wrigley (2018), including essays by Lynn Fotheringham (2018), Tony Keen (2018) and Wrigley (2018), to Wyver’s Screening the Royal Shakespeare Company: A Critical History (2019) and to Wrigley’s forthcoming monograph Greece on Screen (2023). We are enormously grateful to all our collaborators over the ‘Screen Plays’ years (and, of course, since) for engaging with such interest and vigour with our research questions. From 1936 to at least the late 1960s, and after that date in a more limited manner, the BBC and ITV companies offered to large general audiences an extensive and varied repertoire of classics and contemporary drama drawn from the stage. Indeed, there is a sense that, as its practitioners claimed, by presenting an extensive historical and international repertoire, in addition to commissioning a great deal of original work, television acted as what producer Tony Garnett, among others, understood and celebrated as ‘a National Theatre of the Air’ (2016). Many of television’s stage productions were of exceptional quality, as well as being distinctive and often innovative, and in the 1960s were viewed by audiences of eight million and more. Throughout our research for the ‘Screen Plays’ project, we were continually surprised by major productions of a wide variety of stage plays, as well as sustained collaborations with theatre companies, that did not feature in existing histories of television drama. One stimulus for such broadcasts having been marginalised, as is discussed further by John Wyver in Chapter 1, is the much-​cited 1964 polemic by scriptwriter Troy Kennedy Martin which contributed to the already developing rejection of the stage by those concerned to establish television drama as an autonomous form: ‘All drama’, he declared, ‘which owes its form or substance to theatre plays is OUT’ (1964: 23). Most of those who have written about television drama have lined up alongside Kennedy Martin, similarly concerned to establish the medium’s specificity by keeping the taints of theatricality at a distance.

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The negative connotations of ‘theatrical’ when applied to screen adaptations have included the sense that refusing to reshape spatial and temporal constraints from the stage must inevitably be a limitation. Moreover, as Stephen Lacey has itemised (albeit in the context of writing about cinema), ‘theatrical’ has also been mobilised to carry some or all of the following negative associations: an over-​reliance on the ‘word’, the residue of the literary text, which is privileged over the visual image. ‘Theatricality’ may connote a style of acting that seems scaled towards the open spaces of a theatre auditorium rather than the enforced intimacy of the camera; more generally, it suggests an ‘artificiality’ in performance (judged against the criteria of realism, that is), which is largely unconscious and the result of bad habits rather than a self-​reflexive intention … ‘Theatrical’ may also mean ‘flatness’ in the depiction and construction of space, as if the camera is afraid to move through the fourth wall … Finally, ‘theatrical’ also connotes a preference for studio over location, and a reliance on a shooting system that is dominated by the mid-​shot and discrete and minimal editing. (2003: 159–​60)

A selection of such characterisations, often applied indiscriminately to the immensely varied body of stage plays on television, has framed the critical dismissal of it. Across industry-​focused, journalistic and academic publications (with exceptions noted below), there has been strikingly little detailed discussion of small-​screen stage adaptations. ‘Of all forms of drama made during the duopoly period of British television between 1955 and 1982’, one critic has written, ‘the stage adaptation may well be the most neglected and overlooked’ (Smart 2010: 16). Among the exceptions to this critical oversight is the collection Boxed Sets: Television Representations of Theatre, edited by Jeremy Ridgman (1998), which contains significant essays by, among others, two contributors to the present volume, Susanne Greenhalgh and Neil Taylor. Jason Jacobs’ The Intimate Screen (2000), which concentrates on the early history of television drama through to 1955, is also an essential volume, while David Warren’s 2017 essay for Theatre Notebook embraces a longer time-​span. The fundamental work of Billy Smart, another contributor here, must also be acknowledged, both in his doctoral thesis, ‘Old wine in new ­bottles—​ adaptation of classic theatrical plays on BBC Television 1957–​1985’ (Smart 2010), and in subsequent articles. Extending the work undertaken in these writings and aiming to counter decisively the marginalisation of stage plays produced with, for and by British television were key drivers behind this volume and the ‘Screen Plays’ research project from which it grew. The project and this volume are also intended to contribute to the developing interest in intermedial approaches to modern British cultural history. Connections, conjunctions and cross-​overs between film, radio and

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television as well as drama, literature and the visual arts in post-​war Britain are being investigated by cultural historians such as Lynda Nead (2017) and Lisa Tickner (2020) and those involved in the AHRC-​funded research project ‘Transformation and Tradition in Sixties British Cinema: Production Cultures, Cross Media Relations and National Branding’ at the University of York.6 But, at the same time as furthering such intermedial study, we also recognise that within television studies itself, engaging with adaptations of theatre plays can illuminate key aspects of the medium’s development. Most productions were created in the studio with multiple electronic cameras before the early 1990s, when the space of the television studio was understood to replicate many aspects of the space of the conventional stage. The style and aesthetics of studio drama, and their shaping by technology, economics, craft practice and institutional operation, remain under-​explored as stage plays for television—​such productions offer a fruitful focus for future research into the poetics of studio production. Moreover, because theatrical playtexts are created and exist separately from their realisation in specific stagings or screen adaptations, they have remained accessible to producers throughout television’s history. (Only very rarely has television in Britain re-​ made at a later date a play that was written for the medium.) By comparing productions of the same stage play produced by television decades apart, the forms of the medium and its possibilities at distinct historical moments can be strikingly revealed. A rich example of such analysis is Smart’s consideration of BBC Television’s productions of Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard made in 1962, 1971 and 1981. Comparison of the three, he proposes, demonstrates the ‘unique usefulness and significance that the TV stage adaptation can hold for television studies’ (2014: 74). While television drama historiography has marginalised productions of stage plays, theatre studies in Britain has similarly failed to acknowledge and explore the frequent entanglements with television of performance companies and their productions. One key exception to this is the extensive body of work on small-​screen Shakespeare adaptations (see Davies and Wells 1994, Rothwell 2004). There have also been productive engagements with the cross-​overs of theatre and television in discussions of Samuel Beckett’s works (Herren 2007, in addition to Bignell 2012). But the numerous small-​screen presentations of notable stagings by, among many others, the Birmingham Repertory Company, the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC), about which Wyver has written (2019), and the National Youth Theatre as well as more recently by Talawa Theatre, the Royal Court and others have been largely absent from writings about post-​war British theatre. Even when such stage-​to-​screen translations are noted, the adaptation process is invariably taken to be effectively unmediated, irrespective of whether the production was a studio re-​staging or a multi-​camera outside

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Amanda Wrigley and John Wyver

broadcast. Scant attention has to date been paid to the negotiations between theatrical and screen determinants such as technology, craft practice, funding and institutional policy. In general, and in keeping with an essentialist idea of theatre requiring simultaneous co-​presence of actors and audience, the standard histories of the mid-​century and post-​war British stage simply ignore ­television.7 One valuable exception is theatre historian Kate Harris’ essay in which, in the context of discussing interviews conducted for the AHRC-​funded ‘Theatre Archive Project’ at the British Library, she notes that ‘a significant number of interviewees refer to the crossover between theatre and television … suggest[ing] the importance of the relationship between stage and screen, and support[ing] the idea that early television played an influential part in our twentieth-​century dramatic heritage’ (2008: 154). Yet the relationship between stage and screen that Harris identifies remains woefully under-​explored in theatre studies, further validating our decision to develop a specific critical focus on stage plays on television. By contrast, there is a rich film studies literature that explores relationships between theatre and the cinema, although much of it addresses traditions in the United States and continental Europe rather than Britain. Bert Cardullo’s Stage and Screen: Adaptation Theory from 1916 to 2000 (2012) brings together key texts, including foundational essays by Erwin Panofsky and André Bazin as well as Susan Sontag’s 1966 reflections noted earlier. Theoretical contributions appear also in the complementary collection Theater and Film: A Comparative Anthology, compiled by Robert Knopf (2005), which similarly privileges North American and European writing. A welcome recent addition to this literature is Adapting Performance between Stage and Screen by another contributor to this volume, Victoria Lowe (2021). While informed by the critical writing in these collections, the chapters in this volume address specific historical contexts within British television and employ a range of analytical approaches to highlight and consider key productions. John Wyver’s introductory chapter offers an overview of the history of stage plays on television, locating individual broadcasts in institutional and broader cultural histories. He traces first the ways in which television presented, as both OBs or studio reworkings, productions created for the stage prior to any encounter with cameras, and then parallels this with a chronicle of television’s own productions of plays written for the stage. His concern throughout is with the reasons why television has sought to adapt and produce both kinds of screen plays in the years since 1936, and he concludes with a brief consideration of the value of performance recordings for BBC Television, especially during the pandemic lockdown from March 2020. The ordering of the subsequent chapters broadly follows the transmission chronology of the productions on which each one focuses, with

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contributions from Lisa Ward and Victoria Lowe discussing pre-​Second World War broadcasts. Among the many transmissions from the cramped studios at Alexandra Palace before the 1939 shutdown were productions of three early modern plays. Ward explores what we can know of these from the minimal traces left in the press and, in the case of a 1938 production of The Duchess of Malfi, a simple camera script and other production documentation that has survived in the archive. Ward makes the apt comparison between such archaeological investigation of television transmissions that were not recorded at the time of broadcast and the methodologies employed by performance historians studying the early modern period to consider comparably ‘lost’ theatre productions. Lowe’s focus is on the first live OB from a West End theatre in 1938 of a full-​length play—​J. B. Priestley’s comedy When We Are Married—​and on its producer Basil Dean. Dean was also a significant figure in the British film industry in the 1930s and, in its exploration of the creative conditions in which the broadcast took place, this chapter is a significant contribution to the discussion of the intermedial connections between cinema, the stage and television in the new medium’s early years in the immediate pre-​war period. Susanne Greenhalgh (Chapter 4), Amanda Wrigley and Billy Smart (Chapter 5) and Stephen Lacey (Chapter 12) discuss in detail a small group of plays by a major ‘classic’ playwright—​Thomas Middleton, Harold Pinter and Henrik Ibsen, respectively. Greenhalgh suggests that the survival of all seven television productions of Middleton to date—​all but one of which are multi-​camera studio recordings—​allows a rare and important opportunity ‘to compare the televisual treatment of the content and conventions of one body of early modern theatre plays from the mid-​1960s to the first decade of the twenty-​first century’. She interrogates the suggestion that these productions offer a radical alternative to the mainstream canon, represented by the plays of Shakespeare, both within television and more broadly. Further, she draws on feminist scholarship to trace changing attitudes to sexuality, madness and violence encoded by four productions of The Changeling broadcast in different decades of British social history that saw the rise and decline of feminism and significant cultural shifts in accepted codes of sexual behaviour and morality. Wrigley and Smart take as their focal point three plays by Harold Pinter that were broadcast in consecutive weeks of 1967 in BBC2’s prestigious television drama strand Theatre 625. The season, consisting of A Slight Ache, A Night Out and The Basement, sought to illustrate and celebrate the remarkable ability of both the playwright to work within the expressive possibilities of different media and his dramatic writing to lend itself readily to intermedial adaptation. Employing textual analysis and drawing on archival documentation, Wrigley and Smart discuss how the Theatre 625 Pinter season engaged with the impressive legacy to this point

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Amanda Wrigley and John Wyver

of Pinter on radio and television—​which were, after all, the main channels through which he had become a well-​known name in non-​theatre-​going households to this point—​whilst at the same time producing new work that was distinctive, challenging and also in some ways (for example, in design and editing) a sophisticated engagement with Pinter’s reputation. Lacey develops a rigorous close reading of three studio productions of plays by Ibsen from BBC Television in the late 1980s and early 1990s, with a particular focus on their use of space, in order to engage with ideas of naturalism (essentially, verisimilitude in performance) and Naturalism (a more specific, radical concern in early modernist thought, opposed to metaphysical explanations of human actions). His discussion is particularly concerned with the reconfiguring of historical stage conventions for the television studio and in the nature of actors’ performances. Lacey makes a strong case for the expressive potential of studio drama. The operations and aesthetics of the television studio are also core to the contributions by Billy Smart (Chapter 9) and Jonathan Bignell (Chapter 11). Smart discusses what he identifies as ‘a decorative aesthetic’ in the productions of classic plays by the influential BBC producer Cedric Messina. Messina’s approach—​which sought to tell stories in a ‘straightforward’ fashion whilst encouraging the viewer’s ‘visual pleasure’—​is examined through close analysis of three 1970s Play of the Month productions of plays from different periods of theatre history, namely, Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion, Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice (both of which were recorded in the studio), and J. M. Barrie’s The Little Minister (made with OB technology on location). Among the sources on which Smart draws to assess the achievements and flaws of Messina’s work are responses recorded in the press and internal BBC audience research reports. Bignell discusses the use of space in television productions of plays by Samuel Beckett, with focused attention on three adaptations of Krapp’s Last Tape. Bignell argues that these adaptations ‘negotiate between a form of staging that derives from theatre, where cameras are on the edges of the acting area and look into it, and the penetration and segmentation of the performance space that results from moving the cameras into the space and alternating their different points of view’. The links between television staff and personnel in the theatre facilitated the public service drive to adapt Beckett’s theatre work, but on the whole these television adaptations received both poor ratings and audience responses. Chapters 6 and 7, by Lez Cooke and John Wyver respectively, are historical accounts of two non-​ metropolitan, non-​ mainstream negotiations between theatre and television. Cooke’s subject is Stoke-​on-​Trent’s Victoria Theatre, which was distinguished by its in-​the-​round stagings and a strong

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commitment to local stories about local issues. Under Peter Cheeseman, the theatre’s artistic director from 1962 to 1988, this regional institution collaborated on a number of documentaries and adaptations of its work with ITV companies and the BBC between 1966 and 1974. Cooke explores the ways in which these television productions reflected the character and talent of the Potteries where the theatre is based, placing this discussion within the context of structural changes in British television which had a profound effect on the production of regional television drama. The location for Wyver’s history is Manchester, in the years 1968 to 1971, when Granada established its own theatre company based at The Stables. The Stables Theatre Company mounted an extensive and well-​reviewed programme of plays and revues for local audiences and the ITV contractor recorded a number of these in the television studio. The aesthetic aspirations of this unusual experiment, and the problems that contributed to its failure, are outlined in a study that draws on an interview with the project’s founder, Gordon McDougall, production records and extensive press coverage from the time. Both Sally Shaw (Chapter 8) and Ruth Adams (Chapter 10) consider just a single adaptation of a theatre play, examining the respective production and reception contexts of Black Feet in the Snow and Abigail’s Party, respectively. Black Feet in the Snow is arguably as obscure as Abigail’s Party is well known: made in 1974 for BBC2’s access series Open Door (1973–​83), the production was an experimental adaptation of the play by Guyanese poet and playwright Jamal Ali. The play was politically radical—​for example, in depicting racial discrimination and Britain’s colonial past—​and also innovative in terms of its form, mixing Brechtian elements with Caribbean orature. Shaw draws on archival sources and interviews with Ali to locate this production within the context of Black theatre of the time as well as of contemporary representations of race on television. Adams’ subject is Mike Leigh’s Abigail’s Party, probably the best-​remembered production from the BBC’s series of single dramas Play for Today (1970–​84). She examines the responses to this stage adaptation’s controversial representations of class and cultural consumption and tracks the ways in which its reception and interpretation have changed over time and across diverse media—​including stage, television and DVD. In Chapter 13, Cyrielle Garson brings the discussion back into the twenty-​ first century with a comparative analysis of the politics of two productions of verbatim theatre plays: the Tricycle Theatre’s Justifying War: Scenes from the Hutton Inquiry (2004) and the National Theatre of Scotland’s Black Watch (2007). Drawing on Jay Bolter and Richard Grusin’s theory of ‘remediation’, Garson argues that the television presentation of verbatim theatre raises important questions about aesthetic experimentation and political

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Amanda Wrigley and John Wyver

significance in contemporary culture, questioning the extent to which the political identity of original theatre stagings of this kind of work is altered in the translation to television. The collection’s final chapter is something of an anomaly. Rather than explore the production or reception contexts for television adaptations, in Chapter 14 Neil Taylor approaches the relationship between television and theatre by discussing the impact of small screen adaptations on major scholarly editions of the plays of William Shakespeare. The chapter examines the use made of television productions by editors in not only their introductory essays, but also their commentaries and notes on the text. Taylor—​the author of one of the foundational texts about the relationship between television and stage plays (1998)—​here develops a nuanced argument about the importance for historians of performance of paying close attention to productions on television and shines a light on the particular methodological questions raised by the medium. In this way, Taylor contributes a valuable perspective to the collection’s overall proposal that television’s adaptations of stage plays deserve far greater attention and analysis than they have received to date from scholars of either television or the theatre. Editors of and contributors to multi-​ authored volumes such as this inevitably hope that their work will stimulate further research to take forward strands suggested and outlined by their initial efforts. We are no exception, and our ambition is that the interdisciplinary explorations begun here will develop and flourish. We also, however, want this collection to contribute to a broader re-​evaluation of theatre plays on television. As we have noted, we believe that drama of this kind has rarely been appropriately celebrated, despite the riches of the archives discussed here. In our work over the past decade, we have found many recordings from the 1950s to the most recent to be not only intensely rewarding as objects of study but also sources of pleasure and joy. We will be delighted if these essays lead the reader towards such discoveries of their own.

Notes 1 For further information on the ‘Screen Plays’ research project, see https://​gtr.ukri. org/​proje​cts?ref=​AH%2FI004​262%2F1 (accessed 8 March 2021). 2 Screen Plays: The Theatre Plays on British Television Database, online at http://​ bufvc.ac.uk/​scre​enpl​ays (accessed 25 March 2021). 3 Screen Plays: Theatre Plays on British Television, online at https://​screen​play​stv. wordpr​ess.com (accessed 25 March 2021). 4 In June 2012, our first of four ‘Classics on TV’ seasons took place at BFI Southbank. On the theme of ‘Greek Tragedy on the Small Screen’, this season inspired a series of smaller-​scale revivals across the UK—​for example, in

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Nottingham and Birmingham. The subsequent ‘Classics on TV’ seasons at BFI Southbank were ‘Jacobean Tragedy on the Small Screen’, March–​April 2013 (see https://​screen​play​stv.wordpr​ess.com/​2013/​02/​28/​class​ics-​on-​tv-​jacob​ean​trag​edy-​on-​the-​small-​scr​een-​a-​bfi-​southb​ank-​sea​son; accessed 25 March 2021), ‘Edwardian Drama on the Small Screen’, May 2014 (see https://​screen​play​stv. wordpr​ess.com/​2014/​03/​24/​edward​ian-​drama-​on-​the-​small-​scr​een; accessed 25 March 2021) and ‘Great American Playwrights’, January 2015 (see https://​screen​ play​stv.wordpr​ess.com/​2014/​11/​25/​class​ics-​on-​tv-​great-​ameri​can-​play​wrig​hts-​a-​ bfi-​southb​ank-​sea​son; accessed 25 March 2021). Another season of screenings informed by our research featured RSC productions for television at the Barbican in London: ‘Shakespeare on Screen’, January 2016. 5 Some of the screenings programmes at BFI Southbank—​for example, those on Greek tragedy and Edwardian drama—​were accompanied by fruitful academic seminars. Our first conference, ‘Theatre Plays on British Television’, was held at the University of Westminster in October 2012 (read the report here: https://​ screen​play​stv.wordpr​ess.com/​2012/​10/​22/​con​fere​nce-​rep​ort-​thea​tre-​plays-​on-​brit​ ish-​tel​evis​ion-​19-​octo​ber-​2012; accessed 25 March 2021). Three years later, the venue was Alexandra Palace for our second, ‘Theatre and Television: Adaptation, Production, Performance’, in February 2015 (read Billy Smart’s report on the Critical Studies in Television blog at https://​cstonl​ine.net/​con​fere​nce-​rep​ort-​thea​ tre-​and-​tel​evis​ion-​ada​ptat​ion-​pro​duct​ion-​perf​orma​nce-​by-​billy-​smart; accessed 25 March 2021). 6 For further information on ‘Transformation and Tradition in Sixties British Cinema’, see https://​gtr.ukri.org/​proje​cts?ref=​AH%2FL014​793%2F1 (accessed 19 February 2020). 7 Neither ‘television’ nor ‘British Broadcasting Corporation’ (or ‘BBC’) appears in the indices of Rabey (2003) or Billington (2007).

References Anon. (1937), ‘Televised drama’, The Times, 13 December 1937, p. 18. Bignell, J. (2012), Beckett on Screen: The Television Plays (Manchester: Manchester University Press). Bignell, J., S. Lacey and M. Macmurraugh-​Kavanagh (2000), ‘Editors’ introduction to part I’, in J. Bignell, S. Lacey and M. Macmurraugh-​Kavanagh (eds), British Television Drama: Past, Present and Future (Basingstoke: Palgrave), pp. 27–​41. Billington, M. (1993), ‘Why television should tune in to theatre’, Guardian, 7 August 1993, p. 26. Billington, M. (2007), State of the Nation: British Theatre Since 1945 (London: Faber). Brandt, G. W. (1981, ed.), British Television Drama (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Cardullo, B. (2012, ed.), Stage and Screen: Adaptation Theory from 1916 to 2000 (London: Bloomsbury).

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Claypole, J. (2020), ‘BBC announces culture in quarantine programme’, BBC Media Centre, 25 March 2020, online at www.bbc.co.uk/​programmes/​articles/​wLvhN0VTSkB34Pm36c9qSY/​bbc-​arts-​announces-​culture-​in-​quarantine-​programme (accessed 25 May 2020). Cooke, L. (2003), British Television Drama: A History (London: British Film Institute). Davies, A., and S. Wells (1994, eds), Shakespeare and the Moving Image: The Plays on Film and Television (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Fotheringham, L. (2018), ‘Don Taylor, the “old-​fashioned populist”? The Theban Plays (1986) and Iphigenia at Aulis (1990): production choices and audience responses’, in Hobden and Wrigley (eds), Ancient Greece on British Television, pp. 123–​46. Garnett, T. (2016), The Day the Music Died: A Life Lived behind the Lens (London: Constable). Harris, K. (2008), ‘Evolutionary stages: theatre and television 1946–​ 56’, in War British D. Shellard (ed.), The Golden Generation: New Light on Post-​ Theatre (London: British Library), pp. 152–​79. Herren, G. (2007), Samuel Beckett’s Plays on Film and Television (New York: Palgrave Macmillan). Hobden, F., and A. Wrigley (2018, eds), Ancient Greece on British Television (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press). Jacobs, J. (2000), The Intimate Screen: Early British Television Drama (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Keen, T. (2018), ‘The Serpent Son (1979): a science fiction aesthetic?’, in Hobden and Wrigley (eds), Ancient Greece on British Television, pp. 109–​22. Kennedy Martin, T. (1964), ‘Nats go home: first statement of a new drama for television’, Encore, 48, 11:2, 21–​33. Knopf, R. (2005, ed.), Theater and Film: A Comparative Anthology (New Haven and London: Yale University Press). Lacey, S. (2003), ‘Too theatrical by half? The Admirable Crichton and Look Back in Anger’, in I. Mackillop and N. Sinyard (eds), British Cinema of the 1950s: A Celebration (Manchester: Manchester University Press), pp. 157–​67. Lowe, V. (2021), Adapting Performance between Stage and Screen (Bristol: Intellect). Nead, L. (2017), The Tiger in the Smoke: Art and Culture in Post-​war Britain (London: Yale University Press). Rabey, D. I. (2003), English Drama since 1940 (London: Routledge). Ridgman, J. (1998, ed.), Boxed Sets: Television Representations of Theatre (Luton: University of Luton Press). Rothwell, K. S. (2004), A History of Shakespeare on Screen: A Century of Film and Television, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Smart, B. (2010), ‘Old wine in new bottles—​adaptation of classic theatrical plays on BBC Television 1957–​1985’ (PhD thesis, Royal Holloway, University of London). Smart, B. (2014), ‘Three different Cherry Orchards, three different worlds: Chekhov at the BBC, 1962–​81’, Critical Studies in Television, 9:3, 65–​76. Sontag, S. (1966), ‘Film and theatre’, The Drama Review, 11:1, 24–​37.

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Taylor, N. (1998), ‘A history of the stage play on BBC Television’, in Ridgman (ed.), Boxed Sets, pp. 23–​38. Tickner, L. (2020), London’s New Scene: Art and Culture in the 1960s (London: Yale University Press). Warren, D. (2017), ‘Stage plays on television from 1946 to the 1980s: an overview’, Theatre Notebook, 71:1, 44–​64. Wrigley, A. (2018), ‘Tragedy for teens: ancient Greek tragedy on BBC and ITV schools television in the 1960s’, in Hobden and Wrigley (eds), Ancient Greece on British Television, pp. 84–​108. Wrigley, A. (2023, forthcoming), Greece on Screen: Greek Drama on British Television (under contract with Oxford University Press). Wyver, J. (2019), Screening the Royal Shakespeare Company: A Critical History (London: Bloomsbury).

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Stages and the small screen: theatre plays as television drama since 1930 John Wyver

The number of television productions of plays originally written for the stage, and the range of contexts in which they have been created, means that an attempt such as this to outline a history of stage plays on television from 1930 to the present must inevitably be partial. Any such chronicle will of course be inadequate and incomplete, but it will also favour certain elements. That said, this chapter aims to offer such an overview so as to provide useful context for the chapters that follow. The first half discusses television’s presentation—​both as outside broadcasts (OBs) and as studio reworkings—​of productions of theatre plays made by non-​television companies. I then move on to consider the separate but complementary strand of television’s own productions of theatre plays, created either in the studio or on location. Pre-​existing productions adapted and presented by television were shaped by different imperatives and values: for example, proven popularity or critical acclaim were almost always key to television’s initial interest. The medium’s own productions often came about from an alignment of institutional interests and individual enthusiasms. Throughout both strands of this history, I am especially concerned with the reasons why in different institutional contexts and at different historical moments television sought to adapt and produce both kinds of screen plays. Although my discussion works with a pragmatic distinction between the two forms, I want to argue that both television’s own productions of texts written for the stage and the medium’s presentation of pre-​existing productions of these texts should be considered to be adaptations. In both forms, television contributes specific kinds of embodiment and performance to an original text, and this process is framed by spatial and temporal possibilities that are distinct from those of the stage—​in a way directly comparable to the cinematic adaptations of stage plays explored by Victoria Lowe (2021). As a consequence of the mediating processes of cameras and recording technology, as well as of the choices made by the screen director working with camera operators, a sound team and many others, the presentation of a

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pre-​existing stage production is perhaps more obviously an adaptation, even if on occasion such broadcasts are designated by the seemingly neutral terms of ‘relay’ or ‘capture’. But an original production by television, however simple or straightforward, shifts a stage text into a form for which it was not originally conceived. Linda Hutcheon (2006), Margaret Jane Kidnie and others have fruitfully explored the ‘definitional problem’ of ‘when speaking specifically of drama, what constitutes adaptation as distinct from production?’ (Kidnie 2009: 7). But in the case of television productions, it is clear that all presentations of stage plays must be regarded as adaptations. As the following discussion outlines, television’s adaptation history of stage plays began as early as 1930, six years before the BBC started its regular television service from Alexandra Palace. The process by which an emerging medium, as television was then, takes an established one and its components as a subject has been theorised as ‘remediation’ by Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin (1998), who argue that all emerging media forms refashion earlier forms in the same way that photography remediated painting and film remediated stage production and photography. From the very beginning, the advantages for television of remediating stage plays, and more generally drawing in and adapting the approaches and ideas of theatre, have included the availability of proven (and often out of copyright) scripts, access to high-​ profile productions and their casts and ease of adaptation to the studio, often with only minimal explicit changes, of developed and proven stagings. More generally, theatre plays conferred cultural credibility on the new medium, were central to the fulfilment of its cultural public service responsibilities and contributed—​although this was rarely made explicit—​to the shaping by the broadcasting institutions of our conceptions of national identity. Throughout this history, television has almost always been the proactive partner in engagements with theatre, and with specific theatre companies, thanks to its significantly more substantial funding for screen projects and, until the recent introduction of live cinema broadcasts, its monopoly of distribution channels to broad audiences. Theatre has often responded cautiously to the younger medium’s approaches, welcoming the attention but remaining suspicious that the rigour and integrity of live performance may not be respected by a form perceived to be more interested in audience numbers than art. Television’s attention has been recognised for its assistance in marketing, for the facilitation of access and the enhancement of awareness and for archiving notable productions, but theatre has invariably accepted television’s terms both commercially and creatively, believing it had little option to do otherwise. This has rarely been a relationship of equals. Only very recently, as theatre companies (in common with other cultural organisations) have become media producers themselves, has the balance of influence begun to change.

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John Wyver

Just as the theatre was to be central to, and extensively remediated by, television drama in its first years, so in earlier decades the beginnings of both cinema and radio had similarly drawn significantly on the stage. In 1896, Esmé Collings filmed a short scene from the play The Broken Melody, and just over a decade later Gaumont’s Romeo and Juliet (1908) was, as Jon Burrows has written, ‘the first British film which celebrated and foregrounded its named theatrical cast and their screen performances as part of an identity for the film’ (Burrows 2003: 21).1 Throughout the 1910s, major stage stars appeared in film adaptations of theatrical productions, including Sir Johnston Forbes-​Robertson, who received £2,000 for three weeks of filming for the 1913 Hamlet (ibid.: 10). Seven modern dramas by Arthur Wing Pinero were filmed between 1915 and 1921 and, as Geoff Brown notes, after the arrival of sound reinforced the British cinema’s interest in theatrical properties, Basil Dean’s film of John Galsworthy’s Loyalties in 1933 was ‘just one of [that year’s] forty-​nine British feature films with stage antecedents’ (Brown 1986: 154). Radio drama began with a BBC transmission of an extract from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar in February 1923, and there were broadcasts of extracts from West End productions before theatre managers stopped the practice in April that year (Briggs 1961: 280). A decade on, the BBC’s former director of talks, Hilda Matheson, wrote, ‘It was at first taken for granted that the microphone offered a natural medium for the great plays of the world’. She further detailed the three types of radio drama that drew on the stage, effectively predicting the forms that television drama would come to adopt: ‘microphones have been slung in theatre wings to enable plays to be heard from an actual theatre; professional companies have given theatre plays in studios, or they have been given by specially selected players’ (Matheson 1933: 110). There were also the beginnings of drama written especially for radio, with The White Chateau by Reginald Berkeley, broadcast on Armistice Day 1925, being the medium’s first full-​length play.2 Just as would be the case with television, such commissions were driven by a desire for radio, and radio drama specifically, to move on from a dependence on the theatre and in so doing establish its medium-​specific autonomy. John Drakakis has noted that, two years after the start of broadcasting, Director-​General John Reith was irritated by the excessive ‘theatre effect’ of much radio drama: there was, Drakakis wrote, ‘a firmly held conviction from the outset that radio had its own “proper form” distinct from the theatre or from film’ (Drakakis 1981: 2, 3). Television, and specifically drama for television, would be critiqued in a comparable way as the understandings of its own medium specificity emerged. Television drama’s originary moment came in the summer of 1930, soon after John Logie Baird started experimental transmissions of low-​definition

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images with synchronous sound. His first broadcasts offered songs and sketches, and on 14 July the service featured, as a simultaneous broadcast with BBC Radio’s National Programme, Britain’s first television play.3 In the broadcast of this tale of a man with a facial tumour conversing in a cafe, only a single head could be shown at a time. The image was far from perfect: the Daily Mail reported that it appeared as if the characters ‘moved and had their being in a heavy and persistent shower of rain’ (Anon. 1930). This inauspicious start began a tradition of adapting theatre plays for television that remained active ninety years later when a recorded performance of the Almeida Theatre’s production of Mike Bartlett’s play Albion was broadcast in the summer of 2020.

Productions first seen on stage As the date approached for the start of BBC Television’s ‘high definition’ service on 2 November 1936, there was a scramble to assemble a credible schedule. The process was entrusted to Cecil Madden, who hastily organised studio presentations of elements from existing stage productions to provide the first dramas. ‘Planning the television schedule’, Madden later wrote, ‘there was never any doubt in my mind that the emphasis should be on drama … plays formed our backbone’ (in J. Madden 2007: 75) A handful of pre-​war broadcasts were drawn from radio plays, including a version of Berkeley’s The White Chateau, transmitted on Armistice Day in 1938, and there were productions of a small number of original scripts for the medium.4 But, as Harris notes, ‘The Reithian ethos of the BBC, with its emphasis on the importance of culture and learning, meant that television drama was initially more inclined to look to theatre rather than film for its form and content’ (Harris 2008: 153). The service’s first drama transmission on 6 November 1936 consisted of minimally re-​blocked extracts from a current West End staging of the slight Scottish comedy Marigold (Wyver 2011c). A more substantial presentation a month later transmitted thirty-​eight minutes of scenes from T. S. Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral from E. Martin Browne’s London production. For these early broadcasts, producers at Alexandra Palace carried across stage procedures to the studio. ‘The only technique I knew was of the stage’, Madden wrote, ‘so I divided up the studio into three stages behind one another, separated by curtains. The three cameras were placed roughly in line but at different heights … We played an act on stage one, then the curtains parted and cameras moved on to stage two, and then again to stage three’ (in J. Madden 2007: 11, 15). West End productions were readily available, and the theatre was a world from which a number of the early producers

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Figure 1.1  Robert Speaight as Thomas Becket in Murder in the Cathedral (1936), one of the earliest stage plays presented on British television.

came, including Madden himself and Stephen Thomas, who had worked with the theatre manager Sir Nigel Playfair. Studio style developed gradually, so that when in November 1937 actors from André van Gyseghem’s Embassy Theatre production of Shakespeare’s Cymbeline presented forty-​ five minutes of scenes, the camera script indicates that there were just twenty-​five shot transitions in the broadcast, and half of these were to and

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from captions (see Wyver 2017b). Shots of extended duration, which may have been combined with camera moves, suggest the broadcast employed a frontal, ‘theatrical’ visual style distinct from the continuity editing of contemporary cinema. An extreme form of the ‘theatrical’ style was practised by another early studio producer, Fred O’Donovan, who was celebrated for choreographing scenes lasting twenty minutes or more for a single developing camera shot (see Wyver 2017a). Having overseen the early broadcast of Murder in the Cathedral, producer George More O’Ferrall wrote one of the first detailed reflections by a practitioner on the craft of small-​screen drama. Even at this early stage, O’Ferrall was concerned to distinguish his approach from both stage and cinema, writing that: In televising T. S. Eliot’s poetic drama Murder in the Cathedral, it was possible to get away from both theatre and film. We saw Thomas Becket in close-​ up, soliloquising about his temptations, and, as he weakened, the temptation appeared, whispering into his ear. As Thomas strengthened in purpose, the vision vanished. For, by placing the tempter before a separate camera [see Fig. 1.1], it was possible to superimpose the tempter on to the picture of Becket and fade it in and out at will. (O’Ferrall 1937: 5)

In late January 1939, television technique was considered to have advanced to the extent that the Radio Times diary writer ‘The Scanner’ could further dismiss comparisons with the theatre: ‘As good as being in the theatre’. In the early days of Alexandra Palace this kind of comment might have pleased a television drama producer. It is not so today. Television technique has developed so much, has become such an individual affair, that a comparison with the stage is rather silly. (‘The Scanner’ 1939)

By this point, television had also taken its cameras into an actual theatre to offer the experience of a virtual visit. As Victoria Lowe explores in this collection, J. B. Priestley’s hit comedy When We Are Married, which had been staged in the West End by Basil Dean, filled an evening of television on 16 November 1938. There were then further such outside broadcasts from London theatres in the remaining months of the pre-​war service, including Twelfth Night with Peggy Ashcroft from the Phoenix Theatre and—​on two occasions in the summer of 1939—​the hit musical Me and My Girl from the Victoria Palace.5 As in the studios at Alexandra Palace, three cameras were used for these transmissions with, for Twelfth Night, one camera in the centre of the circle’s front row and two in the orchestra pit. The lenses of the latter two meant that changes could be made from mid-​shot to close-​ up, although Radio Times reassured its readers that they ‘will not feel they have been suddenly snatched out of a theatre seat and planted in another with every camera change’ (‘The Scanner’ 1938). The astute critic Grace Wyndham Goldie wrote that she ‘sat in my own sitting room the other night

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and watched Twelfth Night being performed on the stage of the Phoenix Theatre. And the miracle of television came home to me afresh’. She appreciated how television could create ‘the actual feeling of being in a theatre’, but she felt distanced from the drama, comparing the experience as ‘rather like … watching the entire action through opera glasses’ (Goldie 1939). Such broadcasts best exemplify the ‘relay’ function that writers, including John Caughie, have argued is fundamental to the medium of television. Early television, Caughie has proposed, was characterised by ‘a more or less accepted dependency on a point of origin—​the reality of the rush hour at Oxford Circus or the West End stage—​which was located outside television itself’ (Caughie 2000: 40). Yet from the 1930s on, and still today, such theatre broadcasts, while mediating an existing production in a manner comparable to a studio presentation, have been categorised by television managers not as drama but rather as comparable to other outside broadcasts, including sporting events and pageantry. In his 1964 polemic arguing for a new form of television drama, Troy Kennedy Martin proposed that ‘the photography of theatre plays [and he included those newly produced in the studio] should be given over to Talks Department or Outside Broadcast unit … [which] are as competent to produce and photograph these as they are a Beethoven concert or a football match’ (Kennedy Martin 1964: 23). Paddy Scannell and David Cardiff have similarly aligned theatre relays with broadcasts of concerts, sport and more, arguing that from the 1920s on radio and television OBs contributed to a collective sense of a unified national life: ‘They made the nation real and tangible through a whole range of images and symbols, events and ceremonies, relayed to audiences direct and live’ (Scannell and Cardiff 1991: 277). Yet the technical and creative processes of mediating a theatre production for the screen were, as they remain, closely related to those involved in producing multi-​camera studio drama. Creative screen directors aim not simply to ‘capture’ a staging but to enhance and enrich its story-​telling and affects employing, among other devices, framing, camera movement and cutting rhythms. And, more recently, the inevitable mediation has been further developed by the application of post-​production techniques to ‘as live’ recordings. For the 2016 Donmar Shakespeare Trilogy, for example, stage director Phyllida Lloyd extensively edited the in-​theatre recordings, grading and audio mixing the final versions in ways that were familiar from feature film production (see Fig. 1.2). Yet the Donmar Trilogy was institutionally categorised as ‘performance’ and steered onto BBC4 by BBC Arts with funding from neither the drama department of the BBC nor BBC Films. A variant of the institutional distinction between outside broadcasts and conventional drama remains firmly in place. After BBC Television resumed its service in June 1946, theatre companies continued, for the next decade at least, to be invited into the studio

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Figure 1.2  Jade Anouka as Ariel, and company, in The Tempest, part of the Donmar Shakespeare Trilogy (2016).

to present existing productions. The process was cheap and convenient, but too often the quality was found wanting, and the drama units of the BBC and (after 1955) the ITV companies grew more confident about their originated productions. Occasional stagings re-​mounted for studio cameras were now more often visits from prestigious companies that contributed cultural prestige: in March 1950, for example, the Comédie-​Française, then playing in London, presented in French the last scene of Georges Neveux’s adaptation of Shakespeare’s Othello (Wyver 2012a); and extracts from productions at the Old Vic were re-​mounted in BBC studios, including scenes from Julius Caesar (1955) and Cymbeline (1956). Following the start of commercial television, Granada was one of the companies that brought a major theatre production to a much wider audience, when Tony Richardson directed from a Manchester studio a re-​staging with the original cast of his Royal Court production of Look Back in Anger (1956). In contrast to pre-​war opportunities, the possibility of outside broadcasts from commercial playhouses was severely restricted by powerful theatre managements concerned to protect paid admissions. Between 1946 and 1949, almost the only auditorium from which the BBC could broadcast drama was the Intimate Theatre, a modest repertory house in Palmers Green

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that mounted a new stage show every week (see Wyver 2012b). Its location in London’s N13 postal district allowed a live signal to be beamed direct to the Alexandra Palace transmitter, but the house fell outside the restrictions imposed by the Theatrical Management Association (TMA). With few other options, the BBC transmitted fourteen shows from here, despite a producer’s comment about one broadcast that ‘the performance itself was indifferent and there was some very bad miscasting’.6 In May 1952, the BBC finally concluded an agreement with the actors’ union Equity and the Theatres National Committee permitting broadcasts of excerpts from theatre shows of up to forty-​five minutes. One of the first to benefit from the arrangement was the actor-​manager Brian Rix, who invited the BBC to relay from the Whitehall Theatre the first act of Colin Morris’ army farce Reluctant Heroes. Ticket sales increased after the broadcast and the BBC’s internal Viewer Research Report recorded a ‘phenomenal’ Reaction Index figure of 90 as well as ‘tremendous, unqualified enthusiasm’. ‘There was nothing but praise for the way television had handled this relay’, the Report noted: ‘it seemed that the atmosphere of a theatre “got across” most effectively’.7 Following Brian Rix’s gamble, and with theatre managements’ developing awareness of a televised excerpt’s marketing potential, outside broadcasts from houses in London and beyond secured a regular presence in BBC schedules. In 1956, a BBC presentation of this kind contributed to the success of the English Stage Company’s production of John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger. As Kate Harris documents, Tony Richardson’s production at the Royal Court was playing to only modest houses before an estimated five million people watched the BBC broadcast of a substantial excerpt on 16 October, after which box-​office takings leapt from £900 to £1700 per week (Harris 2008: 165–​71; see also Osborne 1991: 23). But the key problem with such programming was identified by the critic Maurice Wiggin (1952), writing about the live transmission from London’s Old Vic of part of The Two Gentlemen of Verona: ‘Television was pretty smug about this outside broadcast; but, in truth, it looked quite awful. May one say yet again that the mere knowledge that a transmission originates in the Old Vic, or in Paris … does not assuage one’s transports of indifference when confronted by pictures valueless in themselves?’ The cultural capital of some broadcasts, however, was irresistible for the BBC, and so, one Sunday in October 1955, viewers were treated first to a studio production of Bernard Shaw’s The Dark Lady of the Sonnets before being transported to Stratford-​upon-​Avon from where the second of three acts of the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre’s new production of The Merry Wives of Windsor was broadcast live (see Wyver 2019: 24–​7). The event furthered the Corporation’s desire to present major cultural institutions on screen, but coupled with the Shaw play in which Elizabeth I appears, it also

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demonstrated how the prestige of theatre, and indeed Shakespeare, could be employed both to fulfil the public service obligations of the BBC as well as to advance other agendas. This Sunday night was just ten days after the start of commercial television in the London area. The mobilisation of Shaw and the Virgin Queen, as well as of Stratford, Shakespeare and Falstaff, was a potent reminder of the BBC’s alignment with the values of a traditional national culture when faced with an upstart challenger perceived to be in thrall to the forms of populist entertainment imported from across the Atlantic. Despite Equity’s constraints on timings, taking cameras into theatres retained an allure for BBC executives, and under the strand title Theatre Flash, such broadcasts continued until the late 1950s. While, as is argued below, the BBC broadcast in full only a very few productions of the progressive British theatre of the late 1950s and 1960s, the stage of the time was nonetheless present in frequent OBs of excerpts. In 1960, for example, viewers saw scenes from Ronald Millar’s new comedy The More the Merrier with Anna Neagle as well as elements of Lindsay Anderson’s production with Albert Finney of Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall’s Billy Liar. In addition to the flowering of writing associated with London’s Royal Court that was engaged with contemporary society, the late 1950s and the following decade saw the rapid development, stimulated by both local and Arts Council funding, of a network of new civic theatres that broke with the traditional proscenium arch structure. The first was the Belgrade in Coventry, which opened in 1958, and other new spaces included Chichester Festival Theatre; while television demonstrated only a minimal interest in exploring and exposing these spaces, the National Youth Theatre production of Coriolanus by Michael Croft was broadcast from Chichester in 1965.

Working with the national companies Early in the 1960s, BBC Television committed to a deal with the newly constituted Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) to showcase two productions each year (Wyver 2019: 38–​40). The Cherry Orchard (1962) with Peggy Ashcroft, Dorothy Tutin and John Gielgud and As You Like It (1963) with Vanessa Redgrave were both recorded in the new studios of Television Centre. In autumn 1964, the two organisations collaborated on a television version of Peter Hall and John Barton’s three-​evening stage adaptation The Wars of the Roses. This ambitious collaboration developed an innovative production method of recording within John Bury’s massive metal set on the stage at Stratford-​upon-​Avon, effectively transforming the theatre, without an audience, into a television studio. Head of single plays Michael Bakewell contrasted this method with conventional broadcasts from theatre

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auditoria: ‘What was intended for The Wars of the Roses was to recreate a theatre production in television terms—​not merely to observe it but to get to the heart of it’ (Bakewell 1970: 231). The result was powerfully effective, retaining the immediacy and intimacy of the stage performances as well as the grandeur of the stage spectacle, while also drawing in the viewer and focusing the narrative with televisual techniques. In large part because of the complexity and the cost of this way of working, such a production strategy for screened plays has rarely been applied since. Broadcasters continued to collaborate on occasion with other theatre companies, with one of the most remarkable being Associated-​Rediffusion’s (A-​R) 1962 primetime presentation of Sophocles’ Electra in modern Greek. Extraordinarily, as part of A-​R’s public service responsibilities, Dimitris Rondiris’ touring stage production with the Peiraïkon Theatron company was shown in primetime—​and without subtitles (see Wrigley 2011a and 2015a). Amanda Wrigley (2011a) has described the production as it exists in an archival recording: There is an impressive sense of space offered by the abstract, but clearly classical, set with its tall pillar-​like structures, between which long shadows fall, and strong horizontal lines of steps and central acting space (the orchestra in the Greek theatre). The sparse austerity of the set is complemented by the chorus of around fifteen women, dressed almost identically in long dresses reminiscent of the Greek toga with scarves covering their hair, but it is nicely counterpointed when the chorus break into the beautiful and fluid movements (choreographed by Loukia Sakellaridou) which accompany their musical chanting.

Later in the decade the new National Theatre company, active since 1963 yet without a permanent home, permitted its lavish production of Much Ado about Nothing, directed for the stage by Franco Zeffirelli, to be imaginatively re-​staged in its 1967 studio adaptation.8 Although after the late 1960s neither the BBC nor any of the ITV companies made ongoing commitments to the National Theatre or to the RSC, it was nonetheless to these national companies that television almost exclusively returned for re-​staged dramas. Later National Theatre transfers, for example, included No Man’s Land by Harold Pinter for Granada in 1978, which recreated Peter Hall’s original staging with John Gielgud and Ralph Richardson, and for BBC Television Richard Eyre reworked his National Theatre King Lear (1998) with Ian Holm. RSC productions included Trevor Nunn’s Antony and Cleopatra (Associated Television (ATV), 1974) which was brought to the studio; this was followed by a landmark 1979 adaptation by Thames (which was facing an imminent assessment of its ITV franchise) of Nunn’s studio production of Macbeth (1979) with Judi Dench and Ian McKellen. Collaborating with studio director Philip Casson, Nunn achieved a screen equivalent of his dark,

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claustrophobic staging at The Other Place in Stratford-​upon-​Avon, and with dazzling performances from his leads conjured into being one of the very finest small-​screen Shakespeare adaptations (see Wyver 2019: 112–​14). There also continued to be occasional interest in re-​imagining how a theatre company might work with a broadcaster. The most sustained such project was The Stables Theatre Company, the troubled history of which is chronicled in Chapter 7 in this volume, but there were earlier and subsequent initiatives. As Warren has noted, ‘J. B. Priestley explored the possibility in the mid-​1950s of the BBC becoming involved in a “theatre-​in-​the-​round”, to be subsidised by the Arts Council, for arena-​style televised productions without elaborate décor’ (Warren 2017: 51). Apparently, the BBC felt that the idea was too experimental. The Corporation was happier to work consistently with actor-​manager Brian Rix on a string of some seventy-​plus risqué comedies from 1952 onwards, although his television productions with his regular writers and actors were most often played on the stages of the Whitehall and Garrick Theatres (see Wyver 2011a). At the start of ITV, the producer John Clements mounted starry productions of classics at London’s Saville Theatre which he then, under the banner International Theatre, transferred to television for Associated-​ Rediffusion, for whom he was working as an adviser. His production of Turgenev’s A Month in the Country (1955), with Margaret Leighton and Laurence Harvey, shot on 35mm film by director Robert Hamer, is an especially remarkable (and all-​but-​unknown) production (see Wyver 2011d). Much later, in the mid-​ 1980s, once Channel 4 had established a context for independent production companies, a group of A-​list actors and others formed United British Artists to ‘devote itself to producing outstanding theater and then taping the productions for television’ (as reported by O’Connor 1985).9 Albert Finney starred in a production at London’s Riverside Studios of the documentary drama The Biko Inquest by Jon Blair, Norman Fenton and Joshua Sinclair which was then taped for Channel 4, but although the company went on to produce a number of feature films, no further productions of this kind for television appear to have been made. In the early 1970s, television was a well-​funded duopoly with the two BBC channels balanced by a commercially and creatively successful ITV. The system was now sufficiently resourced to require neither the access to star casts that was once afforded by collaborations with theatre companies nor the comparatively cheap drama that relays had offered. Television’s translation of specific theatrical stagings was now occasional and essentially opportunistic, most often looking to capitalise on the involvement of an especially prominent performer. So, Alan Ayckbourn’s The Norman Conquests trilogy, produced for Thames in 1977, featured Penelope Keith reprising her role from the original 1973 production in Scarborough, but otherwise a

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new cast and director. The BBC’s strand Play for Today (1970–​84) featured a number of stage transfers, including Mike Leigh’s Abigail’s Party (1977, considered in detail by Ruth Adams in Chapter 10) and a partly re-​cast version of Carol Bunyan’s exceptional study of misogyny, Sorry (1981). Other such translations from stage to screen were more significantly transformational, as was the case with Howard Brenton and David Hare’s Brassneck (stage 1973; television 1975) and David Edgar’s Destiny (1976; 1978), both screen versions which acknowledged their stage premieres only in their publicity. As Tom May (2017) has chronicled, Edgar made numerous (mostly small) changes from the theatre script and the production had a different director and cast from the play’s first production with the RSC; yet there remained a strong sense that a major work of the contemporary stage was appearing on television soon after its success in the theatre. Play for Today also presented one of the most innovative reworkings of an existing stage production in John Mackenzie’s film of John McGrath’s The Cheviot, the Stag and the Black, Black Oil (1974). Film sequences of the touring production by McGrath’s 7:84 company are juxtaposed with historical reconstruction of the Highland clearances and documentary elements about the oil industry in Scotland. The remarkable result is ‘an analysis of the dialectics of metropolitan and local culture, community and technology, that makes it one of the most purposeful explorations of the formal and ideological relationship between theatre and television’ (Ridgman 1998b: 3) Strikingly, the BBC did not broadcast a full production on either of the occasions when the National Theatre opened its home on London’s Southbank in 1976 or when the RSC unveiled its new theatre at the Barbican in 1982. Towards the end of 1982, however, the RSC’s epic nine-​ hour adaptation of Charles Dickens’ The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby was recorded from the stage of the Old Vic, in a hybrid production process comparable to that developed nearly two decades before for The Wars of the Roses. Three days of multi-​camera filming before an audience were combined with eight weeks of recording with just one or two cameras on stage, closer shots and more focused lighting, and with an auditorium occupied only by the technical team. The final edit signals the production’s theatrical origin with audience shots under the opening and closing credits, but—​to appeal to the international audience required by the co-​production funding—​almost all of the drama aspires to the clarity and polish of studio presentation. Nicholas Nickleby was the first commission of Britain’s Channel 4 Television, a new publisher-​broadcaster committed to innovation. Its first chief executive, Jeremy Isaacs, determined that performance would be a key element in the channel’s schedules, in part as a reaction against the strong emphasis on the arts being processed in documentary forms at the BBC and

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ITV. But Isaacs also believed that ‘a live theatre performance does not show up well on television; performances geared to the back of the upper circle have to be scaled down for the camera, and for viewers at home’ (Isaacs 1989: 169). Yet this was the process used for Peter Hall’s 1983 screen version of his National Theatre production of Aeschylus’ Oresteia, played in masks with Tony Harrison’s translation and Harrison Birtwistle’s music (discussed in detail by Wrigley 2012a and 2017a). For Channel 4’s arts commissioning editor Michael Kustow, the aspiration of such a broadcast, and of a comparable as-​live recording of Bill Bryden’s production of The Mysteries, was ‘to keep alive [on television] heightened expression, poetry in speech and classic form’ (Kustow 1987: 17). He also made a passionate case for the importance of television’s engaged presentation of theatre: Reaching half a million people, a derisory number in television rating terms but three times the number that saw the Oresteia at the Olivier Theatre, means that some of those viewers are plunged into a classic for the first time. And if there’s a marriage between the visual language and performance style of the theatre work and the codes of television those viewers may stay tuned [… and] you may have opened new interests and appetites people didn’t know they possessed. (Kustow 1987: 18)

For Susanne Greenhalgh, The Mysteries represents an especially successful engagement by television adapting a theatre show within the space for which it was created. The broadcast trilogy, she writes, ‘was perhaps the most complete expression, as regards performance, of Kustow’s concept of a television of culture and communities, which addressed its audience not as a mass but as viewers, capable of “complex seeing and feeling”’; it is, she continues, ‘a rich example of the possibilities for a dialectical television drama that does not use film as a primary mode’ (Greenhalgh 1998: 83). Not that such questions concerned Michael Grade, who succeeded Jeremy Isaacs as Channel 4’s chief executive in 1987. With a less lofty and more populist understanding of television, he swiftly brought to an end the channel’s broadcasts from theatres. Bryden extended the television strategies of The Mysteries in two large-​scale spectaculars for BBC2, adapting for the screen his promenade productions The Ship (1990) and The Big Picnic (1996). ‘[A]‌lthough these employ the strategies of multi-​camera continuous filming’, Greenhalgh recognised, ‘the balance between spectacle and the human situation shifted squarely in the direction of spectacle’ (1998: 84). Channel 4, meanwhile, went on to work with John McGrath on two large-​scale co-​ productions—​Border Warfare (1989) and John Brown’s Body (1990)—​but these had distinct lives as theatre shows at Glasgow’s Tramway and as television productions, although McGrath directed both. Olga Taxidou has written positively about these works as

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one of those rare moments in alternative culture, where theatre and television complement each other and promote the interests, the agonies, fears and identities of one localized group to the rest of the nation. The televising of Border Warfare and John Brown’s Body was a case of television functioning as an extended national theatre. (Taxidou 1998: 103)

More than a decade later, Jim Cartwright’s drama Road, first staged at the Royal Court, was also radically re-​imagined by director Alan Clarke for a 1987 television film. The main house Royal Court presentation, which shared several cast members with the film, involved re-​structuring the auditorium to facilitate a promenade production around several scaffold stages. For the location filming, Clarke worked extensively with a Steadicam, a new technology at the time, to achieve long tracking shots during which the characters directly address the viewer (see Paget 1998). Only very rarely in the decades since has the imperative to re-​imagine a theatre production fundamentally for the screen been similarly realised.

Endgame for staged productions on television In the 1980s and after—​while theatre still occasionally provided scripts to be adapted for television and while these might benefit modestly from an associated critical reputation—​television considered the stage production for a theatre play largely irrelevant. And this was all the more the case when, first, Channel 4 with Film on Four and, later, BBC2 with Screen Two began to make low-​budget feature films derived from stage plays, such as Marek Kanievska’s film of Julian Mitchell’s Another Country (1985) and Simon Gray’s Quartermaine’s Terms (1987), directed by Bill Hays. As John Bull has observed, ‘Early television drama presented its credentials in terms of its respectable proximity to the theatre … But by 1985, not only had television drama long since broken that connection but it was being watched by audiences for whom the very idea of the connection had no validity or substance’ (2000: 98). Yet, dotted around the schedules, occasional productions continued to celebrate their theatrical origin, as in Southern Television’s local series Theatre in Camera in 1980. Channel 4 broadcast five studio re-​stagings of ‘fringe’ productions in early 1991, including Gillian Plowman’s Me and My Friend, which had been seen the previous April at the Soho Poly theatre. But such initiatives were neither well resourced nor given an opportunity to build their audiences. One strand of work, however, that did continue with success to translate theatre productions to the screen was documentary dramas based around investigations. The Biko Inquest, noted above, was followed by Ronald Harwood’s The Deliberate Death of a Polish Priest (1986), based on a transcript of the trial of the

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murderers of Father Popiełuszko. Co-​produced by the production company Primetime, this premiered at the Almeida Theatre in October 1985 and became a Channel 4 drama the following year, with both versions directed by Kevin Billington. Productions of this kind, including Tricycle Theatre’s Justifying War: Scenes from the Hutton Inquiry (2004), are considered in this volume by Cyrielle Garson. In the 1990s, Performance, the last major BBC series of theatre plays (BBC2, 1991–​98) transferred to the screen a small number of theatre productions, including the Donmar staging of Company by Stephen Sondheim and George Furth, and Richard II from the National Theatre directed by Deborah Warner, with Fiona Shaw playing the king (see Ridgman 1998c). In the following decade, the new digital channel BBC4 went on air with a stated commitment to the arts and ideas, and in its early months, much as early Channel 4 had done, it looked to theatre broadcasts as a strand in its offer. Recordings made in London theatres included a revival of Peter Nichols’ A Day in the Death of Joe Egg (2002) and an unimaginative screen presentation of Michael Blakemore’s production with Kristin Scott Thomas of Chekhov’s The Three Sisters (2004). Several stagings were also transferred to the studio for BBC4, including the Donmar production of John Osborne’s Hotel in Amsterdam (2004) (see Smart 2015). Another transfer, this time from the National Theatre, was Elmina’s Kitchen (2004), written by Kwame Kwei-​Armah. Shot on location by director Angus Jackson in five days, this was a new play about a Hackney cafe-​owner trying to prevent his son from becoming involved in London’s gun culture. But such productions became ever more occasional, although the channel, seeking press attention as much as it was seeking audiences, mobilised digital technology to enhance a live outside broadcast from Shakespeare’s Globe, Richard II: Live from the Globe (2003). Mark Rylance’s all-​male company sought to achieve a form of sixteenth-​century authenticity, while the BBC’s ‘red button’ interactive service offered a subtitled commentary and alternative camera angles (Wells 2003).10 In the new century, the BBC’s ambitious translations from existing stage productions were mostly reserved for Shakespeare, with the RSC’s Hamlet (2009) with David Tennant and a Julius Caesar set in Africa (2012), both directed by the company’s artistic director, Gregory Doran. The BBC at times needed the cultural validation provided by the national playwright—​ or by a project like Mike Bartlett’s King Charles III (2017), written in blank verse, based on an Almeida staging and carrying echoes of the language and plotting of Shakespeare’s History plays. Passionate producers engaged by the vibrant theatrical scene in Britain could occasionally access limited funding from a minority channel, as was the case with a screen adaptation of debbie tucker green’s random, first seen at the Royal Court in 2008 with

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Nadine Marshall playing all the roles, and then on Channel 4 in 2011, directed by the author with additional actors (see Anon. 2011). Alongside its NT Live event cinema presentations, on which more below, the National Theatre was also able to co-​produce with BBC Television and others screen versions of certain stage productions, moving them beyond the theatre spaces in which they were originally presented: both My Country (2017), co-​written by Carol Ann Duffy and Rufus Norris, and directed by the latter, and Alexander Zeldin’s Love (2018) were funded in this way, while Norris’ adaptation from his stage production of Alecky Blythe’s musical London Road (2015) was financed as a feature film. Such complex and comparatively expensive projects were, however, rare in the 2010s, although as demand increased rapidly for quality drama for conventional channels and streaming services, the theatre also offered projects that could, with their authors, be developed into series that left behind their stage origin. Just as Peter Flannery’s 1982 stage play Our Friends in the North eventually became an acclaimed BBC2 film series with an entirely new cast in 1996 (see Eaton 2005), so Mike Bartlett’s office politics drama Bull, first staged in Sheffield in 2013, was the basis for the three-​part ITV drama Sticks and Stones (2019). Also in 2019, Channel 4 transformed Lucy Kirkwood’s stage play Chimerica into a lavish, location-​shot series, and in the following year ITV’s three-​part drama Quiz—​a version of James Graham’s 2018 play—​ attracted great acclaim. By the second decade of the twenty-​first century, the terms of the relationship between theatre and television had shifted. An early sign of the imminent change was a screen adaptation from Shakespeare’s Globe that followed the pair of BBC4 broadcasts. In 2007, Wilson Milam’s staging of Othello was recorded for the screen by Robert Marshall’s Heritage Theatre company with no broadcaster involvement. Heritage Theatre started in 1999 collaborating on screen versions of productions by the RSC, the National Theatre and others for release primarily on DVD. The shift to cultural organisations creating and publishing their own recordings, often working with partners like Heritage, was made possible by falling costs of technical production and the emergence of new distribution possibilities, including home video and satellite feeds to cinemas with digital projectors. In the summer of 2009, NT Live achieved its first cinema broadcast with Racine’s Phèdre. Within five years, NT Live had also presented stagings from the Donmar, Manchester International Festival and the West End, the company Digital Theatre was regularly capturing theatre productions for online distribution, Shakespeare’s Globe was showcasing recordings in cinemas and RSC Live from Stratford-​upon-​Avon had made its 2013 debut cinema presentation with Richard II (Aebischer and Greenhalgh 2018; Greenhalgh 2018). Moreover, in 2012 Shakespeare’s Globe live-​streamed

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thirty-​two international productions from the Globe to Globe season on the website of The Space, a digital funding and training agency set up with support from Arts Council England and the BBC to fund and disseminate performance recordings. After a drought of such presentations from broadcasters, this flood of theatre recordings was supplemented from the mid-​2010s by a modest BBC stream of such work, undoubtedly prompted in part by the extra-​broadcast activity. A multi-​camera recording of The Duchess of Malfi (2014), the first production in the Wanamaker Playhouse at Shakespeare’s Globe, was followed by a presentation of Ivo van Hove’s production of Antigone (2015) with Juliette Binoche from the Barbican Theatre, and Hamlet (2018) with Andrew Scott in an Almeida Theatre production directed by Robert Icke. Whereas the new space at Shakespeare’s Globe was the main attraction for the screening of Malfi, with the other productions it was the perceived star power of their leads that led to their broadcast. The Space was another response to the success of theatre as ‘event cinema’, and its monies contributed, at least in part, to a broadening of plays recorded in theatres, including screen adaptations of Breach Theatre’s It’s True, It’s True, It’s True: Artemesia on Trial (2019) and Mike Bartlett’s Albion (2020) from London’s Almeida, both seen on broadcast television, and Maya Arad Yasur’s play Amsterdam (2019) from Richmond’s Orange Tree theatre, which was shown online. On Stage: Live from Television Centre (2015), co-​produced with Arts Council England and Battersea Arts Centre (BAC), was an innovative live broadcast of four performances by Gecko, Richard DeDomenici, Commonwealth and Jess Thom—​all theatre-​ makers from outside of the mainstream. In turn, this prompted additional screen adaptations of dance and theatre, some co-​produced with BAC and others funded for television and other distribution channels by The Space, including in 2020 Gecko’s Institute. As far back as 1998, Jeremy Ridgman could still be positive about the potential for theatre shown on television. ‘As indigenous television drama moves increasingly towards serial structure’, he wrote, ‘and is absorbed into the schedules and formats, might it not be televised theatre that acts as a specific mode of heightened representation and which returns us to the experience of drama as event?’ (Ridgman 1998b: 4). Twenty years and more after this, the modest audiences achieved by television’s co-​ productions with The Space, and the muted critical response that they attracted, suggest that his optimism was misplaced. Indeed, in March 2020, the BBC elected not to continue funding collaborations, and the modest revival of broadcast screened plays appeared to reach a conclusion. Yet, as in every other aspect of life, the Covid-​19 lockdown contributed a further twist when BBC Television responded with its ‘Culture in Quarantine’ initiative which, in

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line with a proud restatement of the broadcaster’s public responsibilities to ‘inform, educate and entertain during unprecedented times’, included the commitment to offer ‘jewels from the archive, ensuring that brand new theatre and dance performances will join with modern classics to create a repertory theatre of broadcast’ (BBC Media Centre 2020; Claypole 2020). New recordings of theatre plays, including Albion, as well as acquired titles from the RSC, National Theatre and Shakespeare’s Globe, were now mobilised to engage broadcast and online audiences confined to their homes, and at the same time to demonstrate once more, at a moment when the Conservative government was threatening to change the basis of licence fee funding, the BBC’s utility as a national provider of culture and more. During the 2020 Christmas period, BBC4 broadcast an adaptation of a theatre production of Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya, which had had its stage run shut down by Covid-​19 in March, and in the spring of 2021, BBC Television and radio collaborated on a season of theatre productions made with companies across Britain. In this time of crisis, stage plays once again proved their value to the Corporation.

Stagings for the screen Having traced the history of television’s presentation of previously existing productions of theatre plays, this chapter now turns its attention to a parallel account of television’s own productions of texts originally written for the stage. In early February 1937, Margaretta Scott, feted for performances at Regent’s Park Open-​Air Theatre and the Old Vic, and recently contracted for films by Alexander Korda, stepped before the Alexandra Palace cameras to play a short scene from As You Like It. Television’s first Shakespeare was also one of the service’s first original productions of a stage play, albeit in this case just a short extract. Such adaptations quickly became more ambitious: George More O’Ferrall’s 1937 Armistice Day presentation of R. C. Sherriff’s trench drama Journey’s End was the first to run for an hour. Even so, this first of three television productions of the play to date retained a connection with a theatre staging, since Reginald Tate as Stanhope had taken the role in a recent revival at the Criterion Theatre. A month later, Eric Crozier’s presentation of Moss Hart and George Kaufman’s 1929 American comedy Once in a Lifetime was allocated a ninety-​minute slot. Such original broadcasts offered producers far greater creative freedom than re-​blocking existing stagings, but they were also welcomed by administrators as more cost-​effective, since actors were hired directly and not via theatre managers. Producers also began to develop production methods and a screen language specific to television, as well as a sense of the medium’s distinct

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identity. A report in BBC Handbook 1938 about broadcasts in the previous twelve months noted that ‘more careful study was given to the development of studio lighting, multicamera work, and general presentation; and, imperceptibly at first, there developed a new technique which owed more to TV than theatre or cinema’ (Anon. 1938). Jacobs notes that television style quickly moved beyond cameras simply reproducing views through an imagined proscenium: [the] dependence on theatrical material did not mean that the visual style was ‘theatrical’ … There was a structured, and entirely new process of mediation: the multi-​camera studio production which treated performance and narrative space in a manner both similar to other media (film, theatre, radio), and in a combination which was also very different: live, continuous, and ‘intimate’. (Jacobs 2000: 76)

The choice of dramas in the interwar and immediate post-​war years was eclectic and broad-​based with classics and contemporary thrillers and comedies alongside challenging works by authors including Yeats, Pirandello, the Čapek brothers and Eugene O’Neill. Pragmatism dictated some of the choices, such as the availability of out-​of-​copyright texts, but the positive associations of the stage were also important. As Lez Cooke has observed, ‘Television as a new but subordinate branch of public service broadcasting needed the prestige of the theatre to raise its cultural profile, to help establish itself as a legitimate part of a British Broadcasting Corporation which still had John Reith as its Director-​General and which still adhered to the “mission of middle-​class enlightenment”’ (Cooke 2003: 12–​13). With the increasing take-​up of television in the early 1950s, however, as an expanding economy facilitated a wider availability of sets and a growing audience, the range of plays narrowed, with the choice increasingly restricted to titles either thought to have wide appeal or to carry the cachet of recognisable classics. Production facilities at Alexandra Palace remained basic, although the move to more spacious studios at Lime Grove from 1950 permitted work on a larger scale. One highlight of the post-​war period was O’Neill’s Mourning Becomes Electra, broadcast in two ninety-​minute parts either side of the Easter holidays in 1947. After the first transmission, critic Marsland Gander wrote, ‘I don’t think I would be exaggerating if I said it was the highest point yet reached in television drama. It had all the virtues of an all-​star film plus the effect of the knowledge that the actors were performing at the time—​you had that feeling of immediacy. Personally, it was the finest and most dramatic television production I have ever seen’ (quoted by ‘The Scanner’ 1947). Although the recording of live television broadcasts was technically possible from 1947 onwards, contractual constraints initially restricted the use

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of the technology. The first complete British television play to survive is a translation of a theatre play written in French in 1950 by Gilbert Cesbron, ‘It is Midnight, Dr Schweitzer’ (see Wyver 2011e). This early production by Rudolph Cartier was broadcast from Lime Grove on 22 February 1953 and then played again (in a shortened version) as a live repeat four days later, as was the practice at the time. This second transmission was tele-​ recorded by filming the electronic picture from a screen. Even after this practice was established, and then following the introduction of videotape recording from 1958 onwards, many live programmes were not preserved and others were ‘wiped’ to save the cost of new blank tapes. As recording was introduced into the production process, the sense of the liveness, and arguably the associated aura of theatre, was progressively diminished, although until at least the mid-​1970s studio drama continued to be captured on videotape in extended segments. Caughie (1991: 38) has suggested that television ‘seemed to prefer to think of itself as ephemeral, preserving liveness as an aesthetic long after it existed as a technological constraint’. The values of much of the BBC’s output through the 1950s were those of the star-​led commercial productions associated with the London theatre’s dominant producer, H. M. Tennent. The major weekend strand through the 1950s, initially The Sunday Play and later Sunday Night Theatre—​ titles that echoed the older medium—​was initiated on New Year’s Day 1950 with a production of Stanley Houghton’s warhorse Hindle Wakes. Many broadcasts were of comparably familiar titles from the British repertoire, yet there were also dramas by European writers, including Jean Giraudoux, Ugo Betti and Jean Anouilh. Overall, however, the selection of productions from the BBC in the 1950s was unadventurous. Perhaps most notably, at least in hindsight, the socially conscious contemporary work associated with the English Stage Company at the Royal Court, following John Osborne’s 1956 Look Back in Anger, was rarely represented on BBC Television. As noted above, the Corporation broadcast a live excerpt from Osborne’s drama, but it was the ITV company Granada that presented the entire production, with the original cast and director Tony Richardson, from its new Manchester studios in November 1956. Neither historic broadcast was recorded. Arnold Wesker’s ground-​breaking trilogy of Chicken Soup with Barley, Roots and I’m Talking about Jerusalem, staged between 1958 and 1960, did not reach the screen until Charles Jarrott’s productions for the BBC in 1966. And the only BBC production of a theatre play by John Arden was of Serjeant Musgrave’s Dance, made for transmission only to schools in 1965 (see Wyver 2014).11 By the early 1960s, however, theatre plays had a very different place in television drama than that which they occupied a decade before, with one key catalyst of this change being the arrival of ITV in 1955.

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Introducing ITV’s theatre plays The commercial television network ITV began broadcasting with the London weekday franchise holder Associated-​Rediffusion on 22 September 1955. At the heart of the first night’s schedule, hammocked between a variety bill and a middleweight boxing contest, was a half-​hour of theatre, including an excerpt from Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest with Edith Evans and John Gielgud. Gielgud had played Jack Worthington, as he did here, in notable stagings in 1930 and in 1939, when he coaxed a legendary performance from Evans. Those stage productions were mounted by the producers H. M. Tennent, a partner in the ITV presentation with the independent company Towers of London. Both entities, which were aligned with a traditional star-​led West End theatre, would be important to the first years of ITV’s drama, as stage plays were initially central to the network. The first single drama strand Theatre Royal began with Bardell vs Pickwick, a dramatisation of the trial in Charles Dickens’ The Pickwick Papers, which had been a staple of the stage at least since John Hollingshead played it at the Gaiety Theatre in 1871. Although the programme was a made-​for-​television film, the star was one of the pillars of the mid-​century stage, actor-​ manager Donald Wolfit. ITV’s early commitment to theatre plays was a necessity because writers were only just beginning to be commissioned to write original scripts for television. Theatre plays were also central to the plans of the ITV companies because of their commercial partnerships with established enterprises. ATV, holder of the London contract for weekend broadcasting, had as investors the Moss Empires group of theatres, the Grade Organisation talent agency and Howard and Wyndham Ltd, which held a controlling interest in H. M. Tennent. In the first years of ITV, H. M. Tennent extended their stage operation into television drama, replicating their strategy of high-​profile commercial productions. Such prestige presentations were also important in fulfilling the expectations of the regulatory body, the Independent Television Authority. In 1960, ATV could proudly inform the Pilkington Committee that, in addition to making more than fifty plays written for the medium each year, ‘25 sixty-​and ninety-​minute plays are arranged by H. M. Tennent Globe Theatre productions for television production by ATV’ (Associated Television Limited 1962: 652) Yet by the time the Pilkington Committee reported in June 1962, and as ATV’s accounting of its original commissions suggested, a new framework had emerged in which stage plays and the values associated with the theatre were being displaced from their centrality to television drama. Among the new commercial companies, both ATV and Granada quickly established themselves as centres of production to rival the BBC. Under its

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Canadian head of drama, Silvio Narizzano, Manchester-​ based Granada presented the British television premieres of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, All My Sons (both 1958) and The Crucible (1959), and a series of northern plays commissioned early in the century for Annie Horniman’s Gaiety Theatre. Yet the ITV companies also took inspiration from the success in the United States and Canada of original drama scripted for the medium that directly engaged with contemporary life, exemplified by Paddy Chayefsky’s drama of a love-​struck Bronx butcher, Marty (1953). One of the earliest such productions in Britain was Associated-​Rediffusion’s broadcast of Ted Willis’ Woman in a Dressing Gown (1956), but the major shift in ITV’s television drama away from theatre adaptations began with Sydney Newman’s first ABC Television productions for Armchair Theatre from autumn 1958.12 Promising that the new strand would feature ‘no costume dramas, no classical plays, nothing of a contemplative nature’, Newman began to commission original scripts from younger playwrights such as Alan Plater and Alun Owen (Newman quoted in Bird 1958): he was, like Narizzano, a Canadian producer who was influenced by the contemporary relevance and urgency of Osborne’s Look Back in Anger. In an influential analysis of an early Armchair Theatre original, Lena, O My Lena (1960), Caughie (2000: 77) has also argued that Armchair Theatre directors, in this case Ted Kotcheff, began to break with the frontal presentation of scenes, typical of a ‘theatrical’ viewpoint, and to employ mobile studio cameras to explore a ‘cinematic space’ on screen. In Smart’s lucid summary, Caughie sees this new performative space as being a specifically televisual entity, a space distinct from the mannered theatricality of the previous static and wordy television drama, but also a space that allows a new, heightened, sense of performance, different from the comparative realism and causal narrative of the cinema. (2010: 58)

Yet Smart also cautions that the ‘theatricality’ that is apparently being challenged in Lena, O My Lena is only the specific form associated with traditional proscenium arch staging and the acting styles of the commercial theatre of the time. For all that the ITV companies increasingly commissioned original scripts, they continued with a regular output of shortened and adapted theatre plays from their studios. In 1960, for example, while Armchair Theatre was presenting original work by Alun Owen, Clive Exton and Harold Pinter, ITV’s Play of the Week included Lorca’s The House of Bernarda Alba, O’Neill’s Beyond the Horizon and Loyalties by John Galsworthy. Indeed, the dependence on stage dramas is indicated by the remarkable scheduling clash highlighted by the evidence offered to the Pilkington Committee by the Society of Film & Television Arts (1962): ‘Two plays by Eugene O’Neill put on

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one night in 1959 [sic: it was, in fact, 1958] provided a fine illustration of programmes being competitive instead of alternative. Those who wanted O’Neill could not see the whole of both, and for twenty minutes those who didn’t couldn’t see anything else’.13 Starting in 1957, the BBC began to marshal stage plays, or at least those that were acknowledged classics, into distinct series. High profile and well resourced, Television World Theatre (1957–​59) was the BBC’s first series of individual dramas to adopt an exclusive focus on stage dramas. Moreover, the initial choice of twenty-​two plays was determinedly international and intellectual, including Shakespeare’s The Life of King Henry V and Ibsen’s The Master Builder (just six weeks after ATV had broadcast an adaptation) as well as Christopher Fry’s The Dark is Light Enough and H. C. Branner’s The Judge. A number of the productions (not all of which have survived) offered opportunities for innovative directorial approaches to studio presentation. Peter Dews’ production of Henry V, for example, begins with Chorus addressing the camera before the shot roams around the playing space without a cut for more than ten minutes. For O’Neill’s Strange Interlude, produced across two consecutive Sundays, producer John Jacobs elaborated voiceovers for the thoughts of the characters that on stage are presented as asides. And for Women of Troy by Euripides, director Michael Elliott introduced a contextual framework of newsreel footage of atomic explosions before presenting the beleaguered figures as contemporary refugees (see Wrigley 2011b). Critical response applauded these explorations of the possibilities of studio drama, and in institutional publicity the BBC trumpeted the success of the project, even though many viewers were dismayed by the preponderance of tragedies and plays described as ‘morbid’. A second, less ambitious run with a somewhat lower profile in the following season took the title World Theatre (1959) and included studio presentations of acclaimed productions of Ibsen’s Brand and Georg Büchner’s Danton’s Death by Casper Wrede and Michael Elliott’s 59 Company, both of which had originated on stage at the Lyric, Hammersmith. Also featured were presentations of Jonson’s Volpone with Donald Wolfit and Flora Robson in Bertolt Brecht’s Mother Courage, but British television was never again to demonstrate a similar commitment to a bold, international repertory. Festival (1963–​64), under series producer Peter Luke, trumpeted its high-​ brow aspirations, claiming the kind of relevance that was by now associated with original commissions for television. As Luke wrote in a press release: Festival will be a programme of drama for people ‘in the know’. It will be for people who are curious and interested in the arts, in our cultural evolution … No play, however, will be chosen unless it has a particular meaning for us today. (Luke quoted in Smart 2010: 94)

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Along with the aspiration to social relevance, the series also attempted to demonstrate how the television studio could be put to innovative use for the production of major plays written for the stage. Perhaps most striking was Charles Jarrott’s production of Brecht’s The Life of Galileo, which interpreted the ideas of its author to foreground the production processes of television, with technology self-​reflexively in shot throughout and an opening revealing the working of the control gallery. As Smart (2014) has written, this fulfilled Brecht’s wish for broadcasting that affected the listener (or viewer) through presenting both imaginative insights into the life and scientific investigation of Galileo and a wider, more educative, insight into the running of institutions, culminating with the directorial imposition of footage of nuclear missiles at the end of the play. The production achieved this effect by adopting its form as much from factual and informative forms of television as from exclusively dramatic ones.

In retrospect, Festival can be seen as a high-​water mark for television’s presentation of stage plays, and it was complemented in the early years of the 1960s by two ambitious serial presentations of Shakespeare’s dramas. In fifteen live broadcasts, shown at fortnightly intervals, An Age of Kings (1960) was a much-​lauded cycle of the eight History plays, presented in their historical order, from Richard II to Richard III, while the subsequent The Spread of the Eagle (1963) was generally recognised as a less successful attempt to mount the Roman plays in a similar fashion. Television, nonetheless, had demonstrated that it had both the confidence and the capacity to present the medium’s own productions of the classics that were at least the equal of those being created by the RSC and other companies and, in terms of reaching audiences, significantly more successful.

The contemporary stage In 1960, BBC Television drama was criticised as ‘living in the theatrical past’ and ‘out of touch with the present-​day idiom of TV thought’, with the more urgent and contemporary plays being produced by ITV (Anon. 1960). Contemporary dramatists did increasingly make their impact within the BBC’s programming through the commissioning of original scripts and, under head of television drama Michael Barry, the Corporation broadcast a growing number of these. Comparatively few, however, were seen to deal with the textures of everyday life and pressing social issues. This was a situation that Sydney Newman, who came across from ITV to replace Barry in January 1963, was determined to change—​notably with the new strand The Wednesday Play (1964–​70). Newman’s priorities for television drama were

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relevance and immediacy, but he was not entirely opposed to scripts from the theatre: The Wednesday Play included distinctive adaptations of stage plays, including Philip Saville’s production of Sartre’s In Camera (1964) and a version of Georg Büchner’s Woyzeck, adapted by Robert Muller as Death of a Private (1967). Many of the younger producers and directors who Newman encouraged to embrace original work were similarly resistant to established ideas of the theatre. Writer and director John McGrath—​one of the young, iconoclastic originators of Z Cars—​later wrote of BBC drama in the late 1950s and early 1960s that: most of its mores and most of its values came directly from the West End, and most of its drama as well. I remember in the 1950s watching three extremely cumbersome cameras, one on either side and one in the middle, shooting down the aisle, in a West End theatre, to make ‘television drama’. If that wasn’t being done, then plays which looked and sounded like West End plays were being put on studio floats in huge box sets which, to all intents and purposes, were proscenium arches. (McGrath 2000: 48)

One much-​debated expression of such views can be found in the article ‘Nats go home’, a celebrated 1964 attack by the screenwriter Troy Kennedy Martin on the ‘nat’ (that is, naturalistic) television drama of the moment. This is a complex and at times contradictory text but its target is clear. Contemporary television drama was, in his conception, a makeshift bastard born of the theatre and photographed with film techniques … Since naturalism evolved from a theatre of dialogue, the director is forced into photographing faces talking and faces reacting … This enslavement of the visual element is too binding. (Kennedy Martin 1964: 24)

Such views—​which were widespread in television from the 1960s onwards and which to a degree retain potency today—​conceive of ‘theatrical’ television as backward-​looking, ‘stagey’, privileging the word over the image and contradicting, so it is implied, the imperative of the primarily visual medium of television. Television drawn from stage plays was thought to be almost inevitably blighted with such problems and, in part as a consequence, of decreasing interest to significant numbers of viewers. Contributing to the entrenchment of these positions was the emergence of production strategies, initially associated with producer Tony Garnett and director Ken Loach, that rejected the television studio as the prime space for the production of drama. In their innovative broadcasts, including Up the Junction (1965) and Cathy Come Home (1966), Garnett, Loach and their colleagues sought to work with film on location in real-​world settings. The television studio, its ways of working and dominant aesthetic was passed over because of the perceived inevitability of unwelcome theatricality. Indeed, in a 1967 interview,

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Sydney Newman celebrated the individual dramas of The Wednesday Play as ‘anti-​theatre’ (quoted in ‘PHS’ 1967). Yet, as Stephen Lacey has observed, ‘Whilst this undoubtedly produced gains for television drama, especially in its realist forms, it also cut studio drama off from potentially interesting and innovatory attitudes towards space and the depiction of place that were being developed within British theatre at the time’ (Lacey 2006: 6). The director Don Taylor was one of the few who resisted the changes, as he recalled in his autobiography: To put it brutally, I was deeply offended that the premier position in television drama, at a time when it really was the National Theatre of the Air, had been given to a man [Newman] whose values were entirely commercial, and who had no more than a layman’s knowledge of the English theatre tradition. (Taylor 1990: 187)

Nonetheless, Taylor continued until 1990 to work successfully within the BBC, frequently collaborating with the playwright David Mercer and making arts features for Omnibus. His development of the grammar of the television studio to extend the screen presentation of that theatre tradition embraced a distinctive adaptation of The Winter’s Tale (1962) and, over a decade and a half later, productions for Play of the Month of, among other dramas, Granville-​Barker’s Waste (1977), Arthur Miller’s The Crucible (1981) and Sheridan’s The Critic (1982). In 1986, he directed for television Sophocles’ Theban Plays trilogy, making the argument in Radio Times that it was more urgent to bring Greek drama alive on television than on the stage. Theatre audiences, Taylor stated, were composed of ‘bourgeois intellectuals, students and tourists’, whereas television was ‘the whole nation’s medium’ (quoted in Crace 1986; for the trilogy, see Fotheringham 2018 and Wrigley 2012b). Through the Newman years and beyond, the theatre play retained its place on television, in large part because producers and executives shared Taylor’s belief in the centrality of culture to the medium’s public-​service imperatives. One detailed account has estimated that, between 1957 and 1985, the BBC produced over 500 programmes adapted from stage plays (Smart 2010: 17). But in the aftermath of the 1962 Pilkington Report on Broadcasting—​which praised much of the BBC’s output, castigated ITV’s programming and awarded a third channel to the Corporation—​the new cultural service BBC2, which went on air on 20 April 1964, was seen as the appropriate home for such adaptations. Theatre 625 (1964–​68) presented twenty-​five productions of stage works, including dramas by Camus, Goethe and Strindberg (and see Wrigley and Smart’s Chapter 5 for discussion of its 1967 Pinter season), but the new channel had little room for modern middlebrow theatre. Instead, in relation to theatre plays, classical

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dramas could still find a home, along with a small number of experimental, challenging productions. On BBC1, after two initial seasons showcasing a range of classic and new drama, in 1967 Play of the Month was newly dedicated to what BBC1 controller Michael Peacock described as ‘plays written for the theatre and which have been recognised as classics—​as part of our cultural heritage. This would mean Shakespeare, Chekhov, Shaw, Ibsen, etc., and also Miller, Anouilh, Osborne, etc.’14 Peacock recognised the need to distinguish the series from the now celebrated The Wednesday Play but, even so, head of plays Gerald Savory expressed concern about the taint of theatricality. In December 1966, Savory noted that ‘The plays themselves will be properly adapted for TV and sufficiently extended in setting to remove any feeling of staginess about the production’.15 The series was entrusted to producer Cedric Messina, about whom Billy Smart writes in this volume that, ‘Messina was responsible for the majority of theatrical adaptations produced by the BBC for twenty years, meaning that his approach to theatrical adaptation is what most of the television-​watching public instinctively recollect as the general standard of how such plays were realised on television during this period’ (p. 188). Messina’s Play of the Month offerings were strongly cast with leading actors happy to work for a short period of time on a classic play. Most of the productions were made in television studios in elaborately decorative ‘theatrical’ sets. Nor was Messina concerned with originality of interpretation or a distinctive visual style; rather, he prioritised clarity in story-​telling and what he defined as ‘straightforward drama’ (Andrews 1979: 134). While the BBC’s continued support for the strand was dutiful, the Corporation also regarded it as a key element of the Corporation’s overall offering, as managing director of BBC Television Huw Weldon said: ‘We feel that, like the theatre at large, we should be wanting if we did not ceaselessly recreate the classics—​Shakespeare, Sheridan, Shaw and so on’ (quoted in Dunkley 1975). Head of drama Shaun Sutton (1982: 28–​9) expressed a similar view: No television drama schedule is complete without some theatre plays … Many theatrical plays transfer naturally to the small screen. They can be edited, cut down a little (for television audiences are impatient) and actually gain by being scenically spread. The very advantage of the medium, its intimacy and closeness, its ability to underline the great performances with its cameras, can discover new qualities in the old masterpieces.

The dominant Play of the Month ethos underpinned The BBC Television Shakespeare series (BBC1, 1978–​85), transferred to the new project by the producer of its first two seasons, Cedric Messina. But there was sufficient flexibility for both Play of the Month and the BBC’s Shakespeare project to

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permit creative directors including Jane Howell, Alan Clarke and Jonathan Miller to bring to the screen innovative approaches to theatre plays. Moreover, from 1977, after Messina’s departure from Play of the Month, producer David Jones, formerly with the RSC, extended and deepened this tradition. Under Jones, the series included the recent stage plays Flint by David Mercer and The Sea by Edward Bond (both 1978), as well as an innovative production of Georg Buchner’s Danton’s Death. For this, director Alan Clarke was able to use studio cameras to suggest the visual style of late eighteenth-​century French painting. Play of the Month was retired as a strand identity in 1979, although producer Louis Marks continued to bring classic adaptations to the screen, some under the Festival banner (1980) and then with individual productions in 1982–​83. But, apart from a revival of this impetus in the mid-​1990s with Performance (1991–​98) under producer Simon Curtis (who had previously worked at the Royal Court), the BBC’s commitment to classic plays dwindled and, in the first decade of the new century, all but disappeared. The story was similar on ITV, although the commercial companies mounted occasional significant theatrical adaptations, including in Granada’s Laurence Olivier Presents … series (1976–​78). The strategy of the ITV companies, however, was increasingly to offer occasional prestige offerings designed to impress critics and help secure franchise extensions from the Independent Television Authority (later the Independent Broadcasting Authority). After the franchise renewal round of 1980–​82, there was no longer the same necessity to demonstrate cultural credentials. By the mid-​1980s, stage plays appeared only occasionally on any of terrestrial channels. In his pioneering analysis, Neil Taylor (1998) identified 2,586 broadcasts of complete theatre plays on BBC Television channels from 1936 onwards. In most years up to 1950, he found that the average number was over 100. By 1963, this number was reduced to forty-​ five, although the tally increased with the advent of BBC2 before declining again. By 1994, the total number was down to just four. Indeed, in the three years of 1992, 1993 and 1994, there were no broadcasts of stage plays on either BBC1 or ITV, only seventeen on BBC2 across all three years and only two on Channel 4. Taylor acknowledged the seemingly inevitable dominance of Shakespeare, although it is perhaps surprising that Shaw—​ whose work, including many single-​act plays, had been frequently adapted before and just after the war—​was found to be the second most-​produced playwright. In the early years, the elaborately verbal focus of Shaw’s writing was perhaps especially suited to a medium still strongly influenced by radio and restricted by small, low-​resolution domestic screens. Taylor noted the almost complete absence of major post-​war figures, including Brecht and Wesker, and argued that the BBC’s ‘target audience has been perceived as bourgeois and middle-​brow, with tastes which preclude anything very

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intellectual, anything sexually, morally or politically risky, anything from the fringe’ (Taylor 1998: 35). When Channel 4 began transmissions on 2 November 1982, chief executive Jeremy Isaacs committed the service to showcasing performance, including major theatre productions re-​made for the television screen. But, as already discussed, these were mostly versions of proven stage successes, and in any case the channel’s engagement with the form fell away once Michael Grade replaced Isaacs in 1987. Almost perversely, however, Channel 4 was a key partner in the ambitious Beckett on Film project completed in 2002. Produced by Blue Angel Films with backing from Irish broadcaster RTÉ and the Irish Film Board, this created screen adaptations of nineteen of the playwright’s stage plays. Among the directors were Atom Egoyan, Patricia Rozema, Neil Jordan and Karel Reisz, all of whom were recognised for acclaimed feature films, and in keeping with the initiative’s hybrid of cinema and television funding and exhibition, ten of the films were first screened at the 2000 Toronto International Film Festival. Television might now, on a very few occasions, participate in such large-​scale projects for screened plays, but the medium was no longer the driving force in their creation. In the first decade of the twenty-​first century, and despite the arrival of new digital channels from the BBC in 2002 and from other suppliers, British television could find no place for a regular strand of original productions of theatre plays. Shakespeare retained his allure, although for a decade even his work was seen only in modernised versions, for example in ITV’s updating of Othello (2001) scripted by Andrew Davies, and in four contemporary re-​imaginings in the BBC’s ShakespeaRe-Told quartet (2005). Prompted first by the Cultural Olympiad in 2012, there was an original History plays cycle, The Hollow Crown. Films of four plays were mounted by producer Sam Mendes as a sumptuous BBC /​Universal TV co-​production, with a further three dramas following under the same title in 2016 as part of the Corporation’s contribution to events marking the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death. Otherwise, original productions of the classical repertoire remained unseen on the small screen. In 2013, I reflected that there had been no full-​length production of Chekhov on television for a decade, and this remained unchanged until Uncle Vanya in 2020. No Ibsen since 1993, no Shaw since 1991, ‘despite a flowering of often ferociously intelligent and gripping productions of the classics on stage from Katie Mitchell, Lucy Bailey, Benedict Andrews and many other directors’—​to which list can now be added the stage directors Robert Icke, Polly Findlay, Blanche Macintyre and indeed more. I continued: As for the luminaries of British theatre writing today, like Mark Ravenhill and Simon Stephens and Tanika Gupta and Richard Bean and Martin Crimp and Lucy Prebble … … That double ellipsis is me scratching my head and trying

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to recall any television version of a stage play by any of these or their distinguished peers. And that’s not to mention the performance work being done with all kinds of different texts (and sometimes none) by Kneehigh, Punchdrunk, Improbable, National Theatre Wales, Cheek by Jowl, Complicité, Propeller … … (more head scratching). (Wyver 2013)

Part of the reason then, as now, was the belief amongst television executives that theatre plays operated with different rules of pacing, exposition and structure from television drama and consequently did not ‘work’ on screen. At a BFI Southbank event in September 2009, for example, BBC Television’s head of drama Ben Stephenson dismissed the idea of producing such work for his medium. Great plays, he suggested, belonged in the theatre and were probably not for television: ‘I just worry’, he said, ‘that they are not going to be that stimulating on screen’ (reported in Wyver 2009). Yet elements of contemporary theatre work that engaged with social and political issues of the day did sometimes make it to the television screen. Sally Shaw’s chapter in this volume notes the social and aesthetic impact of BBC and Channel 4 television adaptations of plays by writers at the forefront of Black theatre in Britain, including Roy Williams, Kwame Kwei-​Armah and debbie tucker green; in addition, the amplification of the voices of the politics embedded in the verbatim theatre movement in these years is explored by Cyrielle Garson, who focuses especially on work which engaged with controversies surrounding the Iraq War. Also, as recognised at the start of this chapter, in the 2010s the markets for original television drama expanded rapidly, with the aggressive commissioning of projects from services including HBO, Sky, Netflix and Amazon as well as the traditional broadcasters. In this bull market for screen drama, a handful of plays originally staged in British theatres became the basis for multi-​episode series. Among these was Phoebe Waller-​Bridge’s Fleabag, first seen as a monologue on stage in Edinburgh in 2013, then adapted with extraordinary success for BBC Television in two series (2016, 2018), before being briefly revived on stage in 2019 and screened in cinemas internationally by NT Live. Also derived in part from a stage play was the Netflix epic The Crown (2017–​), developed by playwright Peter Morgan from his 2013 theatrical hit The Audience. All of this recent work has demonstrated how a tradition of stage plays and performances on broadcast television that began ninety years ago with John Logie Baird’s experimental transmission of Pirandello’s The Man with the Flower in His Mouth has blossomed in myriad ways. Across those decades, television drew on existing productions of stage plays initially to secure access to work and talent that its own resources could not reproduce. As the new medium developed, it appropriated the cultural capital of theatre and in doing so fulfilled its public service responsibilities by becoming, for a time, a ‘national theatre of the air’. Television’s championing of Shakespeare and its

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presentation of his works (and the national companies that specialised in his plays) on notable anniversaries, alongside other transmissions like the Brian Rix farces on bank holidays (see Wyver 2011a and 2011b) and mystery plays around Easter (see Wrigley 2015b), contributed to a binding of the nation through broadcasting. The theatre has participated in what has been (until recently, at least) an unequal relationship—​to derive revenue, to benefit from marketing, to broaden access to its productions and to secure the kinds of high-​quality recordings of its shows that, until the last two decades, it was unable to create itself. And all of these multiple interactions of television and theatre have left numerous traces which form an immensely rich and largely untapped collection of recordings and related knowledge. With DVD releases of many of the ITV dramas, with increasingly educational availability via initiatives like Learning on Screen’s Box of Broadcasts and with more repeats on BBC4 and elsewhere of archive dramas, these traces are becoming increasingly available for researchers and the next generation of creative artists to work with, and there are many indications that new ways of bringing together the stage and screens can flourish in original forms going forwards.

Productions discussed Abigail’s Party by Mike Leigh (Play for Today). Dir. Mike Leigh. BBC1. 9.25–​11.05pm, Tuesday 1 November 1977. Antony and Cleopatra by William Shakespeare. Dir. Jon Scoffield. Royal Shakespeare Company /​ATV for ITV. 9.40pm–​ 00.40am, Sunday 28 July 1974. As You Like It by William Shakespeare [excerpt]. Prod. Robert Atkins. BBC Television. 3.45–​4.00pm, Friday 5 February 1937. As You Like It by William Shakespeare. Prod. Ronald Eyre. BBC Television. 8.20–​9.20pm and 9.30–​10.45pm, Friday 22 March 1963. Bardell vs Pickwick by Desmond Davis and George F. Kerr (Theatre Royal). Dir. Desmond Davis. Towers of London Productions /​ITP for ITV. 9.00–​9.30pm, Sunday 25 September 1955. The Biko Inquest by Jon Blair, Norman Fenton and Joshua Sinclair. Dir. Graham Evans and Albert Finney. United British Artists for Channel 4. 9.30–​11.25pm, Thursday 1 November 1984. Brassneck by Howard Brenton and David Hare (Play for Today). Dir. Mike Newell. BBC1. 9.35–​10.55pm, Thursday 22 May 1975. The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov. Dir. Michael Elliott. Royal Shakespeare Company /​BBC Television. 9.25–​ 11.30pm, Friday 13 April 1962. The Cheviot, the Stag and the Black, Black Oil by John McGrath (Play for Today). Dir. John Mackenzie. 7:84 Company /​BBC1. 9.25–​10.55pm, Thursday 6 June 1974.

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Danton’s Death by Georg Büchner (Play of the Month). Dir. Alan Clarke. BBC1. 8.05–​9.40pm, Sunday 23 April 1978. Destiny by David Edgar (Play for Today). Dir. Mike Newell. BBC1. 9.25–​11.10pm, Tuesday 31 January 1978. The Duchess of Malfi by John Webster. Dir. Ian Russell. Shakespeare’s Globe /​BBC4. 8.00–​10.30pm, Sunday 25 May 2014. Electra by Sophocles. Dir. Joan Kemp-​Welch. Associated-​Rediffusion for ITV. 9.45–​10.45pm, Wednesday 28 November 1962. Elmina’s Kitchen by Kwame Kwei-​Armah. Dir. Angus Jackson. National Theatre /​BBC4. 22.30pm–​00.00am, Tuesday 21 October 2008. The Hollow Crown by William Shakespeare. Dir. Rupert Goold, Richard Eyre, Thea Sharrock. Neal Street Productions /​NBC Universal for BBC2. 9.00–​11.20pm, Saturday 30 June (Richard II); 10.00–​11.55pm, Saturday 7 July (Henry IV Part 1); 8.00–​10.00pm, Saturday 14 July (Henry IV Part 2); 8.00–​10.15pm, Saturday 21 July 2012 (Henry V). The Hollow Crown: The Wars of the Roses by William Shakespeare. Dir. Dominic Cooke. Neal Street Productions /​NBC Universal for BBC2. 9.00–​ 10.50pm, Saturday 7 May (Henry VI Part 1); 9.00–​11.05pm, Saturday 14 May (Henry VI Part 2); 9.00–​11.10pm, Saturday 21 May 2012 (Richard III). Journey’s End by R. C. Sherriff. Prod. George More O’Ferrall. BBC Television. 9.00–​10.00pm, Thursday 11 November 1937. King Charles III by Mike Bartlett. Dir. Rupert Goold, Drama Republic for BBC2. 21.00–​22.30pm, Wednesday 10 May 2017. Lena, O My Lena by Alun Owen (Armchair Theatre). Dir. Ted Kotcheff. ABC Television for ITV. 9.05–​10.05pm, Sunday 25 September 1960. The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby by David Edgar. Dir. Jim Goddard. Royal Shakespeare Company /​Primetime Television /​RM Associates for Channel 4. 7.00–​ 9.00pm, Sunday 7 November; 7.00–​ 9.00pm, Sunday 14 November; 7.00–​9.00pm, Sunday 21 November; and 7.00–​10.00pm, 28 November 1982. The Life of Galileo by Bertolt Brecht (Festival). Dir. Charles Jarrott. BBC1. 9.25–​10.35pm and 10.45–​11.30pm, Wednesday 29 April 1964. The Life of King Henry V by William Shakespeare (Television World Theatre). Prod. Peter Dews. BBC Television. 8.30–​ 10.30pm, Sunday 29 December 1957. Look Back in Anger by John Osborne (Play of the Week). Dir. Tony Richardson. Granada for ITV. 8.00–​ 9.30pm, Wednesday 28 November 1956. Marigold by L. Allen Harker and F. R. Pryor [excerpts] (From the London Theatre). Television presentation: George More O’Ferrall. BBC Television. 3.35–​4.00pm, Friday 6 November 1936. The Merry Wives of Windsor by William Shakespeare [part 2]. Television presentation: Stephen Harrison and Barrie Edgar. Shakespeare Memorial Theatre Company /​BBC Television. 9.00–​10.00pm, Sunday 2 October 1955.

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Mourning Becomes Electra by Eugene O’Neill. Prod. Royston Morley. BBC Television. 8.30–​10.00pm, Sunday 30 March 1947, and 8.30–​10.00pm, Thursday 10 April 1947. Murder in the Cathedral by T. S. Eliot [excerpts] (Theatre Parade). Television presentation: George More O’Ferrall. BBC Television. 3.30–​ 4.00pm, Monday 7 December 1936. On Stage: Live from Television Centre by multiple dramatists and devisers. Dir. Jonathan Haswell. Battersea Arts Centre /​Arts Council England for BBC4. 9.00–​11.00pm, Sunday 15 November 2015. The Oresteia trilogy by Aeschylus. Dir. Peter Hall. National Theatre /​ Channel 4. 7.15–​8.55pm (Agamemnon), 9.05–​10.15pm (Grave Gifts) and 10.30–​11.45pm (Furies), Sunday 9 October 1983. Quiz by James Graham. Dir. Stephen Frears. Left Bank Pictures for ITV. 9.00–​10.00pm, Monday 13 April, 9.00–​10.00pm, Tuesday 14 April and 9.00–​10.00pm, Wednesday 15 April 2020. Reluctant Heroes by Colin Morris [Act 1] (Brian Rix Presents). Television presentation: Michael Henderson. BBC Television, 9.20–​ 10.05pm, Wednesday 14 May 1952. Richard II: Live from the Globe by William Shakespeare. Dir. Tim Carroll. Shakespeare’s Globe /​BBC4. 7.00–​10.30pm, Sunday 7 September 2003. Road by Jim Cartwright (ScreenPlay). Dir. Alan Clarke. BBC2. 9.25–​10.30pm, Wednesday 7 October 1987. Strange Interlude by Eugene O’Neill (Television World Theatre). Prod. John Jacobs. BBC Television. 8.30–​10.00pm, Sunday 23 March, and 8.30–​10.00pm, Sunday 30 March 1958. The Wars of the Roses by John Barton, Peter Hall and William Shakespeare. Dir. Michael Hayes, Robin Midgley. Royal Shakespeare Company /​ BBC1. 8.00–​9.25pm and 9.35–​10.55pm, Thursday 8 April (Henry VI); 8.00–​9.30pm and 9.40–​11.05pm, Thursday 15 April (Edward IV); 8.00–​ 9.20pm, Thursday 22 April 1965 (Richard III). Woman in a Dressing Gown by Ted Willis (ITV Television Playhouse). Dir. Peter Cotes. Associated-​ Rediffusion for ITV. 8.00–​ 9.00pm, Thursday 28 June 1956. Women of Troy by Euripides. Prod. Casper Wrede and Kenneth Cavander. BBC Television. 9.30–​10.50pm, Sunday 12 January 1958.

Notes 1 On silent Shakespeare films, see Buchanan (2009). 2 Richard Hughes’ one-​act A Comedy of Danger, broadcast by BBC 2LO on 15 January 1924, is generally considered to be the first original drama written especially for the medium in Britain.

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3 The General Electric Company’s test station WGY, Schenectady, in the United States, had broadcast what is generally regarded as the world’s first television play, J. Hartley Manners’ The Queen’s Messenger, on 11 September 1928. On 15 December 1928, Baird had made an experimental broadcast, with separated vision and audio, of scenes from an amateur staging of John Maddison Morton’s 1847 farce Box and Cox (discussed by Cooke 2003: 252 n. 8). 4 Original television dramas in the interwar years included J. Bissell Thomas’ ten-​minute The Underground Murder Mystery (1937) and R. E. J. Brooke’s Condemned to Be Shot (1939), an innovative presentation with a camera replicating the point-​of-​view of a man facing a firing squad. 5 One of the rare records of pre-​war television is of parts of this Lupino Lane spectacular as broadcast, preserved on film for the BBC’s post-​war documentary Television Is Here Again (1946). 6 BBC WAC, T14/​593/​2, ‘Camera report’ by C. Logan, 9 April 1948. 7 BBC WAC, VR/​52/​205, ‘Viewer Research Report’, 4 June 1952. See also Wyver (2011a). 8 Prior to this, the National Theatre worked briefly with the company British Home Entertainment to film productions for exclusive showing on pay-​per-​view television, although the only concrete result from this was a screen version of Othello (1965), directed by and starring Laurence Olivier. 9 Announced backers of United British Artists included Maggie Smith, John Hurt, Diana Rigg, Richard Johnson, Glenda Jackson and Albert Finney. 10 A second broadcast, Measure for Measure: Live from the Globe, with a subtitled commentary, followed in 2004. 11 Wyver’s article also discusses Granada’s fine Play of the Week production of the play in 1961. On BBC and ITV drama productions for schools, see Wrigley (2018); on Open University /​BBC co-​productions of drama, see Wrigley (2017b). 12 Armchair Theatre was an ABC Television /​Thames anthology series for ITV, 1956–​74. 13 On 30 March 1958, Armchair Theatre presented The Emperor Jones, produced by Ted Kotcheff, and the second part of John Jacobs’ production of Strange Interlude was shown in Television World Theatre. 1, 794/​ 1, Michael Peacock’s memo to Gerald Savory, 14 BBC WAC, T5/​ 23 November 1966. 1, 794/​ 1, Gerald Savory’s memo to Michael Peacock, 15 BBC WAC, T5/​ 7 December 1966.

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McGrath, J. (2000), ‘TV drama: then and now’, in Bignell, Lacey and Macmurraugh-​ Kavanagh (eds), British Television Drama: Past, Present and Future, pp. 52–​7. Madden, J. (2007, ed.), Starlight Days: The Memoirs of Cecil Madden (London: Trevor Square Publications). Matheson, H. (1933), Broadcasting (London: Butterworth). May, T. (2017), ‘“An ideology red, white and blue in tooth and claw”: David Edgar’s Destiny (1978)—​Part 1 of 3’, British Television Drama, 31 May 2017, online at www.britishtelevisiondrama.org.uk/​?p=​7040 (accessed 19 February 2020). Nead, L. (2017), The Tiger in the Smoke: Art and Culture in Post-​War Britain (London: Yale University Press). O’Connor, J. J. (1985), ‘TV review: The Biko Inquest on Showtime’, New York Times, 12 September 1985, section C, p. 22. O’Ferrall, G. M. (1937), ‘The televising of drama’, Radio Times, 19 March 1937, pp. 4–​5. Osborne, J. (1991), Almost a Gentleman: An Autobiography, vol. 2: 1955–​66 (London: Faber & Faber). Paget, D. (1998), ‘Road: from Royal Court to BBC—​mass observation /​minority culture’, in Ridgman (ed.), Boxed Sets, pp. 107–​125. ‘PHS’ (1967), ‘Newman’s new post’, The Times, 11 October 1967, p. 8. Poole, M., and J. Wyver (1984), Powerplays: Trevor Griffiths in Television (London: BFI Publishing). Ridgman, J. (1998a, ed.), Boxed Sets: Television Representations of Theatre (Luton: University of Luton Press). Ridgman, J. (1998b), ‘Introduction’, in Ridgman (ed.), Boxed Sets, pp. 1–​9. Ridgman, J. (1998c), ‘Producing Performance: an interview with Simon Curtis’, in Ridgman (ed.), Boxed Sets, pp. 199–​208. Scannell, P., and D. Cardiff (1991), A Social History of British Broadcasting, vol. 1: 1922–​1939: Serving the Nation (Oxford: Blackwell). ‘The Scanner’ (1938), ‘Sunday afternoon outings’, Radio Times, 30 December 1938, p. 15. ‘The Scanner’ (1939), ‘Intelligent “rubber-​ necks”’, Radio Times, 27 January 1939, p. 16. ‘The Scanner’ (1947), ‘Television highlights’, Radio Times, 11 April 1947, p. 7. Smart, B. (2010), ‘Old wine in new bottles—​adaptation of classic theatrical plays on BBC Television 1957–​1985’ (PhD thesis, Royal Holloway, University of London). Smart, B. (2012), ‘The Cherry Orchard (BBC, 1981)’, Spaces of Television, 28 October 2012, online at https://​blogs.read​ing.ac.uk/​spa​ces-​of-​tel​evis​ion/​2012/​ 10/​28/​the-​che​rry-​orch​ard-​bbc-​1981 (accessed 25 May 2020). Smart, B. (2014), ‘Festival: The Life of Galileo (BBC, 1964)’, Spaces of Television, 8 February 2014, online at https://​blogs.read​ing.ac.uk/​spa​ces-​of-​tel​evis​ion/​2014/​ 02/​08/​festi​val-​the-​life-​of-​gali​leo-​bbc-​tel​evis​ion-​1964 (accessed 19 February 2020). Smart, B. (2015), ‘Two television reconfigurations of John Osborne: The Hotel in Amsterdam’ (ATV /​ITV, 1971 and BBC4, 2004)’, Forgotten Television Drama, 2 March 2015, online at https://​forgo​tten​tele​visi​ondr​ama.wordpr​ess.com/​2015/​ 03/​02/​two-​tel​evis​ion-​recon​figu​rati​ons-​of-​john-​osbo​rne-​the-​hotel-​in-​amster​dam-​ atv​itv-​1971-​and-​bbc4-​2004 (accessed 9 February 2021).

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The Society of Film & Television Arts Ltd (1962), ‘Paper No. 133: Memorandum’, December 1960, in Report of the Committee on Broadcasting, 1960 vol. 2: Appendix E, Memoranda Submitted to the Committee (London: HMSO), pp. 802–​5. Sutton, S. (1982), The Largest Theatre in the World: Thirty Years of Television Drama (London: BBC). Taxidou, O. (1998), ‘Where exactly is Scotland? Local cultures, popular theatre and national television’, in Ridgman (ed.), Boxed Sets, pp. 89–​106. Taylor, D. (1990), Days of Vision: Working with David Mercer: Television Drama Then and Now (London: Methuen). Taylor, N. (1998), ‘A history of the stage play on BBC Television’, in Ridgman (ed.), Boxed Sets, pp. 23–​38. Warren, D. (2017), ‘Stage plays on television from 1946 to the 1980s: an overview’, Theatre Notebook, 71:1, 44–​64. Wells, M. (2003), ‘BBC4 to screen Richard II live from the Globe’, Guardian, 22 August 2003, online at www.theguardian.com/​media/​2003/​aug/​22/​broadcasting.arts (accessed 25 May 2020). Wiggin, M. (1952), ‘Double exposure’, Sunday Times, 27 July 1952, p. 4. Wrigley, A. (2011a), ‘Greek plays: Sophocles’ Electra (A-​R for ITV, 1962)’, Screen Plays, 10 August 2011, online at https://​screen​play​stv.wordpr​ess.com/​2011/​08/​ 10/​greek-​plays-​sophoc​les-​elec​tra-​itv-​1962 (accessed 25 May 2020). Wrigley, A. (2011b), ‘Greek plays: Women of Troy (BBC, 1958)’, Screen Plays, 21 June 2011, online at https://​screen​play​stv.wordpr​ess.com/​2011/​06/​21/​women-​ of-​troy-​bbc-​1958 (accessed 19 February 2020). Wrigley, A. (2012a), ‘Greek plays: the National Theatre’s Oresteia (Channel 4, 1983)’, Screen Plays, 23 January 2012, online at https://​screen​play​stv.wordpr​ess. com/​2012/​01/​23/​orest​eia-​chan​nel-​4-​1983 (accessed 20 February 2020). Wrigley, A. (2012b), ‘Greek plays: Oedipus the King, part 1 of The Theban Plays (BBC, 1986)’, Screen Plays, 9 March 2012, online at https://​screen​play​stv.wordpr​ ess.com/​2012/​03/​09/​oedi​pus-​the-​king-​bbc-​1986 (accessed 25 May 2020). Wrigley, A. (2015a), ‘Sophoclean television: Electra without subtitles on ITV in 1962’, La Scène en Version Originale, a special issue of J. Vatain-​Corfdir (ed.), e-​Theatrum Mundi (Paris: Presses de l’université Paris-​Sorbonne), pp. 55–​65. Wrigley, A. (2015b), ‘The spaces of medieval mystery plays on British television’, Shakespeare Bulletin, 33:4, 569–​93. Wrigley, A. (2017a), ‘Aeschylus’ Oresteia on British television’, in R. F. Kennedy (ed.), Brill’s Companion to the Reception of Aeschylus (Leiden: Brill), pp. 430–​54. Wrigley, A. (2017b), ‘Higher education and public engagement: Open University and BBC drama co-​productions on BBC2 in the 1970s’, Journal of British Cinema and Television, 14:3, 377–​93. Wrigley, A. (2018), ‘Tragedy for teens: ancient Greek tragedy on BBC and ITV schools television in the 1960s’, in Hobden and Wrigley (eds), Ancient Greece on British Television, pp. 84–​108. Wyver, J. (2009), ‘BBC to classic drama: stay dead!’, Illuminations, 18 September 2009, online at www.illuminationsmedia.co.uk/​blog/​index.cfm?start=​1&news_​ id=​448 (accessed 2 July 2013).

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Wyver, J. (2011a), ‘Brian Rix presents: Reluctant Heroes (BBC, 1952)’, Screen Plays, 7 December 2011, online at https://​screen​play​stv.wordpr​ess.com/​2011/​12/​07/​ brian-​rix-​prese​nts-​reluct​ant-​her​oes-​bbc-​1952 (accessed 15 February 2020). Wyver, J. (2011b), ‘Brian Rix presents: Wolf’s Clothing (BBC, 1961)’, Screen Plays, 29 December 2011, online at https://​screen​play​stv.wordpr​ess.com/​2011/​12/​29/​ brian-​rix-​prese​nts-​wolfs-​cloth​ing-​bbc-​1961 (accessed 25 May 2020). Wyver, J. (2011c), ‘In the Beginning: Marigold (BBC, 1936)’, Screen Plays, 18 September 2011, online at https://​screen​play​stv.wordpr​ess.com/​2011/​09/​18/​ in-​the-​beginn​ing-​marig​old-​bbc-​1936 (accessed 25 May 2020). Wyver, J. (2011d), ‘International Theatre: A Month in the Country (John Clements /​A-​R for ITV, 1955)’, Screen Plays, 14 October 2011, online at https://​screen​ play​stv.wordpr​ess.com/​2011/​10/​14/​intern​atio​nal-​thea​tre-​a-​month-​in-​the-​coun​ try-​john-​cleme​nts-​a-​r-​for-​itv-​1955 (accessed 25 May 2020). Wyver, J. (2011e), ‘“It is Midnight, Dr Schweitzer” (BBC, 1953)’, Screen Plays, 12 September 2011, online at https://​screen​play​stv.wordpr​ess.com/​2011/​09/​12/​ it-​is-​midni​ght-​dr-​sch​weit​zer-​bbc-​1953 (accessed 25 May 2020). Wyver, J. (2012a), ‘Entente cordiale: a French Othello (BBC, 1950)’, Screen Plays, 4 January 2012, online at https://​screen​play​stv.wordpr​ess.com/​2012/​01/​04/​ente​ nte-​cordi​ale-​a-​fre​nch-​othe​llo-​bbc-​1950 (accessed 25 May 2020). Wyver, J. (2012b), ‘Live from The Intimate Theatre, 1946–​1949, part 1’, Screen Plays, 15 February 2012, online at https://​screen​play​stv.wordpr​ess.com/​2012/​02/​15/​ live-​from-​the-​intim​ate-​thea​tre-​1946-​1949-​part-​1 (accessed 15 February 2020). Wyver, J. (2013), ‘On theatre, television, and theatre on television’, Illuminations, 12 March 2013, online at www.illuminationsmedia.co.uk/​on-​theatre-​television-​ and-​theatre-​on-​television (accessed 25 May 2020). Wyver, J. (2014), ‘Serjeant Musgrave’s Dance and the politics of possibility in two television adaptations’, Critical Studies in Television, 9:3, 89–​99. Wyver, J. (2017a), ‘Exploring the lost television and technique of producer Fred O’Donovan’, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 37:1, 5–​23. Wyver, J. (2017b), ‘Scenes from Cymbeline and early television studio drama’, in S. Hatchuel and N. Vienne-​Guerrin (eds), Shakespeare on Screen: The Tempest and Late Romances (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 56–​70. Wyver, J. (2019), Screening the Royal Shakespeare Company: A Critical History (London: Bloomsbury).

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A duchess, a shoemaker and a knight: early modern drama, early British television Lisa Ward

While Shakespeare’s plays are the focus of almost all of the research devoted to early modern drama on screen, significant elements of scholarship have been published in recent years that consider film and television engagements with plays by other early modern writers. In 2011, 2014 and 2015, Shakespeare Bulletin produced special issues focused on non-​Shakespearian early modern drama on screen that added much exciting new work to the field.1 Pascale Aebischer’s Screening Early Modern Drama (2013) is the first monograph entirely devoted to the topic. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the majority of research into non-​Shakespearian early modern drama analyses films and, to a lesser degree, television programmes for which a recording survives, with notable exceptions including Wyver (2015) and Wrigley (2015). As students of early modern drama are aware, however, studying performances for which no audiovisual record exists can be extremely rewarding, not least because written records can provide rich views into the world of past performance practices. In line with the application of such approaches to television, which include Jason Jacobs’ (2000) work on early small-​screen drama in Britain, this chapter turns to a period in which television transmissions were as ephemeral as productions on the early modern stage: the live broadcasts made in the first years of the regular BBC Television service between November 1936 and September 1939. During these pre-​war years, before the availability of recording technologies, at least three early modern plays by authors other than Shakespeare were broadcast by BBC Television, all of them in 1938: John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi, Thomas Dekker’s The Shoemaker’s Holiday and The Knight of the Burning Pestle by Francis Beaumont. This chapter analyses the sparse but nonetheless revealing written records available for these three programmes in order to begin recovering them as part of these plays’ performance histories, situating them in the contexts of British theatre and television in the late 1930s. The key repository of documents relating to early television programmes is the BBC’s Written Archives Centre (WAC).2 In much the same way that

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surviving business records have provided scholars of the early modern period with details of stagecraft, production files housed at the WAC offer insights concerning the production of early British television drama. While the WAC does not preserve any documentation for The Shoemaker’s Holiday and The Knight of the Burning Pestle, it does hold a slim file on The Duchess of Malfi: this contains set diagrams, organisational documents, memos, cast lists and a partial camera script. Four pages of the script survive, numbered 1–​3 and 5, with page 4 apparently lost; the existing pages indicate key camera cues and moves at the start and end of each major scene, but they do not include all of the production’s dialogue. This Malfi is an important production in television drama history: it is the first televised adaptation of the play and the first substantial attempt to screen a non-​Shakespearian early modern play on British television. The written records also suggest that it was an exciting experiment with both theatrical narrative and the technology of the rapidly developing medium of television. Since Malfi has left behind more written records than its counterparts, it is the primary focus of this chapter. The two other programmes are briefly contextualised because, like Malfi, they were the first versions of those plays to appear on British television and they remain to date their only broadcast productions. The Shoemaker’s Holiday and The Knight of the Burning Pestle may seem to be odd choices to be broadcast on television ahead of plays that were more popular in the theatre at the time, such as Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus and Ben Jonson’s Volpone. Since the network often attempted to economise during its early years by borrowing resources—​costumes, props, actors and sometimes even whole productions—​from West End theatres, one might surmise that the BBC simply decided to draw upon productions of two plays that just happened to be running at the time. Although this is certainly the case with Shoemaker’s, the assumption that Knight was likewise ‘borrowed’ from the West End seems unwarranted—​like Malfi, it appears to have been an original BBC Television production.

Early modern plays on early British television The BBC began regular television broadcasts on 2 November 1936, and the first years of the service lasted until 1 September 1939, as Britain prepared to declare war on Germany. Transmission ended abruptly, ostensibly because the television signal might be used to aid German bombers, and resumed again after the war ended in June 1946. During the pre-​war period, transmissions typically ran from 3.00pm to about 4.00pm and again from 8.00pm to 10.00pm every day except Sunday, although Sunday broadcasts were added in 1938. For the first three years, the television signal reached

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only across London and a modest distance beyond, although even with the signal’s limited reach thousands of people viewed programmes. According to Andrew Crisell (2002: 72), approximately 18,000–​20,000 television sets had been purchased by the time Britain declared war in September 1939. Almost all of the broadcasts were live, so if a play was shown twice, it was performed live on each occasion. While broadcasting filmed material was possible, there was no system available for recording full-​length programmes on either film or videotape.3 Even after recording became more practical with the advent of, first, tele-​recording an electronic signal to film in the early 1950s and, later in the decade, the use of videotape, Jacobs (2000: 10 and 24) explains that videotape’s early editing limitations, combined with copyright issues and relationships with talent unions wary of the new technology, hindered the network from widespread, regular recording until 1958. Time-​ consuming and on occasions contentious negotiations with the theatre world were also an issue from the earliest days of television (Jacobs 2000: 34). Although the BBC often drew on West End theatres for its drama offerings, the broadcaster’s assumptions about the benefits and efficiency of that collaboration were not always correct. To take just one example, instead of requiring fewer rehearsals, actors in current or recently closed stage productions often required more studio rehearsal time because ‘they were generally unfamiliar with the demands of performing for multiple television cameras’ (ibid.). It is also likely that, since television schedules demanded truncated versions of stage plays, keeping two distinct sets of lines and blocking straight was a challenge. Considering rehearsal difficulties, the necessary payments to actors and theatre management were simply not worth whatever cultural cachet that collaborating with the West End produced (ibid.). By October 1938, network executives were actively discussing the need to move away from their dependence on the London stage. Mounting their own productions more frequently, as they had done since early 1937, would prove far more economical, ‘bypassing the need to negotiate with theatre management, and allowing the BBC to hire actors individually’ (Jacobs 2000: 40). Network management was as a consequence loosening its ties with the West End by this point, although it continued to draw upon the theatre throughout the remainder of the pre-​war period and into the decades that followed the war. This was certainly the case with Shoemaker’s, which the Radio Times lists as airing once rather than the usual two times for television drama. The Radio Times television section for the week of Shoemaker’s broadcast features a photograph of two actors ‘in the stage production’ of the play, with the caption also noting that ‘[t]‌he entire cast will play in Sunday’s television version’ (Anon. 1938). The accompanying broadcast listing also specifies the stage version’s origin,

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Nancy Price’s production at the Playhouse Theatre in London.4 According to Stanley Wells (1999: 50), the stage version received ‘mixed notices’: The Evening News (5 November) referred to its ‘senseless bawling heartiness’ and The Times (5 November) found that ‘excellent performances’ in some roles were ‘balanced by the failure of some others to make more than recitations of their parts’. The actor playing Firk (Hedley Briggs) had a great success: ‘This is a clown in the great tradition, cousin to Touchstone and Autolycus, collateral ancestor to Sam Weller, but like all that distinguished and thoroughly national line, a unique individual’ (The Times).

Known to have been performed first in 1599, Dekker’s play is a comic tale of London tradesmen, of soldiers leaving for and returning from the wars and of cross-​class love, disguise and mistaken identity. Based upon the surviving reviews, it appears that Price’s stage version attracted less acclaim than either of its early professional revivals in the twentieth century—​first at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre in 1922 and then at the Old Vic in 1926 (Wells 1999: 48). Like the student and amateur performances that took up the play from 1898 onwards, the professional revivals were met with enthusiasm; Wells describes the Birmingham Repertory version as ‘uniformly praised’ and the Old Vic production as ‘highly successful’. Regardless, no follow-​up in the Radio Times or elsewhere has left any hint as to how audiences responded to Shoemaker’s on television in December 1938. Francis Beaumont’s Knight was first performed in 1607. It is a satire on chivalric romances which also includes parodic references to, among other plays, Shoemaker’s. The play has a similar performance history to Shoemaker’s in modern times: Sheldon P. Zitner (in Beaumont 2004: 44–​5) explains that it, too, became a favourite of student and amateur groups from around the turn of the century before being revived professionally. The Mermaid Society staged it at the Royalty Theatre in 1904; it ran in Manchester in 1908 and at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre in 1919 with Noël Coward in the role of Rafe. After a stint at the Kingsway in 1920, the next major production was at the Old Vic in 1932, with Ralph Richardson and Sybil Thorndike. Although John Caughie (2000: 33) associates Knight with a West End staging, it seems unlikely that the programme was based upon a recent production. The most recent performance before the television presentation appears to have been the play’s run at the Old Vic in 1932, but the cast list published in The Times does not include any names associated with the 1938 broadcast. If the play was professionally staged in London or by a major regional company toward the end of 1938, this left no traces in periodicals of the day or, at least, no traces that have to date come to my attention. Nor did Radio Times, which emphasised Shoemaker’s relationship to its Playhouse production, make any mention of a stage connection for the broadcast of Knight; since the two programmes

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aired during the same month, it seems unlikely that the publication would emphasise the stage connections of one play but completely fail to mention those of the other. Quite why such a delightfully bizarre play was brought to British television in December 1938 may remain unknown, but it does appear to have been deliberately chosen for television adaptation.

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Malfi: performance history and cast In the twenty-​first century, The Duchess of Malfi is one of the most frequently staged plays from the early modern canon, but this has not always been the case. Roberta Barker (2011: 42–​3) notes in her account of the play’s performance history that, while the drama was celebrated in its own day, it fell out of favour during the eighteenth century. Critics found it ‘too crass for neo-​classical canons’ and the play thus disappeared for a hundred years. Revived in 1850, it was heavily adapted to clarify character motivations and to play to Victorian audiences’ taste for melodrama. For example, the ‘Duchess’s ghost became a fixture in stagings of the fifth act’, and American productions often closed with a depiction of the Duchess and Antonio ­‘reunited … in the heavens above the stage … while Ferdinand grovelled … utilized on the boards below, spectacularizing the conflict between good and evil in the quintessential melodramatic fashion’ (ibid.: 48). William Poel’s 1893 production ‘aimed to restore much of Webster’s original text’, situating the play not as low-​culture melodrama, but as a snapshot of how the English viewed Italy in a particular cultural moment (ibid.: 49). The play, however, would not achieve its present-​day prestige for another fifty years. Barker’s history does not feature any productions from the 1930s. Her account jumps from the Phoenix Society’s production, which T. S. Eliot (1920: 37) found much too similar to popular modern drama (Cathleen Nesbitt’s performance, he wrote in a review, was ‘not the Duchess, but something like the respondent in a drama of divorce’), to George Rylands’ 1945 ‘watershed production’ at the Haymarket featuring Peggy Ashcroft as the Duchess. Rylands raised the play’s profile at a time when human agency and savage, senseless death occupied the public’s consciousness. Barker (2011: 50) describes how The Times’ review of the production appeared immediately under searing photographs of the Nazi concentration camps at Nordhausen and Buchenwald. Edmund Wilson later recalled the particular power of the Duchess’s torture and death scenes ‘at the moment of the expose of the German Concentration camps’ … at this moment, The Duchess of Malfi suddenly took on something of the profundity and timelessness more usually associated in this era with Shakespeare himself.

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Rylands’ version of Malfi became the century’s ‘dominant theatrical interpretation’, one which downplayed ‘the play’s reputation for vulgar sensationalism’ and instead ‘relied upon a combination of Renaissance design elements and Stanislavskian acting techniques to provide the signifiers of high cultural respectability’ (Barker 2011: 43). While a number of later productions presented the play as a ‘critique, rather than an affirmation, of high cultural class and aesthetic norms’—​including an adaptation by Bertolt Brecht, H. R. Hays and W. H. Auden—​the Rylands version is the one to which the countercultural versions responded (Barker 2011: 53). Since the mid-​1990s, most productions have ‘featured modern dress and linked the play to mainstream contemporary cinematic tropes’ (Barker 2011: 43) in order to emphasise the play’s popular rather than ‘high cultural’ appeal. Before Morley’s 1938 television version, the most recent English production appears to have been at the Embassy Theatre in 1935. The cast list in the review published by The Times shows that three of Morley’s actors reprised their roles from that staging: John Laurie (Ferdinand) and Neil Porter (the Cardinal) appeared in both broadcasts, and Torin Thatcher replaced Stephen Haggard as Antonio in the second broadcast (Anon. 1935).5 Based on the review, it seems that the Embassy production attempted to strike a balance between melodrama and a more restrained, modern approach; the anonymous journalist praises, for example, John Laurie’s performance (‘his Ferdinand rages magnificently on the very edge of rant’) and criticises the culmination of the revenge plot: ‘When they come upon a scene in which four men are stabbed, something that belongs ineradicably to our milder age comes between them and Webster and they neither kill nor die with that conviction which they would bring to contemporary Grand Guignol’. The programme’s Duchess, Catherine Lacey, was also known for what Maggie Gale (2002a) describes as her ‘emotionally powerful’ style. Lacey would play the nun in Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes later that year; Laurie, too, worked with Hitchcock in Juno and the Paycock (1929) and as the Crofter in The 39 Steps (1935). While Laurie, who is perhaps best remembered as Private Frazer in the BBC comedy series Dad’s Army, never achieved the iconic status of his friend Laurence Olivier, he—​and Lacey, too—​had long careers working in television, film and theatre as character actors.6 Thatcher, too, had a long career on both stage and screen, while Esmé Percy, who received top billing in the programme’s Radio Times listing, worked on the stage and in film more than on television.7 He is best known as a ‘definitive actor of Shaw’s plays’ (Hunter 2002), even appearing as Count Aristid Karpathy in the 1938 film version of Pygmalion. One of Malfi’s minor characters, however, was played by an actor who from today’s perspective is perhaps the most interesting in the cast. According to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Robert Adams (the Executioner) was

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‘the first black actor to appear on British television when he performed in several productions broadcast live by the BBC from Alexandra Palace. These included John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi (1938) and the lead in Eugene O’Neill’s The Emperor Jones (1938)’ (Bourne 2004). After the war he founded the Negro Arts Theatre, and his performance as the Prince of Morocco in The Merchant of Venice (prod. George More O’Ferrall, BBC, 1947) made him ‘the first black actor to play a Shakespearian role on television’ (ibid.). One trait that all of the actors must have shared was their ability to work quickly. In a timeline that was typical for early television drama, the first hiring memos were sent less than three weeks before the first broadcast on 17 January. On 6 January—​only eleven days before the first transmission date—​a memo states that Lacey would replace Marie Ney, who was originally slated to play the Duchess. Most of the other actors had been hired by that date, but Gwynn Whitby’s name did not appear as Cariola until three days before broadcast.

Malfi: style and technology In a configuration typical of prestige productions during the era, Malfi incorporated multiple sets and utilised both of the television studios at Alexandra Palace. Four different set-​ups were used in Studio One (labelled A–​D). The diagram reproduced in Fig. 2.1 shows set-​up A. Each numbered circle represents one of the three cameras in Studio One, with arrows indicating the direction of the lens. Studio Two had only two set-​ups (A and B). Set-​up B used the same set components as set-​up A (arches, flats, etc.), but with different props to signify a change in location. Malfi’s extant planning documents testify to the aesthetic ambition, particularly regarding ‘spatial mobility’ that Jacobs (2000: 17) argues is prevalent in early television drama. While Camera One probably stayed relatively near the set’s centre throughout the programme, it was mounted on a dolly and could be moved forwards and backwards while shooting. Camera Two at screen left was even more mobile. Mounted on a tripod and placed on one of the more rugged dollies used for outside broadcasts, it could also be moved quickly. Of the two cameras that were set on static mounts, Morley tried to get one replaced. Camera Three at screen right was set on an ‘iron man’, stands that Bruce Norman (1984: 134) describes as ‘iron pedestals which could be raised or lowered by turning a handle, and on top which was a panning head on which was mounted the camera itself’. While the position of an iron man could be changed during a broadcast, former BBC employee Arthur Dungate explains that the iron man ‘was not designed to be moved in vision because it tended to be “bumpy”, and was only intended

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Figure 2.1  Studio One, set-​up A, for The Duchess of Malfi (1938).

to be moved between shots’. Camera Four, located in Studio Two, was also mounted on an iron man. Although Morley acknowledged the BBC policy that ‘three dollies may no longer be used in production’, he requested that Camera Four be set on a dolly made from parts of the Austin Seven automobile, with a ‘low tripod if available’. The file does not indicate whether Morley’s request was granted. Nevertheless, attempting to trade a heavy, awkward camera mounting for one with flexibility of movement indicates that Morley wanted the framings of this camera to be as mobile and visually exciting as possible. Knowing the capabilities of the camera mounts and dollies is important because, in the earliest mode of drama production, just as later, camera movements added visual interest to live transmissions. Notes regarding movement and also transitions between camera shots reveal what was emphasised in close-​up. ‘Cutting’ between shots was still impossible: ‘For

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the pre-​war BBC Television Service the cinematic instant “cut” did not exist at all; transitions from picture to picture were achieved by mixing between available camera images, a process that took up to eight seconds’ (Jacobs 2000: 46). By the time that The Duchess of Malfi was broadcast, however, mix times had been shortened. Maurice Gorham, who directed the television service when it resumed after the war, describes how ‘producers and technicians acquired a high degree of skill in mixing and fading; scripts were even written with this requirement in mind’ (quoted in Jacobs 2000: 47). ‘Over a period of months, the BBC and EMI engineers reduced the eight-​ second time lapse … to four, to about two, though the “cut” was not finally achieved until after the war’ (Norman 1984: 136). In September 1937, Radio Times asserted that mix times occurred ‘in five seconds, not a fraction before and not a fraction after’ (Anon. 1937); it therefore seems reasonable to assume that by January 1938 mixes were closer to two seconds. Although a two-​second mix time is ‘still significant’ (Jacobs 2000: 46–​7), these transitions probably happened quickly enough to emphasise particular speeches and actions in Malfi. Rapid camera mixes in the script for the wooing scene, for example, almost seem as though they are ‘showing off’ these new mixing capabilities by matching the tempo of camera mixes with the lovers’ fast-​moving, playful banter. Even with reduced mix times, however, the process of mixing between cameras during live broadcasts meant that shot-​scales needed to be forgiving. Thus, most shots framed the actors in variations of long and medium shots. According to Jacobs (2000: 64), we have Morley to thank for much of what we know about shot-​scale in early television drama; Jacobs credits him with adapting film script shot-​scale notation to television scripts during his 1937 production of The Ascent of F6. He cites Morley’s notation system as further evidence that early television producers had aesthetic ambitions: ‘it indicates the need to discriminate between different shot-​scales at the planning stage, and that the distinction between them was important’ (Jacobs 2000: 64). Far from the ‘theatrical pictorialism’ typical of very early cinema and sometimes associated with early television drama, ‘This is evidence of a greater precision when planning’ than scholars had previously realised ‘and an ambition to visualize a narrative and spatial continuity that is not primarily segmented around the “scene”’, as in theatre (Jacobs 2000: 64). Despite coming to television from radio—​one of the few producers to do so—​Morley was clearly interested in experimenting with the visual possibilities of television. Perhaps the most innovative visual feature of Malfi, however, was that its titling text, as used for locations and credits, were usually printed on caption cards held by an easel in front of a specially designated camera. Such visual captions were not, however, standard from television drama’s beginnings. A Radio Times article about Not Really?, a programme that aired

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more than four weeks after the first broadcast of Malfi, remarks upon the new trend of abandoning traditional voiceover in favour of caption cards to give viewers essential information. Not Really? is described as an example of a tendency in television presentation that seems to become more marked every week—​the elimination of the spoken announcement in favour of printed captions. In Not Really? all the introductions will be made with the camera, unaccompanied by a microphone. Producers now think it worthwhile to allocate one camera for captions exclusively. Better, they think, to have one camera out of action as far as movement is concerned than to have spoken announcements obtrusively holding up the show. (‘The Scanner’ 1938)

Interestingly, Malfi appears to have been even more innovative. First, rather than allocating one camera solely for captions, thus taking it out of service for shooting live action, Morley allocated Cameras Three and Four to cover both captions and action. Camera Three shot what the cue script calls ‘ordinary’ captions that provide the play’s title, author and scene locations. At the programme’s beginning, these captions were superimposed upon the medium long shot of the Duchess’ palace from Camera One, fading in and out as the cards were changed. Second, some of these captions were animated; Camera Four provided ‘rotating’ captions that, according to the cue script, would ‘turn in vision slowly on cue’. These captions quickly superimposed the names of the main characters, as well the names of the actors who portrayed them, as each entered during the opening minutes of the programme. Most likely, Camera Four’s captions were animated in much the same ‘ferris wheel’ style that Not Really? would use weeks later: ‘The caption cards, which vary in size, are mounted on a variety of contraptions, including a sort of Big Wheel à la Blackpool, which will be used as a silent compère for the Not Really? show’ (‘The Scanner’ 1938). In whatever manner these caption effects were achieved, the practice of animating television captions in 1938 is a striking development.

Malfi: narrative Written in 1612–​13, Malfi is a tragedy based on events that took place in Italy a century earlier. In the play, the recently widowed Duchess falls in love with her steward, Antonio. Her brothers, Ferdinand and the Cardinal, have instructed her not to remarry, although she does so in secret and has three children with Antonio. Ferdinand’s spy Bosola discovers the identity of the Duchess’ husband and oversees her execution, along with two of her children and her maid. But then Bosola turns on his employer, while Ferdinand is shown to have gone mad. Along with the Cardinal, both men die in a bloody climax. With the broadcast scheduled to last only thirty-​five to forty

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minutes—​perhaps one third of the drama’s usual running time—​this plot had to be cut radically.8 As Christina Luckyj (2011: 267) observes, however, scholars have longed criticised Webster’s unwieldy plots: ‘It is a commonplace to say that Webster cannot construct plays—​to agree with George Rylands, who directed the 1945 revival of Malfi, that ‘Webster could handle a scene but could not compass a plot’. Radical cutting of Webster, then, can be regarded as legitimate, and considering the programme’s brief duration, cutting strategies appear to have been reasonable. Moreover, this resulted in an adaptation that took an unconventional approach to the play’s ending. As might be expected, the broadcast’s first streamlining strategy was to cut the subplot and eliminate its characters. In addition to revealing the loss of many of the play’s marginal characters, the cast list does not have an entry for Julia, the Cardinal’s mistress, so the subplot culminating in her murder via poisoned bible was almost certainly excluded.9 While it is possible that regular cast members doubled as the ‘madmen’ who torture the Duchess once Ferdinand imprisons her, nothing in the file indicates that this choice was made, and cutting them as well would certainly have simplified the narrative. It also seems likely that, while the characters spoke of the Duchess and Antonio’s children, they were not visually represented in any way.10 Again, no casting documents mention children’s parts, and the prop lists contain no entries for dolls, infant-​sized bundles of cloth or anything else that might be used when the Duchess is presented with the tableau of her family’s ‘dead’ bodies in act 4 scene 1. Since the cue script is missing page 4, which would have detailed this scene, we cannot know for sure if the programme even included it. If so, it seems unlikely that the scene contained anything like the gruesome details from Webster’s play. For example, the ‘dead man’s hand’ and fake bodies certainly would appear in the Scene and Property plot if Ferdinand and Bosola had employed them to convince the Duchess that her family had been slaughtered. One of the programme’s most interesting cutting strategies involves Bosola, who spies on the Duchess for her brothers. Essentially, a moment that seems intended to eschew dialogue in favour of a visually striking image stands in for a series of complicated plot events which encompass Bosola’s discoveries of the Duchess’ pregnancy in act 2 scene 1 and the baby’s horoscope in act 2 scene 3, as well as his intention to write a letter informing Ferdinand of these events. Instead of explaining these plot points, the music swells ‘full up’ as alternating close-​ups of Bosola—​the only two close shots indicated in the extant script—​establish the causal link between the Duchess’ clandestine wedding and the rage Ferdinand voices about his sister’s sexual ­impropriety.11 Bosola does not speak any lines, but these close-​ups reinforce that he is the means by which the Duchess’ brothers discover her refusal to remain unwed and chaste as they had commanded.

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The programme also relocates two key scenes from public to private spaces, a strategy that might give additional insight into the way this version interpreted the Duchess’ character. In the first, the play relocates her wooing and per verba de praesenti marriage to Antonio from the larger public rooms of her palace to her bedchamber.12 Thus, instead of playfully tricking him into marriage in a space where anyone in her court might accidentally discover them, this Duchess chooses the more cautious yet intimate space of her bedchamber. In addition, the production does not give the Duchess a chance to escape to Ancona. Instead of being captured in a busy marketplace, she is taken amidst a scene of perfect domestic bliss, after she and Antonio have been affectionately teasing one another while lounging around the bedroom in act 3 scene 2. This decision simplifies the plot, but more importantly the atmosphere that seemed so warm, joyful and safe only moments before is abruptly violated; she has no chance to attempt to defend herself or escape. In one interpretation of Webster’s text, the Duchess can be understood as taking great chances with her privacy. This Duchess is more cautious, but she still meets the same tragic fate. The programme’s defining narrative characteristic, however, is its choice of ending: eliminating the entirety of the revenge plot in act 5 and concluding just moments after the Duchess’ murder. From Grace Wyndham Goldie’s review, we know that the broadcasts followed the script’s camera strategy at the moment of the Duchess’ death. Instead of depicting her strangulation, the camera focused on Bosola’s reaction at that moment. While it is possible that the programme simply sought to shy away from showing violence, the strong possibility that Cariola’s death moments later was shown complicates such an easy dismissal. In order for the camera to track back to a medium long shot at Cariola’s death, the camera had to have been, at the very least, at medium close range. Thus, the audience would have had a clear view of Cariola’s strangulation, but not that of the Duchess. In Webster’s text, the Duchess briefly revives, hearing the news that the tableau of her family’s dead bodies was all a trick. In the television programme, she dies immediately, never hearing from Bosola that her family yet lives. (Bosola here tells her a half-​truth. Antonio and her eldest son escaped, but Bosola had ordered the younger children to be strangled only moments after the Executioner murders the Duchess.) By eliminating the Duchess’ momentary revival, then, this version thus offers Bosola no chance at redemption, no opportunity to embrace his role as revenger when the pathos of her final death makes him realise his sins. Instead, this Ferdinand simply declares his intention to hunt down Bosola, the music fades up, Camera Two provides one last medium close shot of Bosola and then the frame mixes to a long shot from Camera One, over which the final credits are superimposed.13

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In a way, focusing on Bosola’s face as the Duchess is murdered stands in for the programme’s missing revenge plot, just as Bosola’s earlier close-​ups took the place of complicated plot events. At the moment of the Duchess’ death, the focus quite literally shifted from her, just as the entirety of Webster’s act 5 shifts away from the vibrant heroine toward its impact upon the men in her life. Act 5’s revenge plot revolves around masculine chaos: the Cardinal murders Julia; Bosola attempts to find and help Antonio but accidentally kills him instead; Bosola, the Cardinal and the now mad Ferdinand fight, which leaves them all dying of stab wounds in the last scene. On the one hand, eliminating the revenge plot seems to privilege the Duchess’ death rather than the ways in which male characters respond to it. On the other hand, not one of the men responsible for her murder gets his well-​deserved violent end. In terms of narrative, it is hard to say which ending is ultimately more ‘tragic’: allowing the Duchess’ murder to function as the programme’s privileged climax, or eliminating the entire revenge plot and allowing the villains to get away with murder. While some scholars see the revenge plot as an extraneous device that detracts from the play, as the narrative quandary outlined above might indicate, eliminating the final act altogether is not a choice that both stage and screen productions usually make. In fact, I have been unable to locate another production in the play’s performance history that ends with the Duchess’ death in act 4. Thus, while drastically abbreviating the narrative might have been a technological necessity with possibly vexed artistic results, it is unquestionably the case that this production constitutes a rare, distinctive moment in the play’s performance history.

Conclusion In his essay on The Duchess of Malfi’s screen afterlives, Roland Wymer (2013: 272) notes that both the 1938 production of Malfi and also another produced just over a decade later (adapted and prod. by Stephen Harrison, BBC, 4 and 8 December 1949) are ‘overlooked in almost all accounts of the performance history of the play, partly because they left no footage’.14 By quoting part of Goldie’s (1938) review, however, he implies that not having a record of Morley’s Malfi is no great loss: Reviewing this programme for The Listener, Grace Wyndham Goldie recognized that the cutting between different cameras was starting to create the kind of experience you would get in the cinema. ‘Yet there was a difference. The whole production smacks of the artifice of the theatre and not the reality of the movies.’ The pressures of filming a live performance had resulted in some actors fluffing their lines and some unexplained ‘noises off’, though something of Webster’s quality came through whenever Bosola (Mr Esmé Percy) was speaking.

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It is certainly true that Goldie’s review was blunt and not overwhelmingly positive. When she poses the question of whether ‘the performance on the whole [was] a good one,’ her answer is ‘No, certainly not’ (Goldie 1938). Her review does, however, contain some positive elements aside from her enjoyment of Esmé Percy’s performance. For example, she notes: ‘The action was cramped, sometimes painfully so, but on the whole the manipulation of characters was the most skilful I have seen’. Whether Goldie here refers to the general acting or the arrangement of bodies within the frame, calling any feature of this programme ‘the most skilful I have seen’ is high praise from a critic who was watching most if not all of the BBC’s dramatic output at this point. Finally, after pointing toward the ‘studio disasters’ of forgotten lines and clearly unintended non-​diegetic studio sound, she writes: ‘Now considering the difficulties it was astonishing that the play should have been done as well as it was’. While Goldie’s review illuminates the programme’s failings, it also acknowledges that several features were relative successes. More than seven decades later, the most insightful aspect of Goldie’s review is perhaps her response her introductory question: ‘Should television attempt plays like The Duchess of Malfi? Eventually, yes. But now?’ The review then becomes a keen television viewer’s meditation on the medium’s cultural moment. Her chief criticism is that the programme seems to struggle with possibilities and limitations of an emerging art form. Actors and studio personnel had not yet mastered broadcasting basics and the time constraints of the day resulted in a vastly over-​simplified narrative. She rightly interpreted the mixing patterns as a ‘cinematic’ attempt at a visually exciting frame, but somehow the effect was not entirely successful and still ‘smack[ed] of the artifice of the theatre and not the reality of the movies’. Goldie’s review captures a moment not unlike that which the dramatists of the early modern stage must have experienced: a time when people were making up the rules of their craft as they went, with both successes and failures. From what can be drawn from the printed sources, the 1938 Duchess of Malfi appears to have been exploring a range of the visual and technological possibilities of television; perhaps Morley was overly ambitious in his choice of play, but the programme’s narrative strategies seem logical given its duration. Moreover, as such a unique moment in the play’s performance history, it is worth critical attention even if it was not an early small screen masterpiece. Like many of its early modern dramatic forbears, many of its features of must remain a mystery but, given the scant information available for its counterparts The Shoemaker’s Holiday and The Knight of the Burning Pestle, we are lucky to have any surviving written records for Morley’s pioneering production with which we may even speculate.

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Productions discussed The Duchess of Malfi by John Webster. Prod. Royston Morley. BBC Television. 9.20–​10.00pm, Monday 17 January 1938, and 3.10–​3.45pm, Friday 21 January 1938. The Knight of the Burning Pestle by Francis Beaumont. Prod. Stephen Thomas. BBC Television. 3.00–​4.30pm, Monday 19 December 1938 and 9.00–​10.30pm, Friday 30 December 1938. The Shoemaker’s Holiday by Thomas Dekker. Prod. for the stage by Nancy Price and presented for television by Lanham Titchener. BBC Television. 9.05–​10.00pm, Sunday 11 December 1938.

Notes 1 Among the articles in the 2011 Shakespeare Bulletin issue is an insightful piece by Susanne Greenhalgh (2011)—​whose work also appears in this volume— analysing the BBC productions of The Duchess of Malfi (dir. James MacTaggart, 1972) and ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore (dir. Roland Joffé, 1980). 2 Periodical resources for these plays are quite limited. All three are listed in the Radio Times, which provided the television viewing schedule and news about the medium during this era, but only Malfi warranted a short feature article there. It alone was reviewed by television critic Grace Wyndham Goldie in another BBC publication, The Listener. Newspaper reviews and a Play Pictorial edition exist for the stage production but not the television programme of The Shoemaker’s Holiday, and searches of Proquest’s British Periodicals database and the digital archive of The Times do not appear to return documentary sources for the other two programmes. 3 Broadcasting short segments of filmed material intermixed with live material was commonplace in the pre-​war period. Newsreels were included in the schedules and as early as 1937 scenes from feature films were integrated into live television broadcasts. Both German and British inventors had developed ‘intermediate-​ film’ systems in which images captured using film cameras could be developed in under a minute, scanned and then broadcast on television (Hilmes 2002: 10; Jacobs 2000: 33); this method was used to broadcast the Berlin Olympics in 1936 (Hilmes 2002: 10). 4 Nancy Price (1880–​1970) was a prolific actor, manager, and founder of the People’s National Theatre (Gale 2002b: 619). 5 An internal BBC memo from producer Royston Morley to Head of Design Peter Bax requests that a new card be made for Torin Thatcher, who replaced Haggard as Antonio; no reason for the substitution is given (BBC WAC, T5/​156, memo from R. Morley to P. Bax, ?1938). 6 Although Internet Movie Database (IMDb) records are rarely complete, profiles for both actors show extensive credits spanning thirty-​five years for Lacey

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(‘Catherine Lacey (I) (1904–​1979)’, www.imdb.com/​name/​nm0479910, accessed 4 November 2020) and a remarkable fifty years for Laurie (‘John Laurie (I) (1897–​1980)’, www.imdb.com/​name/​nm0491406, accessed 4 November 2020). 1981)’, www.imdb.com/​name/​nm0857147 (accessed 7 ‘Torin Thatcher (1905–​ 4 November 2020). 8 While it was possible to broadcast for periods longer than forty minutes, at this point most producers were still building up to longer programme durations. Two longer productions (a sixty-​minute Journey’s End and a ninety-​minute Once in a Lifetime) had run in late 1937, but it was not until May 1938 that dramas routinely ran at an hour or more (Jacobs 2000: 36). 9 Castruchio, Roderigo, Grisolan, Malateste, Pescara, Silvio, the Doctor, Old Lady, Court Officers and the Two Pilgrims are all eliminated. 10 Bosola provides the cue script’s first direct reference to the Duchess’ children: ‘Can they prattle?’ (3.5.112). 11 Goldie (1938) alludes to one additional close-​up, in which an unspecified actor seems to have completely forgotten his lines. The script represents a plan for the production, so it is possible that the actual broadcasts deviated from that plan. Alternatively, the close-​up to which Goldie refers might have been included on the script’s missing page. 12 Marriage per verba de praesenti is a common-​law marriage entered into by the joint consent of the two parties and without the involvement of any person authorised to solemnise the marriage. 13 The cue script elides Bosola’s closing conversation with Ferdinand. In fact, the only words that Ferdinand definitely speaks are the final lines of the programme: ‘I’ll go hunt the badger by owl-​light; /​’Tis a deed of darkness’ (4.2.323–​ 4). Whether Ferdinand seems insane, regrets the murder or threatens and refuses to pay Bosola for his services remains unclear. 14 Stephen Harrison produced a longer version of Malfi after the war, along with three other early modern plays, each of which was arranged for television and produced by him: Doctor Faustus (BBC, 22 June 1947), Edward II (BBC, 30 and 31 October 1947) and Volpone (BBC, 27 June and 1 July 1948).

References Aebischer, P. (2011), ‘Early modern drama on screen: a Jarman anniversary issue’, Shakespeare Bulletin, 29:4, 495–​503. Aebischer, P. (2013), Screening Early Modern Drama: Beyond Shakespeare (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Anon. (1935), ‘Embassy Theatre: The Duchess of Malfi by John Webster’, The Times, 15 January 1935, p. 10. Anon. (1937), ‘Heroine too big for the studio’, Radio Times, 24 September 1937, p. 20.

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Anon. (1938), ‘Edmund Willard (right) and Hedley Briggs in the stage production of The Shoemaker’s Holiday, by Thomas Dekker. The entire cast will play in Sunday’s television version’ (image caption), Radio Times, 9 December 1938, p. 19. Barker, R. (2011), ‘The Duchess high and low: a performance history of The Duchess of Malfi’, in Luckyj (ed.), The Duchess of Malfi: A Critical Guide, pp. 42–​65. Beaumont, F. (2004), The Knight of the Burning Pestle, ed. S. P. Zitner (Manchester: Manchester University Press). Bourne, S. (2004), ‘Adams (Wilfred) Robert (c. 1900–​1965)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press), online at https://​doi.org/​ 10.1093/​ref:odnb/​73742 (accessed 4 November 2020). Caughie, J. (2000), Television Drama: Realism, Modernism, and British Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Chambers, C. (2002, ed.), The Continuum Companion to Twentieth Century Theatre (London: Continuum). Crisell, A. (2002), An Introductory History of British Broadcasting, 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge). Dungate, A. (n.d.), ‘Anecdotes from the early days’, Direct Television from Alexandra Palace, online at www.bbctv-​ap.co.uk/​gwaters.htm (accessed 4 November 2020). Eliot, T. S. (1920), ‘The Duchess of Malfi at the Lyric, and poetic drama’, Art and Letters, 3:1, 36–​9. Gale, M. (2002a), ‘Catherine Lacey’, in Chambers (ed.), The Continuum Companion to Twentieth Century Theatre, p. 428. Gale, M. (2002b), ‘Nancy Price’, in Chambers (ed.), The Continuum Companion to Twentieth Century Theatre, p. 619. Goldie, G. W. (1938), ‘The Duchess of Malfi’, The Listener, 2 February 1938, p. 240. Greenhalgh, S. (2011), ‘The Jacobeans on television: The Duchess of Malfi and ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore at Chastleton House’, Shakespeare Bulletin, 29:4, 573–​89. Hilmes, M. (2002), Only Connect: A Cultural History of Broadcasting in the United States (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth /​Thomson Learning). Hunter, A. (2002), ‘Esmé Percy’, in Chambers (ed.), The Continuum Companion to Twentieth Century Theatre, p. 589. Jacobs, J. (2000), The Intimate Screen: Early British Television Drama (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Luckyj, C. (1987), ‘“Great women of pleasure”: main plot and subplot in The Duchess of Malfi’, Studies in English Literature, 1500–​1900, 27:2, 267–​83. Luckyj, C. (2011, ed.), The Duchess of Malfi: A Critical Guide (London: Continuum). Norman, B. (1984), Here’s Looking at You: The Story of British Television, 1908–​1939 (London: British Broadcasting Corporation and Royal Television Society). ‘The Scanner’ (1938), ‘Came the dawn …’, Radio Times, 25 February 1938, p. 18. Wells, S. (1999), ‘Introduction: 5. The play on the stage’, in T. Dekker, The Shoemaker’s Holiday, ed. R. Smallwood and S. Wells (Manchester: Manchester University Press), pp. 44–​53. Wrigley, A. (2015), ‘The spaces of medieval mystery plays on British television’, Shakespeare Bulletin, 33:4, 569–​93.

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Wymer, R. (2013), ‘The Duchess of Malfi on film: Peter Huby’s Quietus’, in S. A. Brown, R. I. Lublin and L. McCulloch (eds), Reinventing the Renaissance: Shakespeare and his Contemporaries in Adaptation and Performance (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan), pp. 269–​85. Wyver, J. (2015), ‘Television and the anti-​realist theatricality of “not Shakespeare”’, Shakespeare Bulletin, 33:4, 543–​68.

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‘This genuine theatre condition’: Basil Dean and the 1938 BBC outside broadcast of J. B. Priestley’s When We Are Married Victoria Lowe I hope that television, still in its infancy, will grow to healthy manhood, and I hope that, in the course of its life, it will give constant practical evidence of its desire to co-​operate with the theatre, to co-​ordinate the efforts of its artists and technicians so that each may help the other, so that we may add one more to the sum of cultural forces of which the world stands in such need today.1

On the evening of 16 November 1938, the BBC television service aired its first live outside broadcast from a theatre of a full-​length play. The production chosen for this pioneering event was J. B. Priestley’s hit comedy When We Are Married, broadcast directly from London’s St Martin’s Theatre. The director of the stage production was Basil Dean who, although primarily a theatre producer, had invested considerable energy in the development of British films in the 1930s, founding the first purpose-​built sound studio at Ealing and introducing both Gracie Fields and George Formby to British cinema audiences. This chapter will explore the significance of the event by locating it within a historical frame that encompasses Dean’s work between theatre and film in the 1930s. This has historiographical significance because, as Ian Macdonald has argued when examining the exchange of practice between playwrights and screenwriters in the 1910s, looking more closely at ‘contemporary practitioners’ own understanding of their cultural experience as well as notions about how their own field worked’ allows us to reframe research around questions of practice and process rather than texts and artefacts (Macdonald 2010: 75). This approach is particularly relevant when researching early television owing to the absence of audiovisual records of its programmes, meaning that the television historian has to utilise a range of other sources—​for example, written records and anecdote—​to investigate the historical event.2 Furthermore, examining cultural practices at particular historical moments can often problematise critical frameworks which uphold ontological differences between the stage and the screen. Rather than histories being bounded by post hoc academic

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disciplinarity, a history can be envisaged that is informed by the idea that, potentially, theatre, film, television and radio are ‘cultural spaces open to each other’s products and practices’ (Gledhill 2003: 3). First, I examine the theatre production of When We Are Married, the first in Dean’s production agreement with the playwright, author and screenwriter J. B. Priestley. I then look at publicity for the broadcast, including a programme made a week before the transmission in which Dean personally announced the venture. Press reaction to the broadcast itself is explored, but I also expand the frame to investigate some of the public debates taking place at the time about the relationship between theatre and television. This question has preoccupied historians concerned with understanding the developing aesthetics of television in this period. The fact that West End theatre provided much of the material for early television drama was initially seen as evidence of the deleterious influence that theatre held on the development of drama on the small screen. These early estimations have been refined by scholars such as Jacobs (2000) and Wyver (2012b). The former’s nuanced investigation into this period argues that it is ‘no longer sufficient to offer a nebulous pre-​history of TV drama in terms of theatricality as a pre-​requisite to moving to the more exciting discussions of Armchair Theatre and The Wednesday Play’ (Jacobs 2000: 3). Rather, Jacobs closely examines the relationship between theatre, theatricality and early television drama using a range of sources to reconstruct and analyse the presentation of significant productions shot at Alexandra Palace, such as Juno and the Paycock (prod. Fred O’Donovan, BBC, 1938) and Clive of India (prod. George More O’Ferrall, BBC, 1938). John Wyver’s discussion of the career of one of the first drama producers employed by BBC Television, Dallas Bower, shows that even in this early period there was actually little homogeneity in the approaches of its production staff. Wyver describes how Bower, who had previously worked in theatre, film and radio, brought his own distinctive ideas to bear on the television drama he produced and saw himself as aspiring more to ‘the visual quality of the cinema than a long shot of a theatre performance’ (Bower, quoted in Wyver 2012b: 31). Despite these refinements in our understanding of the relationship between the ‘legitimate theatre’ and early television, the outside broadcast (OB) remains distinctive in the history of television drama since it is inevitably tied closely to the ‘original’ theatrical event;3 it is more, as Jacobs puts it, ‘a form of drama coverage, than drama production’ (2000: 35).4 As a consequence, perhaps, it has been rather neglected by scholarship which has sought to unearth the particular character of early television drama or to understand the relationship between theatre and television in this period. For instance, Caughie sees the West End theatre OB as ‘symptomatic of a powerful current of dependency which ran between television and “real” theatre’ (1991: 30). Certainly, the idea that television could be

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utilised to bring legitimate theatre to wider audiences was in line with both its public service ethos and Reithian principles of public cultural enlightenment. Richards (2010: 43) quotes from the first Director-​General John Reith’s valedictory speech, on leaving the BBC in 1938, as evidence of this vision: ‘That broadcasting should be merely a vehicle for light entertainment was a limitation of its functions which we declined to accept. It has been our endeavour to give a conscious, social purpose to the exploitation of this medium’. The event also needs to be seen within the context of the service itself at that time, in terms of both its limited audience reach and even more limited funding (Jacobs 2000: 20). Therefore, on one level, using an already rehearsed and successful commodity could be seen as a pragmatic decision by a cash-​deprived public body to keep costs down without losing audiences. These viewers would also presumably be from the same limited social demographic that made up the West End theatre-​going audience. Yet this would be to overlook how the OB was in itself becoming a key attraction of early television: television cameras could take the domestic viewer straight to a range of increasingly adventurous locations and bear witness to the actual ‘event’ taking place there and then. John Wyver (2011c) describes how ‘Already in 1938 audiences had “visited” the circus at Olympia, the London Passenger Transport Board’s skid-​pan for omnibus training, a boxing tournament at Harringay [sic] Arena, the Chelsea Flower Show and the River Police base at Wapping’. It is also in line with the centrality of drama in television schedules between 1936 and 1939. Cecil Madden, a key figure in the service during this time with the job-​title of ‘Planner’, is reported in his biography to have asserted the importance of the adaptation of West End plays at the BBC studios in Alexandra Palace: ‘Planning the television schedule there was never any doubt in my mind that the emphasis should be on drama […] “A play a day” was our aim’ (quoted in Lewis 2007: 75).5 The West End OB was a logical outcome of these complementary developments, entirely in keeping with early television’s principles of culture, ‘liveness’ and event. Indeed, Jacobs argues that the first Director of Television, Gerald Cock, owing to his previous position as Head of Outside Broadcast for BBC Radio, was more inclined to see television in terms of ‘relay’ and thus saw the service’s drama provision as better served by the broadcast of plays from their original site of production, rather than creating them anew in the studios of Alexandra Palace (Jacobs 2000: 40). The event also needs to be understood within the context of public discussion about the relationship between media, which was very much ongoing in the 1930s. It was television’s very liveness which attracted the interest of some theatre practitioners in the late 1930s, who saw theatre and television as having a compatibility which was lacking in the relationship between film and theatre. Jacobs mentions that at this time these (and other) media were often seen in

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Figure 3.1  Producer Basil Dean talks on camera with Joan Miller about the broadcast of When We Are Married from St Martin’s Theatre, November 1938.

relation to each other, and there is much evidence of this from contemporary accounts (Jacobs 2000: 27). However, there needs to be some acknowledgement of the context of cultural production in Britain in the 1930s, when practitioners often moved between film, radio, theatre and television. On one level, this was the result of geographical proximity between the centres of production. But there was also the sense of a performance culture which moved between different media during this time. In the programme made to promote When We Are Married, which was broadcast a week beforehand (see Fig. 3.1), Basil Dean spoke at length about the idea of ‘Drama’ uniting entertainment across different media and appeared keen to persuade the viewer to put aside any perceived differences between theatre and television: ‘There is a fundamental unity underlying all types of dramatic entertainment that the easy critic is apt to forget. That unity is Drama, or rather, I should say that emotional thrill that communicates itself from player to audience at the moment that genuine drama is created’.6 Within this context, it is perhaps no coincidence that the theatre production chosen for the first live OB had both a producer and writer who had crossed over between stage and screen in the preceding decade. Basil Dean had begun his career as an actor with Annie Horniman’s company in

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Manchester in 1907; he moved to Liverpool in 1911, where he became the first Head of the Liverpool Repertory Company (later known as the Liverpool Playhouse). In 1919, he formed the ReandeaN [sic] theatre company, which premiered many productions in the West End over its five-​year history. By the end of the 1920s, Dean began to take more interest in cinema, initially through co-​adapting and then co-​directing Margaret Kennedy’s stage adaptation of her novel The Constant Nymph for the screen in 1928, a venture which was a considerable commercial and critical success.7 In response to the demand engendered by the protectionist 1927 Cinematographic Films Act—​legislation that ensured that 7.5% of films shown in the UK were of British origin (rising to 20% in 1935)—​Dean set up the Associated Talking Picture Company (ATP) in 1929 and built Ealing Studios in 1931, the first purpose-​built sound studios in England. Throughout the 1930s, ATP (combined with other companies to which they rented the stages out) made around sixty feature films at Ealing Studios, launching the careers of stars such as Gracie Fields and George Formby and directors such as Carol Reed. However, Dean still continued to produce in the theatre as well, premiering plays by the likes of Dodie Smith, Clemence Dane and J. B. Priestley. At various points in the late 1920s and early 1930s, he sought to combine theatre and film production by creating a company which produced plays and screen adaptations of those plays with the same actors. Dean always felt that utilising the resources of theatre would enable the development of a more distinctively British cinema by drawing upon existing and indigenous cultural capital in the work of world-​renowned British playwrights (and acting talent), and using them to establish British films in the international marketplace (Lowe 2011). Priestley, too, was famous for working across a variety of media. The 1933 cinema adaptation of his 1929 novel The Good Companions with Jessie Matthews was a box-​office success. His play Dangerous Corner was filmed in 1934, and Basil Dean produced a cinema adaptation of Laburnum Grove in 1936. The two also famously collaborated on two Gracie Fields hits, Sing as We Go (1934) and Look Up and Laugh (1935). The stage production of When We Are Married was the first in Dean and Priestley’s theatrical partnership. Dean wrote in his autobiography that ‘there was an exceptionally happy atmosphere about this production from the start’ (1973: 260). The play premiered at the Manchester Opera House on 19 September 1938 and reviews were uniformly positive, with many commenting on the need for a comedy to take the audience’s minds off the developing international situation.8 The Daily Express described how the play provided ‘comic post card characters brought to life to sit on the mantelpiece and make you laugh with their conceited hypocrisy and their hearty smugness’ (Anon. 1938b). The play then went on to a successful

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run in Blackpool before opening at St Martin’s Theatre, London, on 11 October 1938.9 Reviews were once again good, and many critics remarked on the contrast between Priestley’s previous plays and this more comic fare: ‘Mr Priestley greets us in his lighter mood. Abstruse theories of time do not trouble him. The only sort of time he wants us to have is a good one. Mr Priestley has given us a choice assortment of Yorkshire types, some shrewd sketches of character and a heap of good simple fun’.10 The northern humour in the play was also much remarked upon. The Daily Telegraph opined that ‘local colour can be very boring, especially in the theatre. But here it is applied so dexterously and so enjoyably that we are taken North on a magic carpet with golden results’ (Anon. 1938c: 18). This gets to the heart of both Priestley’s and Dean’s interests in promoting something other than the standard West End fare. Dean had written many articles over the years lamenting what he deemed to be the vacuity of the capital’s entertainment scene. His experience of producing Fields and Formby in the cinema had perhaps helped him to understand the narrowness of vision of much London theatre of the time. In a 1937 interview, he claimed that minority tastes had dominated English drama for too long and that it was time for material to be produced which had much wider national appeal: Our most popular pictures, books and plays have always been those in which the man in the street or the housewife can imagine himself or herself taking part in the drama […] Of one thing I am sure. It is that a new theatre will arise, free from the trammels of the West End, producing plays by authors who care nothing for the shibboleths of the minority.11 (Dean 1937)

Similarly, in an interview published in the West Lancashire Evening Gazette just as When We Are Married was premiering in Blackpool, Priestley talked about how ‘the modern theatre lacks robust comedy. There is, as many people have realised, too much of the slight genteel humour, pictures of Mayfair life in which a very small class of people is interested’.12 It may well be, then, that the duo saw their involvement in the OB as bringing a more diverse cultural product to television’s narrow but growing domestic audience. It seems, then, that the play was in the right place at the right time to be chosen as the first relay of a full-​length performance. In the Daily Express, Barrington (1938) suggested that people had been working on developing OB technology for the previous two years and it was only with advances in camera technology that it was now possible. Wyver (2011c) also suggests that the production was chosen due to the warm friendship between the producer Basil Dean and Director of Television Gerald Cock, as evidenced by the letters between the two men in the files of the BBC Written Archives Centre (WAC) and Dean archive. The choice of a comedy, where the laughter of the audience would provide evidence for the liveness of the event,

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and the simplicity of the staging appear to be factors in the selection. Many of the files in the BBC WAC regarding OBs have initial correspondence noting the results of site visits by the OB department.13 A memo headed ‘Preliminary Survey’, dated 28 October 1938, set out the results of a BBC visit to determine the feasibility of broadcasting When We Are Married. The whole enterprise was under the direction of Philip Dorté, the head of outside broadcasts at the BBC, and production manager Harold Cox. It was noted that Holborn council had ‘no objection’ to a scanning van being parked outside the theatre for both the day of transmission and the preceding day.14 After witnessing a performance of the play, Cox noted: It was decided that three cameras of the Super type if available be used; one either side of the orchestra pit on small rostrums and one in the front row of the Dress Circle. The cables for these would run along a ledge outside the theatre, enter the building via a fanlight over the Stalls, exit through box C, the exit door of which will be removed, then to cameras 1 and 2, it will drop over the circle rail and to camera 3 via the circle rail.15

A later memo from Philip Dorté on 10 November described how the seats in the immediate vicinity of the camera would not be occupied by the audience, in either the stalls or the circle.16 Dean (1973: 262) mentions in his autobiography that ticket prices were halved because of the disruption caused by the presence of the cameras. The financial arrangements were clearly set out in a letter from Cock to Dean, confirming that the BBC would ‘pay you the sum of 75 guineas, representing 50 guineas for the play and 25 guineas to recompense you for any loss of audience due to the occupation of the stalls, etc. by our television equipment; it being understood that you will be responsible for the payment of any fees claimable by the performers taking part in this broadcast’.17 This is notable because in effect the actors were not receiving any more for their screen appearance than their normal wage for appearing in the play. This became a source of some contention and a later memo in the BBC archives, sent in April 1939, suggests a sense of unease about the small amounts that established stars were being paid in comparison to how much they would earn by appearing in an original production: Cecil Madden considered that ‘we have been paying too little for these West End shows in which we get an already rehearsed play and commercial stars of a type we are frankly not able to get at all otherwise’.18 The BBC did, however, promise to pay for any construction work undertaken by them or on their behalf, and it appears that the budget for the whole enterprise came in at £213 18s 0d.19 If financial and technical arrangements seem to have been straightforward, then the matter of publicity was a little more convoluted. Basil Dean had written to Philip Dorté enclosing a ‘rough suggestion’ of the Radio

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Times billing and apologising for being late with the copy: ‘This is because of the difficulty we have had owing to the motor accident in which Mr F. P. was involved. We are negotiating for a star engagement to take Mr [Frank] Pettingell’s place. That is why it might be preferable not to mention individual members of the cast in the advance advertising’. The enclosed note displayed an exuberance which was perhaps somewhat out of keeping with the BBC’s usual house style in Radio Times: WEDNESDAY NOVEMBER 16TH First Time in the History of the Theatre First Time in the History of Television20

A reply from Philip Dorté to Basil Dean describes how he had adopted ‘the subject matter in principle, but in order to bring it into conformity with the standard set up of billings we have slightly reworded it’.21 However, even this more restrained version (and a note advising not ‘to alter the billing in any way’) was regarded as inappropriate by the editor of the Radio Times, who replied to Cecil Madden in scathing tones that ‘only the second half of your paragraph is genuine billing matter […] I am sure you will understand that if we allowed billing to take on this character, the television page would soon be a mass of ecstatic ejaculations that no viewer could be expected to read’.22 Madden’s reply interestingly notes that, should the wording be tampered with, ‘our relations with Basil Dean might be imperilled’.23 This suggests that the production team had to rely on the goodwill of Dean in the preparations for the production. However, it appears that Dean was still not happy, since he records receiving a telephone call from Priestley, who is reported to have been ‘very perturbed at that amount of publicity we are getting, particularly in what might be called the radio and television columns […] He particularly felt that the Radio Times should have done more for us in an editorial way’.24 Gerald Cock’s reply reveals him to be a little economical with the truth when he implicitly blamed the tardiness of Dean’s first letter, saying that, as the Radio Times had already gone to press, ‘rather superhuman efforts were necessary therefore to get in what we did print’. He reassured Dean that it was ‘not so bad as you imagine—​a couple of million people will have the name of Priestley’s play brought to their attention, although comparatively few will see the relay’.25 Dean’s showmanship was at least given full licence in a speech written for a personal television address to the public made the week before the OB itself. In announcing the broadcast, he intoned that he was ‘conscious of a momentous occasion […] the first time in the history of television and in the history of theatre that viewers will be able to see at home a performance actually taking place in a theatre virtually in that same instant of time’. It appears that Dean was conscious of creating a sense of

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‘event’, one that united audiences across public and private spaces and that was only made possible by advances in technology. Yet he also saw television as less of a threat to the theatre than cinema was when sound was introduced to it, and he called upon those he described as the ‘Artists not to be browbeaten by the Technicians, but to take their risks […] As for dramatic entertainment, it is for the Artists to drive that machine to victory’.26 Wyver (2011c) also notes that the OB was mentioned on the radio news on the evening of the transmission. Although When We Are Married was billed as being exactly the same play as was performed each night at St Martin’s Theatre, it had in fact been quite substantially altered to make it suitable for broadcast. Dean wrote in his autobiography about how ‘the grouping of the characters [was] rearranged to accommodate the restricted movement of the cameras of those days. The powerful studio lights completely destroyed my stage lighting’ (1973: 262). The text of the play was also subject to a number of revisions. A letter to Dean from Bruce Belfrage outlined his ideas about how to cut it: this involved ‘starting the script on page 9 to introduce the married couples’ and then going forward to ‘page 59’ so that they could include the introduction of the maid Ruby. Then, he advised ‘going back to page 43’ where Mrs Northrop ‘breaks the news to the wives’ and to finish the initial part of the broadcast ‘on her exit’. This suggestion, he claimed, was based on the principle that: We have got in the main characters, introduced a lot of laughs, and left the thing in the air in a certain situation, which we hope will make people say, ‘Let’s go and see how they get out of this’. I think this will be about right for timing, although there may be one or two cuts and a few lines, if they are purely visual, to be altered. […] If you can get Priestley to agree this in principle, I will work the whole thing out in full.27

This indicates that the producers were clearly adapting the play to fit the television format and making sure that the audience would not switch off during the interval but stay with the play through to the end. Changes also had to be made to the music, costumes and make-​up. A memo from Wilson Blake, Head of Music, to Gerald Cock made it clear that broadcasting the original music from the show would infringe copyright so they needed to ‘arrange to broadcast music from your studio’.28 Furthermore, a camera rehearsal on 15 November revealed that some wardrobe changes were needed since some of the costumes were deemed to be unsuitable for the limited definition of the television image. The black and white servant’s costume for Patricia Hayes (Ruby Birtle), for instance, needed to be replaced by a ‘dark grey dress and tinted apron and cap’; similarly, Raymond Huntley’s (Councillor Albert Parker) black suit would not come up well on screen and ‘as he is prominent throughout the play, it would be

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better to have him dressed in a light suit if possible’.29 There was, however, also a clear sense that the whole enterprise was designed to approximate as closely as possible for the television audience at home the actual experience of going to see the play performed live. For instance, a note from Harold Cox to the design team outlined how the captions for the OB were to be in the form of a replica of a theatre programme.30 The running order for the evening also detailed that the introduction by the announcer Jasmine Bligh would be followed by a lengthy static shot of St Martin’s Theatre with a mix to a traffic noise record and then a tracking shot featuring the words ‘St Martin’s Theatre’ in lights (now very much established as a cliché of the ‘live from …’ type of broadcast). There was also a theatre bell effect from the studio to mark the end of the interval. The wording of Bligh’s introduction, in appealing directly to the audience and involving them in the ‘experiment’, also emphasises this sense of event: ‘This evening the whole programme comes to you from St Martin’s Theatre. We feel sure that you will be interested in this—​the first relay of a successful West End play in its entirety from its own home. To us it is also a great experiment from which we hope to learn a good deal’.31 After cutting from the theatre exterior, the turning pages of a programme were shown as if the viewer were themselves waiting in the audience, looking through to see who was in the cast. After reading out the production details, Bligh then explained the interval arrangements to the viewers: ‘The play is divided into three acts with two ten-​minute intervals. During these intervals we suggest that you relax as if you were in the theatre itself’. Similarly, during the first interval (and in the later one), Bligh reinforced the idea that the television and the theatre audience were to be regarded as one: ‘During this interval we suggest that you should leave your chairs, put the lights on and discuss the play—​in other words do what the audience is doing at St Martin’s Theatre at this moment’.32 Overall, both publicly and privately, responses to the broadcast were positive. On 18 November, Cock wrote to Priestley thanking him for allowing the BBC to televise the play. He said that the BBC had been ‘swamped with telegrams and letters’, the majority of which were from people who were going now to see the play in the theatre, ‘as it was so amusing’.33 He wrote to thank Dean ‘for the way they worked under those lights in somewhat novel conditions and put up such a good show’. Perhaps suggesting that Dean was rather more sceptical about the broadcast, he wrote: ‘it would really do you good if you saw our correspondence. It is all flattering about you, your speech and the play, as well as the television transmission’.34 In a reply which hints at a slightly tense atmosphere during the broadcast itself, Dean thanked Cock for his staff’s ‘unfailing courtesy during that very trying Wednesday and the care with which they carried out their necessary technical arrangements inside the auditorium’.35

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The press response was also generally positive, with the Daily Mail commenting on how ‘ideally suited to television is this particular play, in which so much depends on characterisation and speech and so little on action and background’. The reviewer also noted how: ‘The BBC experts have never done a better job than they did last night with each character swinging to the foreground as his or her “big piece” was due to be said and every now and then the entire cast merging into a complete whole’ (Anon. 1938a). It appears, then, that a visual grammar was being developed in which the camera highlighted key moments by framing the speakers, contrasting this with long shots which took in the whole of the cast. What the Mail deemed particularly exciting, however, was not just the presentation of the play itself but a sense of the whole live performance: the ‘sudden swish of the curtain with the background of rumbling applause’, for example, brought ‘an authentic feel of the theatre into the home’ (ibid.). On the other hand, Peter Purbeck in The Listener ‘doubted the wisdom’ of showing the curtain at all since, being ‘reduced to the size of the television screen’, it seemed too much like a toy theatre (Purbeck 1938). In his thoughtful, extended article, Purbeck initially reflects on two questions: whether watching the play on television was comparable to watching it in the theatre and whether live broadcasts were better than studio productions. In terms of the former, he reflects that however ‘pleasant’ it may be to watch from your own home, nothing can compare to ‘the spell of living players on a stage a few yards away’. He also refers to the rituals of theatre, including dressing up and dining out afterwards that can enhance the experience of the event. In terms of the second question, he initially seems to indicate that theatre productions in the studio should be better as they are clearly designed for the camera, whereas ‘the production at the St Martin’s was designed for its own audience, using a tradition of stagecraft built up over generations’. This meant that the studio production could more clearly co-​ordinate the movement of the actors with the camera, instead of the camera trying to follow the actors onstage to ‘bewildering effect’, with voices being heard and the owners of the voices unseen. However, he goes on to qualify this by saying that the OB did have the advantage over the studio production in terms of having a visible public audience to enhance the actors’ performance: ‘Obviously it is easier to act before a public whose reactions you can feel and watch than it is in front of a camera which does not appear to care a pin; so the stage performance helps the actor. And it helps the viewer too because he feels himself a part of the theatre audience and can join in its tension and its laughter’ (ibid.). The reviewer in The Times felt that on balance ‘It would not seem, however, that the theatre has at present much to fear from television’, although acknowledging that perhaps this was an effect of going from the television set in the bar, where it was ‘a strain upon the eyes to follow

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the farce’, directly to the auditorium where ‘the actual stage seemed to be bursting with life and colour’ (Anon. 1938d). The next OB undertaken by the BBC, on 24 November 1938, had a rather different structure, perhaps as a result of the fear that the live broadcasting of entire productions would potentially diminish rather than increase audiences for West End plays. Thus with the comedy Under Your Hat, starring Jack Hulbert and Cicely Courtneidge, only the first half was broadcast, and this was preceded by backstage interviews with the stars. It was not until 2 January 1939 that another full-​length play, Michel St Denis’s production of Twelfth Night, was broadcast live, this time from the Phoenix Theatre (see Wyver 2011b). After that, it seems that there were a further twelve OBs organised for plays, musicals and variety performances before the Second World War closed down the television service at the start of September 1939. During 1939, however, the prevalence of OBs was also affected by a dispute that had been brewing between the BBC and West End theatre managers for some time. A brief article in the Daily Sketch gives a small clue to what extensive files in the BBC’s archives reveal was an ongoing and increasingly bitter struggle between the BBC and West End theatre managements over the appearance of artists participating simultaneously on stage and on television: ‘All artists in West End productions have been banned not only from television but from all radio work. Failure to secure artists has compelled the BBC to cancel several productions’.36 The row culminated in a meeting in May 1939 attended by representatives from the major West End theatrical management companies. A report from the Television Advisory Committee gives a detailed account of the case presented. It begins by referring to a previous agreement in 1936 overseen by the Post Master General that limited the BBC’s activities with regard to drama programming so as not to threaten the commercial interests of West End theatres. However, the managers now sought to impose further limitations on television broadcasting, which they saw as ‘a much more serious form of competitive entertainment than ordinary broadcasting. It is as revolutionary as was the superseding of the Silent by the Sound film’. In an interesting insight into the way that television was viewed by some quarters of the commercial theatre, the report claimed that television was essentially a ‘parasitic organisation, depending very largely for its sustenance and its programmes upon the professional stage’.37 In a pointed reference to the OB, it also pointed out that any benefit that television might offer the theatre in terms of advertising plays ceased to be of value if ‘the matter diffused is of such length or character as to provide a complete and cheaper alternative to the entertainment provided by the theatres themselves’.38 The response from Cecil Madden in a private memo was to decry the report as containing ‘generalisations’ rather than ‘facts’. However, he seemed

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particularly at pains to rebut the accusation of the medium being ‘parasitic’ by claiming that ‘already a great number of television productions are either completely original or are re-​treated for television purposes. An entirely new technique is being evolved’. The memo also questioned whether television broadcasting comes within the classification of mechanical entertainment such as films and records. Both the latter consist of ‘preserved’ performances which can be reproduced as often as required from a single performance by an artist. In the case of television, every reproduction requires individual performance and no records are possible.39

This underscores how much early television drama was aligned with the ephemeral nature of performance: an element which of course was absolutely central to the OB. If theatre managements were understandably hostile to the OB, specialist theatre journals were perhaps more open to discuss what the new medium had to offer. As noted previously, television was often seen in relation to other media in order to try and define its essential characteristics. Much was made then of the way that television differed from other ‘mechanical’ media, and especially when in relation to live performance, this was proffered by some in the theatre as offering grounds for productive collaboration. For instance, in 1938 Ashley Dukes in Theatre Arts Monthly explicitly identified the ‘liveness’ of television as the most distinctive feature of the new medium: The viewer knows that what he is seeing on the small screen differs essentially from what is heard in radio broadcast or shown on the movie screen. It is complete, instant and actual. Something is coming over which represents the performance of an action […].This sense of actuality can impress the viewer with the sense of being there. (Dukes 1938: 259)

Rather than seeing television as competition, therefore, Dukes saw television as offering a potentially powerful alternative space for the production of plays. He concluded the article with a declaration that whilst it is unclear how television will develop, at this particular point in its evolution, it seemed to ‘fulfil more completely than any other mechanised art, the essential condition of theatre’ (Dukes 1938: 263). Television’s relationship to the theatre was also the subject of the 1939 radio programme Living Theatre, with Basil Dean, the actor D. Clarke Smith and interviewer Herbert Marshall. Dean, seemingly present as a sympathetic representative of the theatre world, was keen to ‘allay fears’ that television would pose another threat to the theatre. He articulated his own interest in television as deriving from ‘the effect of immediacy—​­spontaneity if you like—​which is certainly not present in a genuine sense in even the best film’.40 On the other hand, Dean was keen to emphasise that television plays produced not in the form of an outside broadcast but rather in the

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studio could not match theatre in terms of performance because they could never benefit from being played in front of a live, co-​present audience: ‘It is this interplay of emotion between the player and his audience which makes up the eternal nature of the theatre and which can never be created in the mechanical conditions either of television or of the talking picture’.41 However, he then went on to argue that what distinguishes the OB from these drama transmissions from Alexandra Palace is that the former can potentially capture that relationship between audience and performer. With regard to When We Are Married, he claimed that ‘The viewers caught on their screens some genuine theatre. This they cannot possibly get from performances which might be more technically efficient at Alexandra Palace, but […] could not approximate to this genuine theatre condition’.42 In conclusion, although the OB has been somewhat overlooked in the history of early television drama in favour of an exhumation and analysis of the more tantalising early studio work, it is manifestly clear from the archival evidence that it is equally worthy of study. In many ways, the OB crystallised both the ambitions and the fears surrounding television’s meeting of stage and screen—​of the live and the mechanised. There was a clear sense that the ‘as live’ televised play was central to the debates and discussion surrounding the approach of the legitimate theatre to this emerging medium, and this evidence points to developing practices that seek to identify how best to use technology to try to articulate the live theatre experience for this new audience. In finding ways to emphasise the ‘liveness’ of the performances taking place, we can find resonances in the live cinema screenings of theatre productions today. John Wyver (2012a) has noted the similarity between some of the issues faced by the production team for When We Are Married and live casting teams in terms of the presentation for the screen of material originally conceived for the stage, despite the social context of viewing being very different for the television audience and the cinema audience. For instance, Tim van Someren, the director of the NT Live version of James Graham’s play This House (which played to 45,000 people in cinemas around the UK on 16 May 2013), has claimed that when thinking of how to present the play, ‘the key is to remember it’s not just a play—​it’s tonight’s performance at the Olivier Theatre’ (Van Someren, quoted in Trueman 2013). This emphasises how crucial the liveness of the performance event is to both the OB in early television drama and contemporary developments in live casting theatre shows.43 Similarly, although the technology has changed, director Robin Lough’s description of how he uses the camera to engage the audience interestingly echoes Basil Dean in his use of the term ‘drama’: ‘A crane shot or a gentle track can greatly enhance the drama as long as it is done subtly. The cinema audience should always feel totally engaged

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with the stage production without ever noticing how the transformation to screen is taking place’ (Lough, quoted in Sandwell 2012). Crucial to both this first OB and the NT Live project therefore is the sense of event that they both want to impart and the ways in which the ‘liveness’ of the theatrical encounter is inscribed therein. Whether it is NT Live’s presenter Emma Freud, who hosted many of the early cinema broadcasts, or Jasmine Bligh exhorting the audience in 1938 to ‘relax’ in the interval, it seems that the strategies for constructing the live event for the audience of cinema and television are not dissimilar. Likewise, a 2014 report’s finding that provincial theatre audiences were not diminished by the NT Live broadcasts seems to hark back to the concerns voiced by managements that theatre audiences would be affected if OBs were allowed to continue. It seems, therefore, that ‘this genuine theatre condition’ in the shape of the live theatre broadcast is still attracting audiences seventy-​five years after the original experiment.

Productions discussed Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare. Prod. Michel St Denis and Dallas Bower. BBC Television. 8.30–​11.00pm, Monday 2 January 1939. When We Are Married by J. B. Priestley. Prod. Basil Dean. BBC Television. 8.30–​10.40pm, Wednesday 16 November 1938.

Notes 1 Basil Dean Archive, John Rylands University Library of Manchester (hereafter BDA), DEA 12/​1/​82, typescript by Basil Dean, 16 November 1938, p. 2. 2 See Jacobs (2000: 4–​5) for a discussion of this issue. 3 The term ‘legitimate theatre’ derives from the Licensing Act of 1737, which placed theatres under the control of the Lord Chamberlain. Drama could only be performed at patented theatres and thus illegitimate theatre included types such as melodrama, pantomime and music hall. In this example, I use the term to distinguish text-​based drama from more popular forms such as music hall—​the latter, of course, having its own relationship with early television. 4 This distinction between ‘coverage’ and ‘production’ has contemporary resonance, too. The director of the Opening Ceremony of the 2012 Olympic Games, Danny Boyle, reportedly threatened to resign from his post because the company who were responsible for shooting the ceremony were not drama specialists but sports broadcasters, more used to event coverage than production (see Hopkins and Gibson 2012). 5 For details of ten plays produced between 1930 and 1939, see Wyver (2011a).

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6 BDA, DEA 12/​1/​81, typescript by Basil Dean, 9 November 1938. 7 For an excellent discussion of The Constant Nymph, see Napper (2009: 35–​79). 8 The annexing of the Sudetenland by Nazi Germany led to the Munich conference later in September after which, on 30 September 1938, Chamberlain returned declaring a pact with Hitler and ‘peace for our time’. 9 There was a substantial setback to the production after the opening when the lead actor, Frank Pettingell, was involved in a serious car accident. Priestley stepped into the breach by playing the part himself (Holt 1938: 19). 10 BDA, DEA 11/​1/​28, typescript, ‘Suggested quote from dailies: Daily Mirror’, 12 October 1938. 11 A clipping of Dean’s 1937 article published in Teacher’s World exists in BDA, DEA 11/​1/​28. 12 BDA, DEA 11/​ 1/​ 28, newspaper cutting from the West Lancashire Evening Gazette, 27 September 1938, p. 6. 13 See, for instance, BBC WAC, R30/​1, ‘Outside broadcasts: His Majesty’s Theatre’. 14 BBC WAC, T14/​1072, ‘Preliminary survey’, memo from Harold Cox to OBS, 28 October 1938. 15 Ibid. 1072, memo from Philip Dorté to Wilson Blake, 16 BBC WAC, T14/​ 10 November 1938. 17 BBC WAC, T14/​1072, letter from Gerald Cock to Basil Dean, 2 November 1938. 18 BBC WAC, T5/​517, memo from Cecil Madden to Gerald Cock, 13 April 1939. 19 BBC WAC, T14/​1072, letter from Gerald Cock to Basil Dean, 2 November 1938. 20 BBC WAC, T14/​1072, letter from Basil Dean to Philip Dorté, 31 October 1938. 21 BBC WAC, T14/​1072, letter from Philip Dorté to Basil Dean, 1 November 1938. 22 BBC WAC, T14/​1072, memo from the Editor of Radio Times to Cecil Madden, 2 November 1938. 23 BBC WAC, T14/​1072, memo from Cecil Madden to the Editor of Radio Times, 3 November 1938. 24 BDA, DEA 2/​71/​42, letter from Basil Dean to Gerald Cock, 12 November 1938. 25 BBC WAC, T14/​ 1072, letter from Gerald Cock to Basil Dean, 14 November 1938. 26 BDA, DEA 12/​1/​81, typescript by Basil Dean, 9 November 1938. This speech seems to have been broadcast live on television because earlier in the typescript Dean talks about how the television cameras would pick up on any ‘air of false modesty’ in the announcement he is about to make. However, there is no record of Dean’s speech in the billings for the Radio Times, although this is not surprising considering the print deadlines. Since the typescript is dated 9 November and Dean refers to ‘Wednesday next’, it is assumed that it went out a week before the broadcast, perhaps in response to Priestley’s and Dean’s concerns about advance publicity. 27 BDA, DEA 2/​71/​1, letter from Bruce Belfrage to Basil Dean, 7 November 1938. 28 BBC WAC, T14/​ 1072, memo from Wilson Blake to Gerald Cock, 7 November 1938. 1072, memo from Hetty Winthrop to Harold Cox, 15 29 BBC WAC, T14/​ November 1938.

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30 BBC WAC, T14/​ 1072, memo from Harold Cox to the Design Team, 31 October 1938. 31 BBC WAC, T14/​1072, ‘When We Are Married’ camera script, 16 November 1938, p. 1. 32 Ibid., p. 2. 1072, letter from Gerald Cock to J. B. Priestley, 18 33 BBC WAC, T14/​ November 1938. 34 BDA, DEA 2/​71/​13, letter from Gerald Cock to Basil Dean, 18 November 1938. 35 BBC WAC, T14/​ 1072, letter from Basil Dean to Gerald Cock, 18 November 1938. 36 BBC WAC, T/​16/​37/​1, ‘Actors banned from BBC in television war’ (cutting from Daily Sketch), 28 April 1939. There is not the scope within this chapter to go into detail over this row, but this file is full of correspondence between BBC personnel which give a fascinating insight into the battle fought between West End Theatre Managers and the BBC over booking artists. See also BBC WAC, T16/​23, ‘TV Policy, Artists, General Theatre Corporation [GTC] 1935–​1939’ for a similar dispute with the GTC about their contracted artists appearing on television. 37 BBC WAC, T/​16/​37/​1, Television Advisory Committee report, 17 May 1939, p. 4. 38 Ibid., p. 7. 39 BBC WAC, T/​16/​37/​1, memo from Cecil Madden to Gerald Cock, 20 June 1939. 40 BDA, DEA 12/​ 1/​ 85, ‘Suggested title, The Living Theatre’ typescript, 13 February 1939, p. 1. 41 Ibid., p. 3. 42 Ibid., p. 2. 43 For instance, although NT Live delivers ‘encore’ screenings of its shows in cinemas, it currently refuses to release the performances on DVD, other than for educational purposes.

References Anon. (1938a), ’25,000 see televised play’, Daily Mail, 17 November 1938. Anon. (1938b), ‘Review’, Daily Express, 20 September 1938. Anon. (1938c), ‘Review’, Daily Telegraph, 3 November 1938. Anon. (1938d), ‘Television in the theatre: experiment with three cameras’, The Times, 17 November 1938, p. 12. Barrington, J. (1938), ‘First night will be televised from stage box’, Daily Express, 5 November 1938, p. 23. Caughie, J. (1991), ‘Before the golden age: early television drama’, in J. Corner (ed.), Popular Television in Britain: Studies in Cultural History (London: British Film Institute), pp. 22–​41. Dean, B. (1937), ‘A new theatre will arise’, Teacher’s World, 11 August 1937. Dean, B. (1973), Mind’s Eye (London: Hutchinson). Dukes, A. (1938), ‘Televised drama so far’, Theatre Arts Monthly, April 1938, pp. 259–​63.

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Gledhill, C. (2003), Reframing British Cinema, 1918–​1928: Between Restraint and Passion (London: British Film Institute). Holt, P. (1938), ‘Priestley turns actor in his own play’, Daily Express, 3 November 1938. Hopkins, N., and O. Gibson (2012), ‘Olympic opening ceremony: a feast of drama … and that’s just the rehearsals’, Guardian, 18 July 2012. Jacobs, J. (2000), The Intimate Screen: Early British Television Drama (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Lewis, J. (2007, ed.), Starlight Days: The Memoirs of Cecil Madden (London: Trevor Square). Lowe, V. (2011), ‘“Escape” from the stage? From play to screenplay in British cinema’s early sound period’, Journal of Screenwriting, 2:2, 215–​28. Macdonald, I. W. (2010), ‘Forming the craft: play-​writing and photoplay-​writing in Britain in the 1910s’, Early Popular Visual Culture, 8:1, 75–​89. Napper, L. (2009), British Cinema and Middlebrow Culture in the Interwar Years (Exeter: University of Exeter Press). Purbeck, P. (1938), ‘We go to the theatre’, The Listener, 24 November 1938, p. 1151. 1960 Richards, J. (2010), Cinema and Radio in Britain and America, 1920–​ (Manchester: Manchester University Press). Sandwell, I. (2012), ‘NT Live: “It’s about getting back to the core of what the theatrical experience is about”’, Screen Daily, 18 October 2012, online at www. screendaily.com/​home/​blogs/​nt-​live-​its-​about-​getting-​back-​to-​the-​core-​of-​what-​ the-​theatrical-​experience-​is-​about/​5047936.article (accessed 5 November 2020). Trueman, M. (2013), ‘The surprise success of NT Live’, Guardian, 9 June 2013. Wyver, J. (2011a), ‘100 Television Stage Plays: [1]‌1930–​ 1939’, Screen Plays, 22 August 2011, online at https://​screen​play​stv.wordpr​ess.com/​2011/​08/​22/​100-​ tel​evis​ion-​stage-​plays-​1-​1930-​1939 (accessed 5 November 2020). Wyver, J. (2011b), ‘In the beginning: Twelfth Night (BBC, 1939)’, Screen Plays, 11 December 2011, online at https://​screen​play​stv.wordpr​ess.com/​2011/​12/​11/​ in-​the-​beginn​ing-​twel​fth-​night-​bbc-​1939 (accessed 5 November 2020). Wyver, J. (2011c), ‘In the beginning: When We Are Married (BBC, 1938) 1’, Screen Plays, 22 September 2011, online at https://​screen​play​stv.wordpr​ess. com/​2011/​09/​22/​in-​the-​beginn​ing-​when-​we-​are-​marr​ied-​bbc-​1938-​1 (accessed 5 November 2020). Wyver, J. (2011d), ‘In the beginning: When We Are Married (BBC, 1938) 2’, Screen Plays, 23 September 2011, online at https://​screen​play​stv.wordpr​ess.com/​2011/​ 09/​23/​in-​the-​beginn​ing-​when-​we-​are-​marr​ied-​bbc-​1938-​2 (accessed 5 November 2020). Wyver, J. (2012a), ‘Beyond the boundaries: intermedial ideas in Paris’, Screen Plays, 17 March 2012, online at https://​screen​play​stv.wordpr​ess.com/​2012/​03/​17/​bey​ ond-​the-​bou​ndar​ies (accessed 5 November 2020). Wyver, J. (2012b), ‘Dallas Bower: a producer for television’s early years, 1936–​9’, Journal of British Cinema and Television, 9:1, 26–​39.

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‘Our other Shakespeare’: Middleton’s tragedies on television, 1965–​2009 Susanne Greenhalgh

The reputation of the Jacobean dramatist Thomas Middleton has undergone an upsurge in recent years. This is largely the result of the advocacy and editorial labours of Gary Taylor, who oversaw production of the magisterial 2007 Oxford edition of his collected works (Middleton 2007a), deliberately modelled on the format and authority of The Oxford Shakespeare (Shakespeare 2005). Explicitly promoted by Taylor as ‘our other Shakespeare’ (see G. Taylor 2012: 47–​50), Middleton’s corpus is now generally accepted to include scenes from several Shakespeare plays, as well as works such as The Revenger’s Tragedy and A Yorkshire Tragedy. In his introduction to The Collected Works, Taylor pictures the collection of plays as ‘startling surviving pieces … unearthed, catalogued, authenticated, re-​ sequenced, and put together in a single magic box’ (G. Taylor 2007: 58). The image might equally be applied to Middleton’s tragedies on television. Neil Taylor’s statistical overview of stage plays on BBC Television concludes that television has not served early modern drama well, with only seven playwrights’ work having been adapted (N. Taylor 1998: 31). He identifies the comedies of Ben Jonson as the most frequently produced, after Shakespeare in first place (ibid.: 34), but when ITV productions are taken into account, Middleton’s total of seven matches that of Jonson.1 They are also unique among televised early modern drama in that all survive as recordings, constituting a second kind of canon—​or ‘magic box’—​of Middleton texts. They provide an invaluable opportunity to compare the televisual treatment of the content and conventions of one body of early modern theatre plays from the mid-​1960s to the first decade of the twenty-​first century. Middleton’s tragedies are distinctive for their explicit sexual content, spectacular theatricality and exploration of the psychological possibilities of the aside—​all dramaturgical elements that potentially pose challenges for successful television adaptation. As Sarah Cardwell (2014) has argued, adaptations of the same text can produce markedly different aesthetic effects resulting from the technological practices prevalent in different decades. As

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all but one of the adaptations are multi-​camera studio productions, they particularly invite comparison of the ways in which script, setting and camerawork are deployed to re-​stage Middleton’s plays in the ‘performative space’ of the studio (Caughie 2000: 77). These were also years which saw marked shifts in accepted cultural codes of sexual behaviour and morality, and also the rise and decline of the feminist movement. By comparing all seven productions and their ‘economic, cultural, political, social and institutional contexts’ (Cooke 2005: 97), this chapter seeks to determine how and why Middleton’s plays were televised in different eras, and whether they formed a radical alternative to the ‘“mainstream”, implicitly ­conservative’ early modern canon represented by Shakespeare (Aebischer and Prince 2012: 2–​3). Growing critical attention has recently been paid to the screening of what Pascale Aebischer has labelled ‘not-​Shakespeare’: screen versions of the plays of Shakespeare’s contemporaries, which serve as ‘the abject others that both constitute his identity and threaten to submerge it with their filth, disorder and death’ (Aebischer 2010: 117). According to Kenneth Tynan (1962) Shakespeare ‘lied about sex’, while Paul Budra locates the major difference between Middleton’s and Shakespeare’s tragedies in their emotional register, comparing ‘the ethereal, sublime wonder that Shakespearian tragedy is purported to induce’ with Middleton’s tragedies, which are ‘at once too violent, frightening, self-​referential, funny, and sexual for such delicacy’ (Budra 2012: 493). They require productions that resist ‘Shakespearization’ and ‘generate squirms and squeals, ghoulish laughter, and even sadistic glee’ (ibid.: 500). Televising such plays invited the exploration of ways in which the studio space could be used so that what Tynan (1962) considered Middleton’s ‘authentic reportage’ of sexual vagaries could be combined with the plays’ ‘emblematic counter-​realism’ (Jowett 2007: 1491). As Kim Solga argues, The Changeling is a play about ‘the sexual violence of space’ (2009: 141), in which the ‘spaces-​off’—​where rape and murder take place—​require an audience ‘to fill in the endless blanks of theatrical image and narrative uncertainty’ (ibid.: 151). Television, like film, tends towards replacing these theatrical ‘spaces-​off’ with detailed locations. Such refiguring of the plays’ Jacobean spatial conventions does not simply ‘spread their backgrounds’ beyond a few interior sets (Sutton 1982: 63) but can interpret for viewers what passes between the characters—​especially, in Middleton’s tragedies, the questions of whether sex is consensual or not and how far these are ‘warped’ love stories (Rutherford 1993). In particular, the question of whether Middleton’s heroines are raped has become a central one in contemporary scholarship, reflecting the influence of feminist theory and historical contextualisation, together with changing legal and social attitudes towards the act from the 1960s onwards.2 Production choices about what to show or conceal, and the location of each sexual encounter, disclose

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shifting attitudes to male and female sexual behaviour as well as the changing treatment of sex and violence on television. ITV largely left early modern drama to the BBC, which—​as Lisa Ward explores in Chapter 2—​had featured live studio adaptations of such plays, even if few in number, from the early years of broadcasting. This was a tradition that was also well established on BBC Radio, where several productions of Women Beware Women and The Changeling were transmitted from 1950, along with a number of Middleton’s comedies.3 However, as noted above, the BBC’s early modern output remained dominated by Shakespeare, whether as outside broadcasts of theatre productions, studio productions or more televisual adaptations, such as the serialised English and Roman Histories of the early 1960s.4 In contrast, by the mid-​1960s, only three Shakespeare plays had been adapted for mainstream commercial television, and two of these—​Hamlet (prod. Peter Brook, ATV for ITV, 1956) and The Comedy of Errors (prod. and dir. Lionel Harris, ATV for ITV, 1956)—​were broadcasts of theatre productions.5 The quatercentenary of Shakespeare’s birth in 1964 saw a lavish studio production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, directed by Joan Kemp-​ Welch for Associated-​ Rediffusion and broadcast by ITV on Midsummer’s Day in the Play of the Week slot (see Wrigley 2014: 412–​14). In the same year, the BBC’s keynote production was a made-​for-​television outside broadcast, Hamlet at Elsinore, directed by Philip Saville (see Wyver 2013).

Blood and Thunder: The Changeling and Women Beware Women (Play of the Week, Granada, 1965) Granada’s scheduling of Middleton’s tragedies early in the year after the Shakespeare quatercentenary represents a distinctive engagement with ‘not-​ Shakespeare’ drama, suggesting a conscious reaction against both BBC and ITV ‘Establishment’ Shakespeare by a company intent on ensuring that its plays, in the words of Denis Forman, ‘were recognised as being in a class above the rest of ITV—​equalling and perhaps surpassing the drama output of the BBC’ (Forman 1997: 105).6 The two-​play series, entitled Blood and Thunder, was advertised in both the New Statesman and Spectator on 1 January 1965 with the heading ‘Not by Shakespeare’. Painting the Shakespeare anniversary year as a boring flop, Granada offered an alternative ‘quarter-​ centenary’ celebration—​ that of Middleton, conveniently (if erroneously) discovered to have been born in ‘Granadaland’ (Anon. 1965a and b). Decades before the emergence of the filmic ‘not-​ Shakespeare’ corpus analysed by Aebischer, Granada thus playfully initiated a ‘use of a non-​Shakespearean play’ as an attack on the ‘order, decorum,

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universal appeal, tastefulness, narrative, heritage’ represented by television Shakespeare (Aebischer 2010: 127). As George Seddon (1965) commented in the Observer, Granada was clearly ‘out to prove that it’s better than the Establishment /​Shakespearian thing’. It is significant that Granada televised Middleton’s tragedies only four years after the first twentieth-​ century professional stage production of The Changeling (at the Royal Court, 1961; see Panek 2019: 42–​5), and three years after the first modern revival of Women Beware Women (Royal Shakespeare Company, 1962), both of which had been greeted as innovative and experimental. In the foreword to Granada’s account of their first year of operation, the Independent Television Authority Chairman, Kenneth Clark, described the company as aiming at intelligent entertainment, quoting approvingly a critic’s description of it as ‘ITV’s “Third Programme”’ and summarising its character as ‘immediacy. Granada believes in today’ (Granada Television 1958: 6 and 5). The Labour Party returned to power on 15 October 1964, an election win that many put down in part to the destabilisation of the Conservative government under Macmillan caused by the previous year’s scandal of the Profumo affair, which involved politicians, call-​girls and spies. In a climate of disenchantment with the political Establishment, Women Beware Women and The Changeling were evidently felt to fit the mood of a Britain newly aware of the ‘sexual oppression, guilt and bullying, the whitewashing and blackballing, the lack of irony and absurd confused anger of “Jack” Profumo’s England’ (Davenport-​Hines 2013: x). Although over three hundred years old, the plays’ focus on sexual corruption gave them an aura of contemporaneity which evidently fitted Granada’s agenda to screen socially aware drama, as well as its desire to compete with the BBC on quality. The productions were aired in the Monday evening Play of the Week series (1955–​74), a programming slot which rotated between Granada and the other two major ITV companies, Associated-​ Rediffusion (A-R) and Associated Television (ATV), with occasional contributions from smaller suppliers such as Anglia. Although the programme length varied, it was usually between seventy-​five and ninety minutes with two commercial breaks, effectively giving most transmitted plays a three-​act structure. The producer and adapter for Blood and Thunder was Philip Mackie, who was Granada’s head of drama from 1958 to 1962, thereafter working freelance for the company. Mackie was the author of several crime-​based scripts for stage and television and, according to Forman, the ‘most avid reader of dramatic literature’ he had ever met, inhabiting a flat piled high with plays (Forman 1997: 99). He was largely responsible for Granada’s focus on ‘serial’ presentation of theatre plays within existing ‘anthology series’.7 As Jonathan Bignell points out, ‘the anthology was a negotiation with format, seriality

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and commercial (transatlantic) influences’ (Bignell 2014: 372). Audiences were offered weekly opportunities to engage with plays organised by theme or author but without the risk posed by serial drama of missing a key episode, while the scheduling of uninterrupted sequences of Granada plays helped to build the network’s reputation for quality drama. Both productions were shot and tele-​recorded with multiple cameras in Granada’s Manchester studios in late 1964, by directors and designers who had worked with Mackie previously on anthology series based on short stories by Saki (1962) and Guy de Maupassant (1963). Gordon Flemyng, who directed Women Beware Women, was noted for his skill with actors and for preferring to direct from the studio floor. Derek Bennett was a ‘Granada graduate’ who had acted as assistant to Silvio Narizzano, a Canadian who had brought experience of North American television production of drama to Granada. Bennett was also responsible for the first ‘social realist’ episodes of Coronation Street (Granada, from 9 December 1960; see Cooke 2013: 29–​40). The casting of the productions confirmed the ambitions for developing Granada’s existing reputation for quality drama. The main roles in both plays were played by established theatre and television stars, such as Derek Godfrey as a saturnine, sensuous De Flores, Clifford Williams as a commanding Duke of Florence and Gene Anderson as an elegantly evil Livia, together with up-​and-​coming young actors. Diana Rigg, on the verge of her big breakthrough as Mrs Peel in ABC’s The Avengers, presented a poised, self-​aware Bianca, while Kika Markham’s Beatrice, always adorned in lace, was a coolly unreadable blonde beauty, reminiscent of a Hitchcock heroine. As a surviving rehearsal script of The Changeling and the extant recordings confirm, Mackie’s adaptations skilfully filleted lines and modernised vocabulary throughout, to retain ‘all its original flavour, while making its 17th century style easily and quickly intelligible to a 20th century audience’ (Snow 1964).8 On screen, all asides are spoken aloud, but only the most cynical and manipulative characters, such as Livia and Guardiano, consistently address the camera directly. Both productions demonstrate what Gerald Larner (1965) considered the ‘radical reorganisation’ necessary to turn five-​act stage plays into ninety-​minute television dramas. The hospital-​ cum-​madhouse plot is removed entirely from The Changeling, while much is cut from the scenes involving the Ward in Women Beware Women. Other scenes are repositioned. The arrival of Bianca and Leantio at the latter’s mother’s house in act 1 scene 1 here comes after act 1 scene 2 introducing Livia’s household and the planned marriage of Isabella and the Ward, a change which enables setting and characters to be established as ‘a set of hedonists—​wealthy, idle pleasure seekers whose passionate intrigues make Italy’s “dolce vita” scandals of recent years seem as innocent as a Sunday School party’, as Davis (1965) puts it in his briefing for TV Times.

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Even more striking is the foregrounding of De Flores from the start of The Changeling. In contrast to the original stage play, where he does not appear or speak until well into the first scene, on television he appears right at the start: he is given a dramatic first entrance, framed in a doorway from which a shaft of light falls onto the studio floor (an effect repeated as he conducts Alonzo towards the site of his murder). There follows a dynamic, camera-​tracked progress to the church, which leads the viewer’s gaze towards Beatrice, and her first sly exchange of looks with Alsemero. De Flores is also given the first (added) line of the play when he intercepts Beatrice with an offer to escort her to her father, followed by most of his first aside. Only after this does Alsemero speak the first line of Middleton’s script. Mackie also carefully ensured creation of suspense by placing plot cliff-​hangers before each commercial break. Women Beware Women is fitted into a three-​act structure of ‘Seduction’, ‘Corruption’, ‘Death’, with the first ‘interval’ taken after Bianca’s hostile exchanges with her betrayers, Livia and Guardiano, and a final close-​up of the chess board, and the second ‘interval’ after Leantio’s death and Livia’s swearing of revenge. In The Changeling, Mackie gives De Flores, who has Alonzo’s severed finger in his hand, an ironic final line before the first interval: ‘A token for my lady!’ The second break is taken after the fire, as a suspicious Jasperino eyes a determinedly nonchalant De Flores. Thus, while Beatrice is far from side-​lined, the televisual narrative is predominantly focused on De Flores. Although paired for scheduling purposes, the two productions had different designers who invested each play with its own distinctive visual style, aided by the directors’ choice of camera shots and movement. Maurice Richardson (1965), writing in the Observer, found both ‘briskly imaginative, with good use of grilles to peer evilly through and characters kept on the move up and down staircases and along galleries’. As Billy Smart has argued with reference to the BBC’s 1964 adaptation of Brecht’s Life of Galileo (dir. Rudolph Cartier), design here assists a sense of the studio as a ‘space of representation, rather than replication’, combining naturalism and obvious artificiality (Smart 2013: 123). For Women Beware Women, Peter Phillips created a multi-​level and deceptively spacious composite set to evoke the Renaissance Florence of the plot, revealed at the start of the production in a long tracking shot. The contrast between the dingy, confining apartment of Leantio and his mother, on the one hand, and the elegant surroundings of Livia and her associates, on the other, produces a focus on class and conspicuous consumption. In keeping with Middleton’s emblematic use of the Jacobean stage gallery, stairs are used effectively to underline the play’s stress on social ascent accompanied by moral fall as first Bianca, then Leantio, is led upwards to the sexual encounters that will change their fortunes, their bitter lines as they descend emphasising both their new moral

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status and its price. The room into which Guardiano conducts Bianca is a bedroom rather than the picture gallery of the stage play, and the Duke surprises both her and the viewer when he ambushes her from behind the door. In this setting, Diana Rigg plays her response to the Duke’s forceful reminder that ‘I can command’ ambivalently. Her expression and body language, turned away from the Duke, towards the viewer, leave her fairly quick capitulation open to be interpreted as a seduction, a pragmatic bargain or helpless acquiescence. The dramaturgy and imagery of The Changeling constructs Vermandero’s castle as ‘marked by secret passageways, guarded battlements and rooms-​ within-​rooms’ (Solga 2014: 59). Unlike the generally brightly lit stairs and landings of Women Beware Women, this studio fortress is full of shadows, a place of corridors and oddly angled, almost expressionist, arches and openings. The crucial scene in which De Flores demands his sexual payment is here set in Beatrice’s bedroom, his sexual ascendency demonstrated by the sword he lays upon the bed and his scattering there of the gold coins with which she had hoped to buy him off. After what is clearly depicted as a rape, Beatrice lies on the bed, her arms outstretched in a crucifixion pose. In medium shot, De Flores leans over her again and closes his hand on hers as she gasps in pain, suggesting a second rape. This is followed, in a version of the original text’s Dumb Show, by the discovery of Alonzo’s murder, and a wedding procession in which the inclusion of children throws Beatrice’s lost innocence into sharp relief. In a further example of filming characters in doorways for significant effect (also used in Women Beware Women), Beatrice’s sexual awakening to ‘a man worth loving’ (5.1.76) is indicated when she appears with her normally coiled hair loose, stretching her arms wide against the door frame. This is also the only television production of this play in which Alsemero’s closet is a separate room (a medical laboratory) rather than an elaborate piece of furniture, thereby coming closer to its complex and contradictory meanings in early modern culture as a private household place often regarded as signifying male power and possessions and represented on stage by the back doors of the playhouse (Solga 2014: 70–​4). In the theatre, when De Flores is locked in the closet with Beatrice, both may be invisible to the audience; the sounds they make are open to be interpreted as cries of passion or of pain. Here the perspective is reversed, in a way that shifts sympathy to the murderers. Alsemero locks the door on them to ‘rehearse again’ their ‘scene of lust’ (5.3.114–​15) but the camera shows a loving reunion and an unspoken shared resolve to die together; a long kiss accompanies the thrust of De Flores’ dagger. On screen, Mackie’s rehearsal script is augmented by De Flores being given an exit as powerful as his first entrance as, sword in hand and half-​carrying the dying Beatrice, he mockingly scatters Vermandero’s men waiting outside the door,

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wounding one on the way, before exultantly recalling his sexual triumph and dying in his lover’s arms. The critical reception of the Blood and Thunder productions was generally favourable. Larner (1965), writing in the Manchester Guardian, found The Changeling to be an excellent and bold production of a ‘thoroughly theatrical and racy play’. However, in the same newspaper, Mary Crozier (1965) considered Women Beware Women to be ‘throughout a vulgar production’, stagey, ‘thundering’ and without finesse, while The Times reviewer judged it ‘cynically garish melodrama’ (Anon. 1965c). Bennett’s direction was praised for its ‘swift purposefulness’ (Holmstrom 1965: 86) and ‘eventful swiftness of pace’ (Anon. 1965d), Flemyng’s for the power of the seduction scene (Anon. 1965c). At a time when Mary Whitehouse was beginning her moral crusade (her ‘Clean-​up TV’ campaign launched in 1963 and the National Viewers and Listeners Association was founded in 1965), Larner (1965) praised Granada’s courage in refusing ‘to cut out the guts’ of Middleton’s ‘sex, violence, and sadism’: it became very evident how reticent our television producers are. Which one of them, for example, would dare to show us, and have us hear, a nice young Mod having his finger cut off by a villainous Rocker? And which chairman of the ITA would have allowed dialogue as free as Middleton’s in modern prose?

The success of the productions was recognised when Mackie, together with Narizzano, won the 1965 Guild of Television Producers and Directors award for serial drama. Recordings of both were subsequently sold to the New York-​based public broadcasting company WNET-​13 for transmission in the NET Playhouse series in 1968, a purchase that providentially enabled the survival and recent discovery of the videotape of The Changeling in the NET archives at the Library of Congress.9

The Changeling, Play of the Month (BBC, 1974) Ten years later, in 1974, BBC Television tackled Middleton for the first time with a 105-​minute production of The Changeling. As Lez Cooke suggests, ‘the cultural shift from the 1960s to the 1970s, from liberalism to conservatism, from consent to coercion, was reflected in the television drama produced during the decade’ (2003: 112). The short period of Edward Heath’s Conservative government (June 1970–​March 1974) was politically one of economic cut-​backs and social upheaval vented in national strikes and protests, but television budgets still appeared secure in a climate where the BBC’s two channels formed a ‘cosy’ duopoly with ITV. The Changeling was made as part of the Play of the Month series (1965–​79, 1982–​83) that was transmitted on BBC1 on Sunday evenings and presided over by its main producer,

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Cedric Messina, whose influence on televised theatre plays is discussed in Billy Smart’s Chapter 9 in this volume. Of the 120 episodes broadcast in the series, only ten were examples of early modern drama, and only The Changeling was not by Shakespeare.10 It is likely that the choice of play was made by the director, Anthony Page. A former artistic director of the Royal Court, Page had successfully staged The Changeling as a student at Oxford in 1956, as well as the ‘striking revival’ of Women Beware Women in 1962 (Tynan 1962). His production of David Mercer’s The Parachute (BBC1, Play of the Month, 1968; rebroadcast in The Wednesday Play strand in 1969) had taken a stylised, overtly theatrical approach to a psychologically dark narrative, employing dream sequences, flashbacks and visual symbolism, and juxtaposing film and studio-​shot video, to create a work which Caughie (2000: 169) argues is an exemplary modernist televisual text. Working within the constraints of the BBC ‘factory’ mode of studio recording, Page’s tele-​recorded colour production lavishes attention on Betty Aldiss’ detailed Valezquez-​ derived costuming (see Fig. 4.1)—​ this was something Play of the Month audiences expected and appreciated in period drama (see Smart 2014). Page also achieves inventive touches and psychological depth within what at first appears to be a conservatively naturalistic approach, claustrophobically confined by its realistic studio sets. Actors’ performances are captured in long takes whilst the most is made of camera movement, pre-​ recording and the editing of videotape to create ‘opticals’ such as dissolves, slow-​motion, freeze frames and fades-​down or -​up, creating a pattern of visual and aural imagery which here combines madhouse and religious hellfire connotations. Playing all the asides in voiceover increases the sense of interior psychology and constant deception, but also runs the risk of alienating the audience from the action (see Smart 2013) and deadening the energy of the spoken and physical exchanges between actors, making good casting essential. As in the Granada productions, there is a mix of actors better known for film or television roles, such as Stanley Baker as De Flores, bringing with him the soldierly associations of his best-​known film role in Zulu (dir. Cy Endfield, 1964), Raymond Francis as Alibius and Norman Rossington as Lollio, alongside actors with long experience across both mediums, such as T. P. McKenna as Tomazo and Alan Webb as Vermandero, together with striking young performers (including Helen Mirren as Beatrice and Kenneth Cranham as Antonio) at the start of successful careers. The still of an eighteenth-​century engraving of Santa Barbara Castle on its rocky crag that appears under the end credits embodies one of the production’s main interpretive through-​lines, taken from Vermandero’s words to Alsemero: ‘Our citadels /​Are placed conspicuous to outward view /​On promonts’ tops; but within are secrets’ (1.1.167–​9). Although this Alicante, designed by the highly experienced Lucy Taylor, at first appears naturalistic

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Figure 4.1  Helen Mirren as Beatrice-​Joanna and Stanley Baker as De Flores in Play of the Month: The Changeling (1974).

in style, with over-​lit studio sets based on the white-​painted cloisters of the real Spanish city, its nature as a dark fortress becomes apparent as the action moves underground, down a narrow stair carved into the rock for the site of Alonzo’s murder. This is also the location for a hallucinogenic, slow-​motion video sequence in which the Dumb Show wedding-​cum-​ghost scene becomes Beatrice’s guilt-​ridden, blood-​stained nightmare, complete with the phallic snake to which she compares De Flores at 3.4.165. Disconcertingly, and with some of the same effect of spatial dislocation achieved in the 1965 production, the monastery courtyard in which the first scenes are played serves also as the indoor atrium of Vermandero’s home. A door through which a monk exits will later become the entrance to the room—​part armoury and part tack-​room—​where Beatrice meets secretly with Alsemero. This is where she is spied on by De Flores and makes her fatal contract with him. Page also makes effective use of corridors and colonnades, especially in one sequence when De Flores stalks Beatrice: as they vanish down a dark passage, the screen goes briefly black. In his Oxford stage production, Page had surrounded the main action with a cast of grotesque figures, and this is the only television version to

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retain some of the madhouse scenes, though they are so severely cut and re-​arranged that they are clearly there to serve theme rather than plot. They are primarily used to highlight the parallels between the wilful Beatrice and Isabella (Susan Penhaligon), the would-​be rapist servants, Lollio and De Flores, and to enable the Goyaesque scene of frenzied, sexualised dance that erupts in the prison-​like madhouse, embodying the repressed unconscious of the citadel. Page sets the tone aurally at the start of the play as cries and screams are juxtaposed with a requiem mass by the sixteenth-​ century Spanish composer Tomas Luis de Victoria, evoking the ‘howls and gnashings’ that Alsemero predicts ‘shall be music’ to the murderous lovers in hell (5.3.117). Vermandero’s perception at the end of the play, that hell circumscribes all (5.3.164), is hinted at from the start, by frequent shots of a tall candelabra of flickering candles, emphasised sometimes by sharp camera pans. Jay O’Berski (2012: 113) suggests that Mirren and Baker ‘play the opposite’ in their scenes together, so that De Flores is both obsessed lover and attacker, as in their violent death scene played on Alsemero’s bed, while Beatrice’s spoiled child attitude conceals a desire to be sexually tamed. Though less overtly than in The Parachute, Page’s production of The Changeling is subtly structured as a similar exploration of sexual psychology, at the heart of which is not only sinful murder but also a misogynistic fantasy in which a woman falls in love with her rapist.

‘Scenes from The Changeling’, 1972, and Women Beware Women, 1981 (Open University /​BBC) Two productions from the 1970s and 1980s lie outside the institutional frameworks discussed so far and are much abridged, low-​budget versions by the Open University, in collaboration with the BBC, that were created for a student audience but also available to general viewers of BBC2.11 The concept of a ‘University of the Air’, offering distance learning via audiovisual media to students of all incomes and ages, was developed in the 1960s under Harold Wilson’s Labour government, causing it to be viewed as a suspiciously socialist project in right-​wing quarters. Even before its opening in 1971, there was close co-​operation between the Open University and the BBC. Until 1981, when a television studio was created on the University’s Milton Keynes campus, all the Open University play adaptations were made at the historic Alexandra Palace studios in London, where the BBC’s regular television service had begun in 1936. As Amanda Wrigley (2017) emphasises, television was not simply a medium for teaching but intrinsic to the innovative pedagogy that the Open University sought to develop, which in the Arts Faculty centred on

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encouraging independent criticism of texts rather than reliance on ‘definitive’ readings. Short, usually twenty-​five-​minute, play adaptations were a feature from the first Arts foundation course, ‘A100’, which used scenes from Hamlet (dir. Richard Callanan, 1971) as ‘studies in interpretation’, to introduce students to the different ways in which academic analysis could inform production choices. The second-​level course, ‘A201: Renaissance and Reformation’ (from 1972) culminated in a four-​week block on English Renaissance Drama, with half the time devoted to King Lear and the rest split between Doctor Faustus, The Alchemist and The Changeling.12 The course leader, Brian Stone, described the first three acts of Middleton’s play as containing ‘the best tragic things outside the work of Shakespeare’ (Stone and Havely 1972: 39), and the focus of the programme is the scenes in which Beatrice ‘comes into the power of De Flores’ (ibid.: 40), while the only other characters included are Alsemero and Diaphanta, played by the Black actress Siobhan Quinlan. In his section of the course reader, Stone (ibid.) emphasises the claustrophobia of the play’s interior settings: the one-​ set design exploits the confined dimensions of Alexandra Palace’s Studio A, swathing it in curtains and tapestries, and giving prominence to Beatrice’s couch, where, in the flame-​lit first sequence, she exults amorously in De Flores’ murderous arson. All the asides are played direct to camera, inviting complicity with the speakers. The themes of sexual obsession and repressed desire identified by Stone in his on-​screen commentary are further strengthened by the casting. Ian Richardson and Estelle Kohler had played opposite each other in the RSC’s Measure for Measure in 1970, and the post-​theatre censorship climate encouraged them to darken the sexuality of the physical encounters between Angelo and Isabella (Gay 2002: 129–​31).13 In The Changeling scenes, as well as stressing the sexual innuendos pointed out by Stone in the Reader (Stone and Havely 1972: 41–​2; see Ricks 1960), they play the physical interactions as an evenly balanced power struggle. Beatrice strikes De Flores, whose hand is often explicitly on his groin, while the programme ends with him grasping Beatrice’s ‘thing … would do a man pleasure’ (3.3.244–​5). The programme was repeated frequently during the next decade and, while it was scarcely a feminist reading, the focus on Beatrice as a sexual being could well have prompted student debate as the feminist movement developed in the 1970s. The same producer, Nick Levinson, was responsible for the 1981 Women Beware Women, part of course ‘A203: Seventeenth-​Century England, 1618 to 1689: A Changing Culture’, led by the eminent historian Christopher Hill.14 Its approach was firmly based in his influential interpretation of the period as one of revolutionary change rooted in ideological, economic and class conflict (Hill 1958, 1961, 1974). The academic consultant for the play adaptation was the Marxist scholar Margot Heinemann, whose 1982 study

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of Middleton characterised him as a playwright concerned with puritan ideas about women and marriage, stressing as well the role of the theatre in mirroring and circulating oppositional political views in the pre-​Civil War period. A fellow Marxist, Arnold Kettle, the first Professor of Literature at the Open University, was a contributor to the course, having been persuaded by his colleagues out of his prejudice against the use of televised drama for teaching (Wrigley 2017: 388). The play is followed by a scripted discussion (actually more of a lecture in tandem) by Hill and Kettle, who conscientiously outline their main propositions about play and period. At the beginning of the recorded programme, Kettle encourages students to think about the play ‘unacademically’ and certainly not to assume that the director has tried to produce it as it would have been performed in the seventeenth century, a warning perhaps prompted by the historically accurate Jacobean costuming and properties. The well-​lit studio sets are less atmospheric than that of The Changeling, although a nice touch is provided by Bianca being shown a succession of ‘naked pictures’ as Guardiano conducts her to the Duke. Roles are cast with actors of suitable age and, at least in the case of Rosemary McHale as Livia and Giselle Wolf as Bianca, are given strong yet nuanced performances. The Hippolito /​Isabella incest plot is cut, but most of act 3 scene 3, in which the Ward and Sordido appraise Isabella’s sexual attributes, is retained, since the play’s treatment of the economics of guardianship in James I’s reign is one of the historical contexts considered important in the course design, as are the period’s debates about the ‘woman question’. The Duke’s encounter with Bianca is played in full, in a corridor, and leaves open whether she capitulates out of fear or self-​ interest: the exact nature of the resulting sexual transaction is left unseen. All the asides are played as direct address to camera, and close-​ups are used sparingly until towards the end when the Duke and Bianca respond with duplicity and murderous intent to the scarlet-​clad Cardinal’s admonitions. Overall, the programme succeeds in its intended purpose: to invite students to consider Middleton’s text historically, rather than psychologically, and as the product of specific ideological circumstances and concerns.

The Changeling (Performance, BBC2, 1993) Thirteen years later, in 1993, the BBC’s second full-​scale production of The Changeling took place in a very different political and institutional context from the earlier one. Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government pursued policies of privatisation and deregulation, and the Broadcasting Act of 1990 instituted the requirement for increased commissions from independent companies, shifting the BBC towards a market economy, while the ITV

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channels had been joined by Channel 4. In this more competitive market, under its Director-​General John Birt (1992–​2000), the BBC was required to make efficiency savings, exemplified by the introduction of ‘Producer’s Choice’, which opened up the possibility of purchasing programme resources from outside the Corporation. Series of single plays had almost disappeared from the schedules when Simon Curtis, a former Royal Court director, became producer, then executive producer, of the Performance series on BBC2 (1991–​98). Curtis had previously produced Derek Jarman’s 1991 film Edward II, based on Christopher Marlowe’s play and co-​funded by BBC Films, but Performance was designed primarily to return stage plays to the television screen as studio-​set adaptations.15 Interviewed about the Performance series in 1998, Curtis claimed that, despite ‘powerful people … who thought that studio drama was over’, Birt supported studio productions of theatre plays because they attracted an appreciative, if small, audience, and helped make the BBC distinctive (Ridgman 1998: 199). Writing in the Guardian, Hugh Hebert (1993) found this policy ‘suspect and regressive … Hiring the best hands or popular stars to shift antique plays a few feet, in a stagey setting, doesn’t get television drama anywhere’; but, at the same time, he admitted that ‘In the current politics of the business Performance matters because it delivers distinctive quality. And between now and Charter time that is not to be derided’. Performance mounted four Shakespeare adaptations and, once again, Middleton’s play was the only other early modern drama.16 Curtis himself directed, creating a vehicle for his wife Elizabeth McGovern, an American actress beginning a new career in Britain. The production’s profile was further raised by the casting of Bob Hoskins as De Flores, in his first BBC Television role since playing Iago in Jonathan Miller’s 1981 Othello for the BBC Television Shakespeare. For most reviewers, Hoskins’ performance as a birth-​marked De Flores was the production’s main success (see Waymark 1993; Flusfeder 1993). Hoskins combined vulnerability towards a beautiful woman, reminiscent of his role as an ex-​convict in thrall to a prostitute in the film Mona Lisa (dir. Neil Jordan, 1986), with the kind of moralising Jacobean tough he played on stage as Bosola in The Duchess of Malfi (Manchester Royal Exchange, 1981). Other support comes from the suave Leslie Phillips as Vermandero, a fetchingly bewigged Hugh Grant (on the verge of film stardom) as Alsemero and a dangerously short-​fused Tomazo from Sean Pertwee. In the Radio Times listing for the production (9 December 1993, p. 70), Curtis recalls the 1974 production as a ‘seminal experience’, suggesting that the ‘taut, claustrophobic atmosphere’ of the play lends itself particularly well to television. In the 1998 interview cited above, he asserts the need for editing early modern plays: in the case of The Changeling to focus on the

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‘central triangle’ of Beatrice, De Flores and Alsemero (Ridgman 1998: 203). Accordingly, the subplot is cut, and the opening titles present head-​and-​ shoulder shots of all three in turn, seen through eddies of dry ice ‘smoke’. Further artificiality is apparent in the first scene, in which John Linklater, writing in the Glasgow Herald, detected ‘straight sea-​scapes of Casper David Friedrich arranged like a Victorian painted backcloth’. Once inside, the setting is again a seventeenth-​century Spanish castle, shot in film noir style, so that the colour tones are cooler and the lighting more obviously employed to create aesthetically stark shafts of light and dark perspectives than is the case in Page’s Alicante. Frequently, the studio spaces are shot from high above or from oblique angles, creating disorienting perspectives, as though the characters are far underground or located on unstable terrain. Linklater identifies the overtly theatrical mise-​en-​scène as a major flaw, indicative of the futility of trying to recapture the stage on screen: The surprising calamity of the production was its visual attempt to borrow theatrical ‘effect’. The ‘stagey’ set design clearly did not work because the viewer has not the means to work out its shape. The viewer can only see what the camera-​eye will permit. Detail has a much greater importance on screen, but where the general design contradicts it, the viewer is left confused … Here was the screen trying to imitate theatre visually and collapsing.

However, it might be more accurate to locate the ‘calamity’ of the production in its disjunctive shifts between standard studio filming of costume drama, as in the scenes in Alsemero’s bedchamber, and those that employ video technologies and cinematic style to highlight the play’s themes of sexual desire, as when the camera zooms out from De Flores and Beatrice’s first coupling and the image returns briefly as an overlay in the next scene, a montage of the discovery of Alonzo’s body juxtaposed with the wedding of Beatrice and Alsemero. Here the fluid editing in time with the electronic soundtrack creates a dream-​like effect, reminiscent of the more overtly surreal sequence constructed by Page for the 1974 production. Elsewhere, sound seemingly aims at realism, effectively creating the effect of the water into which Alonzo’s body is dropped, but becoming irritatingly literal with the opening harbour scene’s recorded waves and seagull cries, while Stephen Warbeck’s melodramatic score overwhelms many scenes. As Lynne Truss (1993) observed, ‘every atmospheric whistle of the Alicante sea breeze, every rustle of the vast Spanish dresses, every chink of the pearly ear-​rings, and every creak of the natty leather jerkins came over … There was just one small problem: someone had neglected to tell the actors to speak up a bit, to compensate’. Linklater was particularly irritated by the voiceover asides, ‘reduced to low-​key mutterings, sub-​method style’, alternating with direct address to camera for soliloquies. In this version, the viewer does not see what happens behind the red-​doored closet of Alsemero’s bedchamber, though the sounds

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appear to denote sexual passion as well as killing. O’Berski (2012: 120) concludes that in ‘a post-​Feminist, Thatcherite era Curtis and McGovern present a woman who doesn’t have to be broken by being raped in order to reject her smothering father and possessive husband and join a dark lover in creating mayhem’. However, any sense of female agency, of a woman breaking free from patriarchal control through erotic transgression, is countered by the final scene’s portrayal of Beatrice as a stereotypical over-​made-​up prostitute, her red low-​cut dress all too literally emblematising the innocence lost when she was ‘dipped in blood’ and became the ‘deed’s creature’ (3.4.129, 140).

Compulsion (ITV1, 2009) Compulsion (2009), the most recent television version of The Changeling, arguably has no place in this volume, since it is a film spin-​off with a contemporary setting written by Joshua St Johnston, rather than an adaptation of the stage play.17 Commissioned by ITV’s head of drama Laura Mackie (daughter of Philip Mackie), it belongs to a group of post-​millennial rewrites of literary classics (especially Shakespeare), in many of which contemporary multicultural settings ‘mainstream’ British Black and Asian experience.18 Stylishly filmed on location and screened on ITV1 in a bank holiday primetime slot which attracted an audience of over 4.7 million, Compulsion was produced by Ray Winstone’s Size 9 company.19 It served as a vehicle for his performance as Don Flowers, the ex-​SAS chauffeur to a rich British Indian family. Beatrice becomes the daughter Anjika (Parminder Nagra), who has just graduated from Cambridge and is now confronting the cultural requirement to accept an arranged marriage. Instead of an immediate murder, Flowers discredits the intended fiancé by planting drugs on him and only kills him when he discovers this, with Anjika as a witness and accomplice to his death. Flowers’ price is the same as in the original but after the first sexual rendezvous in a hotel, the film shows Anjika becoming sexually obsessed with him, while he harbours a romantic dream of running away together. After the buried body is discovered, Anjika attempts to stage a rape that will justify her stabbing of Flowers, but when she cannot go through with it, Flowers sacrificially forces the knife into his own body, leaving her free to marry her Cambridge boyfriend, who, like Alsemero, has become an acceptable substitute husband in her parents’ eyes. The director Sarah Harding has cited Gary Taylor’s assertion that ‘Shakespeare writes about love and Middleton about sex’ while emphasising the production’s Shakespearean elements (Harding 2009: 605). Compulsion can be viewed as an amoral erotic crime thriller, the story of ‘a skillful woman in control and the loss of self through unbridled “unruly” passion’ (ibid.). Rape, in this version, becomes a woman’s tool, or, rather,

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it is romanticised out of sight, through the sentimentalised rewriting of the De Flores role. Location settings (including a house once owned by Stanley Kubrick) replace the interiority of the studio. ‘[S]‌hot and lit like nine out of 10 other ITV dramas’, Middleton’s disturbing sexual spaces are subsumed into a ‘strange, cold and murky mood … stirred up in the space between Winstone and Nagra’ (Love 2009). This combination of provocative psychological content, classical credentials and culturally diverse focus, as well as its glossy style, enabled ITV1, like Granada’s version for ITV in 1965, to proffer Compulsion both as popular, ‘racy’ entertainment and as an example of continuing commitment to quality public service broadcasting, in competition with the BBC (Aebischer 2013: 214). The presence of Middleton’s plays on British television has largely been due to the enthusiasm of his adapters and producers, several of whom have a theatre background. However, the productions often omitted, diluted or ‘Shakespearised’ the most grotesque and theatrical elements of his work in favour of more realist televisual styles familiar to a domestic audience. Nevertheless, ways were often found to make the confined space of the television studio mirror and magnify the spatial violence against women at the core of Middleton’s dramaturgy. As Madeleine Macmurraugh-​Kavanagh and Stephen Lacey (1999: 69) argue, ‘The studio environment, already essentially “unreal” in terms of the verisimilar, allowed for freedoms within language, image, and metaphor’. While none of the productions discussed in this chapter may achieve the abject otherness of cinematic Jacobean adaptations, collectively they make a strong case for Middleton indeed to be recognised as ‘our other Shakespeare’—​on television as well as in the theatre.

Productions discussed Blood and Thunder: The Changeling by Thomas Middleton (Play of the Week). Dir. Derek Bennett. Prod. Philip Mackie. Granada for ITV. 9.10–​ 10.30pm, Monday 4 January 1965. Blood and Thunder: Women Beware Women by Thomas Middleton (Play of the Week). Dir. Gordon Flemyng. Prod. Philip Mackie. Granada for ITV. 9.10–​10.30pm, Monday 11 January 1965. The Changeling by Thomas Middleton (Play of the Month). Dir. Anthony Page. Prod. Cedric Messina. BBC1. 8.15–​10.00pm, Sunday 20 January 1974. The Changeling by Thomas Middleton (Performance). Dir. and prod. Simon Curtis. BBC2. 8.10–​9.40pm, Saturday 11 December 1993. Compulsion by Joshua St Johnston, after The Changeling by Thomas Middleton. Dir. Sarah Harding. Prod. Steve Matthews. Size 9 Productions for ITV1. 9.00–​11.00pm, Monday 4 May 2009.

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‘Scenes from The Changeling’ by Thomas Middleton. Dir. Nick Levinson. BBC /​Open University for BBC2. 7.05–​7.30pm, Thursday 28 September 1972. Women Beware Women by Thomas Middleton. Dir. Nick Levinson. BBC /​ Open University for BBC1. 6.40–​7.43am, Thursday 2 April 1981.

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Notes 1 The Changeling is often, but not always, credited to Thomas Middleton and William Rowley. For brevity, I have omitted reference to Rowley’s contribution, little of which remains in most of the productions discussed. 2 See, for example, Dawson (1987), Gossett (1987), MacGregor (1998), Heller (2005), Solga (2006), Dolan (2011). In the UK, the 1956 Sexual Offences Act defined rape as unlawful sexual intercourse with a woman, amended in 1976 to ‘intercourse without consent’. In 1991, rape within marriage was made illegal in common law, extended to criminal law in 1994. The 2003 Act defined rape in terms of penetration, and therefore is effectively gender-​neutral. 3 The Changeling: adapt. and prod. Frank Hauser, BBC Home Service, 20 November 1950; adapt. and prod. R. Raikes, BBC Third Programme, 6 April 1960. Women Beware Women: adapt. and prod. R. D. Smith, BBC Third Programme, 11 March 1955; adapt. and prod. R. Raikes, BBC Third Programme, 30 September 1962. 4 See An International Database of Shakespeare on Film, Television and Radio for comprehensive listings of Shakespeare on television worldwide: http://​bufvc. ac.uk/​shak​espe​are (accessed 25 March 2021). 5 On these productions, see Terris (2007) and Wyver (2020). 6 The only other ITV drama associated with a Jacobean play was Kingsley Amis’ A Question about Hell, a contemporary version of The Duchess of Malfi set on a Caribbean island (prod. Claude Whatham, Granada Television for ITV, Play of the Week, 1964). 7 These included The Victorians, a collection of eight nineteenth-​century English plays (1963), and Paris, 1900, six Feydeau farces (1964). Granada applied the same approach to Play of the Week, with stage play ‘seasons’ of playwrights such as Shaw (1962), Tennessee Williams (1964) and Noël Coward (1964). 8 Solent University Library’s Special Collections, Philip Mackie Archive, P23/​ 100, The Changeling rehearsal script, 1964. Recordings of The Changeling and Women Beware Women are held in the British Film Institute National Archive, N-​102108 and C-​1164879 respectively. 9 This is, at the time of writing, available to view at the BFI Mediatheques. 10 The Duchess of Malfi, dir. James MacTaggart, was first screened in the Stage 2 series on BBC2 in 1972. See Greenhalgh (2011). 11 Thanks to Amanda Saladine (Open University Archive), Nick Levinson and Amanda Wrigley for information and materials drawn on in this section. 12 The recording of ‘Scenes from The Changeling’ is held in the Open University Archive, A201/​16.

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13 Gay quotes Richardson as saying that theatre censorship ended two months after the opening of Measure for Measure. In fact, the Theatres Act that abolished stage censorship received royal assent on 26 July 1968, coming into effect immediately. 14 The recording for Women Beware Women is held in the Open University Archive, A203/​4. 15 Most productions were studio-​ based, although a few films were shown in the series, including Macbeth on the Estate (dir. Penny Woolcock, BBC2, 5 April 1997). 16 I consulted an off-​air recording of this production. 17 See Lehmann (2011), Aebischer (2013) and Vienne-​Guerrin (2019) for further discussion of this production. 18 These include Othello (dir. Geoffrey Sax, ITV, 2001), Second Generation (dir. Jon Sen, Channel 4, 2003), Canterbury Tales (prod. Kate Bartlett, BBC2, 2003) and the ShakespeaRe-​Told series (BBC1, 2005). 19 I consulted an off-​air recording of this production.

References Aebischer, P. (2010), ‘Renaissance tragedy on film: defying mainstream Shakespeare’, in E. Smith and G. A. Sullivan (eds), The Cambridge Companion to English Renaissance Tragedy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 116–​31. Aebischer, P. (2013), Screening Early Modern Drama: Beyond Shakespeare (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Aebischer, P., and K. Prince (2012), ‘Introduction’, in P. Aebischer and K. Prince (eds), Performing Early Modern Drama Today (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 1–​16. Anon. (1965a), ‘Blood and Thunder: not by Shakespeare’, New Statesman, 1 January 1965, p. 13. Anon. (1965b), ‘Blood and Thunder: not by Shakespeare’, Spectator, 1 January 1965, p. 12. Anon. (1965c), ‘Destruction of the corrupted’, The Times, 5 January 1965, p. 11. Anon. (1965d), ‘Grim morality play’, The Times, 12 January 1965, p. 12. Bignell, J. (2014), ‘The spaces of The Wednesday Play (BBC TV, 1964–​70): production, technology and style’, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 34:3, 369–​89. Budra, P. (2012), ‘The emotions of tragedy: Middleton or Shakespeare?’, in Taylor and Henley (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Thomas Middleton, pp. 487–​501. Burks, D. G. (1995), ‘“I’ll want my will else”: The Changeling and women’s complicity with their rapists’, English Literary History, 62:4, 759–​90. Cardwell, S. (2014), ‘Persuaded? The impact of changing production contexts on three adaptations of Persuasion’, in J. Bignell and S. Lacey (eds), British Television Drama: Past, Present and Future, 2nd ed. (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan), pp. 84–​97.

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Caughie, J. (2000), Television Drama: Realism, Modernism, and British Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Cooke, L. (2003), British Television Drama: A History (London: British Film Institute). Cooke, L. (2005), ‘Style, technology and innovation in British television drama’, Journal of British Cinema and Television, 2:1, 82–​99. Cooke, L. (2013), Style in British Television Drama (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan). Crozier, M. (1965), ‘Women Beware Women on ITV’, Manchester Guardian, 12 January 1965, p. 7. Davenport-​Hines, R. (2013), An English Affair: Sex, Class and Power in the Age of Profumo (London: HarperPress). Davis, A. (1965), ‘Playbill’, TV Times, 7 January 1965, p. 8. Dawson, A. B. (1987), ‘Women Beware Women and the economy of rape’, Studies in English Literature, 1500–​1900, 27:2, 303–​20. Dolan, F. E. (2011), ‘Re-​reading rape in The Changeling’, The Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies, 11:1, 4–​29. Flusfeder, D. (1993), ‘Bob’s back, bad as ever: The Changeling’, The Times, 11 December 1993, ‘Vision’ supplement, p. 2. Forman, D. (1997), Persona Granada: Some Memories of Sidney Bernstein and the Early Years of Independent Television (London: Deutsch). Gay, P. (2002), As She Likes It: Shakespeare’s Unruly Women (London: Routledge). Gossett, S. (1987), ‘“Best men are molded out of faults”: marrying the rapist in Jacobean drama’, in A. F. Kinney and D. S. Collins (eds), Renaissance Historicism: Selections from English Literary Renaissance (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press), pp. 168–​90. Granada Television (1958), Year One: An Account of the First Year of Operation of an Independent Television Company in England (London: Shenval Press). Greenhalgh, S. (2011), ‘The Jacobeans on television: The Duchess of Malfi and ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore at Chastleton House’, Shakespeare Bulletin, 29:4, 573–​89. Harding, S. (2009), ‘Compulsion: a view from the director’s chair’, Shakespeare Bulletin, 29:4, 605–​16. Hebert, H. (1993), ‘Television: fantasy at No. 10’, Guardian, 13 December 1993, p. 4. Heinemann, M. (1982), Puritanism and Theatre: Thomas Middleton and Opposition Drama under the Early Stuarts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Heller, J. L. (2005), ‘Space, violence, and bodies in Middleton and Cary’, Studies in English Literature, 1500–​1900, 45:2, 425–​41. Hill, C. (1958), Puritanism and Revolution: Studies in the Interpretation of the English Revolution of the Seventeenth Century (London: Secker & Warburg). Hill, C. (1961), The Century of Revolution, 1603–​1714 (Edinburgh: Nelson). Century England Hill, C. (1974), Change and Continuity in Seventeenth-​ (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson).

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Holmstrom, J. (1965), ‘Foreground music’, New Statesman, 15 January 1965, pp. 86–​7. Hutchings, M. (2019, ed.), The Changeling: A Critical Reader (London: Bloomsbury). Jowett, J. (2007), ‘Introduction’ [to Women Beware Women], in Middleton, Thomas Middleton, pp. 1488–​92. Larner, G. (1965), ‘The Changeling on ITV’, Manchester Guardian, 5 January 1965, p. 7. Lehmann, C. (2011), ‘“Taking back the night”: hospitality in The Changeling on film’, Shakespeare Bulletin, 29:4, 591–​604. Linklater, J. (1993), ‘Boxed in with a travesty’, Glasgow Herald, 13 December 1993, p. 14. Love, D. (2009), ‘Obsessive & compulsive: Ray Winstone and Parminder Nagra are thrilling in this chilling modern tragedy’, Sunday Herald, 3 May 2009, p. 18. MacGregor, C. (1998), ‘Undoing the body politic: representing rape in Women Beware Women’, Theatre Research International, 23:1, 14–​23. Macmurraugh-​ Kavanagh, M., and S. Lacey (1999), ‘Who framed theatre? The “moment of change” in British TV drama’, New Theatre Quarterly, 15:1, 58–​74. Middleton, T. (2007a), Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works, ed. G. Taylor and J. Lavagnino (Oxford: Clarendon). Middleton, T. (2007b), Women, Beware Women: A Tragedy, ed. J. Jowett, in Middleton, Thomas Middleton, pp. 1488–​541. Middleton, T., and W. Rowley (2007), The Changeling, ed. D. Bruster, in Middleton, Thomas Middleton, pp. 1632–​78. O’Berski, J. (2012), Middleton and Rowley: The Changeling (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan). Panek, J. (2019), ‘A performance history’, in Hutchings (ed.), The Changeling: A Critical Reader, pp. 35–​66. Paterson, P. (1993), ‘Evil through the ages’, Daily Mail, 13 December 1993, p. 31. Richardson, M. (1965), ‘Messmates and common roomers’, Observer, 17 January 1965, p. 24. Ricks, C. (1960), ‘The moral and poetic structure of The Changeling’, Essays in Criticism, 10:3, 290–​306. Ridgman, J. (1998), ‘Producing Performance: an interview with Simon Curtis’, in Ridgman (ed.), Boxed Sets, pp. 199–​208. Ridgman, J. (1998, ed.), Boxed Sets: Television Representations of Theatre (Luton: University of Luton Press). Rutherford, M. (1993), ‘The Changeling’, Financial Times, 27 May 1993, p. 21. Seddon, G. (1965), ‘Where and when: briefing’, Observer, 3 January 1965, p. 22. Shakespeare, W. (2005), The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works, ed. by J. Jowett, W. Montgomery, G. Taylor and S. Wells, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Smart, B. (2013), ‘The Life of Galileo and Brechtian television drama’, Journal of British Cinema and Television, 10:1, 112–​29.

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Smart, B. (2014), ‘The BBC Television audience research reports, 1957–​ 1979: recorded opinions and invisible expectations’, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 34:3, 452–​62. Snow, S. (1964), ‘Playbill’, TV Times, 31 December 1964, p. 7. Solga, K. (2006), ‘Rape’s metatheatrical return: rehearsing sexual violence among the Early Moderns’, Theatre Journal, 58:1, 53–​72. Solga, K. (2009), Violence against Women in Early Modern Performance: Invisible Acts (Basingstoke: Palgrave). Solga, K. (2014), ‘Playing The Changeling architecturally’, in S. Bennett and M. Polito (eds), Performing Environments: Site-​Specificity in Medieval and Early Modern Drama (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan), pp. 56–​76. Stone, B., and C. Havely (1972), English Renaissance Drama [course materials for A201 ‘Renaissance and Reformation’] (Milton Keynes: Open University Press). Sutton, S. (1982), The Largest Theatre in the World: Thirty Years of Television Drama (London: BBC). Taylor, G. (2007), ‘Lives and afterlives’, in Middleton, Thomas Middleton, pp. 25–​58. Taylor, G. (2012), ‘History. Plays. Genres. Games’, in Taylor and Henley (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Thomas Middleton, pp. 47–​63. Taylor, G., and T. T. Henley (2012, eds), The Oxford Handbook of Thomas Middleton (Oxford: Clarendon). Taylor, N. (1998), ‘A history of the stage play on BBC Television’, in Ridgman (ed.), Boxed Sets, pp. 23–​37. Terris, O. (2007), ‘The forgotten Hamlet’, Shakespeare Bulletin, 25:2, 35–​9. Truss, L. (1993), ‘Passion in a quiet zone’, The Times, 13 December 1993, p. 27. Tynan, K. (1962), ‘Dusting off the minor Jacobeans’, Observer, 8 July 1962, p. 22. Vienne-​Guerrin, N. (2019), ‘New directions—​loving and loathing: horror in The Changeling from text to screen’, in Hutchings (ed.), The Changeling: A Critical Reader, pp. 165–​86. Waymark, P. (1993), ‘A villainous return to be applauded’, The Times, 11 December 1993, ‘Vision’ supplement, p. 11. Wrigley, A. (2014), ‘Space and place in Joan Kemp-​Welch’s television productions of theatre plays’, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 34:3, 405–​19. Wrigley, A. (2017), ‘Higher education and public engagement: Open University and BBC drama co-​productions on BBC2 in the 1970s’, Journal of British Cinema and Television, 14:3, 377–​93. Wyver, J. (2013), ‘Hamlet at Elsinore (BBC /​Danmarks Radio, 1964)’, Screen Plays, 31 March 2013, online at https://​screen​play​stv.wordpr​ess.com/​2013/​03/​31/​ham​ let-​at-​elsin​ore-​bbc-​danma​rks-​radio-​1964-​part-​1 (accessed 11 November 2020). Wyver, J. (2020), ‘A tale of “comedy” times two’, Illuminations, 26 October 2020, online at www.illuminationsmedia.co.uk/​a-​tale-​of-​comedy-​times-​two (accessed 11 November 2020).

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A revival, a reworking and an original: the Harold Pinter season on Theatre 625 (BBC2, 1967) Amanda Wrigley and Billy Smart In 1967, three plays by Harold Pinter were shown in consecutive weeks in BBC2’s prestigious television drama strand Theatre 625 (1964–​68), which specialised in experimental, innovative and challenging work—​ including original writing for television, literary adaptation and stage plays—​which was often presented in themed seasons. The 1967 season of Pinter plays sought to illustrate and celebrate the remarkable ability both of the playwright to work productively within the expressive possibilities of different media and of his dramatic writing to lend itself readily to intermedial adaptation. Produced by Michael Bakewell, the season consisted of A Slight Ache and A Night Out, both directed by Christopher Morahan, and The Basement, directed by Charles Jarrott. A Slight Ache had originally been commissioned for BBC Radio (1959) and had been staged at the Arts Theatre, London (1961). A Night Out had also premiered on BBC Radio (1960) but it had first been developed as a television play and, indeed, within a month of its radio broadcast it had been realised in an ABC production for ITV, reaching 6.4m households, and staged in both Dublin and London in 1961. The Basement was initially an unproduced screenplay but it received its first production as an original work for television in this Theatre 625 season. By the time of the 1967 season, Pinter was already a household name in the UK, largely because huge audiences had been engaging with his dramatic writing via BBC Radio and independent television productions regularly since the late 1950s. BBC Television turned to Pinter rather late by comparison with ITV, but its 1967 Theatre 625 season served to set the tone for the Corporation’s regular and varied televisual engagements with the playwright and his work in the following decades. The different origins and complicated intermedial lives of the plays in the Theatre 625 television trilogy were representative of both Pinter’s career up to this point and the strand’s diverse and demanding ethos. The ambitious Pinter season, in short, accomplished everything that Theatre 625 set out to do.

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Employing textual analysis and drawing on archival documentation—​ in particular, documentary sources from the BBC Written Archives Centre (WAC)—​this chapter explores how the Theatre 625 season engaged with the impressive legacy and now-​established reputation of Pinter not only on stage but also on radio and television—​the main channels through which he had become a well-​known name in non-​theatre-​going households—​whilst at the same time producing new work that was distinctive, challenging and also in some ways (for example, in design and editing) a sophisticated engagement with Pinter’s style. The chapter brings into discussion the evidence for the viewing audience’s engagement with the three plays in order to illustrate that while the BBC served as effective patron of Pinter with the Theatre 625 season, it did not necessarily popularise him—​indeed, when the season was repeated on BBC1 in March 1969, an even smaller percentage of the surveyed audience enjoyed the plays, with approval ratings sinking into the 20s.1 This is not to say that the Theatre 625 productions did nothing for the Pinter ‘brand’ in the public imagination: rather, the season presented the viewer with a particularly televisual understanding of Pinter’s intimate and disorientating drama from the different perspectives offered by the three plays and, as a result, underscored his notoriety for being absolutely ‘baffling’. This chapter, in other words, demonstrates how the unique broadcasting conditions and institutional ambitions of both BBC2 and Theatre 625 created a distinct television theatricality that derived from different sources—​namely, radio, television drama and the stage—​thus contributing an interesting intermedial perspective on the televisual work of a leading writer to the present volume, as well as adding to the broader, rich seam of recent work on the creative life of Pinter and his writing on radio, television and film.2

Pinter’s intermedial moves Harold Pinter was a versatile creator of dramatic fictions throughout the late 1950s and 1960s, pitching, writing and adapting work for the aesthetic conventions and expressive possibilities of whichever performance medium was keen on realising it. The story of his rise on the British stage from the late 1950s is, therefore, intimately intertwined with the life of his work on British radio and television. In this creative fluidity he was not alone. This was still the golden age of BBC Radio drama and features—​a period which began in the 1940s and extended into the mid-​1960s—​and, for Pinter as for almost all playwrights of this era (including Samuel Beckett and Tom Stoppard), the medium offered a well-​ established, innovative, respected

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platform for dramatic writing, resulting in some exciting and experimental cross-​fertilisation for the ‘theatre of the air’. As he often did on the stage, Pinter acted for radio in the 1950s but, as his biographer Michael Billington (1996) notes, his ‘heart’s desire’ was writing. From the start, his agent offered plays to radio and television just as they were finding traction on the stage: in 1957, for example, The Room was not considered to be ‘a practical proposition’ for BBC Radio and Michael Barry at BBC TV thought The Dumb Waiter ‘too obscure’.3 It took a year or two for Pinter’s work to find its place in the schedules. Radio producers served as important patrons of creative writing at this time. Amongst them, Pinter had strong champions such as Michael Bakewell (a producer for radio before his move to television) and Donald McWhinnie, who commissioned work from him that they wanted to produce on air. These commissioners, however, had to fight to get it past the old guard, typified by the traditionalist Val Gielgud, responsible for sound drama at the BBC, who failed to see the serious dimensions in these apparently conversational plays and missed the import of the ‘silences’ when reading them on the page. But producers persisted in championing young, promising writers and, before long, the BBC Third Programme (radio’s ‘highbrow’ channel—​a space for both established ‘high culture’ and more avant-​garde work) broadcast productions of Pinter’s A Slight Ache (1959), A Night Out and Dwarfs (1960), and then The Collection, The Caretaker, The Examination (1962). Several of these Third Programme offerings were produced by Michael Bakewell, the producer of the Theatre 625 season. Radio would continue to offer an appealing performance space for Pinter’s newly staged plays and new productions of established work. The importance of the medium to him was underlined by his Voices, a piece which assembled characters from earlier plays in a new dramatic work, broadcast on BBC Radio 3 in 2005 to mark his 75th birthday. Concurrently with Pinter’s early work on radio, independent TV companies such as ABC, Associated-​Rediffusion and Granada produced at least six of his plays (each reaching millions of viewers) well before BBC Television got in on the act in the mid-​1960s. The BBC may have been slow to put Pinter on television, but this was not for want of trying: it attempted to get the television rights for The Room and A Slight Ache in 1960–​61, but they had already gone to ITV networks; in 1960, the BBC did have the television rights for The Dumb Waiter, but it did not manage to produce it before the twelve-​month window expired. It was not until 1965 that BBC Television first broadcast a Pinter play with Tea Party (BBC1), which was shown alongside twelve different versions of the play in twelve different countries in the same week, as part of a Eurovision project called The Largest Theatre in the World.4

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Pinter’s intermedial moves—​ across theatre, radio, television and also film—​ reveal developmental traces in his dramatic style and technique. Although Pinter declared that he was ‘no more consciously setting out to do ultra-​special things on radio than I am on the stage’, contemporary practitioners and later critics have commented on the ways radio and television may have contributed to his evolution as a dramatic writer, with some noting especially the influence of radio—​a medium which, of course, communicates exclusively through sound, and silence.5

Theatre 625 In every planning discussion about the BBC’s second television channel, the one word that has come up repeatedly is ‘depth’. This is because most people working in the medium have long felt that the major disadvantage attaching to a single-​channel service has been the necessarily brief treatment given to any one subject—​which has always involved the risk of superficiality. […] A new series, Theatre 625, has consequently been set up to explore dramatic themes rather more profoundly than has been possible up to now. It will not be a regular weekly series; there will be from seventeen to twenty productions a year, and the plays will normally be in groups of two or three, each group dealing with a coherent theme. (Anon. 1964b)

The launch in 1964 of BBC2, Britain’s third television channel, created an opportunity for the BBC’s production of single play dramas to be arranged, organised and systematically scheduled in a way that had not been attempted before. Under the aegis of Sydney Newman, the BBC’s Head of Television Drama, plays were branded into a constellation of specific, all-​new series and strands, separating dramas by audience, setting and perceived intention. Watching the new channel—​which transmitted in 625 lines (as opposed to the existing 405 lines), in preparation for the introduction of colour television in 1967—​required the purchase of a new television set. With few viewers able to receive BBC2 initially, BBC1 plays reflected Newman’s ambitions for dramas that would connect with mass audiences. The Wednesday Play (1964–​70) concentrated on contemporary dramas, in the mode of ITV’s Armchair Theatre (ABC /​Thames, 1956–​74), which Newman had produced before moving to the BBC. Supporting this all-​year strand was Play of the Month (1965–​79, 1982–​83), designed to showcase prestigious one-​off stories from literary or theatrical sources (such as A Passage to India in 1965 or Death of a Salesman in 1966) and productions on a larger scale (such as Lee Oswald—​Assassin, 1966). Other forms of single play drama were hived off onto BBC2. The middlebrow theatrical and literary adaptations that had been a mainstay of BBC Television scheduling prior to Newman’s arrival

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were initially part of the BBC2 repertory (in the Thursday Theatre and Story Parade strands, both 1964–​65), but this strain soon largely disappeared. Thirty-​Minute Theatre (1965–​73) plays, which were often broadcast live from the studio, were modest in scale in a series that was intended to act as a seedbed for new television talent, while Out of the Unknown (1965–​71) was devoted to ‘hard’ science-​fiction productions. The repertory of Theatre 625—​which ran from 1964 to 1968—​covered several fields not catered for in these other BBC2 anthology series. As the title of the series implied, it presented adaptations from the theatrical canon, including plays by Shakespeare, Goldsmith, Goethe, Ibsen and Strindberg, amongst others. At the same time, it could present developments in modern theatre in the depth that themed seasons of multiple plays afforded, such as the Arnold Wesker trilogy (1966). It also featured literary adaptations on a different scale to conventional ‘classic serial’ productions, with, for example, Ford Maddox Ford’s Parade’s End presented as three consecutive ninety-​minute plays in 1964. This blurring between the categories of single play and serial encouraged formal innovation in Theatre 625 presentations, most famously with John Hopkins’ four interlinked Talking to a Stranger plays (1966) which dramatised the events of a family tragedy from the different perspectives of each character in each play.6 The series’ name combined two elements: ‘Theatre’ conveyed a sense of performance and cultural history; and ‘625’ expressed technological advancement. This worthy title may have proved counterproductive: it was dismissed as ‘offputting’ by an anonymous Daily Mail correspondent who considered that it ‘would have looked old-​fashioned in 1954. […] The place for these prestige-​seeking titles is in the propaganda leaflets, not presentation’ (Anon. 1964a). But, as the most high-​profile and prestigious of the new BBC2 anthology series, Theatre 625 was a significant element in establishing a cultural identity for the new channel, in terms of both content and scheduling. Longer and more demanding programmes, such as plays, were to be a central plank of the early BBC2 schedule. Michael Peacock, the first Controller of BBC2, explained how the initial Programme Planning Group reached this decision: [The Group] had decided in the summer of 1962 that BBC-​2, which clearly had to be different from BBC-​1 and provide a planned alternative, would establish itself by having a main attraction scheduled for every evening of the week. A main dish, as it were, a centrepiece, which might be anything from a full-​length western to a major opera production. The notion of king size television, programmes of length, designed to give maximum satisfaction to viewers who appreciate that particular type of programme, was central to our thinking at that time. It came to be known as the ‘centrepiece theory’. (Peacock 1964: 11)

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Crucial to this thinking was that Theatre 625 was designed to be an occasional (if frequent) programme, rather than a weekly series like The Wednesday Play. The sporadic presentation of Theatre 625 productions allowed greater time for planning; it also helped prevent producers from burning out under the pressure of continual production.7 As Peacock (1964: 11) stated, ‘It ought to be possible to reach and maintain a very high standard when those concerned have only this number of productions to worry about’. Michael Bakewell, producer of the 1967 Pinter season, expressed the hope that these conditions might establish a particular identity for the programme with viewers, as would befit a ‘centrepiece’ production: It is easy enough for a series or a serial to build up an audience, for viewers will come to know what to expect or experience a feeling of confidence in the programme. A play has to begin afresh to secure the interest of the audience every week. The only way a producer can overcome this initial sense of resistance is to give his programme the kind of atmosphere that a playgoer might feel in going to a theatre for which he feels a particular attachment and where he knows he is going to enjoy himself. In Theatre 625 in which I am currently working we have the advantage of being able to take plays from all sources—​plays, novels, etc., with the added advantage that plays may be grouped in duets, trios, etc., so that there is an extra incentive to audience loyalty. (Bakewell 1966: 9)

As Bakewell (quoted in Billington 1967) explained at the time: Along with Samuel Beckett, I think [Pinter is] the best dramatist we’ve got […] The idea of doing plays in threes is quite familiar now. […] In the past, we’ve done three Alun Owens, three Giles Coopers and three Clive Extons. The idea was that one had a kind of retrospective thing and then produced a new play. In Alun Owen’s case, for instance, we did No Trams to Lime Street, Progress to the Park, and A Little Winter Love. The pattern is the same here. One gets some idea of the range of Pinter’s work and of his variation of style.

The broad reach of ITV that put Pinter at the top of the ratings with Armchair Theatre cannot be claimed for the initial 1967 run of the Theatre 625 season. The plays only attracted very select audiences (of 200,000 for A Slight Ache, 650,000 for A Night Out and 450,000 for The Basement). This small audience is typical of BBC2 in this early period: the most-​watched BBC2 programme broadcast in the week that A Slight Ache was aired was an episode of the western series The Virginian (NBC, 1962–​71) on Thursday 23 February, which was seen by an audience of only 1.1 million. Of greater significance was the 1969 repeat of the Theatre 625 season under the new title of The Harold Pinter Play, broadcast on BBC1 on three consecutive Wednesday evenings at 9.05pm. Some rethinking went into presenting the plays for a mass BBC1 audience. A Night Out and A Slight Ache swapped places in the season, meaning that the series would now start with the least elliptical and most naturalistic play (which would also be familiar to viewers

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who remembered the 1960 production), and the hope seems to have been that the audience was better prepared to accept the abstract and associative story-​telling of The Basement. This approach was not entirely successful, with ratings dropping for each consecutive play (from 7.32 million to 6.01 and 5.61). Reaction Indices of audience reaction collated by the BBC tell a similar story of declining enthusiasm, with A Night Out receiving a disappointing 47, while A Slight Ache and The Basement were awarded the extraordinarily hostile scores of 26 and 25.8 This reception suggests that while the Theatre 625 project of imaginatively themed seasons of experimental work could thrive on the minority channel of BBC2, if exposed to the mass audiences of BBC1 or ITV it was not a sustainable approach to television drama.

A Slight Ache Pinter’s fascination with the ambiguous quality of silence is dominant in A Slight Ache (1959), in which the omnipresent character of the Match-​ seller utters not a single word. This play, his first work for radio, concerns a middle-​class married couple, Flora and Edward, who are disturbed when they invite the Match-​seller, who has been standing at their gate, into their house. Flora and Edward argue over him, puzzle over his silence, and then interrogate him separately in long, revealing monologues. Flora’s questioning quickly turns into interior monologue, with flashes of a messenger speech from Greek tragedy as she speaks in vivid, arresting detail of a sexual assault she experienced as a young woman. She continues to question him, appraise him with her senses of smell and touch, becoming increasingly focused on his physicality, his smell, his sexual history, his potential. The rapid shifts between her sexual arousal and maternal instincts towards him serve as a window to her own, perhaps unfulfilled, potentials. This is excellent radio—​suggestive, puzzling, open to our own meaning-​making. We do not know for sure if this Match-​seller exists or not: the silence that surrounds this character on radio is filled amply by others. Around the figure, or the idea, of the Match-​seller swirl thoughts, memories, fears, possibilities. This ambiguous character functions as a mirror for intimate thoughts. He excites and somehow liberates Flora (but has quite the opposite effect on her husband). Oliver Marlow Wilkinson, writing a ‘Television Drama Report’ for the BBC, describes the play as ‘Contemporary nightmare’, stating that, ‘This is a brilliant dramatic conception—​for sound. How marvellously good the random dialogue! […] The silent, weather-​caked match-​seller,—​especially his silence,—​would not be so effective when seen as he is when heard and not seen.’ He suggests that it would be hard to do a good adaptation of the play for television and, however good it may be, it would remain ‘obscure’ for many viewers. ‘And one couldn’t distort and slurr [sic] the edges of events

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as one can, by implication, in sound, and as this play needs. This author should be commissioned for a television play,—​even though he is French and, presumably, lives in France.’9 Of course, A Slight Ache was later made for television—​in the Theatre 625 production under discussion—​and it was also realised in the theatre. In the 1959 radio production, the actor ‘playing’ the Match-​seller is, with humour, listed in Radio Times as Pinter himself (under the name David Baron). On television, however, the physical embodiment (by Gordon Richardson) of this potent, silent ‘other’ shifts the play’s dynamic in significant directions. Morahan (quoted in Billington 1967) explains that: we wondered about not having him there in our production—​in other words, he becomes a figment of the characters’ imagination. But having decided to include him, I had to select very carefully the first moment we were to see his face. If one brought him in too early then some of the surprise would have gone out of the later part of the play.

Accordingly, Morahan went to lengths to ensure that photographs of Richardson were not used in ‘pictoral publicity for this production. […] showing pictures to the public of the matchseller would, I think be doing the play a disservice’.10 Maurice Denham took the role of Edward in both radio and television productions; the role of Flora, created on radio by Vivien Merchant in 1959, was played here by Hazel Hughes. The responses of Edward and Flora to the presence of the Match-​seller, first outside and then inside their house, is typical of Pinter’s interest in the threat and potency of the external ‘other’. In their separate attempts to converse with the Match-​seller, Edward and Flora engage in prolonged stream-​of-​consciousness monologues that expose deep fears, unfulfilled desires and the fragility of their shared life in their privileged English country idyll. The studio-​bound action, directed by Christopher Morahan, is given room to breathe with its use of a rambling country garden set filled to the brim with flowers, trees, garden structures and even a goldfish pond, with birdsong adding to the remarkable sense of being in the open air. The aptly named Flora takes pleasure and pride in her knowledge of plants, the birdsong and her morning walks. Edward, by contrast, fights nature: he resists Flora’s encouragement to work in the garden, fearing the ‘treacherous’ light summer breeze; and, after drowning a wasp in hot water, he crushes its lifeless body between knife and side-​plate. Only after conquering this ‘vicious creature’ is he able to agree with Flora that it is, indeed, a beautiful day: ‘I can feel it in my bones, in my muscles’. Later, physically weakened by time spent in the presence of the Match-​seller and seemingly overcome with a sense of his own mortality, he begs her: ‘Take me into the garden’. He seeks ‘peace’ but, once there, again he denies hearing the audible birdsong.

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Rather than enjoy the natural world and emotional connection with his wife, Edward finds meaning in asserting his social status: on first meeting the Match-​seller, he performs in rapid succession the roles of knowledgeable scholar, generally cultured fellow and pillar of the community, each of these personae unravelling as his monologue unfurls. By contrast, Flora’s monologue is, as noted above, an exploration of her sense of self: her visceral reaction to the Match-​seller’s smell and his physicality awakens both her sexual and her maternal instincts, illuminating her unfulfilled desire for human contact (see Fig. 5.1). Whereas on radio the Match-​seller could plausibly, if miraculously, seem to get younger as the play progressed, thus readily underlining Edward’s sensitivity to his middle-​age and seeming to prompt Flora’s arousal, on television it seems at first quite unlikely that the Match-​seller’s passive, awkward and dishevelled presence should strike such fear and excitement in Edward and Flora respectively. But, this ‘bullock’ of a man, as both describe him, clearly signifies a mortal threat to Edward and, to Flora, sheer life-​force. Thoughtful camerawork underscores the power shift in the traditional roles of husband and wife in the unfolding drama. When Edward exits his

Figure 5.1  Flora (Hazel Hughes) embraces the silent Match-​seller (Gordon Richardson) in Theatre 625: A Slight Ache (1967).

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study, undone from his time with the Match-​seller, the camera—​located on the stairs below—​zooms quickly from mid-​shot to close-​up, showing his pained face and blinking eyes (suffering the eponymous ‘slight ache’). Wearily, he calls for Flora. A close-​up of her face zooms out just as rapidly, with the next shot revealing that she is already standing on the landing, behind him, calmly and silently observing all. The playful surprise of this effect is pleasurably disorientating for the viewer and suggestive of cracks in their relationship. When, at the close of the play, Flora’s and the Match-​seller’s hands grasp each other over the prone figure of Edward, utterly broken by his insecurities, the symbolism is neat and powerful. With a visual echo of Edward crushing the wasp, the Match-​seller squashes his tray of matches underfoot as he steps over Edward to join Flora in the garden. A Slight Ache was not very popular amongst the eighty-​five viewers who completed a questionnaire for the BBC’s Audience Research Report.11 The overall Reaction Index of 43 was considerably below the average figure of 66 for Theatre 625 productions, but similar to the low figure of 45 that the inaugural radio performance of the play had attracted in 1959 and the more recent television production of Tea Party (47). Most found it ‘inane and senseless’, ‘absurd and pointless’. The absence of traditional plot and the uncertain meaning left many viewers ‘with a feeling of annoyance that they had wasted an hour on such morbid rubbish (one or two adding that the scene in which the wife “pawed” the revolting old man made them cringe)’. But one in three were fascinated by the psychological studies offered by the characters, finding the Match-​seller ‘most effective as the third corner of this odd triangle’. The customary ability of the audience sample to differentiate between various qualities of a production are here in evidence: the Match-​ seller’s costume and make-​up were thought to be ‘particularly good’, and it was appreciated how the attractive garden setting contrasted with the ‘suffocating atmosphere of the dark house on a hot summer’s day’. Critics were less inclined to find value of any kind in this production. Maurice Richardson (1967), writing in the Observer, considered it a ‘curiosity’, whilst Sylvia Clayton (1967a) in the Telegraph thought aspects of the production ‘contrived’ and script ‘tedious’. Barry Norman (1967), in the Daily Mail, declared the play to be ‘vintage Pinter’, but asserted that the production, with its expansive set, was not nearly as successful as previous effectively claustrophobic stage versions. Stanley Reynolds (1967) in the Guardian was scathing, describing Pinter’s dramatic techniques here as ‘cheap’, ‘faking’ and ‘dodges’: it was just an academic exercise of early Pinter, or at worst as if Mrs Dale met a character out of Samuel Beckett while under the influence of D. H. Lawrence. Perhaps not even that.

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The readiness of the critics to complain about Pinter’s dramatic style and engage in intermedial comparison—​with television often coming off worse—​is standard. A third of the domestic audience, however, found it ‘compelling’, if challenging, viewing. ‘Although I wasn’t “with it” entirely’, one reported, ‘I was riveted’—​and this sentiment is perfectly in tune with Norman’s (1967) statement: ‘One may easily be confused by a Pinter play but surely never bored’.

A Night Out A Night Out, the second Pinter play in the Theatre 625 trilogy, had originally been developed as a television play, but it received its premiere on radio in a production Donald McWhinnie for the BBC’s Third Programme in March 1960. As noted in the introduction, however, in the month following the radio broadcast, it was realised for ITV in an ABC production by Philip Saville—​in both productions, Pinter took the role of Seeley. It was staged the following year in Dublin and London. The rich intermedial performance history of this still-​new but well-​known work made it a terrific choice for the 1967 Theatre 625 trilogy which sought to illustrate and celebrate Pinter’s ability to work within the expressive possibilities of different media and, indeed, showcase the way his plays readily lent themselves to intermedial adaptation. In a Radio Times article publicising the BBC2 production, the producer Michael Bakewell describes how the play had immediately become ‘one of the classics of television writing’ following the 1960 ITV production, which reached over six million households (equivalent to 14 million individual viewers) and attained the number one spot in the week’s top ten ratings. It was, he notes, an ‘instant success both with the public and with the critics’ (Bakewell 1967b). Christopher Morahan, the director, was also acutely aware of the landmark status of the play’s first television production and, in a letter to Avril Elgar discussing casting her in the role of the prostitute, he outlines how he was working towards an effect that was ‘considerably more naturalistic and less high-​powered than Philip Saville’s affair’.12 In 1967, the Theatre 625 production opens with the emotionally stifling atmosphere in which Albert Stokes (played by Tony Selby) lives with his mother (Anna Wing, who had by this time already played the role on stage). He resists her unrelenting attempts to manipulate him into staying at home with her, rather than going to a leaving party with work colleagues. In this establishing scene, the cameras follow the two of them keenly, building a sense of visual claustrophobia through sequences of mid-​shots and close-​ups which are carefully choreographed to partner the twists and turns of the

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dialogue. The latent anxiety in the Stokes’ house is released in the following scene, which is set by an outdoors coffee stall near a railway bridge where Albert’s male colleagues good-​naturedly chat and squabble whilst waiting for him. They go on to a party that, with the presence of women, deepens the contrast with Albert’s home-​life, the nimble camerawork capturing moments of joy, ennui, gossip and flirtation. Relationships build through layering of short scenes and, by the time Albert is falsely accused of ‘taking a liberty’ with one of the women, we understand something of the different dynamics at work in this group and, indeed, a close-​up of the hand of the perpetrator exonerates Albert (for the viewer, at least). Humiliated, with his sense of injustice deeply provoked, he returns home, where his mother picks up her needling monologue, repeatedly accusing him of things he has not done. After a burst of anger in which he almost strikes her with the carriage clock (a prop that provides the soundtrack for their cohabitation), he heads back out into the night (see Fig. 5.2). He meets a prostitute in whose bedsit he rises again to violent rage, this time prolonging the terror and causing her—​a complex character, played impressively

Figure 5.2  Tony Selby as Albert Stokes and Anna Wing as his mother in Theatre 625: A Night Out (1967).

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by Avril Elgar—​great distress. At home again, his mother reasserts control, treating him like a little boy: the credits roll as he lies half-​supine before the fire, with his mother gently patting his hand, with the words ‘you’re not bad, you’re a good boy’. Whereas Albert in 1960 (Tom Bell) was a veritable pressure-​cooker, threatening to blow, with puffed-​out cheeks and defensive body language, Selby’s Albert is a more nuanced portrayal of a man whose natural progression towards independence has clearly been thwarted by his controlling mother to the extent that he lacks confidence in all aspects of personal and social life. The BBC’s Audience Research Report, based on a questionnaire completed by ninety-​nine members of the BBC2 viewing panel, states that the Reaction Index was 54—​‘well below the current average’ of 66 for Theatre 625 productions, but markedly higher than the extremely low figure of 43 attracted by A Slight Ache the week before, and the even lower figure of 39 garnered by the impressionistic television play The Basement in the following week.13 Still, ‘its admirers were far outnumbered by those whose response was at best only lukewarm or of a definitely hostile character’. Around a third found it ‘absorbing’, with a plot that was ‘readily understandable’. Many viewers found the characters (especially Albert) ‘startlingly life-​like’. Criticisms centred on the pace, which was found to be too slow to begin with and at the end, and also on aspects of Pinter’s style: for example, ‘A Retired Audit Clerk pronounced it “very dull”, and added “I think the constant repetition back and forth between characters of trifling and ungrammatical sentences was wearying to the ear and an irritant to normal intelligence”’. Others were more circumspect in their irritation: one viewer, described only as a ‘Housewife’, considered amusingly that ‘I suppose it must have been good to annoy me so much’. Admirers of this play were reported by the BBC to have found the dialogue between mother and son ‘authentic’ and the ‘turns of phrase and repetitions’ in play in the office party scene so realistic they ‘could have come straight from life’. Morahan declared that he had been ‘very pleased with it’, in correspondence with Anna Wing.14 Sylvia Clayton (1967b) wrote in the Telegraph that she had liked A Night Out much more than she had A Slight Ache the week before. Introducing it as a ‘managed exercise in claustrophobia, well suited to television’, she praises Selby’s ‘beautifully paced performance’ and Michael Bakewell and Christopher Morahan for bringing this play to the small screen. R. W. Cooper (1967b) in The Times also had high praise for Selby’s ‘admirable’ performance, as well as Wing as his mother and Elgar as The Girl. In letters to Morahan, Wing and Selby are full of gratitude for the chance of working on A Night Out: Wing was impressed by Morahan’s ‘ability to excite his artist’; and, noting that this was ‘the first time I have ever felt like writing to a Director’, Selby considered it to have been ‘one of

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the more stimulating and exciting experiences of my working life, and not just another Tele perf. [sic]’.15 The BBC production may not have reached the same level of popular success as its ITV precursor, but it was by some degree the most positively received of the three plays in the BBC trilogy owing to the combination of linear plot, relatable characters and true-​to-​life vernacular speech rhythms and repetitions. Morahan’s ambition to make a ‘considerably more naturalistic and less high-​powered’ production results in an impressively meaningful realisation of Pinter’s intermedial classic.

The Basement The Basement (1967) was the final part of Theatre 625’s Pinter trilogy. In outline, The Basement can sound like a shopping list of Pinter archetypes: a stranger arrives at the door; there is a battle for ownership of the territory of a room; an eternal triangle is drawn between two men and a woman. Yet the way that the story is told is purely televisual to a degree that makes it hard to imagine for any other medium (even though its initial draft was as a film script): as Michael Bakewell (1967a) noted in Radio Times, ‘It is Pinter’s most precisely calculated visual work.’ The production reunited Pinter with director Charles Jarrott and designer Eileen Diss, who had both worked on Pinter’s first BBC Television production, Tea Party, in 1965. As in Tea Party, The Basement uses visual means to convey the subjective experience of one of its characters, Law (Derek Godfrey), a man who becomes (in R. D. Laing’s term) ‘engulfed’ by stronger personalities. But the means through which Law’s subjective experience is depicted are more opaque than in Tea Party. Where the viewer saw (or failed to see) events through Disson’s eyes, Law’s understanding of his relationships is shown through abrupt shifts to fantasy sequences, which the viewer has to decode as being unreal. With little to no dialogue for much of the play, there are few cues for the viewer to pick up on in the flow of narrative in The Basement. Although Tea Party had agitated viewers with its abrupt cuts, where and when each scene was set was soon made plain, and clearly followed on from what had preceded it in a linear sequence. In The Basement, a play in which the furnishing of a room changes within a shot, it is never entirely clear how much time has elapsed, nor how much each scene is intended to convey ‘real’ or imagined existence (see Fig. 5.3). This approach has often wrong-​footed viewers, with Christopher C. Hudgins (1985) suggesting in his definitive analysis of The Basement that the play’s jumps backwards and forwards in reality are more commonly read as backwards and forwards in time.

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Figure 5.3  Harold Pinter as Stott and Derek Godfrey as Law in Theatre 625: The Basement (1967).

The Basement’s filmic style was accentuated by its being Pinter’s first play for television to extensively use filmed inserts, a complex recording itinerary including scenes shot in central London, a farm in Maidenhead and Margate beach. An elaborate routine with a shattering fish tank had to be recorded separately in Ealing film studios, as recollected by Eileen Diss: [The special effects man] had a crossbow with a bolt and shot a bolt into the tank, which of course exploded really spectacularly. The whole crew were standing around with buckets of water and as soon as ‘Cut’ was said, everyone dived in, rescuing fish. We didn’t lose one, actually.16

In conjunction with its dreamy exterior film sequences, The Basement’s interiors are marked by an acute sense of the possibilities of the television studio, combining multi-​camera studio technique (of sharply defined images and quick, rhythmical, cutting between characters) with greater post-​production editing than was customary in this period. This makes the décor of the basement itself a weapon between characters, immediately switching from style to style with disorientating effect. Eileen Diss explained with approval that,

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When Pinter was writing, his whole imagery was directed into the medium he was writing for. His images are so precise; a comfortable basement flat, which was very ordinary, a cosy little fire—​and suddenly it had become modern Swedish, a wonderful bright space with all this very modern furniture, and then it had become Italian renaissance! It was the speed and surprise of the change which was so important.

Critics received The Basement coolly, with even broadly supportive reviews conveying bewilderment, such as R. W. Cooper’s observation in The Times that the play ‘must have been quite baffling for those who like a strong story line with their fantasy. It was as if Mr Pinter were seeking a sort of television surrealism, an essentially visual impact, in which he no doubt succeeded’ (Cooper 1967a). Nor was the play popular with viewers. The BBC’s Audience Research Report recorded mainly frustrated and disappointed reactions: ‘As far as meaning was concerned, The Basement seemed to have defeated most of the sample. Even the small number for whom it made acceptable entertainment appeared uncertain as to its real implications.’17 The play’s form did not assist: ‘There was some feeling that confusion was increased by a jumpy, disjointed production, in which reality and fantasy were not clearly distinguished, and that too much “chopping and changing” made it difficult to tell what was supposed to be happening’. However, for the majority of the sample, the play’s best feature was its technical realisation, as the following quotations from viewers demonstrate: Both indoor and outdoor shots were brilliant, it was said, and the sets were ‘really wonderful’; in fact ‘the basement was the most interesting character in the play’; ‘the importance of the camera in this play made it impossible to conceive of its production on the stage’; ‘production and sets were so good that dialogue was virtually unnecessary’.

Perhaps the most acute reaction to The Basement came from Nancy Banks-​ Smith (1967) in the Sun, who identified the play as ‘the most televisual thing you ever saw. Very little spoken dialogue. It was written for the camera. A grape suggested a marble, which suggested a cricket ball which suggested a bullet. Images merged and changed and connected like a dream’. But she then turns her argument around: ‘The only trouble about a dream is you have to be asleep. I got the oddest feeling through The Basement that I might easily fall asleep. Not from boredom, but through sheer lack of a soundtrack. Once it was literally the noise of my own laughter that jerked me awake.’ This cusp—​between appreciation and bewilderment—​conveys the disorientating effect of watching The Basement, one of Pinter’s most impressionistic and unsettling plays. The Basement was Harold Pinter’s final full-​length original work for television and is the utmost example of his understanding of television drama’s unique formal possibilities—​its immediacy, intimacy and scope.

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Conclusion The story of Pinter’s evolving place in the public imagination in the 1960s is undoubtedly bound up with his creative flexibility in working within the expressive possibilities of different media. Television, alongside radio, offered a fertile performance space for Pinter’s early work: in this decade, many of Pinter’s works that were first written for radio, and for television, for film and for the stage, were adapted and produced across these various media. The mass media circulation of these adaptations in quick succession made Pinter a household name, conditions which it is hard to imagine ever being replicated for any present-​day dramatist. It also went some way to contributing to a web of popular understanding about Pinter’s work—​with a central tenet being an absence of understanding. Pinter’s reluctance to paint in clearer brushstrokes the motivations of characters, the relationships between them and the distinction between reality and fantasy sometimes resulted in the audience’s bafflement. Pinter’s status, established at ITV as a public dramatist of experimental work, was developed and complicated by his move to BBC Television later in the mid-​sixties. The space that BBC2 and Theatre 625 opened up for BBC producers to serve as patrons of excellent, if difficult, dramatic work is exemplified in the 1967 Pinter season. The commissioning of three interlinked works, both revived and original, and the use of filmed inserts for the first time, created a season of exceptional complexity and range, albeit at the expense of the mass audience’s engagement. Three distinctly televisual understandings of Pinter’s brand of intimate and disorientating drama were achieved, resulting in challenging drama that provoked both emotion and thought.

Productions discussed The Basement by Harold Pinter (Theatre 625). Dir. Charles Jarrott, BBC2. 9.05–​10.05pm, Monday 20 February 1967. A Night Out by Harold Pinter (Armchair Theatre). Dir. Philip Saville. ABC for ITV. 9.05–​10.05pm, Sunday 24 April 1960. A Night Out by Harold Pinter (Theatre 625). Dir. Christopher Morahan. BBC2. 9.05–​10.05pm, Monday 13 February 1967. A Slight Ache by Harold Pinter (Theatre 625). Dir. Christopher Morahan. BBC2. 9.05–​10.05pm, Monday 6 February 1967. Tea Party by Harold Pinter (The Largest Theatre in the World). Dir. Charles Jarrott. BBC1. 9.25–​10.40pm, Thursday 25 March 1965.

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Notes 1 The plays were presented in a different order when shown on BBC1 under the banner of the Harold Pinter Play on subsequent Wednesdays in March 1969: the best-​received play, A Night Out, opened on 12 March, with A Slight Ache and The Basement following on 19 and 26 March. 2 See Bignell and Davies (2020) for a comprehensive overview (especially pp. 485–​ 6 for the many Pinter plays on ITV networks before the BBC’s Theatre 625 season in 1967). Bignell and Davies’ essay introduces the first dedicated volume to consider the transmedial life of Pinter and his work across the decades (Bignell, Davies and Wrigley 2020), a publication which—​along with the present chapter—​arises from the AHRC-​funded research project ‘Harold Pinter: Histories and Legacies’ at the Universities of Leeds, Birmingham, and Reading, 2017–​ 19, on which Smart and Wrigley worked. We are indebted to Jonathan Bignell (Co-​Investigator on the Pinter project at Reading) and John Wyver (Principal Investigator of the AHRC-​funded ‘Screen Plays’ project at Westminster) for their strong encouragement of our individual and sometimes interwoven strands of work over the last decade. 3 Billington (1996: 73). 4 See Smart, ‘Tea Party (1965)’, in the Pinter at the BBC DVD-​set (London: BFI, pp. 5–​7). This set presents of all three Theatre 625 productions, as well as much else of interest. 5 Pinter quoted in the listing for A Night Out, Radio Times, 18 March 1960, p. 43. 6 See Cooke (2015: 85–​91). 7 This had been a particular problem during the nine-​month run of Festival (BBC Television, 1963–​64), Theatre 625’s closest antecedent. See Smart (2017). 8 All ratings and Reaction Indices cited from BBC WAC Viewing Barometers collection. 9 BBC WAC, ‘T48 Harold Pinter TV Scriptwriter, 1958–​1990’ file, ‘Television Drama Report: A Slight Ache’ by Oliver Marlow Wilkinson, 10 August 1959. (For the uncertain reader: Pinter was born in London and lived in the UK!) 10 BBC WAC, T5/​1,937/​1, ‘Slight Ache (A)’ file, memorandum from C. Morahan to J. Stonebridge, 30 November 1966. 11 BBC WAC, ‘Audience Research Report, VR/​67/​84’, 28 February 1967. 12 BBC WAC, T5/1,722/1, ‘Night Out (A)’ file, letter from Christopher Morahan to Avril Elgar, 30 November 1966. 13 BBC WAC, ‘Audience Research Report, VR/​67/​97’, 9 March 1967. 14 BBC WAC, T5/​1,722/​1, ‘Night Out (A)’ file, letter from C. Morahan to A. Wing, 28 February 1967. 15 BBC WAC, T5/​1,722/​1, ‘Night Out (A)’ file, letters from A. Wing and T. Selby to C. Morahan, 17 February and 21 January 1967, respectively. 16 In ‘Pinter on Air’, Archive on 4, BBC Radio 4, 31 January 2009. 17 BBC WAC, ‘Audience Research Report, VR/​67/​117’, 21 March 1967.

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References Anon. (1964a), ‘BBC-​2 adds to its problems by presentation which would have looked old-​fashioned in 1954’, Daily Mail, 21 September 1964, p. 3. Anon. (1964b), ‘Theatre 625: The Seekers’, Radio Times, 30 April 1964, p. 16. Bakewell, M. (1966), ‘The producer and the television play’, The Listener, 7 July 1966, pp. 8–​9. Bakewell, M. (1967a), ‘Theatre 625: The Basement’, Radio Times, 16 February 1967, p. 21. Bakewell, M. (1967b), ‘Theatre 625: A Night Out’, Radio Times, 9 February 1967, p. 19. Banks-​Smith, N. (1967), ‘Television is not only for looking at’, Sun, 21 February 1967. Bignell, J., and W. Davies (2020), ‘Introduction: Harold Pinter’s transmedial histories’ in Bignell, Davies and Wrigley (eds), Harold Pinter’s Transmedial Histories, special issue of Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 40:3, 481–​98. Bignell, J., W. Davies and A. Wrigley (2020, eds), Harold Pinter’s Transmedial Histories, special issue of Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 40:3. Billington, M. (1967), ‘A BBC season of Pinter: premiere of his latest play’, Television Today, 19 January 1967, p. 10. Billington, M. (1996), The Life and Work of Harold Pinter (London: Faber). Clayton, S. (1967a), ‘Fear seems contrived in early Pinter’, Daily Telegraph, 7 February 1967. Clayton, S. (1967b), ‘Finely timed crescendo in Pinter play’, Daily Telegraph, 14 February 1967. Cooke, L. (2015), British Television Drama: A History, 2nd ed. (London: Palgrave Macmillan). Cooper, R. W. (1967a), ‘Mr Pinter in a conspiracy of silence’, The Times, 21 February 1967. Cooper, R. W. (1967b), ‘Study of rising tension’, The Times, 14 February 1967. Hudgins, C. C. (1985), ‘The Basement: Harold Pinter on BBC-​TV’, Modern Drama, 28.1, 71–​82. Norman, B. (1967), ‘Vintage Pinter between the lines’, Daily Mail, 7 February 1967, p. 3. Peacock, M. (1964), ‘BBC2: creating and planning it’, Television Today, 23 April 1964. Reynolds, S. (1967), ‘A Slight Ache’, Guardian, 7 February 1967. Richardson, M. (1967), ‘Making the most of Mr K’s visit’, Observer, 12 February 1967. Smart, B. (2017), ‘Drama for people “in the know”: Television World Theatre (BBC, 1957–​59) and Festival (BBC, 1963–​64)’, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 37:1, 34–​48. Wrigley, A. (2014), ‘Space and place in Joan Kemp-​Welch’s television productions of theatre plays’, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 34:3, 405–​19.

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Regional drama from stage to screen: television adaptations by Peter Cheeseman’s Victoria Theatre company Lez Cooke Contrary to the popular opinion that the cultural revolution of the 1960s centred on ‘swinging London’, from the late 1950s to the early 1970s a liberalisation of the arts involved towns and cities throughout Britain, with some northern cities such as Liverpool, Manchester and Newcastle providing the breeding ground for artistic innovation which subsequently migrated to the capital. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the growth of regional repertory theatres, many with an alternative vision of what theatre should be like and a commitment towards providing community theatre rooted in the locality. Many important and successful plays, including Peter Barnes’ The Ruling Class (1968) and Willy Russell’s John, Paul, George, Ringo … and Bert (1974), were first produced in regional theatres such as the Nottingham Playhouse and the Liverpool Everyman during the 1960s and 1970s before transferring to London’s West End where they enjoyed even greater success. This followed the pattern of northern musicians and artists, such as the Beatles (Liverpool), the Animals (Newcastle-​upon-​Tyne) and David Hockney (Bradford), going south to the capital to further their careers, enabling the legend of ‘swinging London’ to develop. These talents also increasingly appeared on radio and television, developing substantial national audiences for their work. This chapter considers one significant regional theatre—​Stoke-​on-​Trent’s Victoria Theatre, distinguished by both its in-​the-​round stagings and its commitment to local stories about local issues—​and its contribution to stage adaptations as well as documentaries in collaboration with regional ITV companies and with the BBC between 1966 and 1974. With support from local authorities, as well as from government-​ funded bodies such as the Arts Council, there was a significant expansion in regional repertory theatre between 1958—​when the Belgrade Theatre opened in Coventry—​ and 1979—​ when the Wolsey Theatre opened in

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Ipswich—​as new theatres were built and old ones were redeveloped.1 As Dominic Shellard notes in British Theatre Since the War: This collective patronage led in the sixties to the redevelopment of the repertory theatres at Nottingham, Sheffield, Birmingham and Bristol, as well as the construction of completely new complexes in Stoke-​on-​Trent, Scarborough, Chichester, Pitlochry, Manchester (the Contact and Royal Exchange Theatres), Newcastle and Leicester. The drive away from conventional spaces and desire to experiment with new forms of drama also meant that many of these new sixties venues possessed studio spaces and facilities for TIE [Theatre-​ in-​ Education] groups. (Shellard 1999: 178)

The Victoria Theatre in Stoke-​on-​Trent was one of these venues, established in 1962 in a disused cinema with a commitment to staging plays ‘in-​the-​ round’, a style that influenced the work of several of the new regional theatres: it eschewed the conventional proscenium arch in order to develop a new, more intimate relationship with the audience.2 As Anthony Jackson observes in his discussion of the Victoria Theatre: The theatre actually had its origins in the pioneering work of Stephen Joseph—​ vigorous advocate of theatre-​ in-​ the-​ round, director and teacher extraordinary—​who had formed his Studio Theatre Company in 1955 to play in Scarborough in the summer and tour theatreless towns around the North of England at other times of the year. Four years later, Newcastle-​under-​Lyme (next door to Stoke-​on-​Trent) was included in its schedule and before long the borough council gave its support to the company’s plans to set up a permanent theatre-​in-​the-​round in the town. (Jackson 1984: 152)

If Joseph was the guiding light whose ‘dedication to theatre-​in-​the-​round stemmed from his belief that it led invariably to the increased contribution of the audience to a performance because they were more intensely aware of what the actors were doing’ (ibid.), then Peter Cheeseman, the Victoria Theatre’s director from 1962 to his retirement in 1998, was the creative force responsible for its development as a community theatre, dedicated to serving the needs, interests and concerns of the people of the conglomeration of towns and villages of north Staffordshire known as the Potteries. This area had been an economic powerhouse during the Industrial Revolution but by the 1970s it was experiencing an industrial decline which would be hastened by the economic policies introduced by Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government in the following decade. Although born in Portsmouth, Cheeseman spent much of his life in the Midlands and the north of England: he attended school in Liverpool and Newcastle-​upon-​Tyne, among other places (since his father’s job took the family around the country); and he went to university in Sheffield and worked for a period as assistant director at Derby Playhouse in 1959, before

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joining Stephen Joseph’s northern-​based Studio Theatre Company in 1961. On being appointed director at the Victoria Theatre in 1962, Cheeseman dedicated himself to establishing the venue as a community theatre for the people of the Potteries, creating an unparalleled body of work focusing on local history and local issues. Stoke-​on-​Trent’s geographical position between the North West and the Midlands has contributed to an ambivalence in the area’s regional allegiance, which resulted in the Potteries developing a strong sense of independence in its regional and cultural identity. From the beginning, Cheeseman sought to cater for this sense of a unique social and cultural identity in the plays the company developed and performed. Writing about Cheeseman, Shellard suggests that: [N]‌o one in Britain can rival his devotion to a single theatre and its surrounding community. Generally following a policy that stuck to three commitments—​ performances in-​the-​round (the area gained a new theatre-​in-​the-​round in 1986), the juxtaposition of new work and classics and the history and contemporary problems of North Staffordshire—​Cheeseman is best known for eleven documentaries on local issues, in the form of ‘living newspapers’ and in the tradition of Theatre Workshop. These productions have featured the area’s ailing mining, steel and potteries industries and have contributed to local political campaigns, as well as helping to keep alive the oral testimony that is so often lost in accounts of local struggles. (Shellard 1999: 179)

Cheeseman believed that theatre-​in-​the-​round was the best way to present drama because it engaged the audience more directly, in a manner that conventional proscenium arch theatre could not, and as a consequence was more democratic. As he told Gabriella Giannachi and Mary Luckhurst in an interview (1999: 18): ‘the fact that the audience is so present in theatre in-​the-​round means that my obsession is meeting the imaginative potential of this situation. Stephen Joseph said that theatre is made of actors and audiences: their interrelationship is what is important to me’. The commitment to theatre-​in-​the-​round was established from the very beginning at the Victoria Theatre, despite the fact that the performance space in the converted cinema in Stoke meant that ‘the round’ was more of a square, with the audience seated on all four sides of the performance space. The important thing was that the audience surrounded the actors, and when the company moved to a new purpose-built theatre in 1986 it was designed as a genuine theatre-​in-​the-​round. The closeness of the audience to the performers was essential in creating the ‘interrelationship’ between actors and audience that Cheeseman sought, and it was this that enabled the Victoria Theatre ­company to develop such a rapport with the local audience, especially when they were performing one of their documentaries on local issues or staging an adaptation of a novel or short story by local author Arnold Bennett.

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The Victoria Theatre company and television From the mid-​1960s to the mid-​1970s, the Victoria Theatre company collaborated on a number of television productions with all four of the Midlands-​ based television companies operating during the period: BBC Midland, based at the Gosta Green studios in Birmingham; its successor, BBC Birmingham, based from 1971 at the new Pebble Mill studios; and the ITV companies ABC Television and ATV (which took over ABC’s franchise in 1968), both of which were also based in Birmingham. An early but ­abortive collaboration occurred in 1964 when Philip Donnellan, the documentary filmmaker, and Charles Parker, the producer of the BBC Radio Ballads (1958–​64)—​ who were working for BBC Midland in Birmingham—​went to see a performance of the Victoria Theatre’s first documentary theatre piece, The Jolly Potters, which was about the 1842 Staffordshire pottery riots.3 They shot some scenes from the play but the footage was never broadcast.4 The following year, however, Donnellan produced the BBC2 documentary programme The Staffordshire Rebels (8 January 1966), which focused on the second of the Victoria Theatre’s documentary theatre productions about the involvement of Staffordshire people in the English Civil War, first staged by the company in 1965. Described in the Radio Times as ‘a record of three weeks’ tough rehearsal’, the BBC documentary provides a unique insight into Peter Cheeseman’s working method in constructing documentary theatre, revealing how he went about trying to engage the audience through the dramatisation of a historical subject from a distinctly ‘local’ perspective: the Radio Times listing quotes him as saying that ‘the Civil War was a national event which involved everybody, even if at the end they didn’t know what it was all about. I want as far as humanly possible to make our audience feel what it was like to be simply alive then’ (Anon. 1966).5 A third Victoria Theatre documentary stage play—​The Knotty, about the North Staffordshire railway—​followed in 1966. At the end of that year, the company staged Jock on the Go, an adaptation of a 1912 short story by Arnold Bennett called ‘Jock-​at-​a-​Venture’ (published in Bennett 2007). It was while the company was staging Jock on the Go that Peter Cheeseman became embroiled in a dispute with the Victoria Theatre’s board of directors over his proposal to include more local representatives on the board. According to Cheeseman, similar disputes were happening at other repertory theatres as younger, university-​educated people like himself, with different ideas about repertory theatre, replaced the older wartime repertory generation.6 The dispute led to Cheeseman being sacked by the board on 17 January 1967, but it was a sign of the extent to which the local community had been won over by his theatrical initiatives that he and the company received tremendous support, leading to his appointment as Theatre Director by a new independent trust formed of the Arts Council and the local authorities on 11 July 1967.

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It was during this period of ‘exile’, when the company was locked out of the theatre, that Cheeseman received overtures from television executives wanting to lend support by producing work from the company. Two plays were commissioned during this period, one for BBC Midland and one for the regional ITV company ABC Television. Both were adaptations of Arnold Bennett short stories and both were produced to mark the centenary of Bennett’s birth. Bennett was born on 27 May 1867 in Hanley, one of the six towns that formed the Potteries (although Bennett famously always referred to the Five Towns in his novels, omitting Fenton). After a period working as a journalist, he began writing novels, the first of which was the semi-​autobiographical A Man from the North (1898). He is best known for Anna of the Five Towns (1902), The Old Wives’ Tale (1908) and the Clayhanger trilogy (1910–​16), novels which chronicle life in the Potteries in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. A number of his novels, plays and short stories have been adapted for television, including The Old Wives’ Tale (BBC2, 1964), Clayhanger (ATV for ITV, 1976) and Anna of the Five Towns (BBC2, 1985), in addition to those discussed in this chapter. The first television play to be produced during the period of the company’s ‘exile’ was Jock on the Go (BBC2, 9 September 1967), the play the company was performing when the dispute with management arose. This is a whimsical tale about a character called Jock who returns to the Potteries after being away, livening up the area with his antics. A BBC representative came to see the play in performance in late February 1967, before Cheeseman’s employment was formally terminated on 18 March; shortly afterwards, television director Alan Rees came to discuss producing a broadcast version. The company’s resident playwright, Peter Terson, had adapted Bennett’s short story for the stage, and Terson and Cheeseman set about reworking it for television. Rehearsals began on 1 May 1967 in Longton Town Hall, and the play was recorded in the BBC’s Gosta Green studios on 15 May, with some retakes being recorded on 23 July, by which time Peter Cheeseman had been reinstated at the Victoria Theatre. Jock on the Go was transmitted on 9 September 1967, just a few days after the Victoria Theatre reopened with a Peter Terson play called The Ballad of the Artificial Mash.7 The Saturday evening BBC2 transmission of Jock on the Go followed the final episode of a four-​part serialisation of J. B. Priestley’s Angel Pavement, dramatised for television by the Birmingham writer David Turner, but the Priestley serial was a London production, whereas Jock on the Go was listed in the Radio Times as a production ‘from the Midlands […] adapted from the original stage ­production at the Victoria Theatre, Stoke-​on-​Trent’.8 No copy of Jock on the Go survives in the archives because it was common practice at the time to wipe videotapes following transmission so that they could be reused for recording other programmes. According to

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Christopher Martin, who played the lead role of Jock on both stage and television, there was an attempt to recreate the free-​flowing stage performance in the studio: ‘I remember scenes seemed to flow, so the way they were using the cameras … was such that we would do a five-​[or] ten-​minute scene and it would go on and there wouldn’t be cutting and different shots’.9 Martin recalled moving quickly from one studio set to another, suggesting the play may have been recorded as a continuous ‘live’ performance. He also remembered that Peter Cheeseman was very involved in the production (even though he was credited as its producer and not its director), trying to ensure that, despite it being reduced to fifty minutes, it resembled the stage version as far as possible. Bennett’s story is only eighteen pages long, but Terson expanded it by including lots of songs; music was an important part of the Victoria Theatre company’s productions, especially their documentary plays. Radio Times includes the credit, ‘Songs composed and music arranged by Jeff Parton, Gillian Brown, James Hayes, Christopher Martin, Beryl Cotton, Ron Daniels and Susan Glanville’—​in other words, most of the company were responsible for the musical aspects of the production, illustrating the collective nature of the Victoria Theatre company’s work—​and the play was described as a ‘ballad drama adaptation’ of Bennett’s short story.10 The second play commissioned during the dispute was The Heroism of Thomas Chadwick (ABC for ITV, 23 September 1967), adapted by Peter Terson from two Arnold Bennett short stories featuring the same character, Thomas Chadwick, ‘a man who’s ready to sacrifice everything for the sake of preserving his dignity’ (Anon. 1967: 16).11 Chadwick was played by Ken Campbell, who joined the Victoria Theatre company in 1967 at the age of twenty-​five, and this was his first leading role in television. Because of the unique circumstances of the play’s production, being specially commissioned by ABC Television to mark the centenary of Arnold Bennett’s birth, The Heroism of Thomas Chadwick is a rare example of a play created for and by a theatre company which was never actually performed in the theatre. It was commissioned by Leonard White, Executive Producer on Armchair Theatre at ABC Television, 1963–​69, succeeding Sydney Newman, who left ABC in 1962 to become Head of Drama at the BBC. White often visited regional repertory theatres in search of new plays that could be adapted for television, and he was aware that Peter Cheeseman was in dispute with his board of directors and that the whole company had resigned following Cheeseman’s sacking: Help was needed to keep Cheeseman’s company together. ABC Television stepped in to support them and decided to present their production—​The Heroism of Thomas Chadwick […] ABC always maintained a strong interest and support for the theatres in their franchise regions, the Midlands and the North. So, the ill wind that had driven this Company into exile for

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some six months did blow some good. Indeed, soon after this gesture, Peter Cheeseman and his Company were reinstated at the Victoria Theatre. (White 2003: 201)

In fact, Cheeseman was reinstated two weeks before The Heroism of Thomas Chadwick began rehearsing on 24 July 1967 in the Queen’s Hall in Burslem. Further rehearsals took place in early August in Twickenham (near ABC’s Teddington Studios on the outskirts of London), prior to camera rehearsals on 8 August and videotape recording on 9 August: ‘From start of rehearsals until recording was seventeen days’, as Leonard White recalled.12 The play was transmitted on the ITV network as a Saturday night spin-​ off from the Sunday night Armchair Theatre series. It was presented under the title The Story Teller, referring to Bennett, as a special event to mark the centenary of the writer’s birth. Peter Cheeseman was credited as the producer and Mike Vardy, who later directed episodes of The Sweeney, was the director: A full-​length play by a provincial theatre company is a rare event in British television. In Saturday’s production Mike Vardy directs the cameras and Peter Cheeseman directs the actors. ‘Working as a theatre group,’ said Cheeseman, ‘we are able to get an atmosphere and an approach to performance that is quite unique, not because it’s better but because it’s different. I am hoping some of this will come over on the screen.’ (Anon. 1967: 16)

The Heroism of Thomas Chadwick was recorded ‘as live’, enabling the company to retain the element of a continuous performance that they were used to in the theatre. While the staging of it in the studio did not attempt to replicate a performance ‘in-​the-​round’, there was a ‘theatrical’ quality to the production, as Terson observed following a screening of the play at Stoke Film Theatre in 2004: ‘I liked it sort of being theatrical. Instead of all these car chases and whiz-​bam and visual effects you had the rattling tram car and the little office. I loved all that’. The continuous recording enabled scenes to ‘flow’ in the manner they would have done in a theatre production, and as Christopher Martin said they did in the television adaptation of Jock on the Go. Leonard White, however, noted in his Armchair Theatre book: ‘We did not simply want a photographed “theatre” production. James Weatherup’s design helped to make the transformation’ (White 2003: 201). A variety of sets, combined with imaginative direction by Mike Vardy, here directing his first television drama, helped to transform The Heroism of Thomas Chadwick into a fluent television play, with the actors moving quickly from one set to another. Moreover, the use of slides, with back-​projection to simulate the movement of the rattling tram car, plus actors speaking directly to camera, all helped to ensure the production was neither naturalistic nor simply ‘photographed theatre’ (see Cooke 2015: 8).

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Following the dispute and the resumption of theatre production, it was three years before the Victoria Theatre company participated in another television production, although in 1970 its documentary theatre play The Burning Mountain, about primitive Methodism in the Potteries, was the subject of a twenty-​five-​minute item on the BBC2 arts magazine programme Review: At Stoke-​on-​Trent’s Victoria Theatre a new ‘musical documentary’ about the Ranters—​primitive methodists who preached fire and brimstone in the 19th-​ century Potteries—​has been worked entirely from old journals, contemporary interviews, hymns, and folk songs. Review filmed this lively young repertory company in the last week of rehearsals and looked at the countryside and people who provide much of the source material for artistic director Peter Cheeseman’s bid for truly popular theatre.13 (Anon. 1970)

Later in 1970, the Victoria Theatre was also featured in an edition of the BBC1 arts programme Omnibus about regional theatre—​It’ll Be All Live on the Night (1 September 1970)—​in which Peter Cheeseman and resident playwright Tony Perrin were interviewed. Shortly afterwards, the company produced a television version of Anna of the Five Towns (ATV for ITV, 28 February 1971), which had opened a new season at the Victoria Theatre in 1969. This time the television company was ATV, which had taken over the weekend Midlands ITV franchise from ABC in 1968 to become the sole ITV franchise-​holder in the Midlands. Anna of the Five Towns was a ninety-​minute television version of Joyce Cheeseman’s (Peter’s first wife) stage adaptation from Arnold Bennett’s 1902 novel. This ATV network production for Sunday Night Theatre—​directed for television by Dorothy Denham (her first major drama production)—​followed a screening of the feature film A Kind of Loving and preceded an episode of The Avengers. This time, however, Peter Cheeseman was not allowed in the studio during recording, and he has revealed that he was unhappy about the manner in which Anna was adapted for television, especially its slow pace.14 While Anna of the Five Towns did have the advantage of being a colour production, following the recent introduction of colour technology, the production retained a ‘staginess’ which Thomas Chadwick had sought to avoid. Given that the company’s stage productions were fast-​moving, and interspersed with songs and music, the ATV production of Anna was certainly slow in comparison. It was also limited in its stage design, although Dorothy Denham did employ close-​ups to good effect—​an advantage that television had over theatre (see Fig. 6.1). One moment stood out in an otherwise very naturalistic production—​a big close-​up of Anna (Gillian Brown) when she learns of the suicide of Titus Price, the manager of the factory owned by her family. It is the only moment in the television production when a voiceover

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Figure 6.1  Gillian Brown as Anna in Anna of the Five Towns (1971), which employed close-​ups to good effect.

is used to convey a character’s feelings, in this case Anna’s, and the superimposition of a religious painting onto Anna’s face as she ‘hears’ the sermon being given at his funeral, with the camera zooming in and out of the painting, gives this shot an expressionist quality which puts it at odds with the rest of the drama. In an interview for TV Times, Peter Cheeseman talks about the Victoria Theatre’s success in staging plays such as Anna of the Five Towns in-​the-​ round for the ‘cloth cap’ Potteries audience, and he had some interesting observations to make about what theatre-​in-​the-​round and television might have in common: We attract the community because we offer consistent local interest productions, documentaries that use the words of the people. Arnold Bennett was our bonus. Anna was our most popular production. You hear the laughter of recognition when they watch Bennett’s characters talking about what they know. He’s our writer […] We don’t do [Samuel] Beckett because we don’t want to frighten-​off the locals. Theatre needs this real community to draw on. It is up to us to find the right

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stimulus to attract the local community. I think this is happening in a lot of regional theatres.

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Television has helped. We have done two Bennett adaptations, Jock-​on-​ the-​Go and The Heroism of Thomas Chadwick, and two documentaries, The Staffordshire Rebels and The Burning Mountain, about the primitive Methodists. They give an appetite for theatre, but of a particular kind. People want to see actors close-​up. The traditional theatre cannot offer this. Theatre-​in-​the-​round also offers the narrative flow and quick scene-​changes that television and cinema have accustomed people to. (McGill 1971: 6)

Unfortunately, the ATV production of Anna largely failed to achieve the ‘narrative flow and quick scene-​changes’ that other productions might have achieved, leading to Cheeseman’s disappointment with it. No doubt this was partly due to the play being recorded ‘out of sequence’, whereas both Jock on the Go, according to Christopher Martin’s account, and The Heroism of Thomas Chadwick, according to Leonard White, were recorded ‘as live’.15 While Anna of the Five Towns provides a valuable record of the Victoria Theatre company’s work, the television adaptation was a largely conservative and naturalistic studio production (apart from its one expressionist moment) and pedestrian in comparison with the two plays that preceded it. At the end of 1973, the BBC arts programme Second House included a feature on the Victoria Theatre as part of a programme called ‘Some Views of the British Theatre’ (BBC2, 15 December 1973). The seventeen-​minute item included interviews with Peter Cheeseman and members of the company, providing a good insight into how they went about researching and performing documentary theatre for the local community. The play they were researching at the time was the Victoria Theatre’s Fight for Shelton Bar. This local documentary play was about the struggle to save the local steelworks from closure, an issue that the company became involved with in October 1973 at the request of the Shelton Works Action Committee. Like most of the company’s contemporary documentaries, Fight for Shelton Bar was based on oral testimony, and members of the company spent four months recording over 100 hours of interviews with steelworkers and their wives. This material was then edited down and the actors spoke the actual words of the steelworkers, in north Staffordshire dialect, in what was an early example of verbatim theatre (on which see Garson’s chapter in this volume). The play was staged in the theatre, in repertory, for ten months in 1974 while the dispute was going on; the stage production lasted over two and a half hours and each night a member of the Shelton Works Action Committee updated the audience on what was happening in the dispute. In the same year, a much shorter version was produced for BBC English Regions Drama, the enterprising department led by David Rose which was

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established at the BBC’s new Pebble Mill studios in Birmingham in 1971. The company began working on the television version of the play in May 1974, with rehearsals taking place in the town halls of Longton and Tunstall, two of the Six Towns of the Potteries, from 28 May to 1 June 1974. Camera rehearsals took place on the afternoon of 2 June at the Pebble Mill studios, prior to recording in the evening, from 7.15 to 9.15pm. The drama was edited on 7 and 10 June and post-​dubbed on 18 June.16 Fight for Shelton Bar was transmitted on 18 November 1974 on BBC2 as part of Second City Firsts, a series of half-​hour plays produced by BBC English Regions Drama (1973–​78) which succeeded Thirty-​Minute Theatre (1965–​73). This time Cheeseman was finally given the opportunity, by series producer Barry Hanson, to direct the television version of a Victoria Theatre company production. Having no experience of directing in a television studio, Cheeseman was given the camera script for James Robson’s television play Girl (BBC2, 25 February 1974), which had been shown in the previous season of Second City Firsts, in order ‘to learn how to lay out the camera moves’.17 However, whereas the camera script for Girl lists 152 shots in its thirty-​minute running time, giving an average shot length (ASL) of eleven seconds, Fight for Shelton Bar has just seventy-​four shots, giving an ASL of twenty-​five seconds. Of these seventy-​four shots, thirty-​six are still images shown very briefly, so the majority of the studio shots are long takes, some of which last several minutes.18 This gives an indication of the style that Cheeseman adopted for Fight for Shelton Bar: long takes with as little cutting as possible in an attempt to replicate the ‘flow’ of the theatre play.19 The following extract from Cheeseman’s ‘Treatment Notes’ for the television production of Shelton gives more information on the style he wanted to achieve: Style a) Stoke style, not agit prop—​‘agit prop with a human face’ if you like. b) Flow not cuts. Single camera technique as far as possible for as much of the action as practical. c) Words super-​important; people, humanity—​this is the feel. Camera a)  Close to actors, moving smoothly from one to another, moving through them to scenic elements for stills on the process. b) Sometimes groups of actors shot from a distance full figure for key moments.20

Many of the shots in the camera script go from position ‘a’ to position ‘e’ or ‘f’, denoting how the camera was intended to take up different positions within the same shot, with instructions to ‘Pan Left’ or ‘Pan Right

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and tighten to fill shot’ (shot 26). The most complicated shot is probably the scene where the Shelton Works Action Committee meet with Lord Melchett (Jim Wiggins), the Chairman of British Steel, which was recorded in one long take (shot 34 in the script) lasting five-​and-​a-​half minutes, with a mobile camera constantly repositioning and zooming in at certain points to close-​ups on individual characters, such as Ted Smith (Graham Watkins), Chairman of the Shelton Works Action Committee, as he talks to camera about his experience of the meeting, it being a feature of the drama that characters would comment on the action, in a Brechtian manner, by addressing the camera. The camera script indicates thirty-​six re-​positionings of the camera during this one shot, and Peter Cheeseman needed to talk the camera operator through the shot while it was being recorded, giving him instructions over headphones.21 The single camera technique, ‘flow not cuts’, with the camera occasionally getting ‘close to actors, moving smoothly from one to another’, is exemplified in this scene. But it was not always easy to achieve. The recording of long takes on a single camera in a television studio does not necessarily guarantee the kind of ‘flow’ that might have been achieved in the theatre, where actors can move freely without the constraint of having to perform for a camera. Furthermore, in the theatre the audience can choose where they want to look at any moment, the human eye being capable of moving quickly from one character to another. The single camera, however, on a pedestal in the television studio, is not capable of moving so quickly. Often, during the Lord Melchett scene, the discussion moves from one character to another more quickly than the camera can follow it, with the result that we are left looking at a character who has just spoken while the discussion has moved on. This was one reason why cutting (or vision mixing) between several cameras in the television studio was originally introduced, so that a conversation could be followed by cutting from one camera position to another, but with the single camera technique, and a discussion involving several people, it is inevitable that the camera will not always be able to frame the person speaking. What Cheeseman, with his lack of television studio experience, may not have appreciated was that by adhering to the single camera technique, in order to capture the ‘flow’ of the stage production, this would create problems in a discussion scene, such as the one with Lord Melchett. While the single camera technique enabled the actors to give a continuous performance, it also determined where the viewer had to look, which may be a problem when the viewer wants to see who is speaking but is unable to because the camera has not ‘caught up’ with the discussion. In this respect, rather than capturing the ‘flow’ of the stage production, the use of a single camera and long takes can actually slow down the tempo, while also making it difficult to get close to actors when they are speaking.

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Where the television production of Shelton works best is when the long take is interrupted by intercutting documentary photographs and newspaper headlines. An example of this is in the scene following the meeting with Lord Melchett. At the end of the long take, there is a dissolve to a different camera position, a long shot as the meeting ends and Melchett shakes hands with the Action Committee members. This is followed by three black and white photographs illustrating the Kaldo process of converting molten iron and scrap into steel, stills being used in the television version instead of the dramatised sequences from the theatre production in order to reduce the running time. After cutting away to these photographs, the studio scene resumes, from the same camera position, with the chairs from the meeting removed by the last characters leaving the scene. A dejected Ted Smith, however, remains, sitting alone at the table where Lord Melchett sat, while a voiceover (from an off-​screen actor) describes the aftermath of the meeting. In this high-​angle long shot, replicating how someone sitting higher-​up in the auditorium might have seen the action in the theatre, Smith describes the mood of despondency among the workforce in the months following the meeting. There is then a dissolve to a black and white photograph of the real Ted Smith, with the superimposed caption: ‘Ted Smith, Chairman Action Committee’, accompanied by a recording of Ted Smith’s voice as he describes his intention to fight on (see Fig. 6.2). This recording was one of the original tape recordings made by members of the company when they were researching the play. The decision to use the original, rather than have Graham Watkins speak the words, has an emotional effect which would have been enhanced when it was played over a loudspeaker in the theatre production: TED SMITH’S OWN VOICE ON TAPE: [photograph of Ted Smith] Well a tremendous experience took place to me, and I’m telling you. I’m coming work, on the Friday morning, and another friend had died recently, and that was Cliff Toft, a little old man, he were a store-​keeper in there. And I was walking down there and these men that had died [dissolve to Graham Watkins, playing Ted Smith, listening to the recording, with the camera slowly zooming in towards him] and I usually walk down on me own, down past Air Products, I get off the bus and I was thinking to meself, what would they do [dissolve to black and white photograph of the Shelton works, the camera still zooming in] and the message come to me, they’d fight and fight and that was the only thing that come across and I could hear these voices, mate, and loud and clear they were [dissolve to the actor playing Ted Smith in the studio, camera still zooming in] you know men, Tommy Cooper, you know men as’d been killed, George Rushton, his head crushed, what would that man do? And this all, yeah, all come through me mind [dissolve to black and white photograph of the Shelton Works, zooming out] and I came down there and I surged, energy surged through me, coming past Air Products, and I was on me way from that point on mate and I thought [dissolve to the actor playing Ted Smith, camera

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still zooming in to a medium close-​up] the bastards aren’t ’aving my job, those bloody men aren’t giving their lives up for me, and me let ’em down? Not on your bloody life. And tears did roll down my bloody cheeks mate, unashamed tears of bloody joy because I was prepared to put my bloody life down same as they ’ad then [the camera holds on the actor playing Ted Smith, now in close-​up, blinking repeatedly as he experiences the emotion of the real Ted Smith’s impassioned narration. Dissolve to three members of the company in the foreground as an actress sings the ‘Mayday Song’].22

This scene combines the use of a single camera, slowly zooming in from a long shot to a close-​up of Ted Smith, the actor in the studio, with photographs of the real Ted Smith and the Shelton steelworks, sutured together through the use of dissolves (not cuts) and overlaid by the emotional documentary narration of the real Ted Smith. The ‘Mayday Song’ that closes the scene (which is reprised at the end of the drama), performed by the actors in the studio, adds another element of the Victoria Theatre style to the mix, creating a montage that conveys something of the style of the theatre production which Peter Cheeseman described as ‘agit prop with a human face’.

Figure 6.2  A photograph of Ted Smith, with a superimposed caption, which is accompanied by a recording of his voice as he describes his intention to fight on, in Second City Firsts: Fight for Shelton Bar (1974).

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This combination is arguably more successful than the scenes which use a single camera to record long takes in an attempt to achieve ‘flow not cuts’, which are heavy on exposition (‘Words super-​important’, as Cheeseman wrote in his ‘Treatment Notes’!) and narratively sluggish. Such reservations may be why Christopher Morahan, Head of BBC Drama at the time, said in a BBC Television Weekly Programme Review meeting following transmission of the play that ‘although Stoke was in the forefront of regional drama, this theatre production had not transferred very well to television and there had been no comparison between the force of this play and Scotland’s The Cheviot, The Stag and the Black, Black Oil’,23 a drama-​documentary by John McGrath comprising a montage of elements which had been transmitted as a Play for Today in 1974, just four days after Fight for Shelton Bar was recorded.24 Fight for Shelton Bar was an unusual production for the Second City Firsts series, but not for BBC English Regions Drama in that it conformed to the department’s policy of commissioning plays from regional writers about regional culture and regional issues. The Victoria Theatre’s Fight for Shelton Bar certainly did that, although the need to compress a lot of material into thirty minutes, together with the questionable use of the single camera technique and long takes, meant that the television version ultimately suffered in comparison to the full-​length theatre play.

The decline of regional theatre and regional television drama The four television adaptations which the Victoria Theatre company produced in the late 1960s and early 1970s provide an illustration of how regional television companies (ABC and ATV) and production centres (BBC Midland and BBC English Regions Drama) attempted to ‘reflect the character and talent’ of one part of their region, in this case the Potteries, by commissioning work from a theatre company which was particularly concerned with regional issues, culture and identity (BBC 1971: 53). It is significant that the Victoria Theatre company was not involved in any further television productions after 1974, despite the fact that Cheeseman continued producing local documentaries at the Victoria Theatre and, from 1986, the New Victoria Theatre until his retirement in 1998. The thriving regional repertory theatre movement of the 1960s and 1970s went into decline in the 1980s, suffering from Arts Council cuts and a political backlash following the 1979 election of Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government, with its centralising policies and political antipathy towards the regions. The cultural climate in the 1980s was not conducive to the sort of collaborative ventures between regional television companies

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and regional theatres which enabled the Victoria Theatre to work with four different Midlands-​based television companies. Of those companies, ABC lost its Midlands franchise in 1968 when the ITA forced the company into a merger with the London-​based Rediffusion to form Thames Television. ATV continued as the sole ITV operator in the Midlands until 1981, when it became Central Television. Then, in 1994, Central TV was purchased by the London-​based ITV company Carlton Television, which took over the London franchise from Thames Television in 1993 following the controversial franchise ‘auctions’ introduced by the Conservative government in the 1990 Broadcasting Act. The series of takeovers and mergers between ITV companies which took place from 1992 to 2000, culminating in the consolidation of the ITV network as one company in 2004, served to erode the regional identities of the ITV companies and contribute to a downgrading in the importance of regional broadcasting within ITV. While BBC English Regions Drama thrived throughout the 1970s under the leadership of David Rose, the production of regional drama declined following his departure to Channel Four in 1981, and the department no longer exists. Neither does Pebble Mill, sold off in 2004, and while BBC Birmingham produces some regional drama at the ‘drama village’ based at Birmingham University’s Selly Oak campus, its output is dominated by the long-​running afternoon serial Doctors (BBC1, 2000–​). As with ITV, the BBC underwent radical changes during the 1990s that were designed to rationalise BBC production and see the Corporation compete more effectively in the new ratings-​driven broadcasting environment. The commitment to regional drama production was consequently downgraded during this period. While the representation of the English regions, plus the ‘national’ regions of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, continues to be an important part of BBC drama production with regard to attracting audiences, both national and international, the commitment to regional culture and representation that was made by the BBC’s regional production centres in the 1960s and 1970s is now much reduced. This is compounded by the higher cost of drama production, resulting in co-​productions with international companies which produce dramas aimed at an international audience, not a local, regional one. Consequently, the priority of the BBC’s new regional production centre in Cardiff, for example, is to produce television drama that will attract national and international audiences, and be sellable in global markets, rather than to produce indigenous regional television drama. It is the latter that seems to have been lost, or is much reduced, in British television since the 1960s and 1970s, when a theatre company like Peter Cheeseman’s Victoria Theatre in Stoke-​on-​Trent was given the opportunity to produce regionally specific drama for both a Midlands audience and a wider national audience via both BBC and ITV networks.25

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Productions discussed Anna of the Five Towns by Joyce Cheeseman (her adaptation from Arnold Bennett’s novel). Dir. Dorothy Denham. ATV for ITV (Sunday Night Theatre). 10.15–​11.45pm, Sunday 28 February 1971. The Ballad of the Artificial Mash by Peter Terson. Dir. Dennis Vance. ABC for ITV (Armchair Theatre). 10.15–​11.15pm, Saturday 27 July 1968. Fight for Shelton Bar. Dir. Peter Cheeseman. BBC2 (Second City Firsts). 10.15–​10.50pm, Monday 18 November 1974. The Heroism of Thomas Chadwick by Peter Terson. Dir. Mike Vardy. ABC for ITV (The Story-​Teller). 10.15–​11.15pm, Saturday 23 September 1967. Jock on the Go by Peter Terson (after a short story by Arnold Bennett). Dir. Alan Rees. BBC2. 9.55–​10.45pm, Saturday 9 September 1967. The Staffordshire Rebels. Film documentary. Dir. Christopher Martin. BBC2. 8.50–​9.35pm, Saturday 8 January 1966.

Notes 1 See ‘Appendix 1. The Repertory Movement: A Chronology’, in Rowell and Jackson (1984: 192–​4). 2 The first Victoria Theatre was a disused cinema in Stoke-​on-​Trent, just inside the boundary between Stoke and Newcastle-​under-​Lyme. In 1986, the company moved to a purpose-​ built theatre-​ in-​ the-​ round, half a mile away in Newcastle-​under-​Lyme. 3 Information provided by Peter Cheeseman in a telephone conversation on 3 November 2006. I am grateful to the late Peter Cheeseman for taking the time to speak with me about many aspects of the Victoria Theatre company’s history. 4 The rushes are held by the Media Archive for Central England: see catalogue entry at www.macearchive.org/​films/​jolly-​potters-​rushes (accessed 3 December 2020). 5 A copy of the documentary is held by the Media Archive for Central England: www.macearchive.org/​films/​staffordshire-​rebels (accessed 3 December 2020). Ben Kingsley and Robert Powell, who both went on to enjoy successful film careers, appear in the documentary as members of the Victoria Theatre company. 6 Information about the dispute and the two Arnold Bennett plays that were recorded for television in 1967 was provided by Peter Cheeseman in a telephone conversation on 3 November 2006. 7 The Ballad of the Artificial Mash was also produced for television in 1968: it was dramatised by Peter Cheeseman from Peter Terson’s original stage play, with a different cast (including Stanley Holloway and Alfred Lynch). No copy is known to exist. It was the 400th and last Armchair Theatre play produced by ABC Television for ITV. On 30 July 1968, ABC combined with the London-​ based Rediffusion company to become Thames Television. 8 Radio Times, 7 September 1967, p. 7.

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9 Christopher Martin, interviewed by the author, 22 August 2007. 10 Radio Times, 7 September 1967, p. 7. 11 The two stories were ‘The Heroism of Thomas Chadwick’ from the 1912 collection The Matador of the Five Towns (in Bennett 2007) and ‘Death, Fire and Life’ from the collection The Woman Who Stole Everything (Bennett 1927). According to Cheeseman, ‘it was quite obvious to us that the two stories concerned the same man, only one of them is called Thomas Chadwick but the second is undoubtedly the same odd person, so Peter [Terson] joined the two together and I did a bit of codging for the television’ (source: post-​screening discussion, Stoke Film Theatre, 16 June 2004). 12 Production information given by Leonard White in his introduction to a screening of The Heroism of Thomas Chadwick (Stoke Film Theatre, 16 June 2004). In attendance at the screening were Cheeseman, Terson, White and members of the cast, including Gillian Brown, Ken Campbell, Christopher Martin and Ann Raitt. I am grateful to Ray Johnson for making available a recording of the discussion which followed the screening (which I also attended, as the programmer for Stoke Film Theatre at the time). The BFI National Archive holds a copy of The Heroism of Thomas Chadwick. 13 A copy of the Review feature is held by the Media Archive for Central England: www.macearchive.org/​films/​burning-​mountain (accessed 29 April 2016). 14 Comments made by Cheeseman following a screening of Anna of the Five Towns at Stoke Film Theatre, 11 June 2005. When I interviewed him on 10 November 2003 Cheeseman said he was disappointed that he had not been allowed to be more involved in the television production. 15 On 16 June 2004, during the discussion following the screening of Thomas Chadwick, Cheeseman said that Anna had been recorded ‘out of sequence’. 16 Sources: Staffordshire University, Victoria Theatre Collection, DC SHEL: TV version, Folder A (1974), ‘Schedule for TV Shelton’ and the camera script. This was a fairly standard schedule for half-​hour studio plays recorded at Pebble Mill. 17 When I consulted Cheeseman’s papers on Fight for Shelton Bar, he showed me the camera script for Girl on which he had written: ‘I think this was a sample TV script for me to learn how to lay out the camera moves etc.’ These papers are now held by Staffordshire University, Victoria Theatre Collection, DC SHEL: TV version, Folder B (1974). 18 Eighty shots are listed on the camera script for Fight for Shelton Bar, but some changes were obviously made during the course of recording and editing. At thirty-​one minutes and forty seconds (including the thirty-​second title sequence), it was slightly longer than the standard length for a Second City Firsts play. 19 On 8 April 2004, Peter Cheeseman told me that he had been influenced by the ‘Bow Group’ (I believe he was referring here to the BBC experimental TV drama unit, the Langham Group) and the single-​camera technique of Philip Donnellan and Charles Parker. Parker worked with the Langham Group on Torrents of Spring (BBC, 1959), their only surviving production, which is notable for its long takes recorded on a mobile camera in the studio. In a subsequent conversation

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on 20 April 2004, Cheeseman said he recalled seeing an Elia Kazan movie where there was more camera movement than cutting and how he wanted to achieve that kind of feel, to enable the actors to give a continuous performance. 20 Staffordshire University, Victoria Theatre Collection, DC SHEL: TV version, Folder 52 (undated), ‘Fight for Shelton Bar—​Treatment Notes’ by Peter Cheeseman. 21 Information provided by Cheeseman when I consulted the camera script on 20 April 2004. He wanted to involve the crew in a creative capacity; he said how much they enjoyed doing it. 22 Transcribed from a video recording of the programme, kindly provided by Ray Johnson. A copy of Fight for Shelton Bar is held by the Media Archive for Central England: https://​www.mace​arch​ive.org/​films/​fight-​shel​ton-​bar (accessed 29 October 2021). There is also a copy in the Victoria Theatre Collection at Staffordshire University. 23 BBC Written Archives Centre (WAC), ‘BBC Television Weekly Programme Review (Minutes)’, 20 November 1974, p. 17. 24 For more on The Cheviot, see Cooke (2015: 113–​20). 25 I am very grateful to Christopher Martin and the late Peter Terson for their comments on the first draft of this chapter and to Romy Cheeseman, in particular, for providing further information and for her diligence in correcting a number of factual errors.

References Anon. (1966), ‘The Staffordshire Rebels’, Radio Times, 6 January 1966, p. 7. Anon. (1967), ‘Pottery players win TV stardom’, TV World, 23 September 1967. Anon. (1970), ‘BBC2. 9.45. Review’, Radio Times, 15 January 1970, p. 21. BBC (1971), BBC Handbook 1971 (London: BBC). Bennett, A. (1927), The Woman Who Stole Everything (New York: Doran). Bennett, A. (2007), The Matador of the Five Towns (Stroud: Nonsuch). Cooke, L. (2015), British Television Drama: A History, 2nd ed. (London: Palgrave Macmillan). Giannachi, G., and M. Luckhurst (1999), ‘Peter Cheeseman’ [interview], in their On Directing: Interviews with Directors (London: Faber). Jackson, A. (1984), ‘1958–​1983: six Reps in focus’, in Rowell and Jackson, The Repertory Movement: A History of Regional Theatre in Britain, pp. 130–​72. McGill, D. (1971), ‘No room for stars in the cloth cap theatre of the Potteries’, TV Times (Midland), 25 February 1971, pp. 5–​6. Rowell, G., and A. Jackson (1984), The Repertory Movement: A History of Regional Theatre in Britain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Shellard, D. (1999), British Theatre since the War (New Haven: Yale University Press). White, L. (2003), Armchair Theatre: The Lost Years (Tiverton: Kelly Publications).

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Granada Television’s experiment with The Stables Theatre Company, 1969–​70 John Wyver

In late 1968, Granada Television converted a former railway building in central Manchester into a studio theatre and hired a group of actors, including John Fraser, Maureen Lipman, Richard Wilson and John Shrapnel. This was the start of The Stables Theatre Company, which was conceived and run by Gordon McDougall. The intention was to present plays, musicals and revues on stage, a selection of which would be recorded in Granada’s nearby television studios. The critic Kenneth Tynan (1968) suggested in the Observer that the idea ‘may turn out to be the most exciting bridge yet built between TV and the living theatre’. For the next two years, the ITV contractor funded The Stables Theatre Company as it mounted an ambitious theatre programme and transferred fifteen of its productions via the television studio to a national audience. After significant financial losses, however, Granada withdrew its support; the theatre group mounted a public appeal to continue, but by the end of March 1971, the unique experiment was over. On no other occasion in British television history has a broadcaster owned and operated a theatre company. Nor, despite the many individual productions broadcast from theatres or re-​staged for the cameras, has the television industry made another comparable sustained attempt to bring together the practices of the stage and of studio drama. Television in Britain also seems highly unlikely to consider such a project in the future. For now, in the media world of the twenty-​first century, theatre companies operate as media producers quite separately from the BBC, ITV or Sky, creating live cinema productions which may also be released on DVD and via streaming. The National Theatre (NT), the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) and Shakespeare’s Globe are among the theatre companies that have successfully sustained screen production projects without the participation of broadcast interests (Aebischer, Greenhalgh and Osborne 2018). Fifty years after The Stables project, this chapter explores the aspirations and achievements of the Granada project, as well as the reasons for its failure. Drawing on an extended interview with Gordon McDougall conducted in 2011, press coverage and other documentation, and also viewings of three

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recordings of Stables productions, it outlines the largely unwritten history of a clash between the ethos and practices of small-​scale and experimental cultural creation and an industrialised production system that was dealing with both significant economic challenges and technology-​led disruption.1

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Conceiving The Stables The idea for what was eventually realised as The Stables Theatre Company came from Gordon McDougall, who joined Granada Television as a production trainee in 1963 (McDougall 2003). After working on local news programmes and the weekly current affairs strand World in Action, McDougall aspired to directing drama for both television and the theatre. Following a six-​month sabbatical at the Theatre Royal in Barrow-​in-​Furness, he was briefly assistant to John Osborne and Anthony Page at the Royal Court, but he remained frustrated that union restrictions at Granada prevented him from directing television drama. In 1966 he left the ITV contractor to become artistic director at a small Edinburgh venue, Traverse Theatre, where he developed a reputation for encouraging new writers. On being asked to return to Granada, he pitched an exciting idea first to the head of drama Julian Amyes and director of programmes Denis Forman, and then to the chairman and company eminence grise Sidney Bernstein—​the idea was of a collective that would produce for the theatre and television simultaneously. There is an intriguing pre-​vision of this in director Tony Richardson’s early tribute to Granada’s dramatic output.2 Reflecting on television’s standard production period for a drama of only three weeks, he wrote: In such a short time it is hardly ever possible for a director not only to create the play, the performances, the camera script, but when he is in the control room to know, inside-​out, the very essences and subtleties of those performances, the tiny pauses, the fractional speeds that can make, in cutting, for the polish of a production. It is impossible too for actors to create richly enough under such conditions … Ideally, perhaps, a major television outfit would have a live theatre attached. A play could then be rehearsed, played and transferred later, by the same director, to the screen. The gain in quality would be staggering. Economically, however, it is impossible in the foreseeable future. (Richardson 1958)

As framed by Gordon McDougall a decade later, it was just this idea that found a fit of sorts with the interests of Granada Television—​and with the personal concerns of Sidney Bernstein. The company had started owning and operating variety theatres after the First World War and had then developed a successful chain of cinemas, many with facilities for stage shows, mostly in and around London. As the regional network of ITV was being formed in the mid-​1950s, the company applied for and secured the weekday contract for the entire north of England (it was only after the 1968 re-​structuring

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of ITV that the company had a seven-​day franchise restricted to the North West). Granada Television went on the air on 3 May 1956, and as the official historian of independent television later wrote, the company was ‘the most imaginative, innovative, individualistic and infuriating of the ITV companies’ (Potter 1990: 41). Sidney Bernstein and his brother Cecil were the first two directors of the television company, and in 1968 it was still controlled and majority owned by the Bernstein family and their trusts. Sidney took a particular and personal interest in the drama output, as Philip Mackie (the company’s Head of Drama, 1958–​62) recalled just over a decade later: ‘I was responsible to Sidney, because Sidney liked plays, and he would ring me up every day … [H]‌e didn’t leave me alone, was always questioning my choice of play, if it didn’t accord with his, to me, old-​fashioned taste, or possibly because it was a bit expensive.’3 Drama, along with current affairs, was central to the company’s production aspirations and its identity.4 In 1980, a Granada press release claimed that, ‘In drama, the company has an unchallenged international reputation as the most creative and adventurous of British programme-​makers.’5 The outline of The Stables project (initially called the Manchester Drama Group) was agreed with Sidney Bernstein in February 1968. This was a moment when Granada had just secured a new franchise from the Independent Television Authority, having defended its record during the 1967 negotiations against a challenge from the hastily assembled Palatine Television consortium. But the contract offer included a stipulation that the company’s board must have a significant element of regional representation, including two new directors ‘living in and recognisably associated with the public life of the area’ (Sendall 1983: 351). Establishing a new theatre in Manchester could certainly be seen as contributing to the city’s public life. Moreover, although the new contract, starting in August 1968, reduced the area that the company had previously served on five weekdays, it extended its operation to all seven days, including responsibilities to offer Saturday and Sunday programming, such as Stables productions. Granada Television at this point was only one component of a sprawling conglomerate that embraced television rental interests, motorway service stations, a furniture leasing company, ten-​pin bowling centres and a music publisher as well as the cinemas that had built its fortune. The Granada Foundation also offered modest support to a range of cultural activities. But there was no theatre ownership in the corporate structure, even though this was a long-​cherished aspiration of Sidney Bernstein, as his biographer wrote: From the time when [Granada Television’s] drama department had restaged the plays of the Manchester school (the essentially Northern and often working-​ class plays put on by Mrs Horniman in the Gaiety Theatre between 1907–​21) and gone out of its way to recruit Northern playwrights … Sidney had imagined the moment when he would set up a theatre in the city, a testing ground for new playwrights and plays. (Moorhead 1984: 295–​6)

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Figure 7.1  Granada’s derelict building before its conversion to The Stables theatre.

Whether or not Bernstein saw The Stables as the fulfilment of this dream—​ and in 2011 McDougall reflected that, ‘I think all along Sidney thought of it as a bit of a plaything’—​he was a businessman who did nothing without a focus on the bottom line.6 From the start The Stables was projected to break even financially. It was envisaged that the company would make around twelve television productions each year, representing about half of Granada’s drama output (not including its successful twice-​weekly serial Coronation Street). Cost savings would be achieved on salaries because the company’s actors were to be engaged for a full year on a specially negotiated Equity contract. There were other economies as well, as McDougall recalled: ‘We wouldn’t have to pay the writers quite in the same way … Basically we showed that we could produce twelve television plays for no more than it would cost to do them under normal circumstances. Unfortunately 1969 was not normal circumstances.’

Making it real The building after which The Stables Theatre Company was named was a former shed at Manchester’s Liverpool Road station that had once housed

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horses employed to shunt carriages (see Fig. 7.1). Granada leased the derelict building from British Rail and at a cost of some £20,000 converted it into a flexible, free-​form theatre seating an audience of around one ­hundred (see Fig. 7.2).7 The harnessing room became the auditorium and the stalls where the horses had slept were converted into a bar. One critic described the renovated space as a ‘carelessly swanky little warren of raw brick and Scandinavian lighting’ (Bryden 1969). Although financed by a mainstream media company, the creation of The Stables, both in physical terms and as a concept, can be seen to reflect many aspects of the emergence of the alternative ‘fringe’ theatre towards the end of the 1960s. Comparable initiatives of the time included the opening in 1968 of the Arts Lab in London, home of the People Show, Pip Simmons and the Freehold, Portable Theatre, Charles Marowitz’s Open Space, Ed Berman’s Inter-​Action, and Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh (Chambers 1980: 7–​8). As the critic and dramaturg Colin Chambers wrote: A radical spirit of equality was abroad which wanted to take theatre out of theatre buildings and onto the streets, into basements, halls, old churches, anywhere where there was space … the important thing about the ‘new spaces’ was the different relationship they made possible between the audience and the performance—​that is, the nature of the experience both for those putting the show on and for those coming to see it. (Chambers 1980: 9)

At the same time, The Stables can be seen as extending the long tradition in British theatre of a ‘repertory’ company that presented a regularly changing cycle of productions with a consistent group of actors. In the early 1960s, the RSC had developed this idea into what its young director Peter Hall described as an ‘ensemble’ approach to casting, which involved actors committing to two years with the company and taking a variety of roles in a range of productions (Beauman 1982: 244–​6). A less ambitious version of the idea was tried out almost simultaneously with The Stables enterprise by another new ITV franchise, London Weekend Television, for which in autumn 1968 Stella Richman produced the anthology series The Company of Five with a core group of actors in original dramas written by Dennis Potter and Roy Minton, among others (see Anon. 1968). In its earliest months as an ITV company, Associated-​Rediffusion in 1955 produced The Granville Melodramas as a series of half-​hour plays which ­featured a core company of actors; and in 1965 the BBC supported a group of actors to produce work with the Welsh Theatre Company. But the few other partnerships of this kind have all been small-​scale (see Anon. 1965). Among the eighteen-​strong group of actors at The Stables, selected during the summer and early autumn of 1968, were Ewen Solon, known for

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playing Lucas in the Maigret series, the experienced actor John Fraser, who had made the feature film Tunes of Glory as well as Repulsion with director Roman Polanski, and television stalwart Maureen Pryor. But in part because the contract meant living in Manchester for nine months of the year, it proved impossible to attract established stars, even though talented younger figures like Richard Wilson (who had worked with McDougall at the Traverse), Maureen Lipman and John Shrapnel were keen to join. As Shrapnel recalled, ‘Getting together with a group of actors, writers and directors over a sustained period, and working with them on productions for both theatre and television, on generous contracts agreed by [the actors’ union] Equity, seemed like a terrific project—​and a wonderful act of generous self-​interest on Granada’s part.’8 Under an unprecedented deal worked out with British Actors Equity, each company member was employed for a year, out of which it was intended that she or he would work for The Stables and Granada for nine months and be free to take other employment during the remaining three. From the start McDougall intended that The Stables would continue the commitment to new writing that had been central to his work at the Traverse, and the company engaged as its resident dramatist Carey Harrison (Harrison, McDougall and John Shrapnel had been undergraduates at Cambridge University together). Harrison’s first play Dante Kaputt! had received a professional production at Leicester’s Phoenix Theatre in 1966, and in 1968 the Traverse under McDougall staged his Twenty Six Efforts at Pornography. The writer contributed two original scripts to The Stables—​ In a Cottage Hospital (1969) and Breaking It Gently (1970), an early form of which was played in the theatre in 1969 as Lovers—​and translated from the German Gert Hofmann’s play Wedding Night (1969). All three were broadcast.

Curtain up Extending ideas that he had begun to explore at the Traverse, Gordon McDougall hoped that the company could consciously develop a style that was distinct from—​and indeed defined in opposition to—​the location-​based film naturalism identified with Tony Garnett and Ken Loach’s work for the BBC’s influential strand The Wednesday Play. Notable productions by this date that exemplified a small-​screen form of social realism included Up the Junction (BBC, 1965) and Cathy Come Home (BBC, 1966). Earlier in the decade, the writer Troy Kennedy Martin had published the much-​discussed article ‘Nats go home’, in which he made a passionate (if rather diffuse) case for an ‘anti-​naturalistic’ style of television drama. He rejected what he saw

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as the pernicious influence of theatrical naturalism and argued for a ‘new drama’ that had the following as its primary concerns:

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• To free the camera from photographing dialogue • To free the structure from natural time, and • To exploit the total and absolute objectivity of the television camera. (Kennedy Martin 1964: 25; see also Caughie 2000: 88–​124)

McDougall’s idea of anti-​naturalism was related to this vision but primarily inspired by a number of light entertainment spectaculars that the producer Johnny Hamp had mounted in the Granada Television studios, including I Hear the Blues (1963) and It’s Little Richard (1964). These broadcasts brought artistes into a minimal setting, surrounded by the studio audience, where cameras could sometimes be seen in shot and there was no pretension but that the show was staged directly for television. This example influenced McDougall’s form of anti-​naturalistic drama, as he remembered: ‘The idea was that we would do those sort of big company shows, virtually in a bare studio, with audiences scattered around … I thought, why don’t we see if we can develop a kind of television drama which acknowledges it is drama and doesn’t pretend to be naturalistic, [so that] the true action is happening between the actors and you.’

Figure 7.2  Interior of The Stables theatre after conversion.

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McDougall’s ideas, like The Stables project in general, were welcomed in the press coverage, although even before the theatre opened there was scepticism as to whether the approach could succeed. One critic noted: The company aims to reverse the present trend of television drama towards ever greater documentary naturalism. They want to reduce the action to a few actors within a confined space. Scenery will be negligible, almost irrelevant. This may be walking backwards. It may be clinging to old theatrical methods for a medium that needs new methods to convey a new side of reality … Television speaks with chunks of actuality, not with imitation. (Bates 1969)

Among the project’s enthusiastic supporters was the influential critic Kenneth Tynan, who described the idea of The Stables as a unique plan designed to revolutionise the uneasy relationship between theatre and TV; it would also boost the cause of regional drama, and test the willingness of big business to subsidise the performing arts… TV playwrights will be able to experiment with live audiences; conversely straight dramatists will learn how to adapt their work for TV. (Tynan 1968)

Irving Wardle was rather more cautious: ‘The crucial experiment’, he wrote, ‘will be how effectively the company can develop its own character in the embrace of such lavish patronage’ (Wardle 1969). The first sign of the company’s vision on stage was the production of Harrison’s In a Cottage Hospital in February 1969. Described in the Observer as ‘promising but unsatisfactory’ (Bryden 1969), the play featured David Markham as a middle-​aged schoolmaster suffering from light amnesia after a car crash and Maureen Lipman as the nurse Liz with whom he forms a relationship; this casting was replicated when it became the first Stables production to reach the screen. ‘The forms and talents required for television and films aren’t the same as the theatre’s in a good number of ways’, Bryden reflected in his review of the stage production. Regretting that the playwright had not created a treatment of the subject that was ‘more frankly artificial and theatrical’, Bryden suggested that this ‘would have been of no use to television’. Even at this early stage, this critic saw the television–​ theatre tie-​up as restricting, ensuring that the play ‘stays firmly within the slower techniques of naturalism’ (ibid.) Yet, as discussed, naturalism was precisely the style that McDougall had set out to avoid. When In a Cottage Hospital, which Simon Hoggart (1969c) later called ‘quite disastrously boring’, came to be broadcast in August 1969, it was re-​staged in the television studio, just as all the other Stables productions were. Not one was recorded in The Stables auditorium itself, since Granada had always envisaged the theatre as a ‘feeder’ for its studio production. Reviewing the television version with moderate enthusiasm for the Guardian, Robert Waterhouse

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(1969) noted the use of the cameras: ‘The friendly, innocent atmosphere of a small hospital came over in the posed, claustrophobic close-​ups which relaxed into long slow wanders around the private ward. The ease with which the auditorium could be reconfigured was generally recognised as one of the most significant strengths of The Stables. McDougall remembered two very different layouts for the stagings of the collectively written Dracula Two and Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard, both in 1970: When we did Dracula we had the audience on two sides, they were sat on coffins and there were spiders’ webs all over the place, it was all very atmospheric. We did The Cherry Orchard … we had the nursery at this end with a stove and realistic furniture, and you sat on wooden benches with cherry trees growing up into the rafters and leaves all over the floor. Then the clearing in the second act was in the middle of the theatre, and so the benches moved round, and then the ballroom was a circular space at this end of the theatre, and then it went back to the nursery, but completely stripped of furniture.

Vision on Rehearsals for what was intended to be the first television production—​ David Cregan’s Miniatures—​began in January 1969, and the play was seen in the theatre in the spring. In fact, the first productions to reach the screen that year were three dramas transmitted on consecutive Mondays in August, a traditionally low-​rated time of the television year that has often suggested a lack of confidence in a programme on the part of the broadcaster. Harrison’s In a Cottage Hospital was followed by the same author’s translation of Gert Hofmann’s Wedding Night, and an adaptation by Richard Eyre of Jennifer Dawson’s The Ha-​Ha, which had previously been staged not at The Stables but at Hampstead Theatre Club in London. Later in the year, in November, ITV broadcast The Stables’ production of Israel Horovitz’s It’s Called the Sugar Plum, which had been worked up as a late-​night theatre piece by Maureen Lipman and John Shrapnel. Stanley Reynolds described the television version of Sugar Plum as ‘a marvellous two-​hander’, and there was critical praise for performances across this group of broadcast dramas (Reynolds 1969). But a reading of such reviews nearly fifty years on suggests no recognition that these television productions were seeking to do anything distinct or different in terms of style or form. The television production that came closest to realising McDougall’s vision of studio anti-​naturalism was David Wright’s tale of the 1916 Dublin Easter Rising, Would You Look at Them Smashing All the Lovely Windows?, broadcast in 1970. The project had begun in 1965 when McDougall was first at Granada. He had gone to Dublin with the playwright to interview

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many of those involved in the 1916 Easter Rising. Wright and McDougall developed this material for a show for the Traverse in 1968. The director, Barry Davis, staged the play at The Stables and it was invited to the 1969 Edinburgh Festival. Harold Hobson (1969) saw the show in Edinburgh and was unimpressed:

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This is the story, set in the atmosphere of a Dublin pub, of the Easter Rising of 1916, told in brief, farcical sketches apparently modelled on the methods of Joan Littlewood. But Miss Littlewood always had some strong conviction to hammer home by her deliberate unconventionalities; it was this conviction, whether one agreed with it or not, that gave them urgency and life. Mr Wright states no convictions clearly.

Undaunted by Hobson’s critique, McDougall took the play into the Granada studios after Edinburgh, and it became one of the company’s first dramas to be recorded in colour. As he recalled: My idea was to develop this style where we said, there are no tricks up our sleeves, this is the television studio, this is a group of actors, and we are going to tell you the story, with bits and pieces of set and bits and pieces of props as may be appropriate, but here it is, we’re not going to muck about and suddenly move from one set to another.

Yet he felt that the theatre company had far too little studio time to make such an approach work and that, as on other productions, the television direction—​in this case by Barry Davis, who had staged the play in the ­theatre—​was insufficiently responsive and sympathetic. The standard working practices of the industrial studio, he felt, made it exceptionally hard to forge a distinctive screen style. The studio recording reveals Windows as an intriguing drama with time shifts between the present and past, the integration of archival film and musical numbers and the use of what we would now call physical theatre techniques to suggest, for example, characters riding on a horse-​drawn trolley bus. Although not wholly successful, it is far from the disaster that McDougall remembered: It took six days to make, because [the technicians] were working to rule, and I sat in despair while all of these gigantic sets trundled in and sat there in front of a cyc[lorama] which made them look like … a really bad Gilbert and Sullivan, and was just completely what I didn’t mean it to be. I wanted this kind of stark black and white film which David and I had originally conceived the thing as, with very, very simple sets in the middle of the studio.

Similar problems afflicted another recording of a Stables Theatre production. In the autumn of 1969, Gordon McDougall offered in the theatre a

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comparatively conventional staging of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, which was widely admired. Roland Adburgham (1969) praised McDougall’s ‘sensitive and fine direction’ in a production that, he said, ‘brims with vitality, with never a hint of spilling into sentimentality’. As McDougall recalled, Julian Amyes had been very enthusiastic about putting it on television, I didn’t think it would work, and we recreated the set in the studio and we didn’t actually have an audience which might have made it better, I think if we’d tried to do a Globe Theatre situation and shoot it past an audience I think it would have probably worked better, but again it sort of looked like that awful temple at the beginning of Pearl and Dean films, sort of situated in the middle of nowhere.

The studio rushes of the show are preserved in the ITV archive along with the final assembly, but in contrast to the way, to judge from the reviews, it came across in the theatre, on the screen the production is a flat and unremarkable transposition into the studio, with little energy and no sense of any adjustment for the cameras. The recording was never transmitted. Like all of The Stables productions taken to the studio, there was little opportunity to work with the cameras ahead of the recording days and to engage with the machinery of the production process. ‘We just didn’t have the time to do it properly’, McDougall reflected of the Romeo and Juliet recording. He felt that he was constantly frustrated by the inflexibility of the studio and the demands of the schedule, and that this was partly responsible for the overall failure of the project: Unfortunately [the vision] didn’t work out because we didn’t have time to change the television system because we were immediately on this rat race of producing one television play after another, one each month… Whatever you put into a sausage machine comes out sausages in the end unless you change the machine. We simply didn’t have the directors and the television studio time to change the machine. I still believe that it could have worked but it didn’t, because we never got it right on television.

The bottom line By the end of the first season in the theatre, Robin Thornber (1969) could enthuse over The Stables’ ‘famous acting strength’. But it was generally recognised that the company had not established any consistent style or distinctive voice, nor had it made a business case for continuing to exist. Moreover, 1969 was an especially bad year for all the ITV companies. Advertising revenue fell for the first time since 1956, as Jeremy Potter (1989: 20) detailed in the official history of independent television in Britain: ‘both ITV’s principal growth factors during the 1960s had ceased to operate. As television

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coverage of the country approached saturation level the total potential audience was no longer growing, and the size of ITV’s share of that audience could not be sustained when BBC2 became more popular’. At the same time, substantial increased investment was needed to fund the continuing conversion to the 625-​line standard and the introduction of colour. Then, in the 1969 budget, the financially hard-​pressed Labour government announced increases in the ITV levy, which was paid by the companies to the Exchequer on advertising receipts above a certain level. The Chairman of the Independent Television Authority, Lord Aylestone, was moved to say publicly that, ‘The Exchequer levy on the income of Independent Television has, in the view of the Authority, been placed too high … It is beyond our capacity both to pay the levy on anything like the scale the government now demands and still do all we should be doing’ (Aylestone, quoted in Potter 1989: 22). Added to these troubles was the fact that industrial relations, especially with ACTT, the technicians’ union, were particularly poor at this point at Granada, and there were frequent stoppages and periods of work-​to-​ rule. Gordon McDougall recalled the knock-​ on effect of this industrial action: ‘What happened was that as a result of all these strikes, in order to get the television [plays] shot, because we hadn’t been able to make any television [plays] to pay the bills until September ’69, Granada had to buy back the three months of the actors’ time that was supposed to be their leave. So that at the end of the first year we were £63,000 over budget.’ For a company with such a strong sense of the bottom line, this was a significant problem, but in 2011 McDougall identified what he believed to have been another of Bernstein’s entirely unrelated concerns about The Stables: ‘I think that the one thing that Sidney hated was running licensed premises. He hated going into a building and knowing that people—​because he was Jewish—​he hated seeing people getting drunk on his premises.’ According to Denis Forman, who from 1965 onwards was Joint Managing Director of Granada Television and who wrote a book about Bernstein in 1997, The Stables became a focus for tensions between the television company, of which Bernstein was still Chairman in late 1969, even if he was increasingly distant from its operations, and the Granada Group as a whole. Forman wrote that The Stables was a hazardous but worthwhile enterprise and its chance of success depended on wholehearted backing from the Granada board. Even with all the support in the world it was a project that could have failed, but Sidney made failure certain by submitting the Stables to the same treatment he had meted out to Transatlantic [a record label on which Granada had lost some £400,000]. Every management decision was questioned, every budget cut, every call on Television’s facilities was first reduced and then grudgingly granted, and no nit went unpicked. (Forman 1997: 253)

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Had the project begun two or three years later, The Stables might have been able to secure funding from the Arts Council of Great Britain. The Council’s first subsidy to small-​scale theatre companies totalled just £15,000 in the financial year 1969–​70. A decade later, approximately sixty full-​time small-​ scale theatre companies were receiving a total subsidy of more than £2 million (Beauman 1982: 309). But in 1969, this was not a realistic option for relief from the pressure from Granada’s accountants. Within this challenging financial framework, The Stables was granted a second year of support by Granada Television, but with an instruction to Gordon McDougall that the television productions had to be modestly resourced with limited casts and shot in the small Studio 2. ‘Now, of course’, McDougall recalled, ‘those were exactly the sort of shows that are best done with star actors, and not with a company. There was no point in having a company to do those sorts of shows.’ With some reluctance, but with the support of many of the actors, he began a second year of operations. Throughout 1970, The Stables continued to attract praise for its bold programme and for consistently strong performances: in a year-​end round-​ up of the state of the arts in the North West, Hoggart (1970b) wrote, ‘Granada’s Stables Theatre … concentrates almost exclusively on new work, and has a uniformly superb standard of acting.’ Two-​and three-​handers for Granada Television produced by The Stables in 1970 included Carey Harrison’s Breaking It Gently and Lanford Wilson’s The Gingham Dog, which ‘somehow failed to strike a chord’ for Pritchett (1970). Of the original stage presentation of The Gingham Dog, Thornber (1971) wrote that it was ‘a brilliantly written and brilliantly performed account of the end of an affair—​a triumph for The Stables which was used by Granada Television in a hacked-​about version’. Moreover, Lanford Wilson, an American writer especially associated with the experimental group La MaMa in New York, was a comparatively bold choice for a British television company. The only recognised Stables success for television in 1970 was the drama The Day They Buried Cleaver, written by Stuart Douglass and directed by Michael Apted. But this drama about police corruption was an anomaly, not having been developed from a theatre play. Douglass had been writing for The Stables, but this play had been rejected by the BBC, a decision that the playwright had complained was political (Jackson 1968). The script was further developed by McDougall and specially recorded for television, albeit featuring many of The Stables company. In 2011, McDougall recalled it as ‘the best show that was done for television [by The Stables]… it was beautifully shot and it was a very good script’. Another anomaly in 1970 was what, in the theatre, was called Professions, a miscellany of 18 ‘micro and mini plays’. A version of this became the company’s final production to be recorded for television, although it appears not to have been

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broadcast. The archive recording reveals it as a truly strange amalgam of student revue, Brechtian studio tricks with cameras in shot and an audience scattered throughout the studio. In certain ways it retains strong traces of McDougall’s anti-​naturalistic vision, but the material is thin and the performances lack conviction.

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The final act In his memoir, Denis Forman was clear that while he continued to believe that The Stables might have a future, and that he could probably have secured continued support from the board of Granada Television, by the autumn of 1970 Sidney Bernstein and the Group board had lost faith in the project: After two years of desperate struggle with some promising and some indifferent productions behind us, Julian [Amyes] and I had to accept that this jig was up. With Sidney, Cecil [Bernstein] and Joe [Joseph Wharton] against us there was no contest … So we caved in, a little disconsolate and a little regretful that a project which would have been close to Sidney’s heart had he fathered it himself, had been crushed so unmercifully. But then, as I said to Julian, if Sidney had taken it on himself he might have done it better. (Forman 1997: 253)

Granada Television announced in early November 1970 that it was withdrawing its support for The Stables—​ estimated at £55,000 in the first year—​and that unless additional monies could be found, the theatre would close at the end of the year. Ten of the theatre’s twenty-​nine productions had by this date been shown on television. In an official statement, a Granada spokesman suggested that it had been hard to combine the production patterns of the theatre and television: ‘Actors were often needed in the studios when they were rehearsing for a live performance and vice-​versa. It simply became too difficult to be worthwhile’ (quoted in Hoggart 1970c). The most assiduous national press coverage of the story was carried by the Guardian—​unsurprising given the paper’s strong connections with Manchester. In an article reporting Granada’s decision, Hoggart (1970c) included a reflection that reads now as prompted by an off-​the-​record corporate press briefing: ‘Inevitably, the closure must lead to an examination of the whole relationship between television and the live arts. Granada plainly hoped to get a powerful source of good television drama and a “think tank” for future ideas in the medium, and equally plainly it feels it has been let down.’ The Guardian also reported that in response to a plea from one of The Stables company, Maureen Pryor, Sidney Bernstein had explained ‘that his decision to pull out of the theatre was a financial one. He felt that the money involved—​about £50,000 a year—​would be better

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spent directly on experimental television rather than on experimental theatre’ (Hoggart 1970a). There were suggestions in the press that The Stables may have been shut down because Sidney Bernstein disapproved of aspects of the theatre company’s experimental work but, at the time, McDougall acknowledged that ‘At no time have we justified the establishment of a permanent company in terms of experimental television. Certainly The Stables productions had no such identity’ (Thornber 1970). In the same interview, given to the Guardian just after news of Granada’s withdrawal broke, McDougall was rueful about the experience: We wanted to break away from naturalistic drama, to do big musical documentaries and instant plays on current affairs. We couldn’t have done more than four or five productions a year. But that wouldn’t support the Stables. We were pushed into doing bread and butter television plays. We were working on two plays a month—​one for television and one for the theatre—​and we didn’t look ahead and plan things out. We haven’t broken the television treadmill. (ibid.)

Feeling that he had little to lose, Gordon McDougall began to criticise the company that was at this point still paying his wages, and this did little to endear him further to the management. ‘The Stables is the last quixotic gesture Granada is ever likely to make’, he said. ‘Because television isn’t making as much money as it did, it is going to become more and more commercial’ (ibid.). In 2011, looking back, McDougall recognised that The Stables never really made the case for a company that would work in both theatre and television, and most especially in terms of the screen: What we did on television wasn’t hugely successful. It wasn’t that there were magical things going on television every night of the week. The stuff that we were doing was respectable but it wasn’t ground-​breaking and it wasn’t actually particularly thrilling. And as I say things like Windows … that I had thought of as being the touchstone of how we would take television forward was so badly directed that it just didn’t work at all, it didn’t work in anybody’s book. To be honest, I think we didn’t make the case that having a company of actors could make really different new television.

In 2019, Shrapnel suggested to me that ‘it’s possible The Stables Company concept was just too catholic and generalised and, finally, lacked a recognisable identity or “voice”’.9 As the company’s final stage production under Granada’s ownership, Gordon McDougall staged Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard. Responding to its premiere at the end of November 1970, the critic Robert Armstrong (1970) described it as ‘enthralling theatre’. But the creditors were at the

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door, the sound of axes working away at the trees could be heard and The Stables family looked certain to have to leave their home for the last time. ‘The play’s unfolding’, McDougall wrote, ‘became our failed dreams and aspirations, our insouciance and carelessness’ (2003: 83). Granada offered a grant of £5,000 to help The Stables establish itself as an independent venue, and there was a spirited public campaign for funds. The broadcaster also continued its support for three further months into 1971 after The Stables was incorporated as a private company. In addition, the Arts Council offered a grant of £5,000, but all to no avail. The monies simply could not be found to cover the estimated costs of £25,000–​£30,000 needed to keep the company afloat each year. A well-​received revival of John Arden’s Serjeant Musgrave’s Dance opened at the end of January 1971, followed by a pair of Lanford Wilson two-​handers, The Great Nebula in Orion and Ludlow Fair. There was some talk of a joint venture with the Manchester University Theatre, but as a theatre The Stables closed its doors at the end of March. The building stood empty for a time before later being converted into a Granada bar and restaurant.

Legacy Did The Stables leave any kind of television or theatre legacy, and are there lessons to be drawn from the tale? Most notably, perhaps, a number of new writers for television were developed by the company and by McDougall. These included Peter Ransley, a former social worker whose debut Disabled was presented by The Stables both in the theatre and on television (now titled Dear Mr Welfare, broadcast in May 1970); he complemented this with a Stables staging of Ellen (which opened on 14 May 1970). Praising Disabled as ‘moving, funny and immensely powerful’, Hoggart (1969b) wrote of the play that it ‘clearly marks the coming of an important new playwright’. Merete Bates (1970) was equally positive about Ellen: ‘difficult, very complex, very full, and deeply moving’. Peter Ransley’s distinguished later work has included Minor Complications for the Play for Today strand in 1981 and a BBC adaptation of Sarah Waters’ Fingersmith in 2005. Trevor Griffiths’ first full-​length play, Occupations, which was commissioned and produced for the first time by The Stables, although the later Granada Television version was mounted quite separately, after a subsequent Royal Shakespeare Company presentation in London. Arthur Hopcraft, who had been a freelance journalist working occasionally for Granada, was another writer encouraged by McDougall to write a first script for The Stables, which he titled Cyril and the Sex Kittens. This remained unperformed, but later it sufficiently intrigued Granada’s head of drama, Peter Eckersley, that

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he commissioned Hopcraft’s celebrated The Mosedale Horseshoe (Granada, 1971). And as Hopcraft later wrote, ‘A couple of years after The Mosedale Horseshoe I took the central character from Cyril and the Sex Kittens, discarded just about everything else and reworked the whole thing into a BBC Play for Today called Jingle Bells [(BBC, 1973)]. Thank you, Gordon’ (2003: 111). More broadly, beyond the exigencies of the specific economic and industrial context, what The Stables experiment can be seen to represent is a moment in a developing divergence between the theatre and television, at least as the mainstream of the latter medium developed from the 1970s onwards with an increasing focus on film-​based naturalism. Fifty years on, moreover, aspects of The Stables experiment can be seen to foreshadow the hybrid production arrangements that developed in the 2010s as theatre companies have become active, formal partners with broadcasters in the production of screen performance. Both the NT and RSC have co-​produced major shows with BBC Television, and the digital agency The Space has funded and facilitated a range of cultural companies creating recordings for television transmission. Innovative stage performance, some utilising anti-​naturalistic approaches and languages, can now feed into distinctive screen productions without a broadcaster owning or controlling either partner in such collaborations (Aebischer, Greenhalgh and Osborne 2018). The Stables may have failed as an experiment, but the aspirations of Gordon McDougall and his colleagues to explore new ways of drawing theatre and television together can be inspirational for those undertaking this exploration five decades on.

Productions discussed (a)  Stables Theatre Company broadcasts All these productions were produced by Gordon McDougall for Granada for ITV. Breaking It Gently by Carey Harrison. Dir. Peter Plummer. 11.00pm–​ 12.00am, Friday 3 July 1970. The Day They Buried Cleaver by Stuart Douglass (ITV Playhouse). Dir. Michael Apted. 10.30–​11.30pm, Tuesday 15 December 1970. Dear Mr Welfare by Peter Ransley. Dir. Peter Plummer and Richard Wilson. 11.00pm–​12.00am, Friday 15 May 1970. The Gingham Dog by Lanford Wilson (Saturday Night Theatre). Dir. Bill Hays. 10.10–​11.10pm, Saturday 4 July 1970. The Ha-​Ha by Jennifer Dawson, adapted by Richard Eyre. Dir. Barry Davis. 8.30–​10.00pm, Monday 25 August 1969. In a Cottage Hospital by Carey Harrison. Dir. Gordon McDougall. 8.30–​ 10.00pm, Monday 11 August 1969.

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It’s Called the Sugar Plum by Israel Horovitz (ITV Playhouse). Dir. Barry Davis. 10.10–​11.10pm, Saturday 1 November 1970. The People’s Jack by Peter Wildeblood (ITV Playhouse). Dir. Barry Davis. 8.30–​9.30pm, Monday 26 January 1970. Special Co-​respondent by Angela Huth. Dir. Peter Caldwell. 10.30–​ 11.30pm, Friday 24 July 1970. Wedding Night by Gert Hoffmann, trans. Carey Harrison. Dir. Brian Mills. 8.30–​9.30pm, Monday 18 August 1969. Would You Look at Them Smashing All the Lovely Windows? by David Wright (ITV Playhouse). Dir. Barry Davis. 8.30–​ 10.00pm, Monday 2 February 1970.

(b)  Other works Cathy Come Home by Jeremy Sandford (The Wednesday Play). Dir. Ken Loach. BBC1. 9.05–​10.20pm, Wednesday 16 November 1966. The Company of Five by Leon Griffiths, Dennis Potter, C. P. Taylor, Julian Bond, Roy Minton, Alun Owen. Dir. Michael Lindsay-​Hogg, Gareth Davies, Herbert Wise, Alan Clarke. LWT for ITV. 10.20–​ 11.20pm, Sunday 3, 10, 17 November and 1, 8, 15 December 1968 (six episodes). Fingersmith by Peter Ransley (after Sarah Waters). Dir. Aisling Walsh. BBC1. 9.00–​10.00pm, Sunday 27 March, 3 and 10 April 2005 (three episodes). Jingle Bells by Arthur Hopcraft (Play for Today). Dir. Claude Whatham. BBC1. 9.25–​10.40pm, Thursday 13 December 1973. Minor Complications by Peter Ransley (Play for Today). Dir. Moira Armstrong. BBC1. 9.25–​10.40pm, Tuesday 18 November 1980. The Mosedale Horseshoe by Arthur Hopcraft (Playhouse). Dir. Michael Apted. Granada for ITV. 9.00–​10.00pm, Tuesday 23 March 1971. Occupations by Trevor Griffiths. Dir. Michael Lindsay-​Hogg. Granada for ITV. 10.15–​11.45pm, Sunday 1 September 1974. Up the Junction by Nell Dunn (The Wednesday Play). Dir. Ken Loach. BBC1. 9.40–​10.50pm, Wednesday 3 November 1965.

Notes 1 A list of all Stables Theatre Company productions for television is included within the ‘Productions discussed’ section at the end of this chapter. 2 One of Granada’s first major dramas for the ITV network was Tony Richardson’s television adaptation of his Royal Court staging of John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger, broadcast live in 1956. No recording is known to exist. 3 Source: Mackie’s unpublished British Film Institute interview with Paul Madden, c. 1975–​76 (author’s collection). 4 In 1959, Granada supported the creation of the University of Manchester’s Department of Drama, offering seven years of funding (Fair 2018: 132).

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5 ‘Some facts and statistics about Granada Television’, unpublished press release, October 1980 (author’s collection). 6 All quotations by Gordon McDougall are drawn from an interview conducted by the author on 5 October 2011, unless otherwise unspecified. 7 The site is now occupied by the permanent set for Coronation Street. 8 Personal email correspondence between J. Shrapnel and the author, 25 April 2019 (quoted with permission). 9 Ibid.

References Adburgham, R. (1969), ‘Romeo and Juliet’, Guardian, 2 October 1969, p. 10. Aebischer, P., S. Greenhalgh and L. E. Osborne (2018, eds), Shakespeare and the ‘Live’ Theatre Broadcast Experience (London: Bloomsbury). Anon. (1965), ‘Play about Patagonia from Welsh theatre company’, The Stage and Television Today, 4 November 1965, p. 10. Anon. (1968), ‘London plays by a rep company’, The Stage and Television Today, 3 October 1968, p. 11. Armstrong, R. (1970), ‘Cherry Orchard’, Guardian, 26 November 1970, p. 8 Bates, M. (1969), ‘The Stables experiment’, Guardian, 20 January 1969, p. 6. Bates, M. (1970), ‘Ellen at The Stables Theatre Club’, Guardian, 15 May 1970, p. 12. Beauman, S. (1982), The Royal Shakespeare Company: A History of Ten Decades (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Bryden, R. (1969), ‘Granada’s innovation’, Observer, 2 February 1969, p. 26. Caughie, J. (2000), Television Drama: Realism, Modernism, and British Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Chambers, C. (1980), Other Spaces: New Theatre and the RSC (London: Eyre Methuen). Fair, A. (2018), Modern Playhouses: An Architectural History of Britain’s New Theatres, 1945–​1985 (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Finch, J., with M. Cox and M. Giles (2003, eds), Granada Television: The First Generation (Manchester: Manchester University Press). Forman, D. (1997), Persona Granada: Some Memories of Sidney Bernstein and the Early Days of Granada Television (London: Deutsch). Hobson, H. (1969), ‘Fringe benefits’, Sunday Times, 7 September 1969, p. 52. Hoggart, S. (1969a), ‘The Disorderly Women’, Guardian, 20 February 1969, p. 8. Hoggart, S. (1969b), ‘The Giraffe and Disabled’, Guardian, 26 June 1969, p. 10. Hoggart, S. (1969c), ‘Pornography and Miniatures’, Guardian, 22 May 1969, p. 10. Hoggart, S. (1970a), ‘Actress pleads for Stables theatre’, Guardian, 6 November 1970, p. 28. Hoggart, S. (1970b), ‘Arts, roots and grants’, Guardian, 12 October 1970, p. 14. Hoggart, S. (1970c), ‘Stables theatre may have to close’, Guardian, 4 November 1970, p. 7.

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Hopcraft, A. (2003), ‘I can see what you’re trying to do’, in Finch, Cox and Giles (eds), Granada Television: The First Generation, pp. 110–​11. Jackson, H. (1968), ‘BBC not to show play on racialist’, Guardian, 17 July 1968, p. 1. Kennedy Martin, T. (1964), ‘Nats go home: first statement of a new drama for television’, Encore, 48, 11:2, 21–​33. McDougall, G. (2003), ‘En route to the Stables’, in Finch, Cox and Giles (eds), Granada Television: The First Generation, pp. 78–​83. Moorhead, C. (1984), Sidney Bernstein: A Biography (London: Cape). Potter, J. (1989), Independent Television in Britain, vol. 3: Politics and Control, 1968–​80 (London: Macmillan). Potter, J. (1990), Independent Television in Britain, vol. 4: Companies and Programmes, 1968–​80 (London: Macmillan). Pritchett, O. (1970), ‘Thirty-​Minute Theatre on television’, Guardian, 6 July 1970, p. 8. Reynolds, S. (1969), ‘The state of drama’, Guardian, 1 December 1969, p. 6. Richardson, T. (1958), ‘Granada and the drama’, in Granada Television, Year One: An Account of the First Year of Operation of an Independent Television Company in England (Manchester: Granada), and available online: www.transdiffusion.org/​2017/​03/​21/​granada-​and-​the-​drama (accessed 1 January 2021). Sendall, B. (1983), Independent Television in Britain, vol. 2: Expansion and Change, 1958–​68 (London: Macmillan). Thornber, R. (1969), ‘Shakespeare Farewell’, Guardian, 27 November 1969, p. 8. Thornber, R. (1970), ‘Wasn’t Sidney right?’, Guardian, 6 November 1970, p. 8. Thornber, R. (1971), ‘Lanford Wilson double bill in Manchester’, Guardian, 18 February 1971, p. 10. Tynan, K. (1968), ‘Shouts and murmurs’, Observer, 29 September 1968, p. 24. Wardle, I. (1969), ‘Manchester’s new pioneers’, The Times, 1 February 1969, p. 21. Waterhouse, R. (1969), ‘In a Cottage Hospital’, Guardian, 12 August 1969, p. 6.

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From radical Black theatre production to television adaptation: Black Feet in the Snow (BBC, 1974) Sally Shaw Black Feet in the Snow (written for the stage in 1972) was the Guyanese poet and playwright Jamal Ali’s first play for RAPP (Radical Alliance of Poets and Players), the Brixton-​based Black theatre group that he founded in the same year. Of the plays that Ali wrote for RAPP—​including Black by Night (1972), Two Pieces of Roots and Twisted Knot (both c. 1973)—​Black Feet in the Snow was perhaps the most strongly autobiographical (Chambers 2011: 142). As such, the play provided an unflinching depiction of the Guyanese migrant Jahn-​Jahn’s (played on stage and television by Shango Baku) travails in mid-​1960s Brixton and his consequent politicisation. Black Feet in the Snow was politically radical in its championing of the nascent British Black Power movement, its visceral depiction of racial discrimination and its critique of Britain’s colonial past. However, the stage play’s radicalism also extended to its form—​an innovative mix of Caribbean orature and Brechtian elements. Two years after its first stage performance, Black Feet in the Snow was filmed for BBC2’s Open Door community strand in 1974. The television adaptation was unusual, not least because it eschewed documentary realism, which was the dominant form for single television plays depicting the British ‘Black experience’ in the 1970s. Drawing on original interviews with Jamal Ali, material from the BBC Written Archives Centre (WAC) and close textual analysis of the televised version of the play, this chapter argues that the television adaptation allowed for a dynamic enhancement of both the diasporic hybridity of the stage play and its radical intention. Jamal Ali conceived RAPP as both a direct and militant response to Britain’s hostility towards its Black population and a way of positively channelling the energies of young people in his community.1 From the outset, Ali regarded RAPP as ‘a coalition of community artists’ and he drew on both his own experiences as a Black migrant to Brixton in 1962 and those of the young people in his group to write a series of hard-​hitting plays dealing with Black diasporic experiences. RAPP can be seen within the context of a burgeoning Black theatre scene in 1970s Britain which, as the decade

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progressed, would include groups such as Temba, Black Theatre Co-​operative and Black Theatre Workshop. Around thirty Black theatre groups were established throughout the 1970s in London, Birmingham, Leeds and Bristol (Chambers 2011: 156–​7). The reasons for the ‘extraordinary mushrooming of [Black theatre] groups’ during this decade are necessarily complex, but the coming of age of so-​called second-​generation Black British youth, the growth of grass-​roots Black Power-​influenced movements and an associated commitment to using ‘culture as a means of [political] resistance’ all played a part (Chambers 2011: 156). As Chambers goes on to argue: ‘Diasporic theatre [during the 1970s] was asserting and exploring a new sense of identity in crisis-​ridden, post-​imperial Britain, moving beyond the immigrant Other to claim its stake and confront notions of what is meant to be British.’ RAPP was an early example of such a Black theatre company, and it was one of the first to tackle socio-​political issues through ‘a fusion of poetry, songs, music and theatre’ (Lloyd 1982). Echoing Brechtian notions of dramaturgy, which posit ‘theatre not only as a place of entertainment but [as] a moment of political action’ (Turner and Behrndt 2008: 68), Ali described RAPP as a ‘political campaign’.

The text Black Feet in the Snow is a rare example of a play by Ali for which the script survives. This script is the version used in the television production of the play (and it is held at the BBC WAC).2 In an interview, Ali was at pains to state that the text of the play itself was unchanged from the original stage version: the number and order of scenes remained the same, as did the music, dialogue and cast. However, as I illustrate in detail below, whereas the stage production was kept deliberately minimal in terms of props and scenery, the television adaptation was not simply a filmed version of the stage play: rather, it included location work, archive film footage, scenes played out in the studio with designed sets and post-​production techniques such as CSO (colour separation overlay). In both the stage and the television productions, Black Feet in the Snow comprises sixteen scenes in which song and dance play an integral part within the narrative arc. The play commences with a group of women in traditional Caribbean dress who dance exuberantly. The song to which they perform deals explicitly with the legacy of slavery: ‘Lashing of the whip … taken from the land of my forefathers’ (52). In the next scene, a polite and optimistic Jahn-​Jahn bids farewell to his mother in Guyana. Here, Ali leaves us in no doubt that Caribbean economic migration to Britain is another form of colonial exploitation: ‘We are’, cries Jahn-​Jahn’s distraught mother, ‘an exile race’

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(5). Jahn-​Jahn then arrives in Brixton and is shocked by its bleakness. As he traipses around in a fruitless attempt to find lodgings, he is ‘jumped’ by Teddy-​ boys who kick him to the ground in a racially motivated attack. Rescued by two Black men, he is taken to a house where he is told that he can rent a room. The song that accompanies this development however, negates any optimism: ‘Black feet in the snow /​walking around with nowhere to go’ (19). Indeed, we watch as Jahn-​Jahn faces rejection in first the employment market and then the contempt of staff in the dole office. His feelings of alienation and anger erupt as he is sent from one official to another: ‘Me go here, me come back, three times an hour /​because me never had the power /​ me very angry’ (31). Even when Jahn-​Jahn finally manages to claim welfare, it is a derisory sum and he is unable to pay his rent. He is evicted from his room: both he and his meagre belongings are thrown onto the pavement. A dejected and humiliated Jahn-​Jahn sits on his cardboard suitcase, places his head in his hands and weeps. Brixton has now become a ‘crazy, stinking violent ghetto … a colony of white contraptions’ (40). As Ali stated, it is at this point (scene ten) that the full realisation comes to Jahn-​Jahn that he is utterly powerless in the face of ‘white institutions’. Later, as the character walks aimlessly, he is propositioned by a white prostitute. When the innocent Jahn-​Jahn replies quietly that he has no money, the woman gently takes him by the arm and leads him away. Whilst Jahn-​Jahn finds momentary escape from the cold and rejection with a prostitute, some of his peers are seen contemplating more permanent solutions. In scene twelve, two men (played in both the stage and television productions by Archie Pool and Emil Wilson) loiter together. Such is the desperation of one of the men that it becomes clear that he is willing to risk what little money he has on a bet on the horses in order to get ‘home’. Whilst persuaded by his friend that this is a risky and futile plan, the idea of a return to ‘home’ is further explored when they are joined by two young women. One announces that they are on their way to catch a train to begin their journey home. However, her friend asks, ‘But before I go I want to know, where on earth is home?’ (47). Scene thirteen is made up of dancing and narration. The narrator (Jamal Ali himself: see Fig. 8.1) uses the scene to look back into history and to contemplate the legacy of slavery. He states ruefully that what followed later was a kind of con-​trick: Black people came to Britain willingly only to find that ‘the civility of their host [had] broke down’ and they were still treated as second-​class citizens (50). The scene ends with the narrator bringing the play’s action forward to a decade after Jahn-​Jahn’s arrival in London: ‘Ten years later and the pressure is as heavy as ever. Neither man nor Gawd eased up the pressure on this exiled man … ten years later this exile man Jahn-​ Jahn’ (53). In a contemporaneous interview, Ali summed up Jahn-​Jahn’s journey in Black Feet in the Snow as ‘passing from mute acceptance to militant

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Figure 8.1  Jamal Ali as the Narrator in Open Door: Black Feet in the Snow (1974).

resistance’ (Ali, quoted in Lennon 1974). Certainly, when we encounter Jahn-​ Jahn again in scene fourteen, his experiences in a hostile London have radicalised him and rendered him almost unrecognisable from his earlier meek self. He is with a group of friends (and the narrator) at a Black Power stall and it is obvious that he has become a self-​styled political leader: ‘Tonight we talk. Tomorrow we protest. /​The next day, well, we’ll see. /​The heat of this rass place is going to rebound!’ (54). By the penultimate scene, Jahn-​Jahn is the angry and charismatic firebrand who leads his friends in a protest that eventually sparks a riot. In the final scene of Black Feet in the Snow, the dancers sway slowly to a song called ‘Yesterday’s Morning’. The lyrics, written by Ali, provide an epilogue, but one which does not give the audience a neat resolution to the events of the play. Although Jahn-​Jahn has led his community into a riot, this is not regarded as a triumphant or even a successful act. The song calls for peace—​‘Hush now people’—​but at the same time argues that the situation is quite hopeless: ‘no hope any more’ (67). ‘The wars are raging’, warns the song, ‘between the whites and the Blacks /​and the rest of humanity’.

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Whilst the singer opines that, ‘I hope that all wars will die’, the audience is ultimately left with the final line in the song: ‘No hopes any more’ (68).

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Orature and Brechtian dramaturgy Paul Gilroy posits a diasporic ‘double-​consciousness’—​the creative cultural exchanges, spaces of belonging and ‘contact zones’ that occur ‘between (at least) two … cultural assemblages’ (Gilroy 2003: 54). This notion of a diasporic ‘double-​consciousness’ is evident in Ali’s personal narrative, the story of the placeless migrant Jahn-​Jahn and in the form of the play itself. Whilst geographically located mainly in London, Black Feet in the Snow’s seamless blend of various performing art forms together with significant aspects of the play’s structure owe much to African and Caribbean traditions of orature. As Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o (2007: 1) explains, ‘orature’ is a term used to describe complex non-​western performances based on oral story-​telling. Whilst orature varies according to specific geographical locations and cultural and historical contexts (Thiong’o 2007: 3), all forms arguably share four common (interrelated) characteristics. First, orature has a ‘unity of art forms’ at its heart; this is characterised by a non-​hierarchical ‘fluidity between drama, song, story, discourse and performance’ (Owusu 1986: 139; Thiong’o 2007: 1). Second, the inherently holistic nature of orature means that there is little demarcation between the artistic and political spheres (Thiong’o 2007: 1). Third, orature has a ‘creative dialogue’ which is strongly based on patterns of ‘call and response’, which may take many forms (Owusu 1986: 139). Examples include a dancer’s corporeal response to the beat of a drum, the ‘reply’ to a lead singer by a collective chorus, or a group’s embellishment of a story-​teller’s tale (Owusu 1986: 139–​40). Fourth, orature is a community enterprise in which the performer /​spectator dichotomy is often blurred (Ntuli 1988: 214–​15). To a greater or lesser extent, all of these characteristics are evident in Black Feet in the Snow. Jamal Ali acknowledged that his Guyanese childhood had a strong influence on his voice as a writer and that orature had played a central role in the community life of his village. He described the way in which performances that he witnessed as a youth ‘came from an oral kind of theatre, oral storytelling’. Family and friends would ‘sit on the forecourt’ in the ‘moonlight’ and ‘tell stories of all kinds’. As a child, Ali was particularly fascinated by the way in which, as the tales were told, others would ‘jump in’ and ‘add more things’ to make the story even ‘more vibrant’. This ‘call and response’ aspect of the performance allowed for a reworking of ‘the folktales of Guyana’, which further enhanced their often horrific, exciting and supernatural content. These were, he laughingly explained, ‘stories that would frighten the hell out of you!’ Moreover, the embellishments of members of

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the group also seemingly allowed for a socio-​political meta-​dialogue to take place within the story-​telling. Jacob Ross has written that the group telling of folktales helps to ‘define the relationship between the collective and those [who] govern’, going on to state that folklore also serves as ‘a political forum’ (Ross 1988: 234). It is worth noting that Guyana witnessed huge political and social changes throughout Ali’s childhood, not least the hard-​ won electoral success of the Marxist-​led People’s Progressive Party (PPP) in 1953. The PPP had campaigned for ‘an end to colonialism, a demand for self-​government and a higher standard of living for all’—​although full independence from the United Kingdom would not be achieved until 1966 (Beaton 1986: 44). For Ali’s community, the re-​telling of folktales perhaps allowed them a ‘space’ in which to explore their own experiences and feelings during this turbulent period—​‘how they survive[d]‌, how they lived’. In both the stage and the television productions of Black Feet in the Snow, patterns of ‘call and response’ manifest themselves in terms of the dancers’ responses to the music in the play and in some of the spoken dialogue. One such example can be seen in scene fifteen, when Jahn-​Jahn’s friends gather round him at the Black Power stall. Ali sets the scene up in such a way that Jahn-​Jahn is placed in the role of ‘leader’ and his friends form a collective ‘chorus’: JAHN-​JAHN:  We have been marching all day long FRIENDS:  All day long Jahn-​Jahn JAHN-​JAHN:  And what have we accomplished? Nothing! FRIENDS:  Not a thing Jahn-​Jahn. (65)

This structure serves not only to foreground Jahn-​Jahn as an emergent political leader, but also to allow the audience a ‘gap’ in which to consider their own reactions to his words. Related to this point is the way in which the stage production allowed for the possibility of a further element of ‘call and response’—​that of audience participation. Certainly Ali encouraged interventions from the audience: ‘We did that kind of theatre where you had carte blanche … anybody can get involved and intervene into the theatre’. These examples illustrate what Ali himself readily acknowledged: Black Feet in the Snow has explicit connections with orature. Black Feet in the Snow incorporates elements of staging which also allow for a Brechtian reading and interpretation of the text. However, it is important to remain mindful of Olu Obafemi and Abdullahi Abubakar’s discussion of the plays of the radical Nigerian novelist and playwright Femi Osofisan (1946–​) when considering Brechtian readings of Black Feet in the Snow. Obafemi and Abubakar make the important point that there are both ‘corresponding and coincidental’ intersections between Brechtian dramaturgy and Caribbean and ‘African folk performance in the areas of audience participation, style of acting and the use of music and songs’

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(Obafemi and Abubakar 2006: 153). Given this, they censure what they term the ‘uncritical wholesale attribution of [African and Caribbean] … dramaturgical aesthetics to Brechtian epic [theatre]’ (ibid.). Nevertheless, in the case of Osofisan, they are also critical of reductive readings of his plays which deny the existence of Brechtian elements and engage only with African and Caribbean ‘folklorist’ explanations. As they assert, ‘Osofisan’s approach could be said to be a fusion of African thought-​structures and foreign forms’ (ibid.). Their reading of Osofisan’s work, then, foregrounds its diasporic hybridity whilst remaining necessarily cautious of monolithic Brechtian interpretations (Obafemi and Abubakar 2006: 165). These ideas need to be kept in mind in the consideration of the staging of Black Feet in the Snow.

Staging Black Feet in the Snow Jamal Ali not only wrote Black Feet in the Snow but also directed the stage performances and performed the part of the narrator in the stage and television productions. RAPP did not have a permanent base and so the initial rehearsals took place at the Black People’s Information Centre in Ladbroke Grove over a period of several months. Throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s, Ladbroke Grove housed the makeshift headquarters of the Black Panthers and other Black Power affiliated groups (Bunce and Field 2011: 399). Ali’s choice of venue can be seen as instructive insofar as it locates performance and practice firmly in what was a geographical site of radical Black political activity. It is notable that when Black Feet in the Snow was adapted for television, Ladbroke Grove was used as the location for the Black Power market-​stall scenes. As previously mentioned, the young non-​professional actors who formed RAPP were predominantly drawn from the Brixton community. The fact that RAPP’s members had little or no previous acting experience posed a challenge for Ali, but it also afforded him considerable agency as a director. RAPP were ‘from and of’ the community, and Ali argued that this enabled them to have an inherent understanding of the rhythm of the language, gesture and corporeality necessary to what he termed an ‘authentic Black performance’. Shango Baku, in particular, was someone Ali later described as ‘a natural actor’ whose experiences ‘on the street’ allowed him to give the raw, expansive and nuanced performance necessary to depict Jahn-​Jahn’s journey from quiet desperation to militant resistance. The stage version of Black Feet in the Snow opened at the Commonwealth Institute in 1972. From the date of its relocation from a Victorian building in South Kensington’s Exhibition Road to a modernist ‘concrete tent’ building

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just off Kensington High Street in 1962, the Commonwealth Institute had encouraged the staging of ‘multiracial productions’ (Chambers 2011: 124; Heathcote 2012). During the 1970s, it came to be widely regarded as a venue that was supportive of Black theatre groups, staging Wole Soyinka’s The Swamp Dwellers (1958) amongst numerous other Black plays (Chambers 2011: 152). Black Feet in the Snow played for two nights at the Commonwealth Institute (29–​30 July 1972), when the production featured the same RAPP members later used in the television production. The line-​ up consisted of ten non-​professional actors, including Shango Baku, Archie Pool and Emil Wilson (each of whom would go on to work on further television and film projects during the 1970s after starring in the television production of Black Feet). In addition to RAPP, Ali engaged ‘Shades of Black’, an ensemble of five dancers choreographed by Jeanette Springer, who would later feature in the television production (see Fig. 8.2). This same cast also performed Black Feet at the then newly opened Keskidee Centre in Islington, one of London’s first ‘Black-​led arts centres’, which has been described as ‘a major platform for African and Caribbean culture’. From the outset, the Keskidee had a strong political ethos: its name, taken from a Guyanese bird,

Figure 8.2  Open Door: Black Feet in the Snow (1974) made extensive use of colour separation overlay techniques.

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served as a ‘reminder and symbol of both Caribbean roots and migration’ (Chambers 2011: 146). As had been the case with the rehearsal space, both the Commonwealth Institute and the Keskidee provided Ali and RAPP with non-​hostile and receptive venues in which to perform. For a further six months, RAPP toured Black Feet in the Snow sporadically in London, although with a much pared-​down cast, playing in what Ali later described as ‘a series of little dives … wherever we could get an audience’. He felt that this was firmly in line with RAPP’s radicalism. Ali stated that what he termed as ‘radical Black theatre’ had its roots firmly in street theatre and should not be dependent on preordained theatrical spaces: ‘the important thing was to bring theatre to the community’. Even when RAPP performed Black Feet in the Snow as a full ensemble piece (as they did at the Commonwealth Institute and the Keskidee Centre), Ali insisted that the stage should be ‘bare’ and that only props deemed to be utterly essential to the performance should be used (such as masks donned by actors to connote whiteness). Whilst in part this was due to budget constraints, of much greater importance to Jamal Ali was his ideological notion that Black theatre should be radical, in terms of not only its political content but also its form. He rejected the idea that there should be a physical and metaphorical distance between actors and audience: ‘we always did theatre with the audience’. Ali argued that proscenium arch theatre, with what he termed as its ‘attendant paraphernalia’, only served to distance the audience from the essential message that was being conveyed. To this end, wherever possible, RAPP performed ‘in-​the-​round’ and sought to disrupt and interrupt established theatrical conventions. This was achieved by allowing direct address from actor to audience and setting things up in such a way that an actor could spring from among the audience and walk around them, ‘declaring what [they] had to declare’. Both of these essentially Brechtian devices were used by the narrator in stage performances of Black Feet in the Snow. Of his theatrical practice, Brecht wrote that ‘theatre, in a spirit of progress and experiment, [must be] directed towards [the] transformation of society’ (1964: 239–​40). For Brecht, theatre is the vehicle through which ‘debate’ and subsequent political change are effected, with one of his dramaturgical devices being to create a ‘critical distance for the narrator’ (Turner and Behrndt 2008: 39 and 51). This strategy enabled the narrator to ‘step aside’ from the action and to comment on the context and meant, importantly, that the audience ‘was no longer in any way allowed to submit to a [theatrical] experience uncritically’ (Brecht 1964: 71). Such disruptions provide a demonstration to the audience that ‘the course of history, like the course of a scene in a play, can be changed as a result of human intervention’ (Holland 2012: 80). As Ali explained, the narrator’s asides in Black Feet in the Snow included the audience more fully and handed them political

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responsibility: ‘I was not interested in a passive audience; my theatre was all about politics’. Ali’s use of the narrator to incite the audience to political action can, then, be read as Brechtian. An example can be seen in scene fourteen. As Jahn-​Jahn rallies his friends to demonstrate about the beating of two Black men ‘in them stinking station jail’, the narrator moves to the side of the stage to comment direct to the audience: ‘Protest is a sign of weakness. The assumption that timid voices parading the streets, shouting slogans will be listened to, is a fallacy’ (59). In this way, space is given for the audience to reflect on the Black Power notion of the usefulness of violent direct action. As Ali commented, ‘the thing about our theatre, it was like a teaching institution’. Television adaptation, as I shall argue, served to enhance these Brechtian techniques.

Open Door Given Black Feet in the Snow’s radicalism, in terms of both form and political content, it might be expected that its television adaptation would be toned down and rendered more conventional than the original stage production. Indeed, with the notable exception of Jamaican playwright Barry Reckord’s 1972 Play for Today, In the Beautiful Caribbean (of which no recording survives), documentary realism was the dominant aesthetic mode across television for single plays depicting Black experiences throughout the 1970s (on which see, for example, Shaw 2015). It is, then, a paradox that in the case of Black Feet in the Snow, the institutional framing of the text served not only to retain the radicalism of the stage version but also to amplify its non-​naturalistic Brechtian elements. The reasons for this appear to lie in the exceptional ‘discursive space’ afforded to groups external to the BBC by BBC2’s community access series Open Door. Open Door was broadcast from April 1973 to March 1983 with the stated aim of allowing ‘groups or communities with views that are not normally represented on air to say what they want to say in the way they want to’ (Newton 2011: 162).3 Interested parties were encouraged to apply to the Open Door Community Programme Unit for a forty-​minute slot which often took the form of live discussions, phone-​ins and documentaries.4 Unit Editor Rowan Ayres made the initial selection of the groups deemed suitable and his recommendations were then considered by a committee, chaired by the BBC’s Director of Programmes (initially Alasdair Milne), that made the final decision.5 Whilst there was evidently concern in some quarters that this process lacked impartiality (Newton 2011: 162), close scrutiny of the list of organisations appearing in the first year of the series’ transmission reveals the inclusion of diverse and sometimes controversial groups. Among

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its first contributors in 1973 were the Transsexual Liberation Group, Chiswick Women’s Aid and the ‘Gypsy Council’. The BBC selection criteria for Open Door were not specifically attuned to race, but given the marked under-​representation of Black people on the screen at this time, it is perhaps unsurprising that the Black Teachers’ Group took part and a further programme, made with the Black Workers’ Rights Group, was aired in 1974 (Newton 2011: 164). Applicants were subject to certain constraints, codified by the BBC, which served to prohibit Open Door’s contributors from airing material containing ‘obscene speech’ or from infringing existing ‘laws affecting broadcasting’ (Newton 2011: 162–​3). However, strong emphasis was placed on freedom of speech and expression. As Rowan Ayres stated in a Radio Times interview: ‘Open Door is the chance for different groups to have forty minutes screen time to present themselves and what they stand for … the production team will try to become part of each group … They’ll impose on us, not we on them’ (Anon. 1973). Despite Ayres’ democratic sentiments, there is evidence that others in the BBC were keen to retain (and impose) what Stuart Hall has called the institutional ‘governmentality of television’ (Hall 1995: 14). This can arguably be seen in the rigorous selection criteria, the scheduling of the episodes and in the production process. Open Door programmes were initially aired on Monday evenings at 11.30pm, although by series three (in which Black Feet in the Snow was screened) a repeat took place on Sunday afternoons. Budgets were small (around £100) and it was made clear to participating groups that ‘the operation of all equipment and direction rests very firmly with BBC staff’ (Lennon 1974).6 Nevertheless, despite, or perhaps because of, these constraints, the groups who took part in the series were afforded high levels of autonomy in deciding the style and content of their particular programme.7 As well as granting access to a studio and cameras (and the necessary personnel required to operate them), the BBC offered ‘a small amount of location filming’, making it clear that programmes could be enhanced by the inclusion of ‘still photographs, tape recordings, newsreel film and clips from other television programmes in post-​production’.8 In a 1992 television interview, Mike Bolland, who worked as a producer on Open Door from 1973 to 1975, intimated that the series’ non-​peak scheduling and small budget allowed for a high degree of experimentation and novelty, in both content and form, which would not have been tolerated elsewhere in the BBC.9 For Bolland and his team, it was important that Open Door took sometimes ‘scary’ risks and pushed television’s boundaries, ‘even if it didn’t always come off’.10 This attitude is apparent in archival material about Black Feet in the Snow: the Open Door team freely acknowledge the programme’s ‘highly controversial’ subject matter but make it clear that it was necessary to show what they describe as a tale of ‘exile suffering and self-​realisation’ on television.11

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The television production Early in 1974, RAPP applied to Open Door to make a televised version of Black Feet in the Snow. For Open Door, this was a risky venture, not only because of the radical themes of the play but also in terms of the programme’s genre. Open Door had not attempted such an ambitious project as a fiction play before.12 Moreover, Black Feet in the Snow was aired for an hour rather than the usual forty minutes for Open Door productions. Brian Skilton was assigned by the BBC Community Programme Unit to direct the play. Skilton, who would later go on to work with Horace Ové on projects for Channel Four, most notably producing Caryl Phillips’ Playing Away (1986), quickly won Ali’s respect and trust (Wambu n.d.). Ali later explained that: ‘Brian Skilton was part and parcel of the BBC furnishings and fittings … he was one of those nice liberal white guys who gave RAPP a chance to air our views’. Ali recalled that he felt ‘very involved’ in the television production and that, prior to filming, he ‘spent a lot of time going to [Brian Skilton’s] house’ in order to discuss the programme. The pair worked closely and Skilton agreed that the play’s script should remain the same as the stage production and that the cast should comprise the same actors, musicians and dancers who had performed at the Commonwealth Institute and the Keskidee Centre. Indeed, Ali later stated that the performances that he and the other actors gave in the television programme were actually very similar to those on the stage. One of the reasons for this was the perfunctory nature of the television rehearsals: ‘All they [the BBC technicians] did was to say what you would say, and they shoot after they put you in the studio and that was that. There were no proper rehearsals or anything like that.’ The fact, however, that Skilton was careful not to insist on personnel changes, any significant alterations to performance style or changes to the play’s script meant that Ali felt that he retained a strong level of authorship and control over the project. As Ali later commented: ‘Basically Brian had nothing to do with altering what we [RAPP] had to say and what we were trying to do in terms of how we were presenting Black Feet in the Snow.’ Ali recalled that he wanted the televised version of Black Feet in the Snow to represent a dynamic continuum of the innovative work that he had begun on stage. To this end, he made it clear from the outset that he was happy for Skilton to ‘use some technique[s]‌to transport the play from one level to another’. It is perhaps for this reason that Ali was ultimately receptive to Skilton’s radical aesthetic vision for Black Feet in the Snow, one in which Brechtian formalism would feature strongly. Skilton, Ali contended, ‘wanted to create a revolution’ with RAPP’s Open Door programme. From the outset of their collaboration, Ali and Skilton were in firm agreement that the televised adaptation of Black Feet in the Snow could

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not simply be a filmed version of the stage production. Ali explained that bare stages and minimal props were effective with his theatre audiences, but television audiences required what he termed as the ‘authenticity’ that came from dressed sets and location work. To this end, he remembered that: ‘Brian kind of squeezed as much as he could squeeze from the BBC. We had to.’ Unlike many groups which took part in Open Door, RAPP fully utilised the technical support that was on offer. As Ali was to later recall: ‘We used everything, everything.’ Black Feet in the Snow therefore includes footage shot on location (in Brixton, Portobello Road, Ladbroke Grove and Hyde Park’s Speakers’ Corner), library film of Guyana, still photographs of slave trade prints, studio sets and post-​production techniques in which footage is superimposed on to the bodies of the dancers. That such an approach was hitherto unknown in an Open Door production is highlighted by a contemporaneous Sunday Times review written by Peter Lennon (1974): Black Feet in the Snow was, he said, far more ‘technically ambitious and proficient’ than any previous programme in the series. The locations used in Black Feet in the Snow were symbolic in terms of Black political activity and struggle. A desolate Jahn-​Jahn is seen wandering Brixton’s grey backstreets at the beginning of the play, later he rallies his friends at a Black Power stall in Ladbroke Grove and, finally, he leads a riot from Speaker’s Corner. Some of the play’s Brechtian elements were enhanced in the location shooting. Skilton has Jahn-​Jahn speak ‘his sorrows’ direct to camera outside of a row of slum-​like dwellings in Brixton. Later, Ali’s omnipresent narrator appears in Ladbroke Grove as a Black Power stall-​holder where he ‘steps out’ of a seemingly naturalistic scene to comment, straight to the camera, on the action. Behind him, the scene continues to ‘run on’ as if others were oblivious to the intervention. Later, the narrator stands next to Jahn-​Jahn as he addresses the crowd at Speaker’s Corner. Despite the narrator’s physical proximity, the actors play the scene as if unaware of his presence. As Jahn-​Jahn and his followers shout and begin to run, with a clear intention to riot, the ‘unseen’ narrator slowly traces their path. Again, he talks direct to camera and laments the futility of their actions. Interestingly, Ali regarded these devices as a ‘natural extension’ of the stage play. It was, he said, ‘a way of engaging the television audience’. Black Feet in the Snow also made extensive use of colour separation overlay (CSO) techniques. Initially CSO was mainly used for the backdrops for news bulletins, but in the 1970s some television directors recognised that it could have applications in television drama (Merritt 1987: 39; see also Panos 2013). CSO was commonly used in drama when budgets were low, and this factor may have contributed to its use in Black Feet. It seems more likely, however, that Brian Skilton was predominantly drawn to CSO because of the visual creativity that the technique afforded him. CSO was

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known to be effective when depicting ‘fantasy effects and unreal situations’ and had the advantage of allowing multiple and fast ‘changes of background’ (Merritt 1987: 39). CSO was ideally suited to Brechtian non-​naturalistic aesthetics. According to the original Open Door working script of Black Feet in the Snow, CSO is used in five scenes.13 The direction notes for scene thirteen provide an illuminating example of the way in which CSO was utilised: Four dancers in CSO blue costumes stand together to form a screen. The narrator (with CSO blue background) is superimposed … As the narrator finishes, the dancers move. The narrator’s face splits … the dance is a torch light dance which is more or less a confused parade. During the dance the narrator’s face is lost. In its place we see prints of the slave trade [on the bodies of the ­dancers]. (50–​1)

The Brechtian intention of this scene is underlined in three interconnected ways. First, there is a foregrounding of the narrator. Second, there is a ‘mixing’ of acting, music, film and dance. Third, the dancers are moving to a soundtrack on which a male voice repeatedly sings ‘freedom, freedom’ while slave trade images are superimposed onto their bodies. Here and elsewhere CSO is utilised to project contradictory footage onto the bodies of the dancers and actors. It is instructive to consider Skilton’s deployment of these techniques in the light of Brecht’s writing on drama. In 1934, Brecht described his own practice thus: We introduced music and film and turned everything top to bottom … We had our characters bursting into song at the most uncalled for moments. In short we thoroughly muddled up people’s idea of drama … the narrator was no longer missing […] the background adopt[ed] an attitude to the events on stage—​by big screens recalling other simultaneous events elsewhere, by projecting documents which confirmed or contradicted what the characters said. (Brecht 1964: 65; 71)

For Brecht, it was important that drama had what he called ‘the force of what is startling’ (1964: 71). Contradictions and ‘muddles’ within the narrative itself, such as those described in the above extract, meant that it was impossible for audience members to be mere passive ‘spectators’. Theatre audiences could not simply empathise with the events in a drama; instead, they were subject to ‘a process of alienation’ in which nothing was ‘obvious’. This ‘process of alienation’ afforded audiences the space to both reevaluate and form their own political ideas. The audience, then, could only achieve political enlightenment (and, ultimately, political action) through a de-​familiarisation of all that appeared ‘natural’ (ibid.). Skilton’s directorial approach arguably achieves the effect outlined by Brecht. In addition to the aforementioned scene with the dancers and slavery images, Jahn-​Jahn’s

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traipsing of Brixton’s streets, in the futile search for a home, is overlaid with library footage of optimistic Windrush arrivals which then segues into newsreel images of the 1958 Notting Hill ‘race riots’. In this way, conventional notions of emancipation, migration and racism are subverted and provide the necessary space for the television audience to reflect on what it is to be Black in Britain. Taking part in Open Door was ultimately very beneficial for Ali and RAPP. Ali was happy with the television adaptation of Black Feet in the ‘the Snow, commenting later that the play’s central political message—​ conflict between the powerful and the powerless’—​was strongly retained. Moreover, he was impressed with Skilton’s use of visual imagery, which he felt to be sympathetic to the play and an enhancement of the viewing experience: ‘It was very beautiful to see. The mix of stuff, like the dancers who were dancing across the sea [a superimposed image in the first scene] … And the film footage of the Caribbean visitors of the ’50s and ’60s. There was some great kind of imagery there.’ Whilst the press largely ignored Black Feet in the Snow (indicative perhaps of broader indifference to the Open Door strand), a lone review in the Sunday Times praised the production for ‘dealing honestly with a genuine problem’ and for its ‘effective cinematic devices’ (Lennon 1974). Broadcast certainly provided welcome wider exposure for RAPP: ‘Black Feet in the Snow on television got us … more [theatrical] gigs … Oh man, I was elated!’ Perhaps most importantly for Ali, however, the televised production was primarily responsible for his long-​standing friendship and professional association with the Guyanese actor Norman Beaton. This connection is an interesting example of the informal networks of practitioners working in Black theatre, television and film in London in the 1970s (see Shaw 2012: 75). In his autobiography, Beaton wrote of the impact that watching Black Feet in the Snow had on him: ‘It was a powerful polemic laced with apocalyptic poetical images … of all our emerging writers I felt that Jamal was the person who had his fingers firmly on the pulse of the people’ (Beaton 1986: 170). Ali recalled that soon after the programme’s screening, the two men met by chance in Brixton: I was passing through … and when he [Beaton] heard my voice, which he recognised from Guyana, and right away he addressed me as ‘banna’ [colloquial Guyanese term for friend]. He recognised me because I was on television … we went on to where he lived and then we had a talk and immediately he wanted to work with me.

Months after Black Feet in the Snow was televised, Ali and Beaton (together with Rufus Collins) went on to form the innovative and explicitly political Black Theatre of Brixton (Chambers 2011: 143).

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Conclusion The history of Black Feet in the Snow reveals much about the intersection between radical Black theatre and television in the 1970s. It also highlights the importance of identifying television adaptations that reside in ‘alternative strands’. The hybrid diasporic nature of the original stage play allowed for a reclaiming and re-​imagining of the cultural form of orature which was seemingly overlaid with Brechtian ideas of dramaturgy. A close consideration of the institutional context indicates that Open Door provided an unusual ‘gap’ in the BBC’s production and programming schedule—​one which enabled hitherto unheard Black voices to come to the fore. Moreover, the creative collaboration between the radical Black playwright Jamal Ali and the BBC Television director Brian Skilton allowed for an adaptation that further enhanced the political intention of the stage play—​one which offered a dynamic re-​visioning of Black Feet in the Snow’s Brechtian elements. In short, this Open Door production demonstrated a radicalism of content and form. In a period when documentary realism was the dominant mode of Black representation in both television and film, Black Feet in the Snow utilised non-​naturalistic techniques. To this end, the aesthetics of television emphasised the play’s inherent hybridity; devices such as CSO and location filming served to underscore both its orature-​based ‘mixing’ of artistic forms and its Brechtian aspects. Importantly, the televised version’s pioneering use of archival footage allowed for an innovative visual dialogue and critique of events in Black history. Indeed, such an approach would not be taken again until the early 1980s, with the films of the Black collectives under the auspices of Channel 4. The films of Sankofa Film and Video, Ceddo Film and Video Workshop and Black Audio Film Collective eschewed the documentary realist aesthetic, offered re-​imaginings of Black histories and courted a ‘Brechtian audience … ready to be awakened into dialectical awareness’ (MacCabe 1988: 32). It is certainly illuminating to consider how Ann Ogidi’s (n.d.) description of the key tropes in Black Audio Film Collective’s creative output could also be applied to the much earlier Black Feet in the Snow: ‘A multi-​stranded narrative, visual experimentation, a mosaic of sound, interspersed with newsreel and still [images] of Black people’s lives’.

Productions discussed Black Feet in the Snow by Jamal Ali (Open Door). Dir. Brian Skilton. BBC2. 11.10pm–​12.10am, Monday 8 April 1974.

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Notes 1 Unless stated otherwise, all quotations and information from Jamal Ali derive from personal interviews with the author in London on 18 September 2008 and 12 March 2012. 2 BBC WAC, Black Feet in the Snow shooting script. Numbers in brackets henceforth refer to pages of this script for Black Feet in the Snow. 3 See also BBC WAC, T66/​4/​1, accompanying information to application form for ‘Open Door’ Community Programme Unit, February 1973. 4 Ibid. 5 Ibid. 6 See also BBC WAC, T66/​4/​1, accompanying information to application form for ‘Open Door’ Community Programme Unit, February 1973. 7 Ibid. 8 Ibid. 9 M. Bolland interviewed as part of the programming for the ‘TV Hell’ evening on BBC2, Monday 31 August 1992. 10 Ibid. 11 BBC WAC, T66/​15/​2, press release for Open Door—​Black Feet in the Snow, 4 April 1974. 12 Ibid. 13 BBC WAC, Black Feet in the Snow shooting script.

References Anon. (1973), ‘Access to the screen’, Radio Times, 31 March 1973, p. 12. Beaton, N. (1986), Beaton but Unbowed (London: Methuen). Brecht, B. (1964), Brecht on Theatre: The Development of an Aesthetic, ed. and trans. J. Willett (London: Methuen). Bunce, R. E. R., and P. Field (2011), ‘Obi B. Egbuna, C. L. R. James and the birth of Black Power in Britain: Black radicalism in Britain 1967–​72’, Twentieth Century British History, 22:3, 391–​414. Chambers, C. (2011), Black and Asian Theatre in Britain (London: Routledge). Gilroy, P. (2003), ‘The Black Atlantic’, in J. Braziel and A. Mannur (eds), Theorizing Diaspora (Oxford: Blackwell), pp. 49–​80. Hall, S. (1995), ‘Black and white in television’, in J. Givanni (ed.), Remote Control (London: British Film Institute), pp. 13–​28. Heathcote, E. (2012), ‘The Tent in the Park: the disused Commonwealth Institute Building in London is a remarkable landmark of post-​war British architecture’, Apollo, 175, February 2012. Holland, O. (2012), ‘Remembering Ewan MacColl: the agency of writing and the creation of a participatory popular culture’, New Theatre Quarterly, 28:1, 80–​93. Lennon, P. (1974), ‘War games’, Sunday Times, 14 April 1974, p. 21. Lloyd, E. (1982), ‘Wicked city’, Artrage, 1:1, 25.

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MacCabe, C. (1988), ‘Black film in ’80s Britain’, in K. Mercer (ed.), Black Film /​ British Cinema (London: Institute of Contemporary Arts), pp. 31–​2. Merritt, D. (1987), Television Graphics (London: Trefoil). Newton, D. (2011), Paving the Empire Road (Manchester: Manchester University Press). Ntuli, P. (1988), ‘Orature: a self portrait’, in Owusu (ed.), Storms of the Heart, pp. 209–​18. Obafemi, O., and A. Abubakar (2006), ‘Fabulous theatre: a re-​ assessment of Osofisan’s revolutionary dialectics’, Bayreuth African Studies, 78, 153–​66. Ogidi, A. (n.d.), ‘Handsworth Songs (1986)’, ScreenOnline, online at www.screenonline.org.uk/​film/​id/​441093 (accessed 23 November 2020). Owusu, K. (1986, ed.), The Struggle for Black Arts in Britain: What Can We Consider Better than Freedom (London: Comedia). Owusu, K. (1988), Storms of the Heart (London: Camden Press). Panos, L. (2013), ‘Stylised worlds: colour separation overlay in BBC Television plays of the 1970s’, Critical Studies in Television, 8:3, 1–​17. Ross, J. (1988), ‘The timeless voice—​reflections on imperatives for the new language’, in Owusu (ed.), Storms of the Heart, pp. 231–​7. Shaw, S. (2012), ‘“Picking up the tab” for the whole Black community? Industrial, social and institutional challenges as exemplified in Babylon (1980)’, in S. Harper and J. Smith (eds), British Film Culture in the 1970s: The Boundaries of Pleasure (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press), pp. 75–​84. Shaw, S. (2015), ‘Screening Black political struggle on 1970s British television: the case of the Play for Today, A Hole in Babylon (1979)’, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 35:3, 489–​502. Thiong’o, N. (2007), ‘Notes towards a performance theory of orature’, Performance Research, 12:3, 1–​3. Turner, C., and K. Behrndt (2008), Dramaturgy and Performance (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan). Wambu, O. (n.d.), ‘Playing Away (1986)’, ScreenOnline, online at www.­screenonline. org.uk/​film/​id/​508052 (accessed 23 November 2020).

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Cedric Messina: producing theatrical classics with a decorative aesthetic Billy Smart

Few producers have ever dominated a single genre of television drama to the extent that Cedric Messina (1920–​93) did with the classic theatrical play at the BBC between the 1960s and 1980s. Unquestionably the most powerful and prolific figure in the history of television adaptations of stage plays in Britain, he served as producer of Thursday Theatre (BBC2, 1964–​65), Theatre 625 (BBC2, 1964–​68; on which see my co-​authored Chapter 5), Play of the Month (BBC1, 1967–​77), Stage 2 (BBC2, 1971–​73) and The BBC Television Shakespeare (BBC2, 1978–​ 80), in addition to numerous one-​off adaptations and working regularly as a director. Messina was responsible for the majority of theatrical adaptations produced by the BBC for twenty years, meaning that his approach to theatrical adaptation is what most of the television-​watching public instinctively recollect as the general standard of how such plays were realised on television during this period.1 Furthermore, a much larger audience watched these television productions than would have seen the plays in the theatre, meaning that a generation’s understanding of the dramaturgy of Shakespeare, Ibsen, Shaw and much of the rest of the classical theatrical canon was realised through Messina’s conception of drama—​yet little research has been conducted into this significant figure or his work.2 It is therefore worth outlining what was specific and individual about Cedric Messina’s understanding of his position. This chapter describes Messina’s position within BBC Television and explores his artistic ethos and the form that it took in his productions. His approach was concerned with creating an experience of visual pleasure for the viewer, and it was predicated around ‘straightforward’ story-​ telling that utilised the talents of leading actors of their day. After an outline of these broad issues, I examine Messina’s conception of the theatrical classic adapted for television through close analysis of three 1970s Play of the Month productions of works taken from different periods of theatre history, directed by Messina himself: George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion (1973), Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice (1972) and J. M. Barrie’s sentimental Victorian comedy The Little Minister (1975), made as an outside broadcast

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(OB) at Glamis Castle. This chapter attempts to demonstrate achievements and flaws specific to Messina’s mode of production through looking at three aspects of these adaptations: the intention that lay behind the texts (through contemporaneous interviews with Messina and accounts of production), the texts themselves (through critical analysis) and their audience reception (through internal BBC audience research and press reaction).3

Messina at the BBC: a ‘straightforward’ approach Born in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, to Sicilian and Welsh immigrant parents, Cedric Messina was raised and educated in Johannesburg while his father worked in the copper mines of Rhodesia. Early employment at the South African Broadcasting Commission (SABC) as a trainee radio producer was interrupted by war service with the 8th Army and the United States 5th Army. After the war, he worked as a drama producer for SABC in Durban, producing a play each week and becoming the broadcaster’s head of drama. In 1958, he moved to Britain to take up a permanent position as producer for BBC Radio, where his productions included the soap opera Mrs Dale’s Diary (Light Programme and BBC Radio 2, 1948–​69) as well as many classic theatrical plays. Messina moved to BBC Television in 1962, initially as staff director on series such as Dr Finlay’s Casebook (BBC1, 1962–​71), before becoming a producer with the advent of BBC2 in 1964 (Giles 1993; Williams 1993; Wake 2012). The Play of the Month anthology series—​with its regular presentation of high-​profile and well-​resourced productions featuring leading actors of their time and broadcast in a prime-​ time slot of (usually) Sunday evenings on BBC1—​represents a high-​water mark of institutional prestige being attached to the televised stage play by the BBC. As staff producer for Play of the Month, Messina held an institutional responsibility to protect the status of the classic theatrical play at BBC Television. Messina saw his role at the BBC as being one of a public servant, responsible for a large budget of money from licence fees, which by 1970 was over £2,500,000 per annum for nine Play of the Month productions that year (Nicholson 1970: 52). This outlay of resources, combined with the employment of star actors, placed Messina in a position which had affinities with both commercial theatre impresarios and artistic directors of large subsidised theatre companies: he had to choose a repertory of plays, find suitable directors and be involved in casting, while trying to attract a wide public to his productions. Messina did not approach casting with the primary intention of creating star vehicles, but he believed in ‘casting as high as possible as long as the actor is right for the part’ in the pursuit of achieving ‘thumping good established plays with super casts’ (Nicholson 1970: 53). An advantage that

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the BBC Television production schedule held over theatrical production was that in-​demand actors only needed to be employed for the comparatively short period required for rehearsal and recording (normally three weeks, culminating in three days recording in Television Centre), so that with dates planned long in advance, performers such as John Gielgud or Maggie Smith could appear in Play of the Month productions.4 This allowed for very specific casting in plays that Messina considered could only be carried by distinguished performers, an example being the appearance of American film star Anthony Perkins in The Male Animal (1968), an unfamiliar Broadway comedy by James Thurber (ibid.). Messina saw himself as not a man of the theatre or a drama expert, his South African background shaping his attitudes through ‘being brought up in a country which had very little cultural life. There was no theatre of any consequence and certainly very little music’ (ibid.). This meant that his decisions to produce classic plays from the theatrical repertoire tended not to be tempered by familiarity through the tradition of having seen many stage productions: ‘This is one of the curious things about some of the plays I do—​I’ve never seen them: I go entirely on my own conception of them when I read them’ (ibid.). Messina believed that this unfamiliarity was an advantage, giving him an undiluted enthusiasm for the idea of producing classic theatrical plays for television. He saw his unfamiliarity with performance traditions as placing him much closer to the average television viewer who was unlikely to have seen most of the plays presented in the theatre. Productions were made for what Messina termed the ‘the ordinary viewer’, who responded to these classic plays through their characters and stories (Drabble 1975a: 17), rather than a cognoscenti audience with broad literary and historical knowledge (Nicholson 1970; Andrews 1979). Working without a sense of comparison with theatrical performance ­history—​’I didn’t have any yardstick of “wasn’t-​Peggy-​lovely-​in-​’35” to go on’, as Nicholson himself put it (1970: 52)—​meant that Messina’s productions prioritised clarity of story-​telling and intelligibility of plots for the television viewer (Drabble 1975a). He defined this as ‘straightforward drama’ (Andrews 1979: 139). The directors who Messina commissioned viewed this uncomplicated approach with approval, Basil Coleman observing that while directors with a more artistic background ‘clutter ourselves up with fears and doubts … Cedric never wonders whether or not it would be a good idea to put on a certain play. He just says “I want to do this play” and that’s that’ (Nicholson 1970: 53). Coleman also comments on the support received by Messina’s regular directors, being ‘backed right up to the hilt. There’s no trouble he won’t go to … He knows immediately if things are going a bit tricky and a lunch or a drink might help smooth things over’ (Nicholson 1970: 52). Although

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this approach (and the tendency for the same directors and performers to return frequently to Play of the Month) might be seen as autocratic, Messina insisted that he did not seek to impose an overall production style. He occasionally employed directors who created idiosyncratic interpretations, such as Alan Clarke (The Love-Girl and the Innocent by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, 16 September 1973) or Jonathan Miller (Shakespeare’s King Lear, 23 March 1975). Messina also singled out Alan Bridges’ version of Henrik Ibsen’s The Wild Duck (21 March 1971) for particular praise, despite considering it ‘a most eccentric production’ with ‘the oddest interpretation’ (Drabble 1975a: 17) Messina’s stated intention for the BBC Television Shakespeare ­project—​ a unique complete series of all thirty-​ seven Shakespeare plays (BBC2, 1978–​85)—​was to create a definitive set of ‘straightforward’ Shakespeare productions (Willis 1991; Wiggins 2005). This aesthetic approach can be understood as a continuation of Messina’s Play of the Month ethos, which was carried through in his appointment of his regularly employed directors to oversee the individual plays. Messina ended up being sacked from the project after twelve plays: many of these productions failed to impress critics and his unadventurous approach was institutionally unpopular within BBC Drama Department (Sutton 1982; Willis 1991).5 Matters came to a head with a departmental decision not to screen a 1978 production of Much Ado About Nothing directed by Donald McWhinnie, with Head of Drama Shaun Sutton justifying the decision by explaining that ‘I thought that the approach was a little ordinary and we could do better’ (quoted in Willis 1991: 16).6 After this cancellation, Messina was not well placed politically within the institution of the Drama Department and his tenure as producer was jeopardised: ‘While Messina was the man to plan the series, it seemed he was not the man to produce it. He was part of too many power struggles; too many directors would not work for him; he proceeded with too many of the traditional production habits’ (Willis 1991: 15). James Cellan Jones, the Head of Plays at BBC Television who eventually dismissed Messina from the Television Shakespeare, illustrates this antipathy towards Messina’s approach: ‘Cedric Messina was to be the producer; this filled me with foreboding. When I asked him what his policy was to be, he said, “I’m an instinctive person and I shall follow my instinct.” My heart sank’ (Cellan Jones 2006: 68).

Pygmalion, 16 December 1973 Although Messina intended that Play of the Month should present classic plays from across the theatrical canon, the majority of productions were

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derived from British sources from between about 1890 and 1940, including Wilde, Pinero, Shaw, Galsworthy, Coward, Priestley, Rattigan and others. Productions of Ibsen and Chekhov were also regularly attempted during Messina’s tenure on Play of the Month, with the late nineteenth-​century European origin of the plays offering clear parallels with British period adaptations. Such plays had strong affinities with the prevalent television genre of costume drama in the mode of The Forsyte Saga (BBC2, 1967–​68) and Upstairs Downstairs (LWT for ITV, 1971–​75). The dominant concerns were characterisation and plots that revolved around questions of marriage, property and employment located within a recognisable social world. The plays were generally set in the interiors of houses from a social stratum of middle class or above in a period in the living memory of older viewers (and within the lives of parents or grandparents for younger ones). Such plays had a specific visual aesthetic that carried across different authors, which invited viewers to take pleasure in the detail of sets and costumes.7 This enjoyment was especially encouraged by the greater definition of 625-​line television created by the inception of BBC2 in 1964, and the introduction of colour from 1967 (introduced to all new BBC programmes in 1969). Such productions were never handled by experimental directors such as Bridges, Clarke or Miller, but rather by a regular group, used many times, including Basil Coleman, Rudolph Cartier, Herbert Wise, David Giles and Messina himself. This model is remembered, sometimes denigratingly, as forming the generic Play of the Month style. Head of BBC drama Shaun Sutton, for example, described Messina’s approach as being ‘somewhat enervated’ and ‘needing gingering up’ (Sutton 1982: 56); Dennis Potter (1977), too, disparaged the directorial conventions of Play of the Month productions: ‘the usual three-​ shot, two-​shot, close-​up, pull-​back, three-​shot, two-​shot rhythm, by which variety is brought to three talking heads in a tight and airless studio’.8 Messina’s conception of theatrical plays as vehicles with which to present visual pleasure to the viewer can be seen in his emphasis on the detail of attractive costumes, settings and properties, and the implications of this decorative approach are especially apparent in productions that he himself directed. Messina’s version of Pygmalion extends the locations of the stage play to present the viewer with a great sweep of well-​dressed period rooms. The BBC production is not only set in the familiar study and drawing room but also presents Higgins’ hallway, morning room, bathroom, an anteroom, two staircases, a landing and Eliza’s bedroom. The play’s locations are extended in two different ways, through adding short sequences (of characters arriving at the door or climbing stairs) before and after Shaw’s scenes and through using Shaw’s screen play for the 1938 feature film of Pygmalion. This earlier film adds two sequences to the scenes of the 1915 stage play: Eliza being bathed and the ball where the transformed Eliza is

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Figure 9.1  Messina’s decorative aesthetic in Play of the Month: Pygmalion (1973): the bathroom.

introduced to high society. The bathing scene does not greatly affect the presentation of the play, being a short comic sequence that extends the viewer’s sense of character. By presenting a rare glimpse of Eliza away from Higgins early in the play, it offers an opportunity for visual pleasure through the interesting period detail of a well-​furnished period bathroom, an unfamiliar setting for a dramatic scene in a play (see Fig. 9.1). The ball is more problematic for television drama, requiring vast (and expensive) resources that test the full spatial extent of the studio. The location of the ball is divided into four separate areas: the hallway where guests are announced, a grand staircase, the ballroom itself and a living room. In his choice of shots, Messina is keen for the viewer to respond to the visual splendour of these locations, indicated by his use of the rare device of very slowly mixing as the action passes from one room to the other. This emphasises the scale and detail of the scene by obliging the viewer to look at the set. The sequence also uses dozens of extras, each in a striking costume, taken from a variety of different national dresses. Although the sequence at the ball is visually spectacular, and something that would not have been feasible in any theatrical revival of the play, it may have unbalanced the focus of the production. Although highly visual, the

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scene works in a cinematic register unique to this section of the programme, rather than the more familiar studio televisual register of other scenes. The scene is also dramatically superfluous in terms of telling the story, as Eliza’s triumph at the ball is immediately established when she returns to Higgins’ home in the subsequent scene.9 In a two-​hour play, the sequence of the ball only lasts for twelve minutes, but to assemble such a lavish setting would have taken up much studio time, and the resulting exigencies upon production are noticeable elsewhere. The programme is marked by a much greater degree of technical mishap than in other Play of the Month productions: boom mikes appear in shot on several occasions and both the stairs and the banisters wobble, the latter rocking out of place on one occasion when Higgins runs downstairs. Messina’s camera technique, when applied to showing actors, as opposed to rooms, is more problematic for the production. Doolittle’s long speech in act 1 is shown in close-​up for two minutes, leaving the viewer certain as to what the character is saying, but uncertain of the implications of this speech by being denied access to the reactions of Higgins and Pickering. When Shaw’s dialogue is rapid, the cameras have problems following it, especially in the slipper-​throwing argument between Eliza and Higgins, where shots come in on characters late, once they have already been speaking for half a line, and on occasion out-​of-​focus. The effect of such a directorial approach is to create a production where viewers have to do much of the work of understanding the implications of character and psychology themselves, through listening closely to the dialogue and working out how characters are responding through the limited amount of screen time given to showing their reactions. When evaluating Messina’s directorial style through his framing, selection and duration of shots in Pygmalion, one can only describe it as functional. Pygmalion was one of the strongest ratings successes of Play of the Month, with the familiar story attracting 18% of the audience, against 21% for the equivalent timeslot on ITV and 6.8% for BBC2.10 Although the production gained a high Reaction Index score of 71 (out of a possible 100) in the BBC’s Audience Research report into the programme, there is a notable discrepancy between the viewers’ reaction to the play and the production.11 Because of the work’s great familiarity, those who enjoyed it already knew that it was ‘a real evergreen’, and a play of which they approved. This familiarity, however, also meant that these viewers were operating within a more exact framework of expectation than with a comparatively obscure piece, encouraging a more acute understanding of potential deviations in this production than with an unfamiliar play: ‘Some were also disappointed, it seems, at an apparent departure from the original: they could see no reason, they said, for any alteration to the script, which, in their view, was “no

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improvement”’.12 This scepticism on the part of viewers about alterations to the play indicates the different levels of interpretive leeway afforded to the directors and script editors of theatrical television adaptations, as opposed to those working from literary sources. While the length and lack of definitive illustrations within novels meant that viewers were prepared to engage with adaptations from fiction without a fixed interpretation of how scenes should be realised, discussion of television productions of plays (or at least those plays, like Pygmalion, about which the audience had considerable prior knowledge) was based upon a more fixed sense of the parameters as to how scenes should be realised and sequenced. The audience reaction to Pygmalion collated by the BBC demonstrates a sophisticated and conscious ability on the part of viewers who already had knowledge of the play to distinguish between their approving responses to Shaw’s drama text and the shortcomings of Messina’s performance text. Although the ‘wobbly’ staircases and walls distracted some viewers, the aesthetic of visual pleasure that Messina had created attracted more universal approval: ‘There was widespread agreement that the overall production contributed greatly to viewers’ enjoyment—​costumes, make-​up, sets (especially the bathtub scene), all receiving special mention as imparting a good period flavour.’13 This understanding of visual pleasure on the part of viewers is different to the aesthetic of expense and exoticism found by Charlotte Brunsdon (1990) in filmed dramas of the 1980s such as Brideshead Revisited (Granada for ITV, 1981) and The Jewel in the Crown (Granada for ITV, 1984). The pleasure identified here is located in the suitability of the details discerned by viewers. Getting the properties and costumes aesthetically right (historically accurate for period as well as pleasing to view and attractively displayed) meant that viewers felt that they had confidence in the veracity of the world evoked in Pygmalion, and how the characters of the play responded within that world. These detailed but wobbling settings were perhaps not perceived as especially lavish (although all of the characters whose homes are depicted are certainly well-​to-​do) and the one sequence that attempted a more filmic spectacle (the ballroom) could be said to be, and was perceived by some viewers as, counterproductive to the programme’s narrative efficacy as a television drama. Pygmalion presents a useful example of a production that worked within most aspects of the audience’s framework of e­ xpectation—​a generally faithful production of a witty and intelligible play, allowing opportunities for visual pleasure through attractive period design and enjoyable moments of performance. Because the production fulfilled these expectations, the majority of viewers responded to the programme with approval, even though their enthusiasm did not blind them to the adaptation’s shortcomings as television.

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The Merchant of Venice, 16 April 1972 The Merchant of Venice was the only Shakespeare play that Messina directed for television, and it is therefore worth analysing in depth in order to understand how his ethos of adaptation was realised in its purest form when not mediated through the decisions of other directors. This is perhaps especially pertinent in the light of the commissioning of Messina’s cherished complete BBC Television Shakespeare project by the end of the 1970s. Messina’s attempt to give coherent form to poetic Shakespearean dramaturgy showcases a strong sense of his values and priorities: the primacy of story-​telling clarity; the casting of strong leading actors; a visual style which highlights attractive costumes, settings and properties; an avoidance of elaborate camerawork such as close-​ups, short average shot lengths or cutting within a space before establishing the full extent and dimensions of the location; and conventional blocking and arrangement of performers. Despite working within the world created by the words of Shakespeare’s characters, as opposed to Shaw’s more precise and defined realistic settings, Messina’s production of The Merchant carries over most of the traits found in his version of Pygmalion to very different material, rather than rethinking the way in which Shakespearean drama might be approached and presented for television. The opening credits highlight to the utmost extent the casting of familiar performers in the play, presenting close-​ ups of Maggie Smith’s and Frank Finlay’s faces accompanied by their names, before separately listing the rest of the cast and the play’s title. Both lead performers’ interpretations are established very quickly in their initial scenes through registers of speech and distinctive gestures, with pursed lips and arched eyebrows for Smith’s Portia, and a steely stare and a private smile for Finlay’s Shylock. This creates a definitive sense of characterisation and performance for the viewer, portrayals that remain consistent throughout the play, even as the fortunes of Portia and Shylock fluctuate wildly. Much of this strong sense of characterisation would have particularly registered with viewers through the casting of familiar actors, whose established qualities created a specific framework of expectations for understanding their performances. Stanley Reynolds’ review of the production in The Times demonstrates how this complex process of recognition might work for the viewer, simultaneously commending Maggie Smith for her performance and finding it slightly routine: ‘With Maggie Smith as Portia we were sure of the entendres getting their doubles … [she] was very good delivering her quality of mercy speech. In fact she was almost matter of fact about it which is as much as you can hope for when everyone is sitting up waiting for Portia to ham up this hit song of the show’ (Reynolds 1972). Although the majority of viewers in

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the BBC Audience Research report were highly approving of the acting, the way in which some viewers phrased their disapproving comments suggests terms in which Messina’s star casting might be criticised. Viewers either found their perceptions of the actors’ characters at variance with the roles they depicted (for example, Smith ‘did not appear as attractive as the plot suggests’ and Finlay ‘Looked too kind for the grasping moneylender’) or the instantly defined and unvarying pitch of characterisation became wearing and repetitive to watch (for example, of Smith, ‘I expected a better performance—​sometimes she seemed almost lifeless’ and ‘Very wooden and uninspiring’; Frank Finlay was described as ‘stilted’ and ‘characterless’).14 The visual style of The Merchant forms a definitive example of the spectacular realisation of Shakespeare, posited by Jonathan Miller as a temptation to be avoided in television production (quoted in Drabble 1975b). The production takes place within three very extensive settings. The Venice exterior is presented as a large courtyard with walkways surrounded by the facades of buildings; the courtroom is a vast room, with high and ornately panelled walls; and Portia’s Belmont home is a palatial villa, shown through three different interconnecting rooms, with a broad veranda and gardens backed by a cyclorama depicting a painterly vista of rolling Italian countryside. The two Venetian settings are located in public spaces, populated by Messina with numerous extras. These figures are often shown in wide-​ angled, mobile shots, most notably during the trial in act 4 where—​when Shylock, the Judge or Antonio address the court—​a tracking camera moves behind the speaker to pan along the watching crowd behind them. As in the embassy ball in Pygmalion, this technique has two effects upon the viewer: it emphasises the public nature of the trial, showing a choric response from bystanders to the dramatic events, but it also presents the scene in a spectacular style by giving the viewer numerous details to look at, with many figures in various distinctive period costumes potentially diverting attention away from the immediate situation faced by the protagonists. A similarly spectacular effect is created through the multiplicity of settings, furnishings and properties displayed in the private spaces of Belmont, producing an atmosphere of great opulence and potential diversion. Portia’s dialogues with Nerissa are presented as highly mobile conversations: for example, Portia walking from room to room, toying with ornaments and sitting down without settling before setting off again. Staging the scene this way provides the viewer with a highly defined visual sense of the power dynamics of the relationship between the two characters, with Portia as a bored and cosseted young woman living in opulent luxury while her maid loyally trails in her wake. What the scene gains in strong visual presentation it also loses in verbal subtlety because, despite Maggie Smith’s exact diction and delivery, the precision of her words sometimes gets lost in the flurry of movement

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and visual busyness, shown in mid-​or long-​shot rather than in close-​ups that might aid the viewer’s understanding of the speeches. The BBC audience research report conveys dissatisfaction from viewers at how characters, especially Portia, walk away from the camera when they speak.15 Messina’s priority to create ‘straightforward drama’ that presented intelligible stories for the ordinary viewer led to his productions adopting, where possible, a literalism in making imagery understood. This approach is seen at its boldest in act 5: when Jessica and Lorenzo consider the stars, Messina elects to show a twinkling constellation effect in the Belmont exterior cyclorama, rather than concentrating on the couple. The obvious artificiality of this effect lends the production a decorative visual charm at the expense of psychological depth of character. This concentration upon decorative detail was found by critics to be the defining characteristic of the production: ‘I started ravished with the look of it, and the attention to such detail as the fluttering flags in the courtyard and the hum of background chat in the (studio) exterior scenes’ (Fiddick 1972). In Cedric Messina’s production one felt the heavy hand of Civilisation [BBC2, 1969], with echoes of the Venetian school in Tony Abbott’s highly polished sets and in the splendid costumes which Juanita Waterson devised to place among them. … The production contained one moment of pure kitsch—​ a shot where the camera looked up over the heads of Lorenzo and Jessica as they reclined on the grass and gazed at the stars. (Hood 1972: 527) Tricked out in splendour, laced in gold and silver, dropping iambics like eggs into a grand dame’s lap, The Merchant of Venice paraded before the BBC 1 audience last night. … with Cedric Messina’s direction we were positive of the last swish being wrung out of every cape. … lay as easy on the eye as a set of exquisite transparencies. (Reynolds 1972)

These decorative aesthetics place The Merchant in the category of television Shakespeare production defined by Michèle Willems as ‘pictorial’ (1987: 100), yet the production has little affinity with the (later) BBC productions directed by Jonathan Miller and Elijah Moshinsky from which her term derives. Although Messina’s production takes visual inspiration from Titian and Botticelli, this is in the form of attractive detail such as costume or the cyclorama of undulating Italian countryside at Belmont, rather than as an attempt to depict an integrated world through design. The production’s generic camera style and lighting prevent it from becoming pictorial in the painterly sense of presenting the viewer with a choreographed and designed image, where the depth and definition of the persons and objects create an artwork within the frame of the shot. Instead, there is little precision in Messina’s framing of shots, with the mobility of the camera merely capturing surface detail and event. The lighting is not subtle or suggestive

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but uniform, avoiding the presentation of characters in shadow, and suggesting different times of day through conventional twilight and night-​time lighting. In a review of the 1979 BBC Television Shakespeare production of Measure for Measure (dir. Desmond Davis), Clive James excoriates the perceived blandness of this kind of decorative aesthetic: Verona seemed to have been built on very level ground, like the floor of a television studio. The fact that this artificiality was half accepted and half denied told you that you were not in Verona at all, but in that semi-​abstract, semi-​ concrete, wholly uninteresting city known to students as Messina, after the producer of the same name. … The Trevor Nunn production of Antony and Cleopatra [ATV for ITV, 1974] should have shown everybody that the way to get the effect of wealth with a television budget is to shoot tight on the actors; use a few good props; and keep the background darkly suggestive. But in Messina the lesson was never learned. So here once again was the supposedly teeming street life, composed of an insufficient number of extras dutifully teeming as hard as they could. All the perspectives were evenly lit, as if specifically to reveal their poverty of detail. The eye went hungry, which made the ear ravenous. Unfortunately there was not much worth listening to. (James 1991: 293)

BBC audience research for The Merchant records strong approval for the production, though not to the extent that viewers felt a sense of personal affirmation from the play, as they did with the most successful Play of the Month productions of twentieth-century plays. Viewers reported enjoying the magnificence of the costumes and settings, while regretting that they did not yet have colour sets with which to appreciate them fully. Their reactions were rated on a five-​point scale (see Table 9.1). It must be remembered that, because Play of the Month was transmitted on BBC1 on a Sunday evening, Messina was catering for a larger audience

Table 9.1  Audience reactions to The Merchant % % % % % Thoroughly entertaining

60 24 11 3

2

Very boring

Very easy to understand

55 28 10 5

2

Very difficult to understand

Excellent plot

63 22 10 3

2

Poor plot

Definitely out-​of-​the-​ordinary

48 30 17 2

3

Just ordinary

Source: BBC WAC, VR/​72/​246.

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with a much higher proportion of casual viewers compared with productions in the later BBC Television Shakespeare series transmitted on BBC2. Although the BBC1 audience for The Merchant was dwarfed by the concurrent ITV one (7.6% of the population against 29.7%), this is still twice as high as the audience for the most watched BBC Television Shakespeare productions. Messina achieved this enthusiastic reaction through casting recognisable actors, judicious cutting of the text (the broadly comic Launcelot Gobbo subplot is reduced to one scene in this production and only the trial scene lasts longer than a few minutes) and presenting viewers with continual spectacle of diverting imagery and incident.

The Little Minister, 2 November 1975 One innovative development in the production of the theatrical adaptation that Messina particularly sought to encourage in the 1970s was the making of plays as outside broadcasts—​in other words, they were recorded away from the studio (where most stage adaptations were recorded) by multiple electronic cameras onto videotape—​the same equipment used to relay sports and public events—​not on film. Of these, he produced or directed ten: Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (dir. James Cellan Jones, BBC1, 1971), The Duchess of Malfi by John Webster (dir. James MacTaggart, BBC2, 1972), The Love-​Girl and the Innocent (dir. Alan Clarke, 1973), The Recruiting Officer by George Farquhar (dir. David Giles, BBC1, 1973), Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night (dir. David Giles, BBC2, 1974), The Little Minister (dir. Cedric Messina, 1975), Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost (dir. Basil Coleman, BBC1, 1975), London Assurance by Dion Boucicault (dir. Ronald Wilson, BBC1, 1976), Shakespeare’s As You Like It (dir. Basil Coleman, BBC2, 1978) and Shakespeare’s Henry VIII (dir. Kevin Billington, BBC2, 1979). Messina’s willingness to make adaptations with OB technology can in part be attributed to his showman’s instincts: historical locations such as castles and stately homes, set in landscaped gardens and verdant countryside, offered great opportunities for arresting spectacle and decorative detail. Sometimes the availability of a location dictated the choice of play, as with the 1975 Love’s Labour’s Lost, one of Shakespeare’s least performed and hardest to follow plays: ‘Well, we wanted to do another Shakespeare comedy. And I particularly wanted a play that was set in the open air. In this, all the action takes place in the open air. We recorded it at Glyndebourne. It looks lovely. All the girls are very, very pretty. They look like Botticelli paintings’ (Messina, quoted in Drabble 1975a: 17) For Messina, the beauty of Glyndebourne as a location acted as justification

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for the demanding choice of play: ‘I hope that when people switch on, they will see all these glorious Renaissance creatures wandering around these beautiful gardens and they’ll stay with it’ (ibid.). Historical exteriors were also more likely to garner publicity than studio productions because of the presence of star actors in public locations, and the owners of heritage sites wishing to promote them to a viewing audience of potential visitors. The Radio Times publicity for the 1974 production of Twelfth Night is a good example of how this kind of publicity could work to the advantage of both programme-​makers and property-​owners, with the performers and Castle Howard on the front cover, and an extensive colour on-​location feature, ‘A hard day’s Twelfth Night’ (Anon. 1974), explaining the history of the rooms and grounds of the Castle to be seen on screen. Although The Little Minister was largely overlooked, receiving little in the way of publicity or critical reaction in 1975, it had far-​reaching consequences for the future of the theatrical adaptation at the BBC, acting as a template for future OB productions. While directing the play on location at Glamis Castle, Messina found himself enchanted with the play’s setting: ‘I went for the burn walk, and it seemed to me the most wonderful sort of forest. It occurred to me that if one were to do a production of As You Like It, then this was the place to do it’ (Fenwick 1979: 20). Messina held a powerful position in BBC drama as the acknowledged leading producer of theatrical adaptations (Nicholson 1970; Drabble 1975a; Willis 1991), and so he was able quickly to pitch this idea, expanded from one production of As You Like It into a grand project of all thirty-​seven Shakespeare plays, to the BBC’s Director of Programmes and Director-​General, and to receive an ‘immediate and enthusiastic’ commission (Fenwick 1979: 6). Messina’s imagined Glamis Castle OB production of As You Like It was made and transmitted as one of the first BBC Television Shakespeare productions, although only one other play in the series (Henry VIII) ended up being made on OB.16 In light of its influence upon the development of the theatrical adaptation, as the model for the production of the most expensive and ambitious television drama project undertaken by the BBC, The Little Minister is therefore a production that bears a considerable historical weight. As the template for television adaptations of Shakespeare, it should be studied for how it works as an adaptation designed for the circumstances of OB, and as to whether the specific qualities of this production had a wider application to other plays. Although J. M. Barrie’s The Little Minister was written and first performed in 1897, it is set fifty years earlier and, despite dealing with a Luddite riot in rural Scotland, could not be said to be overtly political in intention. The play has narrative roots in an earlier Shakespearean tradition of pastoral comedy, including comic rustics, and a love plot based around confused

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identities (Babbie, the girl who incites the riot, disguises herself as a gypsy but is actually the daughter of the mill owner; a magical transformation culminates in a wedding between Babbie and Gavin Dishart, the village’s ‘little minister’, who commits himself to marrying Babbie without knowing her true identity). The Little Minister differs from its Shakespearean antecedents in following a less complex Victorian dramatic construction than the loose, epic structure of the Elizabethan open stage. The play is divided into four acts, each with a specific setting: woodland, a cottage, a castle and a garden. Each act consists of a single scene. The OB cameras allowed the possibility to ‘open out’ the play to an extent that would have been impractical in the studio and expensive on film. Off-​stage scenes only described in Barrie’s play are shown in the adaptation, most notably the riotous meeting of the weavers, but also scenes of soldiers (including cavalry) on manoeuvres, impatient parishioners waiting in church while the minister is delayed and a comic sequence of the waylaid pastor running from location to location when late for his service. This opening-​out changes the narrative of the play, giving it a more spectacular feel, an integrated sense of location where each setting has a tangible, topographical relation to the other settings in the play for the viewer, and a much less apparent sense of its theatrical origin than most other Play of the Month productions. The many moments of spectacle in The Little Minister were presented through techniques that could only have been practicably achieved by OB production, with its mobility and comparative cheapness. A sense of the passage of time between acts is evoked through a shot of the entire village at dawn, taken from a high vantage point, possibly a steeple or turret. When Babbie’s father arrives at the village, a great sense of distance, space and impending confrontation is created through the use of a lengthy continuous panning shot of his horse-​drawn carriage travelling from wooded countryside and into the township. Although such effects could be seen in feature films, the time and expense needed to set up such technically demanding sequences on film meant that this kind of shot had rarely been attempted in television drama before. Within this expanded, opened-​out structure, made possible by the new technology of OB, three distinctive types of location were used in the adaptation: countryside, village and castle. Each setting required by Barrie’s play was approached differently in Messina’s production, with variable results and effects. For countryside scenes, a greater expanse of space and variety of locations could be used than was possible on a West End proscenium arch stage of the 1890s, meaning that scenes of pursuit and eavesdropping could be realised in a different manner. While the success of these conventions in theatrical performance is reliant upon the audience willingly suspending disbelief, the ability of the multiple cameras of the OB unit to shoot a scene

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in different parts of a forest adds a greater sense of expansiveness and can show interrelated events occurring in separate parts of a wilderness. The depth of field of OB cameras also enhances this sense of greater plausibility being given to a pastoral narrative. The play starts with a group of villagers looking into the offstage distance at the pastor’s cottage and discussing his recent arrival in the village, verbally creating an impression of the pastor and the community in the theatrical audience’s mind. In Messina’s adaptation, both the villagers in woodland and the pastor’s cottage are shown to the viewer in long shot, making what was previously described a concrete actuality, removing a layer of imaginative work on the part of the viewer. A problem with the woodland scenes is that the sound recording is cramped and muffled, with actors’ voices struggling to be heard against the ambient conditions of a babbling stream and incongruous nocturnal birdsong (an unfortunate consequence of night filming). The ambient sound adds authenticity to the scene, as these are sounds one might expect to hear in a forest, but this is realised at the expense of audibility for the viewer. Audio technology in the 1970s meant that it was much easier for programme-​ makers to dub sounds into a programme in post-​production than it was to mute them out, a clear advantage held by the studio over OB recording. The production’s village scenes use more bodies than was customary for television drama at the time, taking advantage of cost-​effective OB recording to reuse extras over a variety of scenes—​the riot, street scenes and the church congregation. When this plethora of extras was combined with the ability to place them in a greater variety of locations, the effect was more visually diverting for viewers. Authentic period details that might exist on location could be incorporated into scenes with more ease than in studio recording. For example, the weaver’s cottage includes a working period loom, shown in action at the start of the sequence, a property that would be difficult to obtain and insure for use in the studio. The sections of the play where the specific problems of OB shooting are most apparent for the viewer are the Glamis Castle interiors. The full extents of the castle’s grand rooms are always shown in these scenes, sometimes to the detriment of narrative and characterisation. For example, when the Minister first enters the drawing room of Babbie’s father, Rintoul, his reaction is to look, overawed, at the room’s ceiling. Messina chooses to show this moment through a long panning shot that follows the Minister’s point of view, emphasising the room’s ornate painting and tremendous height, telling the viewer more about the castle than the character or situation (see Fig. 9.2). This tendency is most marked at the crucial dramatic point of the scene, when the exchange between Rintoul and Major Halliwell is shown by Messina in long shot, against the full extent of the room’s wall. This image impresses the size of the room upon the viewer, but dissipates the dramatic

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Figure 9.2  Play of the Month: The Little Minister (1975): Cedric Messina’s direction emphasises the grandeur of the location, rather than the dramatic interest of the scene.

interest of the scene by making it hard to follow while also failing to show the room to its best advantage, since the various details of paintings and furnishings are too small for the viewer to discern easily (see Fig. 9.2). The dulling effect that the use of long shots has upon the viewers’ understanding of castle scenes is further exacerbated by the problem of echoing floors, making it difficult for performers both to move and be heard at the same time. The BBC’s audience research report offers a response from a small sample of viewers: ‘It is estimated that the audience for this broadcast was 3.6% of the United Kingdom population. Programmes on BBC2 and ITV at the time were seen by 6.8% and 17.4% (averages)’.17 But the response indicates a paradoxical cognitive process of interpretation. Two terms of praise predominate: viewers respond to the fairy-​tale-​like ‘romance and whimsy’, while understanding that the atmosphere of this unlikely and ‘wholesome’ story was accentuated by the fact that it has been placed in a ‘realistic’ historical background. That a production managed to combine the pleasures of the fantastical and the actual for viewers indicated the possibility of success for Messina’s (largely unrealised) intention of producing much of the Shakespeare series on OB.

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Conclusion Examining how the same priorities are manifest in three of Messina’s productions of plays originating from different centuries allows us to draw conclusions as to his preferred vision for television adaptation of the classic theatrical play, whether recorded in the studio or on location. Pygmalion shows Messina’s decorative aesthetic as it was realised in the familiar form of Edwardian period drama, the ballroom sequence attempting to extend the visual pleasure of period décor beyond the expected confines of the studio adaptation. This lavish approach is contrasted with a functional directorial style. The different dramatic challenges set by The Merchant of Venice are met with identical methods, in a literalist interpretation that presents lavish and attractive settings, where camera movement concentrates upon the detail of the set rather than nuances of the drama. The use of OB technology in The Little Minister gave Messina greater opportunity to open out his production, with the intention of adding extra-​textual visual pleasure for viewers by showing much picturesque Scottish scenery underscored by long shots of stately castle interiors. Audience response to these three productions is remarkably consistent, reporting (though not uncritically) real pleasure taken from experiencing attractive period detail and clear story-​ telling. That the audience research for two of these productions (Pygmalion and The Merchant of Venice) also reveals that they were watched by a fairly substantial BBC1 audience, indicates a wider success and popularity for Messina’s aesthetic vision for Play of the Month, with large numbers of viewers responding enthusiastically to the plays for the reasons that Messina intended, and which had attracted Messina himself to the plays.

Productions discussed King Lear by William Shakespeare (Play of the Month). Dir. Jonathan Miller. BBC1. 9.20–​11.20pm, Sunday 23 March 1975. The Little Minister by J. M. Barrie (Play of the Month). Dir. Cedric Messina. BBC1. 10.00–​11.40pm, Sunday 2 November 1975. The Love-Girl and the Innocent by Alexander Solzhenitsyn (Play of the Month). Dir. Alan Clarke. BBC1. 8.15–​ 10.25pm, Sunday 16 September 1973. The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare (Play of the Month). Dir. Cedric Messina. BBC1. 8.15–​10.25pm, Sunday 16 April 1972. Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw (Play of the Month). Dir. Cedric Messina. BBC1. 8.15–​10.15pm, Sunday 16 December 1973. The Wild Duck by Henrik Ibsen (Play of the Month). Dir. Alan Bridges. BBC1. 8.15–​10.00pm, Sunday 21 March 1971.

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Notes 1 Messina produced 134 theatrical adaptations for BBC Television between 1963 and 1985 (the first being Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s The Physicists in 1963 and the last a BBC2 Theatre Night production of Molière’s Tartuffe in 1985); he directed a further ten. 2 Even a production that was seen by a small proportion of the viewers on BBC2 (for example, the 3.6% of the UK television audience that saw Ibsen’s The Lady from the Sea in 1974) would amount to over a million, far greater than any combined British theatrical audience for this play for the entire twentieth century (BBC Written Archives Centre (WAC), VR/​74/​161). 3 This chapter is an outcome of the research project ‘Spaces of Television: Production, Site and Style’ at the University of Reading, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council from 2010 to 2014. 4 See, for example, the production file for An Ideal Husband, 11 May 1969: BBC WAC, T5/​853/​1. 5 However, audiences received the first two series of the BBC Television Shakespeare very positively. The average Reaction Index (the means by which the BBC attempted to gauge audience reception through a mark out of 100 that was compiled by asking viewers to rate a programme on a five-​point scale) in BBC Audience Research reports for the first two series of the programme was 76, the highest individual figure was 80 for Henry VIII and the lowest, 68, was for The Tempest (BBC WAC, VR/​80/​242). 6 Mark Lawson discussed the decision not to screen Much Ado on Front Row, BBC Radio 4, 8 April 2008. 7 There are many examples of visual pleasure expressed in BBC Audience Research for Play of the Month productions: the report for Terence Rattigan’s The Winslow Boy broadcast in 1977 noted that ‘An extremely high percentage of those reporting were impressed with the period atmosphere and extremely captivated by the elegance of the costumes and the authenticity of the hairstyles’ (BBC WAC, VR/​77/​32); and Harley Granville-​Barker’s The Voysey Inheritance of 1979 was considered to be ‘Visually most attractive with scenery and costumes very evocative of the period’ (BBC WAC, VR/​79/​66). See Wheatley (2005) for a discussion of the spatial dynamic, and detail in properties and sets, of studio period drama in Upstairs Downstairs; see Cooke (2015: 91–​2) for an overview of the significance of The Forsyte Saga in the development of British television drama. 8 Sutton was partly responsible for the decision not to screen Messina’s 1978 production of Much Ado About Nothing. 9 A similar reliance upon a spectacular sequence in a Messina production of Shaw can be seen in his 1975 version of The Apple Cart, where two filmed sections of a helicopter are added between scenes. 10 BBC WAC, VR/​73/​714. 11 Between the 1950s and the 1980s, the BBC’s internal Audience Research Unit compiled up to 700 audience research reports for television per annum,

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attempting to cover the complete spectrum of BBC TV programming: see Smart (2014) for a detailed consideration of the form and conventions of the Audience Research reports into drama. 12 BBC WAC, VR/​73/​714. 13 BBC WAC, VR/​73/​714. 14 BBC WAC, VR/​72/​246. 15 BBC WAC, VR/​72/​246. 16 See Smart (2015) for a detailed consideration of the links between The Little Minister, As You Like It and Henry VIII and the viability of recording classic theatre plays on outside broadcast. 17 BBC WAC, VR/​75/​627.

References Andrews, J. (1979), ‘Cedric Messina discusses the Shakespeare plays’, Shakespeare Quarterly, 30:2, 134–​7. Anon. (1974), ‘A hard day’s Twelfth Night’, Radio Times, 9 May 1974, pp. 6–​7. Brunsdon, C. (1990), ‘Problems with quality’, Screen, 31:1, 67–​90. Cellan Jones, J. (2006), Forsyte and Hindsight (Dudley: Kaleidoscope). Cooke, L. (2015), British Television Drama: A History, 2nd ed. (London: Palgrave Macmillan). Drabble, M. (1975a), ‘The Messina touch’, Radio Times, 13 December 1975, pp. 17–​19. Drabble, M. (1975b), ‘Two gentlemen of the drama’, Radio Times, 20 March 1975, pp. 12–​15. Fenwick, H. (1979), ‘Introduction’, in W. Shakespeare, The BBC Television Shakespeare: As You Like It, ed. P. Alexander and J. Wilders (London: BBC Books). Fiddick, P. (1972), ‘The Scientists on television’, Guardian, 17 April 1972, p. 8. Giles, D. (1993), ‘Obituary: Cedric Messina’, Independent, 17 May 1993. Hood, S. (1972), ‘Lovely people’, Listener, 20 April 1972, pp. 527–​8. James, C. (1991), Clive James on Television (London: Picador). Nicholson, G. (1970), ‘If Cedric Messina has got excited about something …’, Radio Times, 15 January 1970, pp. 52–​5. Potter, D. (1977), ‘A real shaker of a play’, Sunday Times, 11 December 1977, p. 37. Reynolds, S. (1972), ‘The Merchant of Venice’, The Times, 17 April 1972, p. 9. Smart, B. (2014), ‘The BBC Television audience research reports, 1957–​ 1979: recorded opinions and invisible expectations’, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 34:3, 452–​62. Smart, B. (2015), ‘Producing classics on outside broadcast in the 1970s: The Little Minister (1975), As You Like It (1978) and Henry VIII (1979)’, Critical Studies in Television, 10:3, 67–​82. Sutton, S. (1982), The Largest Theatre in the World: Thirty Years of Television Drama (London: BBC).

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Wake, O. (2012), ‘Cedric Messina’ [biography], British Television Drama, 27 September 2013, online at www.britishtelevisiondrama.org.uk/​?p=​2715 (accessed 11 November 2020). Wheatley, H. (2005), ‘Rooms within rooms: Upstairs Downstairs and the studio costume drama of the 1970s’, in C. Johnson and R. Turnock (eds), ITV Cultures: Independent Television over Fifty Years (Maidenhead: Open University Press), pp. 143–​58. Wiggins, M. (2005), The Shakespeare Collection [DVD viewing notes] (London: BBC). Willems, M. (1987, ed.), Shakespeare à la Télévision (Rouen: Université de Rouen). Williams, K. (1993), ‘Cedric Messina’, Guardian, 21 May 1993, p. 34. Willis, S. (1991), The BBC Shakespeare Plays: Making the Televised Canon (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press).

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Abigail’s Party: ‘It’s not a question of ignorance, Laurence, it’s a question of taste’ Ruth Adams

Mike Leigh’s excruciating comedy of suburban manners, Abigail’s Party, is one of the writer and director’s most iconic and best-​known works. First performed at the Hampstead Theatre, London, in April 1977, its posterity was assured by a BBC Television adaptation broadcast in November of the same year. Film and theatre director Richard Eyre has argued that not only has the play reached classic status but it has become ‘adjectival’: ‘You can describe an event as being “Abigail’s Party”. Which, of course, means that Mike’s work has acquired the status of a playwright such as Pinter’ (quoted in Raphael 2007). The play is a claustrophobic portrayal of a nightmarish neighbourhood drinks party, hosted by a socially ambitious middle-​class couple—​Beverly, a beautician, and her workaholic estate agent husband, Laurence. Their guests are working-​class Angela and Tony, a nurse and a former professional footballer now working with computers, and Sue, an older, upper-​middle-​class divorcee, mother of the eponymous but never seen Abigail, an adolescent punk. As in all of Leigh’s work, the characters were developed through a lengthy period of improvisation with the actors, with Leigh’s then-​wife Alison Steadman creating the domineering Beverly, ‘a suburban harridan of memorable awfulness’ (Chaillet 1977). This chapter will consider how the play’s reception and interpretation have evolved over time and across diverse media—​from stage to television, and then later to video, DVD and online. It will also examine the representations of socio-​economic class and cultural consumption in the drama, and the critical and popular responses these provoked. Is Abigail’s Party, as some have asserted, a ‘cruel’ and ‘snobbish’ play? It is a work very much of its time—​the late 1970s: is it still relevant in the twenty-​first century, or is it now a period piece of kitsch nostalgia? Abigail’s Party was first broadcast by BBC1 on 1 November 1977 as part of the Play for Today strand, with a repeat showing on the same channel on 7 August 1979.1 Mike Leigh has suggested that it was the circumstances

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of the repeat that ultimately secured Abigail’s Party’s place in television history. In an interview with Amy Raphael, he recounts that:

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It went out in November 1977, and it was very popular. They repeated it. Then the second time they repeated it, in August 1979, there was an ITV strike on. Channel 4 hadn’t started yet. There was a highbrow programme presented by Jonathan Miller on BBC2. Massive storms were raging throughout Britain. And sixteen million people watched Abigail’s Party on BBC1. That’s a lot of people. So it became a legend. (Raphael 2008: 113)

Although frequently repeated by critics and journalists, this story is not so much a legend as a myth—​it has no identifiable source other than Leigh’s own account. Lez Cooke observes: I think Leigh must be referring to the first repeat … the second repeat was not until 1992, and the BBC audience record does not support his claim that the play had an audience of 16 million when it was repeated. Rather, the BBC Daily Viewing Barometer records an audience of 4,332,600 (8.3 per cent of the population), dropping to 3,915,000 by the end of the play (BBC WAC [Written Archives Centre], R9/​37/​15). On its first broadcast in November 1977, the play had an audience of 9,342,500 (18.5 per cent of the population), dropping to 8,888,000 by the end (BBC WAC, R9/​37/​13). (Cooke 2015: 260 n. 9)

Leigh’s claim that the viewing figures were boosted by industrial action at ITV also seems open to question. Jeremy Potter’s history of independent television in Britain records that the nationwide strike by the station’s technicians did not begin until 10 August 1979, three days after the repeat showing of the play (Potter 1989: 272). While attributing the enduring popularity and cult status of Abigail’s Party to freakish broadcasting circumstances makes for a good yarn, Leigh is perhaps selling his work short. It seems more likely that the quality of the drama and its resonance for large parts of its audience meant that it stuck in viewers’ minds. The play’s viewing figures were healthy, but not outside of the norm for Play for Today, which often attracted in excess of five million viewers. Audience size was not always a reliable indicator of longevity, either; Cooke (2015: 100) cites the example of Robert Holman’s play Chance of a Lifetime (BBC1, 1980), which despite having nearly fifteen million viewers has fallen into obscurity. Other plays with smaller audiences captured the imaginations and hearts of viewers and became celebrated through a combination of critical responses and popular memorialising—​ Abigail’s Party clearly falls into this category. The play has been continually re-​staged by professional and amateur theatre companies throughout the world: as of 2007, thirty years after it made its debut, an estimated 500 Beverlys had appeared in 20,000 performances.2 When, in 1999, the

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original cast read extracts from the play at the National Theatre in London, demand for tickets so outstripped supply that a big screen was erected outside the theatre for the benefit of the overflow audience (Raphael 2007). As Michael Coveney suggested (1996: 10), ‘That sort of fanzine adulation among ordinary punters attaches to very few leading writers’. For many fans, one of the chief pleasures of the play is the exploration of the relationship between class, culture and consumption—​or what Simon Fanshawe describes as ‘social calibration’.3 Material culture looms large in Abigail’s Party, as it does in all Leigh’s work. The set directions are detailed and precise. During rehearsals for the original Hampstead Theatre production, actors Alison Steadman and Tim Sterne were dispatched to the Ideal Home Exhibition, in character as Beverly and Laurence, to research their tastes in domestic interiors.4 One reviewer of the original stage production thought that ‘the tacky-​chic room’ devised by set designer Tanya McCallin suggested that she had ‘sussed out the characters of a play and placed them in the surroundings they deserved’ (Chaillet 1977). Likewise, Irving Wardle remarked that the ‘bright orange furniture, Van Gogh reproductions, a fibrelight mobile, and a mail order set of Dickens herald the clash of cultural aspirations before anyone has spoken a word’ (Wardle 1997: 15). The play’s dialogue is peppered with pointed references to food, drink, furniture, travel, literature and downstairs toilets, and conflicting tastes are used to illustrate and articulate the more fundamental tensions between the characters. In the climactic scene, Beverly and her husband’s terminal argument explodes against a backdrop of Beethoven’s Fifth and kitsch erotic art. Keen to portray himself as a connoisseur of the arts, Laurence homes in on neighbour Sue—​described by Wardle (1977: 15) as ‘a lone bourgeois vessel sinking in an ocean of vulgarity’—​engaging her in conversation about painting, classical music and literature, having (correctly) identified her as the only person present capable of validating his tastes. In doing so, however, he exposes the superficiality of his erudition: ‘Macbeth … part of our heritage … of course, it’s not something you can actually read’ (Leigh 2017: 49). Laurence’s untimely demise has been compared to that of Leonard Bast in E. M. Forster’s Howard’s End, who also expires from a weak heart under the weight of his cultural aspirations (Watson 2004: 70). Laurence, like Bast, is a man who has only a ‘familiarity with the outside of books’, and for whom appearances are important; it is a source of pride that he buys a new (albeit modest) car every year, and he worries that an increasing ‘cosmopolitanism’ might depress local house prices. He does, however, express aspirations to what he perceives to be the higher values of culture, opining rather sadly that ‘musicians and artists, they’re very lucky people: they’re born with one great advantage in life. … Their talent. They’ve got something to cling to. I often wish I’d been born with that sort of talent’ (Leigh

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2017: 35). Beverly, by contrast, seems to seek no such existential mooring, appearing rather as a living embodiment of Richard Hoggart’s description of mass-​entertainments:

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full of a corrupt brightness, of improper appeals and moral evasions. … they tend towards a view of the world in which progress is conceived as a seeking of material possessions, equality as a moral levelling, and freedom as the ground for endless irresponsible pleasure. (Hoggart 1976: 340)

Mike Leigh argues that: It’s important that Beverly has been a beauty consultant in a department store. She’s concerned with looks, appearances. But she obviously eschews other qualities of life. She says, ‘We’re not here to have a conversation, we’re here to enjoy ourselves.’ She doesn’t want to know about ideas. … It’s frightening and it’s outside the parameters of what’s safe. She doesn’t feel bright enough. (Quoted in Raphael 2008: 119)

Beverly instead finds a source of cultural capital in her femininity which she deploys like a weapon, sashaying around her party dispensing drinks, cigarettes and bons mots in what she assumes to be an elegant and seductive manner (Fig. 10.1). As Beverley Skeggs (1997: 84) has observed, working-​ class women’s bodies are the most significant, and perhaps only, ‘site upon which distinctions can be drawn. Skills and labour such as dressing-​up and making-​up are used to display the desire to pass as not working class. … The fantasy of the “other” (the middle-​class, elegant sophisticate) becomes part of the construction of one’s self’. However, as Skeggs also notes, ‘the ability to capitalize on femininity … provides only restricted access to potential forms of power’; it is limited because it can only be ‘used socially in tactical rather than strategic ways’ (Skeggs 1997: 10). Beverly, Laurence and their guests are illustrative of not only particular social types but also a specific historical context: they capture a zeitgeist. Although Callaghan’s Labour Party was still in power when the play was first produced and broadcast in 1977, Thatcher’s mantra of Britain as ‘a property-​ owning democracy’ and individualised advancement through material acquisition was already well established. The repeat broadcast took place a few months after the 1979 election that brought Thatcher to power. It is telling that Laurence’s occupation is an estate agent and also that, as Mikita Brottman observes, Beverly shares some of Thatcher’s ‘less appealing qualities—​her theatrical voice, her matriarchal bossiness, her crass, opinionated championing of middle-​class values, her primped hair and powdered complexion’ (2007: 319). Laurence and Beverly captured the essence of the coming era, ‘a society whose only acceptable means of expression is commodity fetishism’ (Brottman 2007: 321). Leigh himself suggests that the work continues

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Figure 10.1  Alison Steadman as Beverly and Tim Stern as Laurence in the television adaptation of Mike Leigh’s Abigail’s Party (1977).

to speak to people because ‘The fact is that “Beverly Culture”, if you want to call it that, is dripping and groaning on every TV channel. There are whole stations about house make-​overs and fuck knows what. People utterly relate to the horrors of what it is about’ (quoted in Raphael 2008: 114). Leigh’s detractors have argued that Abigail’s Party is snobbish and lacking in compassion. Critics such as Julie Burchill and Tom Paulin have identified what they perceive to be a ‘Hampstead sneer’ at aspirational suburban mores.5 In Dennis Potter’s famously damning review of the television adaptation he wrote that Leigh diminished, the ‘characters’ … to a brilliant puppetry of surface observation. The thin wires of prejudice and superficial mimicry can nearly always be seen, tangled up with the words. What one gets is a portrait—​and a very revealing one—​of the social assumptions and insecurities of that peculiar group of people who earn their bread by acting. This play was based on nothing more edifying than rancid disdain, for it was a prolonged jeer, twitching with genuine hatred, about the dreadful suburban tastes of the dreadful lower middle classes. Nothing too much wrong with that, perhaps, if some opposing strands, some new insights, are thereby released. A long tradition asserts that it is enjoyable to get on the other side of the ding-​dong doorbell in a new suburban villa and trample mud into the wall-​to-​wall carpets.

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Abigail’s Party was horribly funny at times, stunningly acted and perfectly designed, but it sank under its own immense condescension. The force of the yelping derision became a single note of contempt, amplified into a relentless screech. As so often in the minefields of English class-​consciousness, more was revealed of the snobbery of the observers than the observed. (D. Potter 1977)

In Leigh’s view, however, cruelty is in the eye and mind of the beholder and he asserts that it’s not ‘a conscious choice of mine not to judge the characters morally; the fact is I just don’t. For me the most distressing line of criticism I get is precisely that—​that I’m judgmental. But I never am. I simply reflect and lament on how we live our lives’ (quoted in Raphael 2008: 50). Watson proposes that what made critics like Potter so uncomfortable ‘was finding himself in such close and distressing proximity to the real, the real in the form of an encounter with class, an encounter that for him at least was traumatic’ (Watson 2004: 12). Leigh observes that if you present a character like ‘an awkward, slightly over-​weight, grubby guy with greasy long hair in an old black overcoat, people may say, “Ah, you’ve made him like that so we can laugh at him”, as if he were inferior or degenerate’ (in Raphael 2008: 59). He asserts, however, that the characters are given the props and the lines that they ‘require’, and that he simply shows their ­reality. He emphasises too that a common theme throughout his work is ‘our received idea of what we should be, rather than just the thing of being what we actually are’ (Arena, 1982), and it is this disjunction that is at the root of much of both the comedy and the tragedy.6 All the same, whatever an author’s intentions are, there is no way of determining how an audience will interpret a play and what elements might strike them as comedic or why. As Maggie Andrews suggests, ‘the polysemic nature of popular culture texts … ensures that they may have as many readings as readers, positioned as they are by their class, gender, sexuality and other cultural specificities’ (Andrews 1998: 50). There can be no guarantees that Abigail’s Party will not provoke cruel laughter. Sections of the audience may well enjoy reinforcing their ‘sense of distinction’ by mocking people they regard as less cultured or urbane than themselves. When comic actor Kenneth Williams went to see the original theatre production, he recorded in his diary that he stayed only for the first half, partly because he found the play too much like ‘the actual mess’ of life but mainly because of the ‘frightful’ audience. It was composed, he concluded, of ‘Hampstead sophisticates knowingly laughing at all the bad taste lines “Oh! a bottle of Beaujolais! How lovely! I’ll just pop it in the fridge …” and they fell about, loving their superiority’ (Davies 1994: 541). In his Telegraph review of the 2002 West End stage revival, Charles Spencer (2002) accuses the play of patronising and ridiculing its characters and being ‘entirely devoid of magnanimity’, but he also admits to ‘laughing, a lot, because Leigh presses all the right buttons

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and I’m not immune to snobbish contempt myself. … It’s shamefully entertaining stuff—​the modern equivalent of visiting Bedlam to laugh at the lunatics’. Watson notes that ‘since a copy of Spencer’s entire review (“A great but guilty pleasure”) was on display at the theatre entrance, someone was obviously calculating that it would draw people in—​people enticed, presumably, by the prospect of experiencing [this] guilty pleasure’ (Watson 2004: 67). In a Sunday Times review of the Hampstead Theatre production, Bernard Levin described Abigail’s Party as One of the most horrible plays I have ever seen (though meant to be), and in some ways one of the most remarkable, too, it is a study of the mores, attitudes, conduct and speech of Affluent-​Yobbonia (a large delegation from which dread land appeared to be in the first-​night audience, to judge from the vacant braying which punctuated it throughout). (Levin 1977a)

Reflecting back on this the following week, Levin concluded that: ‘The stage had become a mirror, wherein the spectators saw themselves, and did not like what they saw, the recognition being so painful that it had to be walled in by the defence-​release of laughter’ (Levin 1977b). What is interesting about this review is that Levin characterises the audience not as high-​minded North London intellectuals scoffing at the shortcomings of the aspirational lower-​middle classes, as Kenneth Williams and others assumed; the crowd of which Levin found himself a part was, he implied, composed not of Sues, but of Beverlys and Laurences, relishing the excruciating self-​identification. Leigh has asserted that each of his works ‘is very much intended to be seen by the people who it is about’ (Wapshott 1982) and that what Levin experienced ‘was the very chemistry that makes it work’ (Raphael 2008: 116). As Carney argues (2000: 80): ‘Leigh is not interested in mocking someone else but in showing us things about ourselves. As he has often insisted, there is no “them” in his work. Everywhere we look, we are meant to see ourselves’. By the end of the play’s run at the Hampstead Theatre, Alison Steadman was four months pregnant, which ruled out a transfer to a long run in the West End. Leigh recalled: we went to see the doctor, who suggested that she could only continue for a further five weeks. At that point in the game, there was a play about the Diplock trials in Belfast by Caryl Churchill, which was pulled for ‘political reasons’. So Margaret Matheson [producer of Play for Today]—​with whom I was already in collusion because she was going to produce the next film … —​was left with an empty television studio on her hands. She suggested filming Abigail’s Party, and I said, ‘No way. It’s a play. It won’t work on television.’ I was sat on by everyone, from every angle. Quite rightly. (Quoted in Raphael 2008: 112)

Abigail’s Party is unique in Leigh’s oeuvre for being the only instance of a work designed explicitly for one medium being transferred, rather than

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translated, to another. Although the characters for Bleak Moments and Nuts in May began life in stage plays, Leigh notes that ‘in these two cases I wasn’t really turning a play into a film, rather making a film from some of the ingredients of a play’ (in Raphael 2008: 50). That this happened only once was almost certainly due to Leigh’s well-​documented unhappiness with the television version of Abigail’s Party. This was partly irritation with the methods and constraints of broadcasting: he complained that the ‘original set was adapted and modified’, that ‘the BBC wouldn’t credit the original designer’ (Raphael 2008: 111) and that certain key pieces of music had to be changed for copyright reasons.7 But for the most part, Leigh’s discontent stemmed from more fundamental aesthetic issues. He goes so far as to describe the television version as ‘a work of deep embarrassment and pain. … Not for the play or its content … It is a stage play that was wheeled into a television studio. It’s slightly compromised as a play, but not too seriously. However, as a piece of craft, it’s simply appalling’ (Raphael 2008: 111). Shot in a studio, it lacks the naturalism and the meticulous single camera direction of Leigh’s film works. As Leigh recalls, it was ‘done in such a hurry, and it had to be done in a hurry … and because there were five cameras everything was compromised to a factor of twenty percent’.8 Consequently, he has grumbled that: It is appallingly lit, it is sloppily shot. There are boom shadows all over it. You can actually see the boom come into the shot on more than one occasion. It’s bland and slick in the worst sense … I’m a film-​maker for whom the film is all about the precision of moments, and for me it’s a disaster. (Raphael 2008: 111)

He denies it is a film in fact. He says ‘it’s a stage play. … When it’s described or discussed as a film, it pisses me off’ (Raphael 2008: 112). This notwithstanding the fact that—​for many of the millions who saw the original broadcasts or subsequently watched it on video or DVD (Leigh 2003, 2009) —​the television version of Abigail’s Party is not adaptation but the archetype. That a review of a 1979 stage revival in Manchester actually referred to ‘the television original’ (Thornber 1979) shows how quickly this ‘fact’ became established. Leigh recalled that when the play was revived at Hampstead Theatre in 2002, ‘the production was absolutely faithful to the original stage play, except I allowed the director David Grindley to use Demis Roussos instead of Jose Feliciano. The feeling was that people would be so disappointed otherwise’ (Raphael 2008: 112). While Leigh may protest that it didn’t really ‘translate’ (Movshovitz 2000: 7), television was in many ways the perfect medium for Abigail’s Party. Raymond Williams (2010: 52) argues that: the television play was the ultimate realisation of the original naturalist convention: the drama of the small enclosed room, in which a few characters lived

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out their private experience of an unseen public world. Since a major structure of feeling, in the art of the period, was in any case of this kind, it is not surprising that many television plays reproduced this assumption of the nature of representative reality. This was a drama of the box in the same fundamental sense as the naturalist drama had been the drama of the framed stage. The technical possibilities that were commonly used corresponded to this structure of feeling: the enclosed internal atmosphere; the local interpersonal conflict; the close-​up on private feeling.

The technical possibilities and structure of feeling that underpinned television drama also facilitated the situation comedy, and the apparent similarity of Abigail’s Party to the latter perhaps partly accounts for its broad and enduring popularity. Michael Coveney describes the broadcast version as looking like ‘some weird episode of The Good Life with a kind of acid undertow to it’.9 This is due in part to the use of the multi-​camera studio method which at the time was the dominant production method for both comedy and drama. Of the 298 Play for Todays transmitted between 1970 and 1984, only ninety-​four were shot wholly on film (Cooke 2015: 100) although, as George Brandt has observed (1993: 12), by the 1980s ‘multi-​ camera shooting … gave way increasingly to single-​camera production’ in most television drama productions, with the exception of soap operas and sitcoms. Consequently, an audience might adopt the ‘dual-​reading focus’ that Jim Cook identifies as one in which audiences are made aware of sitcom’s artificiality while simultaneously adopting the engaged reading position common for most television fiction. Audiences, then, find pleasure in sitcom in a manner similar to most narrative television, while the text constantly reminds them of its artificiality; audiences are simultaneously distanced and engaged. Such a contradictory position is one vital to comedy generally, in which laughter requires an involvement with, and a detachment from, that which is funny. (Mills 2004: 68, who quotes Cook’s ‘dual-reading focus’ at 67)

The television audience for Abigail’s Party were certainly positioned as the ‘fourth wall’, but unlike most sitcoms of the time there was no live audience or laughter track, a fact that made the transition from stage to screen seem all the more marked for those involved. Alison Steadman, for example, recalled the ‘scary’ move from a theatre with ‘an electric atmosphere’ to ‘a dead studio’ (Raphael 2008: xiv). Abigail’s Party shares with many British sitcoms a use of social class and its cultural manifestations as not only a means to identify characters, but also a vital source of humour. Critics of the play have suggested that it shares a rather stereotypical, even misogynistic portrayal of women as well, such as the comedy stereotypes identified by Laraine Porter (1998: 65): ‘the ingenuous curvaceous bimbo on the one hand and the nagging unattractive wife on the other’. On a similar theme, Medhurst (1997: 241) identifies a

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‘frequently recurring characterization of suburbia’ in sitcoms as feminised, suffocating and emasculating, producing a gendered model in which men ‘dream of escaping routine and rut’ and women ‘unquestioningly accept or even, at worst, embody them.’ Maggie Andrews (1998: 57) observes that in British popular culture women are often depicted as consumers, spending men’s hard-​earned money, and they are sometimes also portrayed ‘as social climbing, pretentious, aspiring to be something they are not and, as such, … false or deceitful’. Leigh himself says that ‘Abigail’s Party is undoubtedly the battle of the sexes. … You could call the play “the tyranny of women”, possibly, but at the same time … we’re all culpable and we’re all victims. And these men and women are victims of social expectations and what society makes them be’.10 Leigh has no problem with being funny—​indeed, most of his works have some kind of humorous element, and he locates himself within a broader British comic tradition. He acknowledges the influence of Ealing Studios, as well as radio and television comedy, telling one interviewer that ‘If I wasn’t what I am, I would be a cartoonist. My work is in the tradition of Hogarth, Gillray and Rowlandson’ (Wapshott 1982). Harlan Kennedy argues (1991: 22) that Abigail’s Party anticipates [Leigh’s later cinema films] High Hopes and Life is Sweet in its passionate flirtation with caricature. It’s as if Leigh realizes that something more than a ‘bare, forked’ minimalism is needed to do justice to the panache with which people set up lines of potential interaction (a party, a camping trip, a new restaurant) only to abuse or destroy them.

Kennedy goes on to say that this approach, however, precludes nuance and that, ‘[e]‌nmeshed in their own idiosyncrasies, at sea in their self-​regard, his characters increasingly become “turns”. Party-​piece mannerisms—​Beverly’s flouncing, square-​ shouldered walk; friend Angela’s pedantic, adenoidal “niceness”—​eat up spontaneity’. Other critics have also slated Leigh’s play for a perceived lack of subtlety, with both Julie Burchill and John Caughie comparing it with Carry On films,11 the latter describing it as ‘a comedy of character which ruthlessly exposes vulnerability and social pretension but ends up assuring the audience of its own superiority’ (Watson 2004: 7). The exaggerated nature of the characters and dialogue in Abigail’s Party can, however, perhaps be attributed in part to the fact that it is, regardless of the medium, essentially a stage play. This being the case, for Kennedy to criticise it as an example of Leigh’s ‘theatricality’ seems somewhat off the mark. Much of Leigh’s oeuvre could legitimately be described as camp, with Abigail’s Party perhaps more than most. Camp is not an easy category to pin down, not least because it is, as its most famous advocate Susan Sontag argues (1982: 105), ‘a sensibility’ rather than an idea. She describes it as a

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‘variant of sophistication’, a ‘mode of aestheticism’ (1982: 106) characterised by ‘a love of the exaggerated, the “off”, of things-​being-​what-​they-​are-​ not’ (1982: 108). Sontag asserts too that camp is not just a way of looking at things, it is also ‘a quality discoverable in objects and the behavior of persons’ (ibid.: 107). Arguably, it is its embodiment of, and appeal to, a camp sensibility that distinguishes Abigail’s Party from the conventional television and drama that it superficially resembles. As Anna Malinowska argues: ‘Camp’s “cultural elitism” is a feature that separates it from the popular’; ‘It … denotes a certain marginality when signifying camp’s forms of manifestation, and emphasizes camp’s non-​mainstream character’ (2014: 12). We can find in this analysis the germ of an explanation both for Abigail’s Party’s enduring cult status, and the accusations of cultural snobbery. By contrast, Sontag (1982: 119) argues that camp can also represent a more empathetic urge, which ‘identifies with what it is enjoying’. Camp taste is, suggests Sontag, ‘a kind of love, love for human nature. It relishes, rather than judges, the little triumphs and awkward intensities of “character”’. This is a description that would seem to encapsulate Leigh’s philosophy perfectly. Sontag also observes (ibid.: 113) that the canon of camp can change, as we become distanced from it. What once was painful because it resembled ‘too closely our own everyday fantasies’, we are now better able to enjoy as a fantasy as it is no longer our own. This is why so many of the objects prized by Camp taste are old-​fashioned, out-​of-​date, démodé. It’s not a love of the old as such. It’s simply that the process of aging or deterioration provides the necessary detachment—​or arouses a necessary sympathy. When the theme is important, and contemporary, the failure of a work of art may make us indignant. Time can change that. Time liberates the work of art from moral relevance, delivering it over to the Camp sensibility. (Sontag 1982: 113)

Although even the play’s harshest critics would not have described Abigail’s Party as a failure, in its time it evidently had the power to make people angry and indignant, and this was absolutely a response to its ‘moral relevance’. However, because the cultural vehicles employed to articulate class and aspiration—​ three piece suites and holidays in Majorca—​ now seem quaint and dated, the play’s critical bite and timeless tragedy are perhaps somewhat neutralised by its retro charm. There is a danger that the camp qualities of Abigail’s Party will descend into kitsch. While both camp and kitsch are associated with aesthetics and ethics that fall outside the boundaries of high art and good taste, the latter arguably lacks the critical edge, the empathy or the outsider perspective of the former—​it is empty and cynical. Postmodernity has seen the elevation of kitsch and the celebration of

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bad—​often ‘retro’—​taste for its own sake. If Abigail’s Party is perceived as kitsch, it becomes both superficial and ‘safe’ and the humanity is overwhelmed by an unhealthy fixation on the décor. In this sense, the play itself falls victim to a similar fate to its protagonists. Leigh emphasises the importance of the material in his work because, he says, it is the characters and the objects and the sense of place and time and the atmosphere and the light, and all of those things that give you a sense of the real world is part of the celebration of life that it’s all about. So, in Abigail’s Party plainly the material things are of the stuff of what the play is.12

Those material things, vital as they are, however, in the longer term also risk making the television version (and subsequent stage productions) of Abigail’s Party both a period piece and a shibboleth. As an insightful review on the TV Cream website notes: rare is the production, it seems, in which the leading actress will dare to move away from Steadman’s original swooping Essex intonation, or the decor away from the original MFI shelving /​Tretchikoff painting/​ice-​and-​slice chic. It’s a bit of an odd state of affairs, all told, that what began as a series of improvisations … has become set in stone, as it were. This can tend to give the whole thing a seventies-​in-​aspic air that trivialises it if you’re not careful. (Anon. 2009)

Leigh himself claims to find ‘this ’70s kitsch thing … extremely bizarre’, arguing that ‘no one … who knows the play [should] run away with the idea that it’s … just an exercise in kitsch, … because a man does die of a heart attack and some quite serious things happen below the comic surface’ (Leigh 2012). The play’s aesthetic is now presented in certain contexts not as a biting social commentary but rather as a postmodern lifestyle choice. In 2015, a company called ‘The Art of Dining’ offered: a 70s themed, five course pop-​up dining experience, combining food, theatre, music and set design. Inspired by Mike Leigh’s play of the same name, Abigail’s Party will see set designer Alice Hodge transform the iconic Rose Lipman Centre [in North London] into a 70s living room, complete with lava lamps, hostess trolleys, shag-​pile rugs, loud wallpaper, jazzy sofas, drinks cabinets and every shade of beige. (Anon. 2015)

To accompany a menu of contemporary twists on 1970s dinner party staples—​ ­ such as prawn cocktail, fondue and, of course, cheese and ­pineapple—​guests were encouraged to ‘shake out that dralon dress with the plunging neckline, slap on the eyeliner, press those flares, unbutton your shirt to the navel, slip on the heels and … be transported back to the 70s’ (Anon. 2015). In a similar vein, in 2012 UK fashion retailer Topshop

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advertised a range of retro clothing on their website encouraging shoppers to ‘Get all dressed up and come on over for Abigail’s Party! Think cocktails and finger food, prints, embellishments and billowing sleeves—​we’re playing by 70s rules’.13 The perception of Abigail’s Party as kitsch is perhaps aggravated by shifts in the style and technology of television production and reception. The multi-​camera studio method is now primarily associated with a ‘cosy’, old-​fashioned type of sitcom which gives rise to an apparent disconnect between the form and content for present day viewers of the broadcast version. Today, many sitcoms are shot with single cameras, either to give a more naturalistic sense—​what Brett Mills (2004) has termed ‘comedy ­verité’—​or to allow for greater flexibility of location and shooting. The use of a single camera is particularly associated with sitcoms that are ‘edgy’ or experimental in their form or content, such The Office (BBC2, 2001–​03) or the pioneering The Royle Family (BBC2, 1998; BBC1, 1999–​2012), the latter having evident similarities with much of Leigh’s work in its unflinching portrayal of the banality and materiality of everyday life and being set, like Abigail’s Party is, in a domestic living room. In 2007, BBC4 curated an Abigail’s Party Night to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the television broadcast.14 It included a showing of the play itself, a profile of Alison Steadman and a documentary featuring Leigh and the surviving cast and crew. Punctuating these were a documentary about Demis Roussos and a couple of brief interludes entitled ‘Party Nibbles’ featuring celebrities discussing the clothing and food at Beverly’s ‘do’. As Raymond Williams has observed, television viewing is (or, perhaps more accurately, was) often less about discrete programmes than the ‘flow’ of broadcasting. Individual shows are given additional context and meaning by their position in this flow, and the nature of this flow itself. This being the case, the reception and interpretation of Abigail’s Party must surely vary from its original identification and location as a Play for Today, to the ostensible focus of a theme night where it is surrounded by documentaries about incidental (and not even original) features of the play, and interstitials with a retro styling. Furthermore, on video, DVD and online it might either not be part of a flow at all, or certainly not one imaginable by the original broadcasters and viewers. Developments in audiovisual and digital technology have brought about new modes of viewing. We might see the video and internet-​era consumption of Abigail’s Party as forming part of the same cultural universe as popular ‘clip shows’ like VH1’s I Love the 80s, which present the recent past as a series of easily digestible and largely decontextualised soundbites. These assume on the part of the viewer both an attenuated attention span and ‘the paradoxical desire for ‘a history’ devoid of

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any pursuit of knowledge or moral understanding—​a history that offers only pleasure’ (Soukup 2010: 77). A couple of short clips of iconic scenes from the television version—​‘Demis Roussos’ and ‘I’ve got very beautiful lips’—​posted on YouTube had recorded viewing figures of around 123,000 and 84,000 respectively as of August 2015. We could also see the ‘pop-​ up dining experience’ and the clothing range cited earlier as aspects of this tendency, the appeal of which might be understood on the one hand as merely a fun fashion trend or, on the other, as evidence of a desire to demonstrate ‘distinction’ in a complex and cynical cultural landscape through the deployment of an apparent inverse snobbery. In her study of the contemporary market in retro furniture and objects, Sarah Elsie Baker (2012: 632) observes that locations such as Essex, the putative setting of Abigail’s Party, have become ideal sources for retro retailers. Due to differences in value, decorative objects and furniture can be acquired cheaply at house clearances, auctions and junkyards and sold at a profit in London. These objects, such as Ercol sideboards, cocktail bars, glass fish and G-​Plan dressing tables, are not only bought at bargain prices, but are desirable to retailers and consumers partly because of their associations with bad taste—​something that has long been associated with Essex.

This suggests a persistence of the less attractive tendencies that critics such as Williams and Spencer identified in the audiences for Abigail’s Party. Stephanie Brown (2000: 48), however, suggests that ‘something besides a snide pleasure in one’s own sophistication makes kitsch “work” today’—​a more genuine and generous nostalgic urge. The novelist Milan Kundera has also argued for a more benevolent interpretation of kitsch, closer to Sontag’s characterisation of camp, and one that seems relevant to a more sympathetic and nuanced understanding of Abigail’s Party’s contemporary appeal. Kitsch, suggests Kundera, ‘is the translation of the stupidity of received ideas into the language of beauty and feeling. It moves us to tears of compassion for ourselves, for the banality of what we think and feel’ (quoted in Congdon and Blandy 2005: 199). This chimes with Leigh’s claims that there is no ‘them’ in his work, only ‘us’. As Kundera also asserts, ‘none among us is superman enough to escape kitsch completely. No matter how we scorn it, kitsch is an integral part of the human condition’ (quoted in Komins 2001: 2). Abigail’s Party continues to speak to audiences in a human fashion because, in Leigh’s own words: ‘the things that it’s about … our terrible tendency to pretend to try and be things we are not, and … the strain of relationships and all those things … don’t belong exclusively in 1977, you know, they’re as relevant now as ever they were’ (Leigh 2012).

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Production discussed Abigail’s Party by Mike Leigh (Play for Today). Dir. Mike Leigh. BBC1. 9.25–​11.05pm, Tuesday 1 November 1977.

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Notes 1 Play for Today was a BBC1 drama strand of single plays. It ran from October 1970 to August 1984, replacing The Wednesday Play, which had been on air from October 1964 to May 1970. Abigail’s Party was published on DVD by the BBC in 2003. 2 ‘Welcome: Abigail’s Party Night’, an extra dir. Neil Dougan (2007), published in the BBC’s six-​disc DVD set Mike Leigh at the BBC in 2009. 3 In ‘All about Abigail’s Party’, a documentary extra dir. Alexandra Briscoe (2007), published in the BBC’s six-​disc DVD set Mike Leigh at the BBC in 2009. 4 ‘All about Abigail’s Party’. 5 Newsnight, ‘Review’, BBC2, 25 July 2002. 6 ‘Mike Leigh—​making plays’, an Arena documentary extra (1982), published in the BBC’s six-​disc DVD set Mike Leigh at the BBC in 2009. 7 Elvis Presley was replaced by Tom Jones, and Jose Feliciano by Demis Roussos, substitutions that Leigh describes as ‘ridiculous’ (Raphael 2008: 112). 8 ‘All about Abigail’s Party’. 9 ‘All about Abigail’s Party’. 10 ‘All about Abigail’s Party’. 11 The Carry Ons were a series of very popular, low-​budget British comedy films made for cinema release between 1958 and 1992, featuring a repertory cast and broad, bawdy humour in the tradition of music hall and ‘saucy’ seaside postcards. 12 ‘All about Abigail’s Party’. 13 This page on the Topshop website was accessed on 21 September 2012; the URL was not recorded. 14 Mike Leigh claims that—​‘significantly’ (Raphael 2008: 112)—​he was not invited to take part in this celebration, yet he features regularly in the specially commissioned documentary. Leigh, it would seem, is an unreliable narrator of his own career.

References Andrews, M. (1998), ‘Butterflies and caustic asides: housewives, comedy and the feminist movement’, in S. Wagg (ed.), Because I Tell a Joke or Two: Comedy, Politics and Social Difference (London: Routledge), pp. 50–​64.

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Anon. (2009), ‘Abigail’s Party’, TV Cream, 23 June 2009, online at www.tvcream. co.uk/​telly/​play-​for-​today/​abigails-​party/​ (accessed 20 November 2020). Anon. (2015), ‘Abigail’s Party: a night of food, drink, theatre and 70s music’, The Art of Dining, online at www.theartofdining.co.uk/​popups/​abigails-​party (accessed 20 November 2020). Baker, S. E. (2012), ‘Retailing retro: class, cultural capital and the material practices of the (re)valuation of style’, European Journal of Cultural Studies, 15:5, 621–​41. Brandt, G. W. (1993), ‘Introduction’, in G. W. Brandt (ed.), British Television Drama in the 1980s (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 1–​18. Brottman, M. (2007), ‘Debauchery next door: the boundaries of shame in Abigail’s Party’, Quarterly Review of Film and Video, 24:4, 317–​23. Brown, S. (2000), ‘On kitsch, nostalgia, and nineties femininity’, Studies in Popular Culture, 22:3, 39–​54. Carney, R. (2000), ‘Defeating systems of knowing: Nuts in May’, in R. Carney with L. Quart, The Films of Mike Leigh: Embracing the World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 80–​95. Chaillet, N. (1977), ‘Abigail’s Party’, The Times, 22 April 1977, p. 11. Congdon, K. G., and D. Blandy (2005), ‘What? Clotheslines and popbeads aren’t trashy anymore? Teaching about kitsch’, Studies in Art Education, 46:3, 197–​210. Cooke, L. (2015), British Television Drama: A History, 2nd ed. (London: Palgrave Macmillan). Coveney, M. (1996), The World According to Mike Leigh (London: HarperCollins). Davies, R. (1994, ed.), The Kenneth Williams Diaries (London: HarperCollins). Hoggart, R. (1976 [1957]), The Uses of Literacy (London: Penguin). Kennedy, H. (1991), ‘Mike Leigh about his stuff …’, Film Comment, 27:5, 18–​24. Komins, B. J. (2001), ‘Popular culture, kitsch as camp, and film’, CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture, 3:1, 1–​8. Leigh, Mike (2003), Abigail’s Party [DVD] (London: BBC). Leigh, Mike (2009), Mike Leigh at the BBC [six-​disc DVD set] (London: BBC). Leigh, Mike (2012), ‘Mike Leigh on Abigail’s Party “albatross”’ [clip from Justin Webb’s interview with Mike Leigh], Today (BBC Radio 4), 8 May 2012, online at http://​news.bbc.co.uk/​today/​hi/​today/​new​sid_​9719​000/​9719​312.stm (accessed 21 September 2012). Leigh, Mike (2017), Abigail’s Party: 40th Anniversary Edition (London: Penguin). Levin, B. (1977a), ‘Mr Ayckbourn changes trains’, Sunday Times, 24 April 1977, p. 37. Levin, B. (1977b), ‘To see ourselves as others see us’, Sunday Times, 1 May 1977, p. 37. Malinowska, A. (2014), ‘Bad romance: pop and camp in light of evolutionary confusion’, in J. Stępień (ed.), Redefining Kitsch and Camp in Literature and Culture (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing), pp. 9–​22. Medhurst, A. (1997), ‘Negotiating the gnome zone: versions of suburbia in British popular culture’, in R. Silverstone (ed.), Visions of Suburbia (London: Routledge), pp. 240–​68. Mills, B. (2004), ‘Comedy verite: contemporary sitcom form’, Screen, 45:1, 63–​78.

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Movshovitz, H. (2000, ed.), Mike Leigh Interviews (Jackson: University of Mississippi). Porter, L. (1998), ‘Tarts, tampons and tyrants: women and representation in British comedy’, in Wagg (ed.), Because I Tell a Joke or Two: Comedy, Politics and Social Difference, pp. 65–​93. Potter, D. (1977), ‘Trampling the mud from wall to wall’, Sunday Times, 6 November 1977, p. 35. Potter, J. (1989), Independent Television in Britain, vol. 3: Politics and Control, 1968–​80 (London: Macmillan). Raphael, A. (2007), ‘The party that has lasted for 30 years’, Guardian, 14 October 2007. Raphael, A. (2008, ed.), Mike Leigh on Mike Leigh (London: Faber & Faber). Skeggs, B. (1997), Formations of Class and Gender: Becoming Respectable (London: Sage). Sontag, S. (1982), ‘Notes on camp’, in her A Susan Sontag Reader (London: Penguin). Soukup, C. (2010), ‘I Love the 80s: the pleasures of a postmodern history’, Southern Communication Journal, 75:1, 76–​93. Spencer, C. (2002), ‘A great but guilty pleasure’, Telegraph, 6 December 2002. Thornber, R. (1979), ‘Abigail’s Party’, Guardian, 1 February 1979, p. 12. Wagg, S. (1998), Because I Tell a Joke or Two: Comedy, Politics and Social Difference (London: Routledge). Wapshott, N. (1982), ‘The man stirring up the British class system’, The Times, 16 March 1982, p. 10. Wardle, I. (1977), ‘Elegy for suburban wasteland’, The Times, 19 July 1977, p. 15. Watson, G. (2004), The Cinema of Mike Leigh: A Sense of the Real (London: Wallflower Press). Williams, R. (2010 [1974]), Television: Technology and Cultural Form (London: Routledge).

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Screen and stage space in Beckett’s theatre plays on television Jonathan Bignell

Theatre plays written by Samuel Beckett that have been adapted for television need to be understood in the historical contexts of their production and broadcast. While they can be situated as adaptations of theatre plays, the significance of the adaptation in each case is determined by the changing relationships to original television plays, to conceptions of television authorship, to the aesthetics of original or adapted drama on television in terms of mise-​en-​scène and performance, and to broadcasters’ perceptions of what their audiences want (Bignell 2009). Such a constellation of questions about the adaptation of a theatre play for television can be productively addressed by focusing on spatiality, or how space is related to meaning. Theatre staging is necessarily transformed spatially for presentation on screen. Thinking about space in this context includes assessing whether a theatre production has been ‘opened out’ by adding new scenes or shooting in a variety of locations. The opportunities for changing how performance and setting are arranged for the camera also draw attention to the framing and composition of the two-​dimensional television image. Shots can be close-​up, relationships between foreground and background can be manipulated by depth-​of-​ focus techniques and the relative positions of performer and other objects in the frame can be changed by camera movement. The pace and tone of adapted theatre plays on television are also crucially dependent on editing, which creates relationships between one camera shot and the next in ways that are not possible on stage. In addressing the spatial realisation of Beckett’s plays, this chapter combines work on archival sources, brief mise-​en-​scène analysis of the audiovisual detail of plays as broadcast and discussion of audience responses. The chapter begins with arguments about the significance of authorship in Beckett’s involvement with television adaptations, since his authorial status and directorial track-​record in theatre impacted on the adaptation of his stage plays. Working relationships with television directors, actors and production staff involved in adaptations of his work were also significant,

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since Beckett often collaborated closely with them and his agency had enabling and constraining effects. Adaptations of Beckett’s theatre plays were commissioned and responded to in relation to categories such as high-​profile authored drama, arts programming, educational television and ‘star’ performance—​ ­ so, within television, they were also situated in multiple ways. For television professionals, viewers and critics, television versions of Beckett’s theatre plays could be positioned and understood in a range of different categories, and as a consequence they offered a variety of pleasures. While some analysis of television and film adaptations of Beckett’s work has been carried out with attention to their aesthetic, thematic and historical development (for example, Herren 2007: 171–​97), spatiality has not been central to the largely text-​based tradition of Beckett scholarship. This chapter offers a brief case study of the earliest British television adaptation of Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape (1963) as well as a more recent 2007 version in order to analyse the television studio as, and in contrast to, a theatrical space. In both cases a three-​sided set was left open on its fourth side, producing an imaginary separation of audience space from stage space. Similarly frontal modes of address can be seen in the short film adaptation of Beckett’s Comédie [Play] (dir. Marin Karmitz, 1966), and television adaptations of his Not I (BBC2, 1977) and Was Wo [What Where] (dir. Samuel Beckett and Walter Asmus, Süddeutscher Rundfunk, 1986). Each of these Beckett adaptations negotiates between a form of staging that derives from theatre, where cameras are on the edges of the acting area and look into it, and the penetration and segmentation of the performance space that results from moving the cameras into the space and alternating their different points of view. Television adaptations of Beckett’s work move between apparent acceptance of perceived boundaries between theatre and television and acknowledgement of the porosity of those boundaries. In this respect, the television adaptations have much in common with the five original dramas that Beckett wrote for television (Bignell 2009), in which there are occasional elements specific to television production (like the use of videographic effects) but also a highly theatrical presentation of a single, interior performance space.

Authorship and the spaces of transnational adaptation As a living writer, Beckett had a much greater role in the adaptations of his plays than is usual for the dominant form of television adaptation in Britain, namely the episodic serial adaptation of the ‘classic’ novel. The notion of the ‘classic’ signals the enduring cultural and commercial life of a text that is part of an educational, literary canon (Cardwell 2002; Giddings and Selby 2001; Giddings and Sheen 2000). Novelists whose work has been adapted for

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television have most often been those writing in the 1840–​1940 period, with canonical figures such as Jane Austen, the Brontë sisters, Charles Dickens, George Eliot and Thomas Hardy predominant. There is an expectation that the adaptations will be ‘faithful’ to the writer’s work, which means adopting the main characters, setting and storyline of the source text, along with its dominant tone (for example, melodramatic, satirical or comic). But, nevertheless, it is the adaptor responsible for writing the screenplay used for the television production who has the role of creative originator and who, in some cases (notably Andrew Davies), becomes as much an anchoring ‘brand’ as the novelist whose work he or she transforms. In contrast, television versions of ‘classic’ theatre plays by William Shakespeare, George Bernard Shaw or Henrik Ibsen—​the three most adapted playwrights for television in the twentieth century (N. Taylor 1998: 34–​5)—​had no credited adaptor in most cases and the originating creator of the television programme was assumed to be the director or producer. Beckett was situated between the two creative roles of originating author and adaptor, and was thus in an unusual and interesting position. His dialogue was not modified to any extent when scripting adaptations, which thus potentially signals a lack of involvement in the adaptation process rather similar to the role of ‘classic’ novel writers. But, on the other hand, as a director himself and a frequent collaborator on theatre productions, Beckett shared some of the creative primacy that the television director would have had. For example, when Donald McWhinnie was intending to produce a new adaptation of Beckett’s Play for BBC Television in 1976, he asked Beckett for directorial suggestions, and Beckett replied with the idea that close-​ups should always be of the three speakers’ faces together and not separately. The play was shot following this advice but never broadcast because Beckett did not like the lighting.1 Beckett had authority as the creator of the adapted work and used it to influence aesthetic choices that were normally under the control of the director. The producer of an adaptation customarily makes budgetary and casting decisions but is not necessarily involved in creative discussions with the author of the source text. Beckett, however, had a high public profile and his approval of an adaptation could be made public, to validate and promote it to the television audience. This was the case, for example, when Radio Times described a repeat screening of the 1977 BBC adaptation of Not I on BBC2 in 1982: ‘In one of the most extraordinary pieces of modern drama Billie Whitelaw, Beckett’s foremost interpreter, performs this astonishing tour de force. Not I—​the mouth suspended in space, caused a sensation when it was first performed at the Royal Court in 1973. Beckett himself is a great admirer of this television version.’2 Again, Beckett was in an unusual position as a living writer whose ideas and personal connections with

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performers, directors and other broadcasting staff could be harnessed to assist the producer. Because of his close relationships with television producers and directors who in many cases knew him or had directed his work on stage in the UK, Germany or the USA, Beckett was usually willing to offer advice about the plays or co-​direct them for the screen. He had strong views about how his work should be realised. For example, he had pre-​production discussions about the play’s realisation with the director slated to work on the first television version of Krapp, Prudence Fitzgerald, because he had disliked the set for a 1961 BBC adaptation of Waiting for Godot, a now lost version that seems to have been shot on videotape.3 Shortly thereafter, Harry Moore, story editor of the BBC’s Festival series that specialised in television adaptations of modern theatre, went to Paris in February 1964 to discuss television projects with Beckett (as well as to meet Jean Genet, Marguerite Duras and others). Moore reported back on his visit, referring to Beckett’s dislike of the BBC’s 1963 adaptation of Krapp’s Last Tape in which, Beckett felt, his advice to Fitzgerald had not been followed.4 Beckett’s views about previous and putative adaptations had a strong influence on what was made and how it was staged for the camera. For Beckett’s collaborators, adapting his work offered both opportunities and constraints. His plays have small casts, single settings and were suitable for shooting in the controlled environment of the television studio. They could feature performances by well-​known theatre actors: the producer of the 1961 BBC version of Waiting for Godot, Donald McWhinnie, reunited Peter Woodthorpe and Timothy Bateson, the first actors to play Estragon and Lucky in the English-​language première of the play directed by Peter Hall in London in 1955. On the other hand, each Beckett play was a one-​off programme, so costs could not be spread across a continuing series using the same cast and crew. The plays are of unusual lengths and so are hard to schedule; their slow pace—​with almost no physical action and a bare, almost unchanging setting throughout—​required the audience to give sustained attention to the details of their language and performance. On the one hand, this focus on performance was an opportunity to showcase the actors’ work, but inasmuch as television marked its difference from theatre by using location settings, for example, and editing camera shots to build dramatic sequences, Beckett’s plays are not ‘televisual’. The production process of Shades—​an hour-​long edition of The Lively Arts which offered a compilation of three Beckett plays, BBC2, 17 April 1977—​gives a detailed insight into how Beckett’s work was perceived.5 The BBC producer Tristram Powell had started to research a possible Beckett anniversary television programme for the Second House arts series in late 1975. Beckett was renowned as a novelist and poet as well as a playwright,

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but Powell prioritised performances of Beckett’s theatre plays as the means to present his work to the television audience. He considered making short feature items for his programme, to include material about Not I and Waiting for Godot, and interviews with Beckett, the director Donald McWhinnie and actors including Billie Whitelaw, Nicol Williamson, Patrick Magee, John Gielgud and Ralph Richardson, each of whom had taken leading roles in London theatre productions of Beckett’s plays. Powell made lists of Beckett productions in the USA and France as well as in Britain to identify which ones had been recorded previously, and listed original plays with adaptations, and radio drama alongside television drama. Beckett’s authorship was the unifying principle. Television adaptation of Beckett’s theatre plays exists in a transnational context, and a Beckett ‘brand’ formed a locus for co-​operation between nationally specific television production and reception cultures. Just as Beckett had an international reputation as a dramatist, and an international network of collaborators, television adaptations of his theatre plays travelled abroad in a way that was comparable to touring theatre productions. Television adaptations made in Germany for SDR were acquired by BBC for broadcast in Britain, and the BBC’s own adaptations were broadcast in Germany. The Swiss-​German television financier and distributor Reiner Moritz co-​produced Powell’s BBC2 programme Shades (1977), and BBC Television acquired the American documentarists D. A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus’ film of a 1981 New York theatre performance of Beckett’s Rockaby (1982). Such exchanges and partnerships continued after Beckett’s death, when the Beckett on Film project (2000–​02) brought actors and directors from the UK, Ireland, the USA and continental Europe together to adapt for the screen all nineteen of Beckett’s theatre plays, some of them using the same cast and director from the Dublin theatre festivals of Beckett’s work in 1999 (Frost and McMullan 2003). Irish and British television channels and arts institutions invested in the films, thus acquiring the rights to screen them and distribute them internationally. It is clear that Beckett adaptations exist in transnational networks of production and distribution organised around his authorship, and those networks have their own dynamics of finance and power.

Theatre on television In a wide-​ranging critical review of the field, Thomas Leitch (2008) notes that the great majority of adaptation scholarship has focused on how novels have been adapted into films, and that the methodologies for analysing television adaptations of theatre are under-​developed. As Billy Smart (2010)

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has shown, studies by Roger Manvell (1979) or Egil Tornqvist (1999) are both partial and schematic, tending to essentialise the mediums and focus on one form or period of text. The legacy of semiology (see Esslin 1987, Aston and Savona 1991, Pavis 1991, Fischer-​Lichte 1992), however, does helpfully link theatre and screen adaptation around the significance of directorial decisions. On television, camera point-​of-​view and editing shape where the viewer can look and thus how moments of action are perceived. In theatre, the spectator can view the playing space as a whole, inasmuch as it is made visible by lighting and placement of set elements, whereas television adaptation can withhold knowledge of the space of the fictional world, and also alter and relocate it. Spatial realisation is the joining and separating hinge between theatre and its television adaptation. Twentieth-​century television adaptations of Beckett’s theatre work were recorded in studios, in long takes with few cuts: their form therefore associates them with theatre’s sequential, continuous performance. In a homage to the respective French and British premières of En attendant Godot and Waiting for Godot (1953 and 1955 respectively), the BBC’s 1961 television version opened with the three knocks on the stage floor that traditionally precede curtain-​up in French theatre and, as noted above, was cast with the same lead actors who first played the tramps Estragon and Vladimir on the London stage.6 BBC adaptations of Krapp appeared in the Festival and Thirty-​Minute Theatre series of television dramas in 1963 and 1972 respectively, each of which centred on adapted works rather than original plays for television. When the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) non-​commercial channel in the US first screened the Beckett on Film (2000–​02) series, the plays were shown in the channel’s Stage on Screen (2000–​01) slot, produced by the New York television station WNET. Stage on Screen showed television and film adaptations of theatre plays, documentaries about plays and playwrights and occasional television relays of live theatre. As this chapter explores further below, the BBC discourse promoting Beckett’s work on television in Britain, and adhered to by contemporary commentators who discussed his work in reviews, regarded Beckett’s theatre plays on television as an extension of his theatre writing. The form, personnel and approach to adapting Beckett’s theatre work for the television medium have been chosen in ways that pay due respect to its stage origins, rather than occluding them. However, Beckett’s work did not appear in the most prominent and longest-​running British series of theatre adaptations—​namely, Television World Theatre (BBC, 1957–​ 59), Play of the Month (BBC1, 1965–​ 79, 1982–​83), Theatre Night (BBC2, 1985–​90) or Performance (BBC2, 1991–​ 98). These anthologies comprised adaptations of plays mostly written by canonical early modern dramatists, including Shakespeare, and twentieth-​ century authors such as George Bernard Shaw, Noël Coward, J. B. Priestley

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and Terence Rattigan. Such plays were understood to be ‘accessible’ to large television audiences, whereas a feature in the BBC’s listings magazine Radio Times advertising a production of Beckett’s Eh Joe (BBC2, 1966) acknowledged that his work might seem unappealing to viewers, saying of Beckett’s theatre plays: ‘They are bizarre, with their endlessly arguing tramps and their families imprisoned in dustbins, and they express a philosophy which many people find unrelievedly bleak’ (Anon. 1966). Although Peter Luke’s Festival series (1963–​64) was the home for an adaptation of Krapp, its ‘high cultural’ ambitions and small audiences led to the series’ cancellation. It was in arts programmes that television versions of Beckett’s theatre plays were screened, rather than series of theatre adaptations. Adaptations of theatre plays have been regarded pejoratively as ‘theatrical’ rather than ‘televisual’ in aesthetic form (Gardner and Wyver 1983). Much of this criticism is based on spatial considerations, since adaptations have been seen as imperfect reproductions of performances intended for another medium, constrained by the television studio. The orthodoxy has been that television develops historically away from the derivative and constrained form of the adapted play, shot live (or as-​if-​live) in the studio, and towards original drama for television, frequently shot with film cameras on location and structured by editing in post-​production. It should, however, be acknowledged that this developmental model has also been subject to a more nuanced critique (Macmurraugh-​Kavanagh and Lacey 1999). Paradoxically, adaptations of Beckett’s plays take advantage of factors commonly viewed as constraints on adaptation. The conventional way of producing adaptations was to map the spatial dynamics of the theatre stage onto the bounded space of the studio, without introducing the multiple, exterior spaces that location filming allowed (Ridgman 1998). The form of performance that this spatial restriction encouraged centres on the contribution of the actor, in negotiation with the specific details of setting and point of view that the restricted space makes more prominent. Both John Adams (1998) and John Caughie (2000) have outlined this highly detailed performance aesthetic, characterised by gestural nuance and intense work on the dialogue. Beckett’s nuanced and highly deliberate speech made these demands on actors, and made it more attractive for producers and directors of Beckett adaptations to draw their performers from theatre productions. This expectation of a television aesthetic derived from theatre can be seen in Powell’s planning for the Beckett anniversary tribute programme Shades (1977).7 He expected to use two sets, one of which would be a black empty space and the other dressed to represent a derelict room. The first of these suggests the ‘black box’ style of theatre presentation, using minimal sets and props, that had become increasingly accepted since the early 1960s, although it would also suggest the television studio as a plastic and ‘null’

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space, representing only itself. The second set has clear links to the dilapidated rooms that Beckett often prescribes as the settings for his theatre plays (perhaps especially Endgame). In the end, the completed 1977 programme Shades used a theatre as the location for a discussion about Beckett between presenter Melvyn Bragg and expert commentator Martin Esslin, accompanying screenings of Not I and two original television plays by Beckett (Ghost Trio and … but the clouds …). Theatricality was signalled by putting Bragg and Esslin in a theatre, but both of the original plays were shot in television studios and Not I, although based on a theatre production, had been specially staged and adapted for the screen. It was shot on 16mm film in 1975 at BBC’s Ealing Television Film Studios, with synchronised sound. However, while the version of Not I exploited the close-​up aesthetic of television and the bounded shape of the screen frame, with Billie Whitelaw’s mouth in close-​up throughout, it relied on the close involvement of the Royal Court Theatre production team. Powell’s undated production notes show that the original intention was to include the character of the Auditor from the theatre staging of the play, although this figure was omitted from the filmed version. The Royal Court’s stage manager was there to prompt for Whitelaw, who had been the leading performer on stage, and the special chair in which Whitelaw performed had been brought over from the theatre. Although Not I became ‘televisual’, it derived from and used the personnel of the theatre version. Similarly, the Royal Court Theatre was the source for BBC2’s 1979 production of Happy Days, featuring Billie Whitelaw.8 The production was repeated in a series of Beckett adaptations broadcast in December 1982, as announced by Radio Times: ‘Arena presents the first programme in a Samuel Beckett Season providing a unique opportunity to see famous interpretations of his work. The playwright himself directed this production of his classic play Happy Days, and BILLIE WHITELAW, Beckett’s favourite actress, plays Winnie—​one of the strangest parts in modern theatre.’9 When D. A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus’ film (1981) of Rockaby was screened in the same week, Radio Times drew attention to its theatrical provenance: ‘Arena continues the Samuel Beckett Season with a unique record of his new play Rockaby which has just opened at the National Theatre. Premièred in America, it was filmed in rehearsal and performance by the celebrated filmmaker D. A. Pennebaker. The programme follows Billie Whitelaw’s preparations for her latest Beckett role’. The listing finishes with an explicit invitation: ‘Attend the opening night in Buffalo, New York, and see the strange and haunting play’.10 Television adaptation was represented as the way for the television viewer to see theatre plays of acknowledged cultural standing, written by a famous and enigmatic writer, performed by some of the leading actors of the time. The television medium acted as a

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channel for the wider public circulation of valued knowledge and cultural experience to that part of the audience that might be interested.

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The room as a performative space In the three adaptations of Krapp’s Last Tape discussed in detail below, attention is directed to bravura performances in relatively fully realised sets. In each case, the interiors draw attention to the composition of space, the selective lighting in the television studio and the placing of objects, entrances and exits. There is a sense of confidence in the representation of space because of the way that wide shots at the start of each version give access to it and situate Krapp within it. Exterior space and Krapp’s kitchen are unseen, although defined in relation to the main playing area, and instead the camera’s movement is towards the centre of the space where the performer sits at his desk with his tape recorder. The studio is used as a theatrical space in which a constructed three-​sided set is left open on its fourth side. The missing fourth wall implies the separation of audience space from stage space, although camera movements closer to and to the side of the performer reduce this separation. In all three versions of Krapp, the employment of the cameras displays a confidence in their ability to show more than a theatre audience might see, and they demonstrate access to and understanding of space. They acknowledge but also move away from theatrical staging of space and towards the alternation of points of view that is conventional in television drama. The settings, performance styles and lighting are different in each version and they have surprisingly different durations. The distinct uses of studio space and its technologies impact on performance style, shot type, sets and lighting. Adaptations of Beckett’s theatre plays for television use the ‘intimacy’ of the studio and the primacy of acted performance differently, but they largely match what the director Don Taylor (1998: 38) understood to be the ‘essence’ of drama for the medium: ‘a single drama, recorded in a television studio more or less continuously, certainly in whole scene takes, and, in its purest form, without any use of location filming’. This form, Taylor argues, has a special relationship with dramatic writing and the detail of linguistic choices realised by performance; it ‘relishes imaginative, argumentative and even poetic writing in a way the film camera does not. It is at its best in long, developing scenes, where the actors can work without interference from the director’s camera, using their own timing rather than his’ (ibid.). The overall effect is to produce an intense and integrated work of art by means of collaborative authorship: ‘When director, lighting designer and designers work in harmony, its pictures glow with the colours of Titian and Veronese,

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which, because of their electronic origin, are quite unlike the colours the film camera produces’ (ibid.). These collaborative outputs are especially significant for adaptations of Beckett’s theatre, because the small cast, single setting, slow pace of action and thus the focus on specific elements of physical and verbal performance are all conducive to a greater weight of viewer attention being placed on individual moments of action and on the relationship of action to the surrounding visible space in the frame. A version of Krapp directed by Alan Schneider and featuring Jack McGowran was made in 1971 for the New York television station WNET. Beckett disliked what he regarded as an exaggerated performance by McGowran (Knowlson 1996: 582), and the adaptation was withheld from broadcast until it was acquired by Channel 4 and shown in 1990. Its fifty-​ five-​minute duration leaves plenty of time for McGowran to explore the possibilities for movement between the front and the back of the set where a door to an unseen kitchen is placed, so that his bent and jerky body posture can demonstrate Krapp’s age and decrepitude. The temporal extension enforced by the action, in which Krapp searches for and plays back tape recordings of his own audio diary from earlier years, matches the spatial expansiveness of the set itself. Krapp’s room is much larger than a ‘realistic’ room might be, and a wide shot of extended duration begins the adaptation, offering the viewer knowledge of this space but drawing attention to its odd proportions. The room resembles a proscenium theatre stage, with Krapp and other set elements (a desk, the kitchen doorway) clearly established in relation to each other. Lighting concentrates attention on Krapp himself, and colour links Krapp to the space in the similarity of the yellow overhead lampshade to the studio lighting whose yellowish hue makes Krapp’s skin look sallow. Camera movement is always forwards into the space or into the space from one side, offering more than a theatre spectator in a fixed seat could see, yet never moving behind Krapp to look towards the place of the audience. As the play proceeds, greater use of close-​up invites the audience to understand Krapp’s thoughts and feelings from his facial expression, and thus also showcases McGowran’s skill as a mime. The 1972 adaptation featuring Patrick Magee, directed by Donald McWhinnie for BBC’s Thirty-​Minute Theatre, is significantly shorter. The duration gives Magee fewer chances to develop his performance physically, and the emphasis is on psychological concentration more than physical action. The set is narrower than in Schneider’s version, and geometric lines created by a sloping ceiling, beams of light cutting diagonally across the space and bits of litter on the floor around Krapp all contribute to an impression of enclosure, rather like the oppressive geometry of a Constructivist theatre set (see Fig. 11.1). The yellowish lamp does not determine the lighting palette, which is a cold greyish white. The reflective surface of the floor

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Figure 11.1  Patrick Magee in Thirty-​Minute Theatre: Krapp’s Last Tape (1972).

bounces light around the space and parallels the reflection caused when light hits Magee’s sweating face. Indeed, Krapp’s perspiration can be read as a physical index of mental concentration and emotional investment in his recall of his past (as Barthes 1973 argued of the performances in the 1953 MGM film Julius Caesar). As in Schneider’s version, the camera stays relatively frontal to the space, offering few shots from the side and instead privileging the close-​up on Magee’s expression, in shots that are tighter than those on McGowran. This adaptation seems dominated by principles of condensation and intensity that match the play’s short length, and which also emphasise facial expression more than physical movement in the constrained space. BBC4’s 2007 adaptation of Krapp, featuring Harold Pinter and directed by Ian Rickson, is significantly different from the earlier versions discussed above. The room is much smaller and is very dimly lit, so that its wealth of detail (notably Krapp’s bookshelves that are immediately behind him) is hard to see. It is much more ‘realistic’ as a room, but there is little scope for physical movement in the space, and Krapp (played by Pinter who was very ill at the time) is also constrained by a wheelchair so that details of movement and facial expression predominate in the performance. The yellowish

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lighting falls almost entirely on Krapp himself, and contrasts with the deep blues and browns of the set around him. The lighting seems less motivated by realism but works expressively to highlight Krapp in distinction to the musty and dim setting. The camera moves more fluidly than in either the 1971 or 1972 adaptations, and even circles above and almost behind Krapp, making this adaptation the least ‘theatrically’ frontal. Pinter’s performance emphasises stillness rather than gesture or facial mobility, and overhead lighting prevents a consistently clear view of his face. His face is contemplative rather than seeming to wrestle with inner forces, and eruptions of sound from Krapp as he listens to his tapes take on greater force in contrast to the static body position and facial expression that predominate for the play’s fifty-​five-​minute duration. As in the other adaptations, the camera moves into close-​up increasingly through the play, but this is integrated more into the overall strategy for point-​of-​view since preceding wide shots of the space reveal much less of the setting than in the earlier versions. This adaptation was billed in Radio Times with reference to its theatrical provenance, as an ‘intriguing opportunity to see Nobel Laureate Harold Pinter perform Samuel Beckett’s dazzling examination of memory and mortality at the Royal Court Theatre in London’.11 But its lack of wide shots, the muted and physically still performance by Pinter, and the mobility of the camera, make it the most ‘televisual’ and least ‘theatrical’ of the adaptations because of the relationship between the room, the camera and the performer. Television drama has built on a theatrical heritage centred on domestic stories told in domestic settings. Problems of individual identity, family, home and social class have been explored in theatre by working them through on stage, and in television drama in the studio, acted out in three-​ dimensional space. Raymond Williams (1990: 56) described television drama as ‘the ultimate realisation of the original naturalist convention: the drama of the small enclosed room, in which a few characters lived out their private experience of an unseen public world’. The television producer Troy Kennedy Martin (1964) saw this dramatic form as deriving from European naturalist theatre and from American television drama of the 1950s, such as Paddy Chayefsky’s Marty (NBC, 1953), putting characters on screen who appear ordinary and recognisable, as if they have just walked in from the street outside. It is a tradition that Kennedy Martin criticised for its illusionistic settings and psychological performance style. By contrast, rooms in Beckett’s plays are lonely and empty environments, and in television productions they are clearly sets rather than locations. They draw attention to the artificial and metaphorical conventions of the theatrical avant-​garde, rather than naturalism, by their high-​contrast lighting that picks out specific parts of the space, their pared-​down settings and few props and their manipulation of proportion and perspective. While the television adaptations of

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Krapp certainly foreground performance, and use close-​up to grant access to Krapp’s thought processes and intensifying emotional responses to his tape recordings, the performance styles are exaggerated rather than ‘natural’ and develop in complex relationships with the sparse but therefore significant objects and spaces of the setting. While not exactly reflexive, the stagings for these adaptations of Krapp make no pretence of realism, and instead draw attention to artifice.

Picture planes The camera’s access to the three-​dimensional space of a room contrasts with the frontal modes of address in television adaptations of Beckett’s Comédie, Not I and Was Wo. Flat compositions represent an alternate approach to adaptation where the studio resembles the planar surface of a picture, and the space refuses three-​dimensionality. For example, the French director Marin Karmitz made a film version of Beckett’s Comédie in 1966, working closely with Beckett in a Paris studio (Foster 2012). This production used the interior space to explore the possibilities of a frontal relationship that matched the theatre play’s staging, in which three figures are stationary in a row of large urns throughout. In the theatre, the characters only speak when a spotlight falls on them. It is as if the light compels them to speak. Karmitz transformed this by cutting quickly from character to character in his film, as if the camera calls upon each to speak and be captured in the frame. The result is a rapid alternation of similar static and planar shot compositions. The studio becomes an abstract space that both retains a link with theatrical staging and also emphasises montage and framing in ways that draw attention to the film medium. The studio does not resemble a theatre stage, and the urns and speakers are suspended in a dimensionless space that is only comprehensible through the relative sizes of the characters in the image—​ large if they are near, and small if they are far away. The rhythms of editing produce a fugue-​like system of combinations of shot sizes and compositions, paralleling the rapid alternations of character speeches individually and in groups. Rapid cuts between close-​ups and long shots, with the characters stationary and facing the camera with blank expressions, disorient the viewer rather than giving access to a performance. While the actors in Karmitz’s production had appeared in a 1964 staging of the play in Paris, the film started afresh from the published text (Herren 2009). The planar surface in a depthless space was also used in the BBC’s version of Not I in 1977 and in the SDR adaptation of Footfalls in 1988. In each of these, light picks out images that are always on the same linear plane at the same distance from the camera. In Not I, there is just Whitelaw’s

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mouth, gabbling the words in close-​up, with no cuts between shots, so that the viewer seems to be confronted face-​to-​face. In Footfalls, a single female figure trudges slowly from left to right across a dark space, and back again. Action in three-​dimensional space is flattened onto a plane that reproduces the planar surface of the television screen, producing image compositions that seem graphical as much as representational. Beckett directed Was Wo with Walter Asmus at SDR in 1985 for broadcast the following year. In this adaptation, the characters’ bodies in the stage version were replaced by a large, diaphanous face (Bam) on the left side of the screen, and three smaller but brighter faces (Bim, Bom and Bem) on the right. The faces slowly materialise, speak, then dematerialise back into complete darkness in the television version, as if they meet and pass through the surface of the black screen into light, then disappear back again. Their appearing and vanishing parallels the play’s oscillating relationships of power and powerlessness among the voices. The depthless plane on screen matches the play’s questioning title—​in English translation, What Where—​and the faces seem to hesitate between material presence and fading into null blackness. By using the studio to shoot the faces in different shot sizes and with variable levels of light, the post-​produced collage of these shots appears to bring an impossible set of spaces and times together on the same screen surface. These static compositions and schematic, graphical uses of lighting and contrast invite the viewer to contemplate their structural, painterly qualities, as if they were abstract pictures on a gallery wall. The surface of the screen becomes a composition and a surface as well as a window through which action and movement are perceived. A later example of this is Act without Words II, directed by Enda Hughes for the Beckett on Film (2000–​02) season, where the actors’ performance appears in the horizontally aligned ‘windows’ of celluloid film frames, in a depthless flat space. In the framing materials around Beckett’s drama when presented on television in Britain and Germany, similar tensions can be seen between space and flat screen. As noted above, the BBC’s 1977 programme Shades was presented from a London theatre, in which Melvyn Bragg interviewed Martin Esslin about Beckett’s work. Esslin was shot from a slightly off-​centre position, revealing the theatre stage behind him on which a circular spotlight threw an elliptical shape. The presentation was designed not to appear frontal and flat, but spatial and to some extent theatrical. This contrasted with the photographs and artworks shown in the programme (photographs of Beckett, and paintings by Francis Bacon, for example) that were necessarily planar. In SDR’s broadcast of a selection of Beckett’s work in 1986, similar tensions can be seen. The caption card showed Beckett himself standing on the set of his television play Quadrat I & II [Quad] (SDR, 1981) and thus in a spatial volume whose back wall was partially created by a superimposed photograph

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appearing to rise vertically from the floor. In the main body of the programme, however, the presenter Georg Hensel adopted an entirely frontal position against a flat backdrop to address the viewer as if face-​to-​face. This planar composition contrasted strongly with the caption card, and each format made a link with the spatial and planar tensions in Beckett’s dramas themselves. In the later Beckett on Film (2000–​02) series of adaptations, the same tensions were still at work: Neil Jordan’s version of Not I uses frontal and side-​on camera positions, suggesting a planar arrangement that segments space into two axes, while Anthony Minghella’s Play experiments interestingly with the spatial depth of a large set, frontal and side-​on close-​ ups of performers, and interpolated film frames that draw attention to the flat surface of the recording medium. In one case, a Beckett theatre text was ‘opened out’ to include sequences not specified in the script. The BBC’s Festival version of Krapp, produced by Peter Luke and directed by Prudence Fitzgerald, was recorded on videotape at BBC Television Centre in October 1963. Fitzgerald expanded the cast to include a Nurse (Genny Cook) and Krapp’s lover (Kika Markham) in addition to Cyril Cusack as Krapp, so that flashbacks of Krapp’s past with his lover could be introduced electronically, with scenes appearing to issue from the mirror in Krapp’s room. The flashbacks were shot on film in a water tank and showed Krapp punting past a tree with his lover, and were over-​lit to give a dreamy effect in contrast to the very low lighting of Krapp’s room. Editing the play in post-​production was lengthy and problematic, and the director was so unhappy with the programme that she seriously considered withdrawing it from transmission.12 This example of departure from as-​if-​ live studio production of Beckett’s theatre plays demonstrates that ‘opening out’ to take advantage of special effects and post-​production appeared ultimately to have neither aesthetic nor technical benefits, and records of audience response support this conclusion. Viewers of the BBC’s Beckett adaptations were conscious that what they were watching was theatre adapted for the screen. The BBC’s Audience Report on the 1961 version of Godot, for example, included explicit acknowledgement of the play’s staging in London.13 The report refers to audience resistance to the play alongside their awareness of its reputation at the Royal Court Theatre, quoting one unnamed viewer who thought this was ‘a lot of fatuous nonsense. I’m not even going to try to decide, as the critics did for months when it first came out, what the author was getting at’. The Audience Report on the 1963 Krapp said: over two-​thirds of those supplying evidence thought the play excruciatingly dull and dreary to watch. … Krapp’s ‘den’ looked too large for his supposed indigence, it was said, and there were many complaints about the detail (the lighting, as ‘too gloomy’ in particular) of the production that viewers,

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grudgingly for the most part, admitted was in keeping with the mood of the play. One or two thought the management of the ‘flash-​back’ sequences (with scenes from Krapp’s past appearing to issue from the mirror on the wall) just ‘plain silly’, but there were others who spoke of the whole technique of presentation and the ‘special effects’ in particular as very effective and ‘cleverly done’.14

Viewers were prepared to overlook patently ‘unrealistic’ settings and pared-​ down visual detail as long as other aspects of the play (most often the actors’ performances) compensated for this. They expected to see well-​ known actors with theatre reputations (as well as experience in television drama) and to enjoy intense performances by them. They recognised the significance of Beckett as a theatre writer, but if they did not enjoy the drama, they expressed feelings of alienation and incomprehension. The study of Beckett’s theatre plays as presented on television offers an exceptional opportunity to analyse how adaptation strategies recur across the decades and are affected by a range of textual and extra-​textual forces. For both aesthetic and practical reasons, long before the post-​1960 programmes discussed here, television adaptation of theatre had ceased to relay staged performances as if the camera were a member of the audience with a seat in the stalls (Cooke 2003: 14). Spatial constraint of this kind was reserved for performances of opera, rare relays of West End stage farces (Wyver 2011) and situation comedy written for television. Even when fourth-​wall sets were used, they were designed without an elevated stage or pieces of set at different heights, so that mobile camera dollies on the flat studio floor could let the cameras penetrate into the performance space and create opportunities for lateral shots, multiple angles for close-​ups and either tracking or panning shots as well as zooms into the action. The spatial constraint and the restraint of camera positions and movement in Beckett’s adapted theatre plays, both those he directed himself and those directed by others, are thus significant and draw attention to themselves. Frontal arrangements restrict the types of shots available to the director and use up much of the studio floor-​area because wide shots need to encompass both foreground and background. For Beckett’s plays, relatively large studio spaces need to contain only a single set, but the cameras move in restricted ways around it. This maximises spatial concentration for the viewer but also temporal concentration, since sequences in almost all the adaptations are shot in long takes with minimal cuts. In the television industry, camera movement and the avoidance of frontal shooting have been encouraged as the best use of the medium’s possibilities and its non-​ theatrical aesthetic. Even in studio-​shot single plays of the 1950s and 1960s, such as those for ITV’s Armchair Theatre (1956–​74), cameras were moved smoothly into and around the fictional space, along axial dimensions and

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also in curving and swooping movements (Cooke 2003: 43–​7). Variation of camera height or close-​ups on actors or set details also added to the sense of the studio space as dynamic, rather than enclosed and oriented towards a specific angle of viewing. When adaptations of Beckett’s plays were made in large single sets, arranging the studio as an empty space with a three-​walled set was an unusual and theatrical choice. Such choices encourage viewer responses to spatial constraint and temporal intensity that benefit the plays aesthetically, but often they did not please their audiences at home despite often being critically admired (Bignell 2009: 164–​201). The fact that the adaptations used the performers, staging and often some of the production staff of theatre productions of the same plays meant that professional critics and occasionally domestic viewers could make comparisons between stage and screen in terms of quality and achievement. Production histories of theatre versions of the plays invited evaluation of the adaptations in relation to each other but also in relation to theatre productions (whereas such discourses were not available for evaluating adaptations of novels). Many of the personnel making Beckett adaptations had theatre backgrounds (producers and directors as well as performers) and the high cultural value of theatre as an artistic form lent the adaptations a special cachet for their makers and sometimes for their audiences. The spatial realisation of Beckett’s theatre plays on television was a means to negotiate ideas about the relationships between television and theatre in very concrete ways (Bignell 2019). Stage space and screen space were articulated with and against each other, both materially and conceptually.15

Productions discussed Act without Words II by Samuel Beckett (Beckett on Film). Dir. Enda Hughes. Channel 4. 7.20–​ 7.35pm, Friday 29 March 2002 (first UK screening; it had previously been screened theatrically at festivals, etc.). Eh Joe by Samuel Beckett. Dir. Alan Gibson. BBC2. 10.20–​ 10.40pm, Monday 4 July 1966. Footfalls by Samuel Beckett. Dir. Walter Asmus. Channel 4. 00.00–​00.20am, Wednesday 13 February 1990 (first UK screening of this work; it was acquired from the German broadcaster SDR which made it and first screened it in 1988). Happy Days by Samuel Beckett (Arena). Dir. Samuel Beckett. BBC2. 8.30–​10.10pm, Saturday 13 October 1979. Krapp’s Last Tape by Samuel Beckett (Festival). Dir. Prudence Fitzgerald. BBC. 9.55–​10.35pm, Wednesday 13 November 1963. Krapp’s Last Tape by Samuel Beckett (Thirty-​Minute Theatre). Dir. Donald McWhinnie. BBC2. 10.25–​11.00pm, Wednesday 29 November 1972.

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Krapp’s Last Tape by Samuel Beckett (Homage to Beckett). Dir. Alan Schneider. Channel 4. 9.00–​10.05pm, Sunday 11 February 1990 (the first UK broadcast of the 1971 WNET production). Krapp’s Last Tape by Samuel Beckett. Dir. Ian Rickson. BBC4. 9.00–​ 9.50pm, Thursday 21 June 2007. Not I by Samuel Beckett (Beckett on Film). Dir. Neil Jordan. Channel 4. 7.45–​8.00pm, Sunday 1 July 2001 (first UK screening, though it had earlier been screened theatrically at festivals, etc.). Play by Samuel Beckett (Beckett on Film). Dir. Anthony Minghella. Channel 4. 7.45–​8.00pm, Friday 29 June 2001 (first UK screening; it had previously been screened theatrically at festivals, etc.). Quad [Quadrat I & II] by Samuel Beckett. Dir. Samuel Beckett. BBC2. 10.40–​ 11.00pm, Thursday 16 December 1982 (acquired from SDR which made and screened it in 1981). Rockaby by Samuel Beckett (Arena). Dir. D. A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus. BBC2. 10.05–​10.55pm, Tuesday 14 December 1982. Shades, an hour-​long edition of The Lively Arts offering three plays by Samuel Beckett accompanied by discussion by Melvyn Bragg and Martin Esslin: Ghost Trio dir. Donald McWhinnie; … but the clouds … dir. Donald McWhinnie; and Not I dir. Anthony Page. BBC2. 9.00–​10.00pm, Sunday 17 April 1977. Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett. Prod. Donald McWhinnie. BBC. 9.50–​11.20pm, Monday 26 June 1961.

Notes 1 See the programme file ‘The Lively Arts: Shades’, at the BBC Written Archives Centre (WAC), file number T51/​350/​1. Subsequent references are given as BBC WAC followed by the file number. 2 Radio Times, 9 December 1982, p. 53. 3 See BBC WAC, T5/​2420/​1, ‘Waiting for Godot’. 4 BBC WAC, T5/​2239/​7 ‘TV Drama memos 1964’, memo from Harry Moore to Head of Drama Group, 9 February 1964. 5 For the process of producing Shades, see BBC WAC, T51/​350/​1, ‘The Lively Arts: Shades’. 6 For the production process of the 1961 play, see BBC WAC, T5/​2420/​1. 7 Again, see BBC WAC, T51/​350/​1, ‘The Lively Arts: Shades’. 8 BBC WAC, RCONT20 ‘Samuel Beckett, 1970–​79’, memo from Tristram Powell (producer) to BBC Copyright Department, 13 June 1979. 9 Radio Times, 9 December 1982, p. 25. 10 Radio Times, 9 December 1982, p. 47. 11 Radio Times, 14 June 2007, p. 120. 12 BBC WAC, T5/​2144/​1, memo from Peter Luke (producer) to Prudence Fitzgerald (director), 14 November 1963. 9/​ 7/​ 52, ‘Audience Research Report: Waiting for Godot’, 13 BBC WAC, R/​ 26 June 1961.

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14 BBC WAC, R9/​ 7/​ 63, ‘Audience Research Report: Thirty-​Minute Theatre. Krapp’s Last Tape’, 13 November 1963. 15 This chapter derives from the research project ‘Spaces of Television: Production, Site and Style’, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), led by Jonathan Bignell and based at the University of Reading, 2010–​15. I gratefully acknowledge the support of the AHRC and the cooperation of the BBC Written Archives Centre and the Beckett International Foundation. Preliminary versions of this chapter were presented as conference papers: at the Beckett Working Group, University of Southampton (2012), organised by the late Julie Campbell; and at the Screen Plays conference, University of Westminster (2012), organised by the editors of this volume.

References Adams, J. (1998), ‘Screen play: elements of a performance aesthetic in television drama’, in Ridgman (ed.), Boxed Sets: Television Representations of Theatre, pp. 141–​57. Anon. (1966), ‘A new play for TV by Samuel Beckett: Eh Joe? [sic]’, Radio Times, 30 June 1966, p. 19. Aston, E., and G. Savona (1991), Theatre as Sign System: A Semiotics of Text and Performance (London: Routledge). Barthes, R. (1973), ‘The Romans in films’, in his Mythologies, trans. A. Lavers (London: Granada), pp. 26–​8. Bignell, J. (2009), Beckett on Screen: The Television Plays (Manchester: Manchester University Press). Bignell, J. (2019), ‘Performing the identity of the medium: adaptation and television historiography’, Adaptation, 12:2, 149–​64. Cardwell, S. (2002), Adaptation Revisited: Television and the Classic Novel (Manchester: Manchester University Press). Caughie, J. (2000), ‘What do actors do when they act?’, in J. Bignell, S. Lacey and M. Macmurraugh-​Kavanagh (eds), British Television Drama: Past, Present and Future (Basingstoke: Palgrave), pp. 162–​74. Cooke, L. (2003), British Television Drama: A History (London: British Film Institute). Esslin, M. (1987), The Field of Drama: How the Signs of Drama Create Meaning on Stage and Screen (London: Methuen). Fischer-​Lichte, E. (1992), The Semiotics of Theater, trans. J. Gaines and D. L. Jones (Bloomington: Indiana University Press). Foster, D. (2012), ‘Spatial aesthetics in the film adaptation of Samuel Beckett’s Comédie’, Screen, 53:2, 105–​17. Frost, E., and A. McMullan (2003), ‘The Blue Angel Beckett on Film project: questions of adaptation, aesthetics and audience in filming Beckett’s theatrical canon’, in L. Ben-​Zvi (ed.), Drawing on Beckett: Portraits, Performances and Cultural Contexts (Tel Aviv: Assaph), pp. 215–​38.

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Gardner, C., and J. Wyver (1983), ‘The single play: from Reithian reverence to cost accounting and censorship’, Screen, 24:4–​5, 114–​24. Giddings, R., and K. Selby (2001), The Classic Novel from Page to Screen (Manchester: Manchester University Press). Giddings, R., and E. Sheen (2000), The Classic Serial on Television and Radio (Basingstoke: Palgrave). Herren, G. (2007), Samuel Beckett’s Plays on Film and Television (New York: Palgrave Macmillan). Herren, G. (2009), ‘Different music: Karmitz and Beckett’s film adaptation of Comédie’, Journal of Beckett Studies, 18:1–​2, 10–​31. Kennedy Martin, T. (1964), ‘Nats go home: first statement of a new drama for television’, Encore, 48, 11:2, 21–​33. Knowlson, J. (1996), Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett (London: Bloomsbury). Leitch, T. (2008), ‘Adaptation studies at a crossroads’, Adaptation, 1:1, 63–​77. Macmurraugh-​ Kavanagh, M., and S. Lacey (1999), ‘Who framed theatre? The “moment of change” in British TV drama’, New Theatre Quarterly, 15:1, 58–​74. Manvell, R. (1979), Theater and Film: A Comparative Study of the Two Forms of Dramatic Art, and of the Problems of Adaptation of Stage Plays into Films (London: Associated University Presses). Pavis, P. (1991), Languages of the Stage: Essays in the Semiology of the Theatre, trans. S. Melrose (London: Performance Analysis Journal Publications). Ridgman, J. (1998), ‘Introduction’, in J. Ridgman (ed.), Boxed Sets: Television Representations of Theatre, pp. 1–​9. Ridgman, J. (1998, ed.), Boxed Sets: Television Representations of Theatre (Luton: University of Luton Press)​. Smart, W. (2010), ‘Old wine in new bottles—​adaptation of classic theatrical plays on BBC Television 1957–​1985’ (PhD thesis, Royal Holloway, University of London). Taylor, D. (1998), ‘Pure imagination, poetry’s lyricism, Titian’s colours: whatever happened to the single play on British TV?’, New Statesman, 6 March 1998, pp. 38–​9. Taylor, N. (1998), ‘A history of the stage play on BBC television’, in Ridgman (ed.), Boxed Sets: Television Representations of Theatre, pp. 23–​37. Tornqvist, E. (1999), Ibsen, Strindberg and the Intimate Theatre: Studies in TV Presentation (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press). Williams, R. (1990), Television, Technology and Cultural Form (London: Fontana). Wyver, J. (2011), ‘Brian Rix presents: Reluctant Heroes (BBC, 1952)’, Screen Plays, 7 December 2011, online at https://​screen​play​stv.wordpr​ess.com/​2011/​12/​07/​ brian-​rix-​prese​nts-​reluct​ant-​her​oes-​bbc-​1952 (accessed 13 November 2020).

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Television’s natural disposition? An analysis of Naturalism and performance in relation to BBC productions of Ibsen’s plays Stephen Lacey The starting point for this chapter is a comment by theatre director turned television producer Simon Curtis, then in charge of BBC2’s Performance strand of theatre play adaptations, in an interview with Jeremy Ridgman about the origins and development of the series: ‘It is true that naturalism works better in the [television] studio’, Curtis said. ‘And it is much easier in the theatre to do a stylised set—​with real elements but which isn’t representing a real room. In TV it’s much harder to pull that off’ (Ridgman 1998: 206). Curtis is here offering a familiar view of naturalism, which is equated with verisimilitude and ‘scenic literalism’, and in which the studio is seen as a space particularly suited for the creation of ‘real’ environments represented ‘as if’ they were extracted from social reality beyond the stage /​screen. The contrast with theatre that Curtis draws would not be seen as controversial: for some time, television has shared the cinema’s ‘realist disposition’ to represent environment, and therefore mise-​en-​scène, in literal terms; there have been few attempts to produce the kind of stylised realism, or outright abstraction, on television that is commonplace in contemporary theatre scenography. It is also the case that naturalism is often used in a derogatory way in the discussion of television. Even as derivations of the term—​such as natural, naturalistic—​have become accepted (especially in the discussion of acting, for example, or dialogue, where they are normally used approvingly), naturalism, the noun, and Naturalism, the historical movement, have been used as synonyms for the theatre and the theatrical.1 The severing of theatrical roots in television drama has frequently been done through the rejection of naturalism and the studio play with which it became associated: as Troy Kennedy Martin asserted in an influential onslaught on naturalism entitled ‘Nats go home’, studio-​based television drama was a ‘makeshift bastard born of the theatre and photographed with film techniques’ (Kennedy Martin 1964: 25). It was, therefore, a dead end for the television dramatist and director, who should instead be adopting the techniques of filmmaking. As Kennedy Martin pithily expressed it: ‘All drama which owes its form or

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substance to theatre plays is OUT’ (1964: 23). As a call to arms at a particular cultural conjuncture, this was liberating; but, as this volume makes clear, it could also be limiting. This version of naturalism-​as-​scenic-​literalism, a default position in the discussion of televisual space, whilst being not entirely inaccurate nevertheless sells Naturalism short, as does the impulsive rejection of naturalism and the theatrical. One of the main purposes of this chapter is to subject naturalism, and Naturalism, to critical scrutiny, to rescue it from the limitations of habit and to consider how it might help in the analysis of selected productions of one of the most adapted of nineteenth-​century dramatists, Henrik Ibsen. Reciprocally, such an analysis might also show the potential of television drama to negotiate a complex understanding of Naturalism as a historical phenomenon, rather than a contemporary habit. This chapter is particularly concerned with the use of space, with the reconfiguring of historical stage conventions for the television studio and in the nature of actors’ performances. The examples chosen here are: Ghosts (dir. Elijah Moshinsky, BBC, 1987), A Doll’s House (dir. David Thacker, BBC, 1992) and Hedda Gabler (dir. Deborah Warner, BBC, 1993). The latter two productions were shown within the Performance strand and the first as part of BBC2’s Theatre Night, which preceded it.2 The equation of naturalism with scenic literalism was not accidental. This is not only because Naturalist plays were, historically speaking, renowned for innovations in stage design, especially realism in décor and staging, but also because environment carried a particular significance in Naturalist drama. This has been explored persuasively and in detail by Raymond Williams (1977). Intervening, interestingly, in a debate about realism and television a decade after Kennedy Martin, Williams placed television drama firmly in the tradition of realist stage dramaturgy. That tradition was rooted in the contemporary world—​that is, contemporary to its first audience—​in its setting, theme and language, socially extended (in terms of the social, especially class, experience being represented) and secular in orientation. This tradition came to full flowering through the latter part of the nineteenth century, although it had roots in the centuries preceding it. For Williams, Naturalism and Realism were interchangeable (he noted that Strindberg used them thus) and were not bound by questions of ‘method’—​dramatic or scenographic—​but were deeply connected to questions of morality, politics and philosophy. For Williams, the key relationship is that between individuals and the environment in which they move. Williams ascribes a particular meaning to Naturalism in the course of a discussion of the implications of a secular view of the world for drama, linking it with the natural sciences: ‘Naturalism is the conscious opposition to supernaturalism and to metaphysical accounts

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of human actions, with an attempt to describe human actions in exclusively human terms’ (Williams 1977: 230). One of the major achievements of Ibsen and his fellow Naturalists was that the very notion of what it means to be ‘human’ was subjected to scrutiny in ways informed by science and especially scientific and philosophical concepts of determinism. As Toril Moi (2012) has argued, Ibsen’s unflinching opposition to idealist bourgeois ideology makes him both a Realist and a Modernist. For Ibsen, individual lives are shaped—​constrained—​by environmental forces, and these may be biological (the use of hereditary syphilis in both A Doll’s House and Ghosts) and /​or socio-​political (the workings of patriarchy in all three of the plays considered in this chapter). As Williams correctly noted, this accorded a particular role to dramatic space and to the staged room in particular. The dominance of the domestic room in naturalist drama occurred because the family home was increasingly the centre for human action for the bourgeois family; it was ‘entirely consonant with a particular reading of the place of human action—​this is the life of the bourgeois family, where important things occur’ (Williams 1977: 232).3 Additionally, stage spaces—​always more than simply backdrops to the narrative action—​are embodiments of the environmental forces that constrain, and sometimes crush, the characters that inhabit them. They are tangible representations of the oppressive forces of a constraining social and moral order, limiting the possibilities for change and growth. Ibsen analysed ‘the indissoluble relation between character and environment, in which the room was a character because it was a specific environment created by and radically affecting, radically displaying, the nature of the characters who lived in it’ (Williams 1977: 231). In this way, determinism is not only a theme in the plays, but is an essential aspect of Ibsen’s dramaturgy, and the insistent detail of realist stage environments is both a reflection of the lives of the characters who inhabit them and a generator of synecdoches and metaphors of the wider, historical, moral and environmental forces that lie beyond the bourgeois living room. In all three of the adaptations chosen for closer attention here, the determinations of these environmental forces are evident in their narratives. A Doll’s House, which occurs over just three days during the period before Christmas, has as its centre the bourgeois ‘doll wife’ Nora Helmer (played by Juliet Stevenson), whose husband Torvald (Trevor Eve) has just secured a promotion at the bank. The past, however, returns to haunt Nora, who forged her father’s signature to underwrite a loan from Krogstadt (David Calder) that funded a trip to warmer climes to save her husband’s ailing health. The inescapability of the past—​of the consequences of one’s own actions as well as those of others—​is evident in all of the major strands of the plot: for example, in the determination of Krogstadt who, disgraced by

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fraud, demands that Nora influence her husband to secure him a position at the bank (which Torvald, in ignorance of the loan, refuses to do); and in the hereditary syphilis suffered by Dr Rank (Patrick Malahide), a friend of both Torvald and Nora who is—​in this production—​clearly sexually obsessed with Nora. As in Ghosts, this disease is used as both an example of (biological) determinism and a metaphor for the inescapability of the past more generally. At the drama’s climax, Nora comes to the realisation that she has lived her life as a lie—​a prisoner first of her father, who treated her as a doll, and then of Torvald. In one of the most famous endings in stage history, Nora slams the front door shut, leaving Torvald and their three children to embark on a journey of self-​discovery. Ghosts similarly concerns the inescapability of the past and the damage caused by a constrained, and constraining, conservative moral orthodoxy. The narrative focuses on Mrs Alving (Judi Dench) and is set on the eve of the opening of an orphanage built in memory of her husband. In a series of set-​piece confrontations between Mrs Alving and Pastor Manders (Michael Gambon), one-​time friend and spiritual confidante, the reality behind the public gesture is revealed: Captain Alving was a promiscuous drunkard who—​as Mrs Alving learns during the course of the play—​was probably the father of the family servant, Regina (Natasha Richardson). Once persuaded by Manders to remain with her husband despite everything, Mrs Alving is attempting to use the building of the orphanage to escape the past and begin her life anew, but this is doomed. Alving’s dissolute life affects more than his wife: their son Osvald (Kenneth Branagh), an artist attempting to pursue a life free from bourgeois hypocrisy in Paris, is dying from hereditary syphilis passed on by his father. At the play’s close, Mrs Alving is forced to confront the burning down of the orphanage, the consequences of her inability to take control of her life by leaving her husband when she could and the death of her son, who asks that she assist him to take his own life. Unlike in A Doll’s House, Ibsen gives his protagonist no way out of the dilemmas that the past—​and the bourgeois idealist ideologies that have shaped it as surely as the syphilis that so insistently works through Osvald’s brain—​have bequeathed to the present. The protagonist of Hedda Gabler, the eponymous Hedda Tesman (Fiona Shaw), is similarly allowed no way of escaping her fate, in an adaptation (originally seen on stage) that transposes the narrative from Norway to rural Ireland. We meet Hedda newly returned from her honeymoon after marrying the dull but genial Jorgen Tesman (Nicholas Woodeson). Shaw’s Hedda is a damaged woman, whose cowardice and voyeurism are ultimately a product of the social world she is shaped by (symbolised in the play by the portrait of her father, General Gabler, which dominates the action). Confronted by the return of her would-​be lover, Ejlert Loveborg (Stephen Rea), who

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reminds her of what was lost, and the barely concealed erotic machinations of Judge Brack (Donal McCann), Hedda is trapped. In a gesture of romantic idealism, Hedda secretly burns the manuscript of Lovborg’s history of civilisation, his magnum opus (his ‘child’), and persuades him to commit suicide ‘with vine leaves in your hair’; Lovborg shoots himself, sordidly, in a brothel. Faced with the appalling and unintended consequences of all her plans, Hedda shoots herself with her father’s pistol. The challenge for the director who wishes to be true to the playwright’s intentions when adapting Ibsen for the small screen is to capture carefully chosen stage detail and invest it with the kind of resonance that Ibsen did. Ibsen’s stage directions give an indication of where significant detail can be found. The main playing space for A Doll’s House, which is laid out in the stage directions to act 1, contains the following detail: ‘Back right, door to the hall; back left, door to Helmer’s study’ (Ibsen 1997: 1). At one level, Ibsen’s stage directions, which are famously detailed, create the social, cultural and spatial context for the action; at another, they gesture both outwards, towards the world that lies beyond the apartment, and inwards, towards the tensions that will overwhelm the Helmer household. This is evident in the juxtaposition of the two doors (and it is important to bear in mind that the play was written for an end-​on, proscenium arch stage, so the back wall is designed to be visible throughout the performance). The door to the hall leads to the outside world, through which the major threats to Nora Helmer’s security (notably in the form of her tormentor and nemesis Krogstadt) will arrive: later, it will also be the means of Nora’s escape to a new life. The second door, which leads to Torvald’s study, a room neither we nor Nora will enter, stands as a metonym for him and the patriarchal and idealist values he represents; even when not on stage, his presence is evoked by this door. A similar signification is proposed in the opening stage directions of Ghosts, which presents us with a ‘large garden room’ leading into a conservatory through which ‘a view of a gloomy fjord, half-​hidden by continual rain, can be made out’ (Ibsen 1971: 21). Once more, doors lead to the outside world, the crushing oppressiveness of which is evoked by the ‘continual rain’. Later in the play, the destruction of the orphanage will be partially visible through the conservatory glass, as will the ‘burning sun’ that dominates the final act. Reading the stage directions of both plays in this way assumes that the audience will, if presented with an end-​on staging, be able to hold these elements in view throughout. As Nora wrestles with the secret of the loan agreement on which she forged her father’s signature, the catastrophe of Helmer finding out (which, when it eventually happens, turns into a liberation) is present for the audience because of the door to his study; as Mrs Alving wrestles intellectually and morally with both Pastor Manders and

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her own past, the society that constrained—​and constrains—​her actions is viewed, metonymically, throughout. Stage productions may, of course, choose to ignore these signifying elements, or, even if they are present, may or may not draw attention to them: individual audience members will, however, always have the choice to look at them or not. There are clearly difficulties with these signifying processes when they are applied to screen adaptations, as the focus provided by the camera does not permit, except occasionally, an open view of the space, nor give the spectator the freedom to look where he or she will. One of the pleasures of the Ibsen productions considered here—​and one of the reasons why they are of continuing interest—​is that they show directors and actors wrestling with the problems of how to negotiate these scenic elements on television, how to represent these complex and detailed environments, in a way that gives due weight to the dialectical relationship between environment and character. This is clear when the main spatial strategies are analysed. As already noted, Thacker’s production of A Doll’s House, like most Performance adaptations, remains within the broad conventions of Ibsen’s source text—​that is, it does not, by and large, open the play up or move beyond the interior spaces specified by Ibsen. There are some minor reconfigurations of the space, however, which are in part accommodations to the camera and the screen. For example, the production creates effectively three rooms, including Helmer’s study and adding a dining-​room at right angles to the public living-​room of the original and connected by double-​doors to the study. The inclusion of the dining-​room has no obvious importance in itself but it does allow the action to flow, permitting an increased physicality as characters are allowed freedom of movement, and creates visual depth, which counteracts the potential for flatness if the single stage space were to be literally translated onto the screen. The expansion of the space also allows the camera to take the viewer, though not Nora, into Helmer’s study, largely for cutaways. This does not make the study an active space in its own right so much as a substitute for the continued presence of Helmer’s study door in the stage version. It reminds the viewer that they are a potential, and sometimes actual, eavesdropper on the action in the main public room. At times, Thacker’s adaptation retains the original significance of the study door, as Nora occasionally goes to it to listen in order see if Helmer is likely to overhear what she is saying: both strategies reinforce Helmer’s role as synecdoche and metaphor for patriarchal values and determinations. Space is extended in one other way that also reinforces the metonymic significance of doors. The opening credits are played across a sequence showing Nora arriving via the staircase, shot from above, that links the apartment to the street. This addition can be read as a reminder to the viewer of the world beyond, to

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which the Helmer household is connected (via stairs) and from which it is separated (there is no direct or visible connection to the street). Like that of A Doll’s House, Elijah Moshinsky’s 1987 production of Ghosts does not attempt to reconfigure the text or move the action beyond the Alving home. It adopts, however, a different approach to the reproduction of the spaces on screen that Ibsen creates on the page. The adaptation takes the idea of depth suggested by the original stage directions—​the conservatory and then the fjords beyond the room—​and translates it into the house itself, which is reproduced as a series of dark rooms that recede into the distance, creating the appearance of a tunnel, the end of which is difficult to determine. The conservatory and fjord are omitted, though the side windows are retained and assume greater importance as a result, since the last act is shot in a way that reveals them as the source of the sunlight that resonates metaphorically through the dialogue. The production adopts a distinctive approach to the inclusion of textual detail. The orphanage, which as we noted appears only as it is burning down offstage, glimpsed through the back window, is represented in Moshinsky’s production as an architect’s model and is in the main space throughout. Although not always visible, it is often centrally placed, with the characters moving around and talking across it. It has, indeed, an extra significance because of its frequent presence in shot, though attention is rarely drawn to it. In one way, this is an elegant solution to the problem of how to deal with such detail on screen, since an undue focus—​a close-​up, say—​on a single detail of obvious metaphoric or symbolic significance might register as portentous. In the televised Ghosts, all portraits are blacked out, with no features allowed to dominate, or comment on, the action. In Hedda Gabler, the portrait of Hedda’s father, General Gabler, which is a brooding, metonymic and metaphoric presence in the stage play, is omitted entirely. The set of Ghosts leads the eye down the corridor, a composition of vertical and horizontal planes. The actors are frequently grouped, and the action staged and shot, in a way that draws attention to this symmetry, with deep focus—​sometimes containing the entire length of the house/​corridor—​used to striking and self-​conscious effect (there are other aspects of this, to which we will return). The production is also dominated by a uniform and metaphoric use of colour. The entire space is dark blue-​grey or black, and this is picked up in the costumes. This foregrounding of shape and colour signals an approach to design and space that differs from that of A Doll’s House in one striking way, in that it is to a degree abstract and symbolic, rather than realistic and metonymic. In this way, the set is non-​naturalistic (in the sense of not being a simulacra of a real place), so that it can be naturalistic (in the sense that it creates a style for the production in which the reciprocal relationship between characters and their environment is given an appropriate aesthetic form).

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The reconfiguring of ‘literal’ space to emphasise the metaphoric and synecdochal possibilities of the domestic environments is also a feature of Deborah Warner’s Hedda Gabler, designed by Hildegard Bechler, Warner’s long-​term collaborator in the theatre. The production reproduces the space from Ibsen’s stage version, a solid, austere, upper-​class interior, its solidity evoking the conventions of naturalist theatre design in what seems at first sight to be a studio version of a box-​set. However, the space is extended to a room beyond, accessed by a door in the middle, to which neither the viewer nor Hedda have access until the end: it is where Hedda commits suicide, her body revealed by the camera at the play’s conclusion. The main room is bleached of colour, bleak and with minimal furniture; the inner room, however, is often soaked in red—​prefiguring Hedda’s suicide, perhaps. This both has a realistic explanation—​the Tesmans have just moved into the house—​and is a metaphoric comment on the characters’ lives. The walls are stripped, and the omnipresent portrait of General Gabler is replaced by a series of non-​reflecting ‘mirrors’: that is, they are framed as mirrors, but blackened so as not to reflect any images—​or, as it were, reflect only ­darkness—​and are often in shot. It is worth pausing to note that the sets of both Ghosts and Hedda Gabler do not quite conform to Curtis’ precept with which this chapter opened: they are not ‘literal’ representations of ‘real’ places. Like several productions in the Performance series, they take symbolist or expressionistic approaches familiar from theatre design and apply them to the television studio. The availability of these readings of space and place is, of course, dependent on the way that such spaces are constructed by the camera—​that is, by shot length and framing. All three productions are much less reliant on close-​up than might be expected of dramas dominated by character interaction and dialogue (although close-​ up remains important). Thacker’s approach to framing, which might be considered the most orthodox, keeps the actors largely in mid-​shot, their upper bodies in view, which has the effect of capturing much of the space behind them—​or, one might say, capturing the actors in dialogue with the spaces they inhabit. For example, there is a recurrent motif in the production of Nora and Torvald being separated by a table, which is central to the dining-​room in which much of the action occurs, and which is frequently in view. The table is simultaneously an indexical sign of comfort and wealth and an embodiment of Torvald’s power. He addresses Nora across it, hectoring her about her supposed profligacy. When they return from a Christmas party, he sexually assaults her across it in what Thacker interprets as a near-​rape, interrupted only by Dr Rank. At the end of the narrative, Nora demonstrates her resolve by asking Torvald to join her at the table as she explains her decision to leave him. This final encounter is shot almost entirely in close-​up, the space stripped

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away or left as a halo of darkness around the head-​shots that now dominate. The repressive bourgeois living-​room is left behind, literally as well as metaphorically. The appeal to an aesthetics of symmetry, abstraction and metaphor in both Ghosts and Hedda Gabler noted earlier is also partly a product of the way that space is framed. Both productions rely on a balance between shot lengths, with a striking and recurrent use of long shots and, as noted in relation to Ghosts, deep focus as a counterpoint to the encounters between individual characters, who are shot mostly in mid-​shot or close-​up. The effect is to place the actors in relation to each other and the space in a way that often isolates them and dramatises their relationship to each other. This is especially so for Hedda, who seems adrift from everyone else, literally as well as metaphorically, sometimes seizing hold of furniture as she passes by, as if tossed on a wave and seeking a haven. She also clings to the walls. The first sight we have of Hedda is emerging from behind a chair, an entrance that is both disturbing and comic (Fiona Shaw’s performance creates some of its most memorable effects from the tension between an out-​of-​kilter oddness and comedy). The emotional chasm that separates Hedda and her husband is often rendered as spatial distance, whilst Judge Brack’s insidious power over Hedda is represented best in a striking sequence towards the end of the play when he is placed close to the camera—​downstage in theatrical terms, and to the left of the frame—​whilst she is locked into a corner of the room, some way behind him (and therefore the viewer /​camera) and to the right. The way that space is shot in these productions challenges another of the assumptions frequently made about naturalist drama on the screen—​that it is closely linked to the observation of character psychology and the close-​ up. As Curtis suggests, the intimacy of the studio favours the intensity of naturalist plays and actors’ performances: ‘my feeling is that in the studio, on video-​tape, what works best is just capturing those faces, those close-​ ups … the minutiae of human behaviour is often better achieved here than in the theatre’ (quoted in Ridgman 1998: 201). The general correlation of studio space and actor-​centred drama was noted astutely by John Caughie (2000: 77): the studio was a ‘performative space—​a space for acting—​rather than narrative space—​a space for action’. The dominance of acting in the meaning-​making processes of studio drama is particularly apparent in adaptations of theatre plays because of the equation of ‘theatre’ on television with ‘quality’ and the draw of recognisable actors for the audience. Indeed, one of the main attractions of Performance—​as it is for high-​end television drama in the UK generally—​was Curtis’ success in attracting some of the best-​known actors from both stage and screen. Some were already famous (Judi Dench, who starred in Rodney Ackland’s Absolute Hell, which later transferred to the National Theatre, and Jeremy Irons, who appeared in

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Christopher Hampton’s Tales from Hollywood in 1992, the year he won an Oscar for Best Actor). Others were established and beginning to become well known to a broad public, such as Bill Nighy, Juliet Stevenson, Zoë Wanamaker, Hugh Grant, Jane Horrocks and Colin Firth. The attraction, as Curtis observed (in Ridgman 1998: 200) was not only the chance to act in some of the best-​known plays in the stage canon but also the rehearsal time of four or five weeks, familiar from theatre but increasingly unheard of on television. The productions considered here clearly feature some of the most accomplished and high-​profile British stage and screen actors, and each relies on those actors’ ability to reveal the ‘minutiae of human behaviour’ in close-​ up; Ibsen was, after all, intensely interested in what made people tick, their motivations and goals, and what prevented them from achieving them. However, the variety of shot lengths employed means that actors can often use the techniques and strategies that they would have at their disposal on the stage—​that is, their bodies and a repertoire of gestures and movements. They are not restricted to the head and face, and the fact that these adaptations use a variety of shot-​lengths suggests that there is more than character psychology or the intensity of emotional introspection associated with the actor’s face in play. The television production of A Doll’s House, for example, shows that there is a politics of the body that has to be negotiated on the small screen, as it does on the stage. Toril Moi has argued that A Doll’s House is ‘an astoundingly radical play about women’s historical transition from being generic family members (wife, sister, daughter, mother) to becoming individuals’ (Moi 2012: 226). This transition, which is a way of describing how Nora moves beyond the determinations that the drama is so concerned with, is played out partly through Nora’s body, and how that it is looked at, desired and manipulated. Moi notes that one of the key metaphors in the play is that of Nora-​as-​doll; when Nora finally sees what has happened to her throughout her life (as wife, sister, daughter and mother), it is the metaphor of the doll that she seizes on. The woman-​doll, which as Moi notes is a familiar literary device (2012: 235), is a form of automata, entirely subservient to the male will, imprinted by, and reflecting back, his desires (The Stepford Wives, 1975 and 2004, is a modern version of this metaphor). In the stage version, this is often dramatised most memorably through the tarantella, which Nora, anxious to prevent her husband from reading Krogstadt’s letter awaiting him in the mailbox, dances in a frenzy. In doing so, she is the object of sexual desire for both her husband and Dr Rank, whilst remaining under Torvald’s control and direction. Moi has argued that the scene actually gives Nora agency as well (more than this interpretation might suggest), an awareness of the performative nature of the dance she is constructing for her own

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purposes and witnessed by Mrs Linde (Geraldine James), who is acting as the audience’s representative at this point (Moi 2012: 238–​9). The television version, however, does not find a way of capturing these complex stage interactions, and Nora’s dancing is constrained by the space and the camera, intermittently catching the sexual desire directed towards her, but not the complexity of looks and double-​looks that the moment demands, nor the subtle use of Mrs Linde. Thacker’s production, however, exploits the woman-​doll metaphor much more successfully elsewhere. In a strikingly unsettling scene a little later in the play, the Helmers return early from the Christmas party at which Nora has danced the tarantella, to find Mrs Linde, Nora’s childhood friend and recent confidante, waiting seemingly to glimpse Nora in her finery (in reality, she has a message from Krogstadt, whose letter revealing Nora’s crime is still sitting in the mailbox). Torvald, obviously sexually aroused, is clearly annoyed. Torvald and Nora enter the dining-​room and are framed in the door as they encounter Mrs Linde. Nora is seen in full length, her body seeming to fill the door-​frame as well as the screen. Torvald rips her cloak from her, like a conjuror revealing a trick. He comments on her successful performance of the dance—​too ‘realistic’ for the strict demands of ‘art’—​ and concludes by forcing her into a bow, pushing her down from the waist over his arm. It is an unexpected—​only because he is rarely so blatant—​act of aggression, reinforced by the controlled violence in his voice, and one which demonstrates his possession of her. Later, when Mrs Linde has left, Torvald grabs Nora, pawing at her body, turning and twisting it, the first step towards the violent sex act referred to above, which the dialogue suggests will be (for him) a re-​enactment of the taking of her virginity: the woman-​doll becomes a sex-​doll. He is thankfully interrupted by Dr Rank’s knock at the door. Ibsen was writing within a historically specific theatrical and dramatic tradition, one in which the formalised and excessive conventions of melodramatic performance were the norm. He challenged, though did not entirely discard, many of those conventions as a means of attacking the ideological assumptions with which they were associated. This engagement with, but not complete rejection of, the codes of stage melodrama poses even more difficulties for screen adaptations than for modern stage productions. Contemporary screen naturalism, in its generalised, colloquial sense, demands a more ‘natural’ mode of performance, in which the actor is required to disappear into the role, and the techniques of acting are hidden. The ending of Ghosts poses particular difficulties, since it appropriates the conventions of melodrama so thoroughly—​even concluding with a formal tableau—​that it is sometimes adapted (rewritten) in contemporary productions.

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The conclusion of Ghosts focuses on Mrs Alving and Osvald and leaves the former with a decision to make: will she help her son, who is going mad with syphilis, die as he requests by giving him poison pills? Ibsen’s stage directions place them apart, Mrs Alving at a table and Osvald in a chair. As Osvald’s mind slips away, he can only intone ‘the sun, the sun’. Here are the concluding moments in full: MRS ALVING: … Where did he put them? [Hurriedly feeling in his coat] Here! [She shrinks back a few paces and cries] No no no … Yes! No no … [She stands a step or two away from him with her hands twisted in her hair, staring at him in speechless horror.] OSVALD: [sitting motionless as before, says]  The sun … the sun. (Ibsen 1971: 102)

As the stage directions indicate, the scene is written for an excessive, externalised mode of performance that is not easily transferable to the screen. The television adaptation solves the problem by re-​casting the play’s performance conventions, and both Judi Dench and Kenneth Branagh adopt an essentially naturalist—​in the sense just described—​performance mode. Moshinsky shrinks the action to a sofa, not just for this sequence but for approximately the last ten minutes of the play, losing the wider space entirely. He also uses close-​up to allow an intimate and nuanced performance register. The camera captures Alving /​Dench’s face throughout, and, for much of it, Osvald /​Branagh’s as well. Where Ibsen keeps a physical separation between them, Moshinsky allows Alving /​Dench to hug her son, and rifle through his jacket (he is wearing it) in search of the pills. During the first part of the exchange quoted above, Alving /​Dench holds Osvald /​ Branagh’s head in her hands. This gradually slips to her chest as he says his last lines, his eyes closed, and then from view entirely, as the camera focuses on Alving /​Dench, her face obscured now by her left hand as if blocking out the sun that is now denied to her son. Interestingly, the spoken text is not truncated or adapted: Dench gives us the full complement of ‘no’s. The scene is given a fully psychologised logic, however, with each twist and turn of Mrs Alving’s emotions as they register in her face and whispering voice. In accommodating the dominant conventions of contemporary television performance, Moshinsky moves the focus from the body to the face, from the physicalisation of emotion to its internalisation. In doing so, he demonstrates the revolutionary adaptability and complexity of Ibsen’s naturalist form, whilst giving actors the space and opportunity to demonstrate their craft at the centre of the production of meaning. There is another way in which the historical context of Ibsen’s dramaturgy is negotiated in these television adaptations, which is through the visual arts. The general connection between Naturalist theatre and painting

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may be seen in the proscenium arch, the ‘picture frame’ separating audience from stage. More specifically, theatre and painting were closely related as practices throughout the nineteenth century and into the twentieth. Art was particularly important for Ibsen, who had a lifelong love of painting and at one point wanted to become a painter. As Moi notes, Ibsen ‘placed himself at the center of a living, productive aesthetic tradition in which painting and theater were sister arts’ (Moi 2012: 125). This was partly a matter of subject, with plays based on paintings and paintings adapted from plays, and partly a question of theatrical conventions, with stage pictures reflecting the principles of visual composition used in paintings (Moi 2012: 126–​8). The abstraction and aestheticising of space and composition in the television studio noted earlier in relation to Ghosts and Hedda Gabler may be read as drawing on the language of painting, especially portrait painting, which the strategy of using mid-​and long-​shots accentuates. The framing of Hedda seems at times to echo the composition of a painting. There is more than one shot of her on a sofa, for example, seemingly preoccupied, caught in a mid-​shot that frames her body and places flowers in the foreground. It is in Ghosts, however, that the impact of painting on the production aesthetic is clearest. Ibsen’s Ghosts opens with a conversation between Regina and her erstwhile ‘father’, the carpenter Engstrand (Freddie Jones). Moshinsky’s production, however, inserts a sequence over the credits, in which Branagh’s Osvald is filmed in a mid-​shot that captures nearly all of the chair and him in it, looking off-​screen to the right and into the main light source—​the sun, perhaps. The sequence is a kind of trompe l’oeil illusion, in that it appears at first to be a still image, constructed with a painter’s regard for balance between light and shadow and held for over a minute. This image is disturbed when Branagh slowly turns and looks into the camera, which moves towards him. It is both a direct evocation of painting and an inversion of Osvald’s trajectory through the play: in these credits he is frozen and comes to life; in the play that life is extinguished in his mother’s arms. This opening sequence suggests that painting will be a point of reference for the whole production. It is not only that the production aesthetic is ­painterly—​although it is—​it is also that specific paintings are referenced. The use of deep focus, as we noted, places characters in relation to each other in perspective. There is a remarkable moment when Mrs Alving is caught in the foreground looking directly to camera, an expression of horror on her face. In the background, to the left, Osvald and Regina are kissing: Mrs Alving, though neither of the lovers, knows that they are half-​brother and sister, and her horror registers this knowledge. It also directly evokes Edvard Munch’s The Scream, the first version of which was painted in 1895 (see Fig. 12.1). Munch was a tremendous admirer of Ibsen (although the feeling was not reciprocated): he designed Max Reinhardt’s

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Figure 12.1  Frame evoking Edvard Munch’s The Scream in Theatre Night: Ghosts (1987), with Judi Dench (Mrs Alving), Kenneth Branagh (Osvald) and Natasha Richardson (Regina).

1906 production of Ghosts in Berlin, and perhaps the production is hinting at this connection. The reference to The Scream is resonant for another reason, for it makes explicit a crucial feature of Ibsen’s dramaturgy. As Toril Moi and others have argued, Ibsen’s Naturalism is in fact an early stage of Modernism, though it does not always declare itself as such, especially in Ghosts. The obsession with the self of the artist and the breaking of theatrical verisimilitude in favour of an overt symbolism, if not metatheatricality, is associated with some forms of theatrical Modernism and is evident in Ibsen’s later work; in this television adaptation, the echo of Munch’s expressionist masterpiece, with its externalisation of inner anguish, reminds us that this is also part of Ibsen’s aesthetic and world view. Moi begins her study of Ibsen with the wry observation that Ibsen has only a dutiful presence on most theatre studies syllabi, his plays ‘obligatory historical markers, hurdles to be got over as soon as possible, so as to get to the really exciting stuff’ such as the Modernists Artaud and Brecht (Moi 2012: 1). This is a little harsh, and Ibsen has a clear presence in the UK’s professional repertoire, but the comment can be taken to apply to

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Naturalism more broadly. As this chapter has argued, however, this does not do Naturalism (or naturalism) justice: in terms of the acting decisions made, the camera-​style adopted and the use of the studio space to create a dynamic relationship between character and narrative space, all three productions discussed here have found ways of negotiating the fluidity and complexity of both naturalism as a style of performance and Naturalism as a radical, anti-​bourgeois historical intervention. They also demonstrate that Naturalism is not fixed, either as an aesthetic form or a political ideology, does not sit in isolation from the other arts and is not locked into its historical moment. In doing so, they demonstrate the potential of the television studio to interpret these important dramas for a modern audience.4

Productions discussed A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen (Performance). Dir. David Thacker. BBC2. 9.25–​11.40pm, Saturday 21 November 1992. Ghosts by Henrik Ibsen (Theatre Night). Dir. Elijah Moshinsky. BBC2. 7.15–​9.00pm, Sunday 14 June 1987. Hedda Gabler by Henrik Ibsen (Performance). Dir. Deborah Warner. BBC2. 8.35–​10.45pm, Saturday 27 November 1993.

Notes 1 In this chapter, naturalism—​without the capital letter—​will be used when contemporary meanings of the term are in play, and Naturalism, with the capital, will be used when the historical movement is being referred to. 2 Performance was the last sustained attempt to develop and engage an audience for theatre plays on the small screen. Conceived as an anthology series, like its immediate predecessor Theatre Night, which had a much more haphazard presence in the schedules, Performance ran from October 1991 to March 1998. There were thirty-​three productions in all, grouped in annual seasons of five or six plays (with the exception of 1998, when there was only one). The series consisted almost entirely of stage plays, and there was a strong showing for Naturalism: in addition to A Doll’s House and Hedda Gabler, Performance produced D. H. Lawrence’s The Widowing of Mrs Holroyd (1995) and Sean O’Casey’s The Shadow of a Gunman (1995). Interestingly, live theatre has returned to the small screen since 2011 courtesy of Sky Arts, whose policy of reclaiming ground ceded by the BBC and ITV has led to the broadcast of live theatre, including stage productions from Shakespeare’s Globe. However, Sky Arts has not, at the time of writing, staged a full season of adaptations of stage plays, although as the first chapter of this volume details, there has been a modest revival of theatre plays on BBC Television as well in the mid-​2010s. It is also worth noting that one response to the crisis

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faced by theatre companies in the wake of the Covid-​19 pandemic has been the broadcasting of ‘live’ theatre productions, on the model of cinema screenings of live theatre, on an unprecedented scale. 3 In an argument that also draws on Raymond Williams, Helen Wheatley (2005) has analysed the ways in which ITV’s popular series Upstairs Downstairs has used domestic space to explore social tensions, suggesting that studio drama of a non-​ theatrical origin is also aware of the potential of naturalist mise-​en-​scène. 4 This chapter is an outcome of ‘Spaces of Television: Production, Site and Style’, a research project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, 2010–​15.

References Caughie, J. (2000), Television Drama: Realism, Modernism, and British Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Ibsen, H. (1971), Ghosts, trans. Peter Watts, in his Ghosts and Other Plays (London: Penguin). Ibsen, H. (1997), A Doll’s House, trans. Kenneth MacLeish (London: Nick Hern). Kennedy Martin, T. (1964), ‘Nats go home: first statement of a new drama for ­television’, Encore, 48, 11:2, 21–​33. Moi, T. (2012), Henrik Ibsen and the Birth of Modernism: Art, Theatre, Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Ridgman, J. (1998), ‘Producing Performance: an interview with Simon Curtis’, in J. Ridgman (ed.), Boxed Sets: Television Representations of Theatre (Luton: University of Luton Press), pp. 199–​208. Wheatley, H. (2005), ‘Rooms within rooms: Upstairs Downstairs and the studio costume drama of the 1970s’, in C. Johnson and R. Turnock (eds), ITV Cultures: Independent Television over Fifty Years (Maidenhead: Open University Press), pp. 143–​58. Williams, R. (1977), ‘Lecture on Realism’, Screen 18:1, 61–​74. Reprinted in 1990 as ‘A defence of Realism’, in his What I Came to Say (London: Hutchinson Radius).

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Remediating the real: verbatim plays on television in the new millennium Cyrielle Garson

Verbatim theatre is understood to be a form of drama based on real p ­ eople’s words recorded in a range of ways. In twenty-​ first-​ century Britain, this approach to drama has entered the mainstream (Cantrell 2013: 1), expanding in original and perhaps unexpected directions so as to become, in the words of Andrew Haydon, ‘the prevalent form for dealing with the Big Topics’ (Haydon 2013: 45; original emphasis). According to Haydon, verbatim theatre-​making has ‘touched on almost every possible way of working in modern British theatre’ (2013: 48), from the rather austere-​looking tribunal plays of Tricycle Theatre to Alecky Blythe and Adam Cork’s innovative musical London Road (2011).1 Staged at the National Theatre in 2011 in a production directed by Rufus Norris, London Road featured a text drawn from interviews about the Ipswich serial murders in 2006–​8 with people who lived close to where they happened as well as with prostitutes who worked there. Other key verbatim works include the physical theatre and spoken word pieces of Lloyd Newson’s dance company DV8, such as To Be Straight with You (2007), Can We Talk about This? (2011) and John (2014). Verbatim theatre also inspired British cinema with Peter Middleton and James Spinney’s Notes on Blindness (2016), and prior to that documentary film, The Arbor (2010), an experimental documentary directed by Clio Barnard based on the life of playwright Andrea Dunbar. Both films took the verbatim technique into the realm of cinema, with actors lip-​syncing to documentary audio recordings. In 2015, most notably, London Road was adapted for the big screen, marking the first occasion that the National Theatre was a co-​producer of a feature film. At the time of its release, critics particularly struggled to find adequate terminology to designate this new type of cinema production, with Peter Bradshaw finally settling for ‘cineopera in a reportage verbatim style’, before changing his mind again and calling it ‘a film oratorio’ (2015). A significant number of verbatim plays created in the theatre have also made the journey to the small screen with similar startling effect. Among the most influential was The Colour of Justice, drawn from the Macpherson

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Inquiry into the killing of Stephen Lawrence, which was presented on BBC Television in 1999. The transfer offers a striking example of the impact of verbatim theatre on contemporary cultures and, as Jonathan Bignell, Derek Paget, Heather Sutherland and Lib Taylor have remarked, the broadcast potentially constituted ‘an additional marker […] of [the play’s] importance to British culture’s attempt to come to terms with racism’ (2011: 31). There have been a number of interesting studies on both the proliferation of non-​verbatim drama-​documentary works on television (Bignell 2010; Paget 2011) and of verbatim plays on stage (Hammond and Steward 2008; Martin 2006), but the literature to date has rarely engaged with the television presentation of verbatim plays, nor has it opened new paths of analysis or explored in detail the complex relationship between stage and screen languages. Arguing that these verbatim dramas are quite unlike the majority of television adaptation of stage plays, this chapter attempts such an exploration, together with an assessment of the cultural significance of verbatim plays on British television in the new millennium. At the outset, it should be stressed that ‘the real’, or rather its promise, underpins everything embraced by the label ‘verbatim’, and it is this aspect of the plays that seems even more problematic in the context of television and an identifiable ‘prevailing climate of scepticism’ (Tomlin 2013: 114). For the purpose of this study, ‘the real’ is to be understood as something that happened or is happening in the world. In other words, it is the very opposite of representation, simulation and fiction, something which is theoretically impossible to achieve (according to the discourses of both postmodernism and poststructuralism) within the confines of the theatre and, yet, it would seem to be currently much sought after by audiences and theatre practitioners alike. As a consequence of this, one may wonder how real is ‘the real’ within a verbatim production that has undergone a further change of medium, as is the case when verbatim plays are translated into other languages, which I have discussed elsewhere (Garson 2013). It would therefore become necessary, in the context of this chapter, to consider whether or not television may have exacerbated these contradictions and undermined the aesthetic contours of verbatim theatre. In other words, are these television versions reinforcing the implicit promise to an audience that, despite their relation to absence (verbatim works being only able to deal with remains and traces from a past that can never be fully revived or accessed), they will appear as plenitude, perhaps even as indistinguishable from what they attempt to recreate? Or are they working from a different premise, according to which documentary realism is impossible?2 I contend here that verbatim theatre is subject to new constraints and pressures imposed by a change of medium, and I suggest further that such a process of remediation is politically marked. Furthermore, this research sets out to

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advance discussions about the challenges television presents to stage plays (even when very few stage plays are adapted for the small screen) and the opposing claims of each medium today. In an effort to explore these pressing questions—​including the adequacy of television as a platform for verbatim theatre—​and to examine what the theoretical implications of a move to television might be, I draw on media and culture theorists Jay Bolter and Richard Grusin’s theory of ‘remediation’ (1999). My discussion centres on two BBC productions: the Tricycle Theatre’s Justifying War: Scenes from the Hutton Inquiry (BBC4, 2004) and the National Theatre of Scotland’s Black Watch (BBC Scotland, 2007). I divide my discussion of the plays into two main sections: the first concerns ‘immediacy’ and ‘hypermediacy’ and the second their political dimensions. Finally, I posit that the new context of mediation has redefined the audience engagement with ‘the fetish of the verbatim’ (Wilson 2013: 122). This important point requires a number of alterations to the way we might ordinarily understand these television adaptations, and, crucially, it suggests that critical (re)evaluation of them is due.

Case studies from the Tricycle Theatre and National Theatre of Scotland Both Justifying War: Scenes from the Hutton Inquiry and Black Watch were high-​profile theatre productions that attracted considerable attention beyond conventional theatrical contexts. Justifying War draws on the transcripts of the judicial inquiry which was set up in 2003 by the Labour government to investigate the circumstances surrounding the death of biological warfare expert Dr David Kelly. It focuses on the heated conflict between the BBC and the government over a sceptical broadcast report about the official claim that Iraqi forces could deploy weapons of mass destruction within forty-​five minutes, the subsequent naming of Dr Kelly as the source of the broadcast and its tragic consequence for him and his family. The play opened at the Tricycle Theatre in Kilburn, north London, on 30 October 2003; it was first broadcast on BBC4 on 8 January 2004. Dealing with equally sensitive political issues, Black Watch details a controversial re-​deployment of the soldiers of the Black Watch, Royal Highland Regiment, during the Second Battle of Fallujah in 2004. Soon after the deaths of three soldiers and an interpreter, there was an official announcement that the regiment, which was intensely proud of its 300-​year history, was to be amalgamated into a new Royal Regiment of Scotland. The play alternates between scenes in Iraq and a pub in Fife. It was first performed on 5 August 2006 at the University of Edinburgh Drill Hall as part of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and was then filmed by BBC Scotland in March 2007 before being screened on BBC2 Scotland on 27 August 2007.

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Virtually all critics commended both plays on their stage debuts. Trish Reid describes Black Watch, the sensation of the Edinburgh Fringe in 2006, as ‘the most important Scottish post-​devolutionary theatrical event’ (Reid 2011: 194). Kate Dorney and Frances Gray (2013: 204) point out the considerable status the play has achieved ‘not just as spectacular drama but also as a symbol of Scotland’, referring to the Gala performance mounted by the newly elected Scottish National Party government to mark the opening of the Scottish Parliament on 30 June 2007. Just as significant was Justifying War’s widely acknowledged participation in the public sphere as ‘a kind of counter-​discourse’, being ‘timed to be produced between the testimony itself and the official written reports from the inquiry’ (Reinelt 2009: 17). Justifying War, the fifth production of a series of ‘tribunal plays’ by the Tricycle Theatre, was based entirely on official court transcripts edited by the Guardian’s security affairs editor, Richard Norton-​Taylor, and directed by the Tricycle Theatre’s former artistic director, Nicolas Kent.3 The real-​ world origins and topicality of these two plays, both of which address the war in Iraq, means that they are exemplary manifestations of contemporary verbatim theatre. This was underscored by the statements that Black Watch was ‘based on interviews with former soldiers who served in Iraq’ (as noted by the first shot of BBC2 Scotland’s production) and that Justifying War’s ‘edited transcripts [we]re taken from the evidence of twelve witnesses in the first part of the Inquiry’ (Norton-​Taylor 2003: 7). Nonetheless, there are clear distinctions of tone, style and approach between the two plays. While Justifying War is a meticulous recreation of the proceedings across twenty-​ five days of Lord Hutton’s Inquiry, Black Watch is characterised by very dynamic physical actions, including a military Tattoo as well as arrangements of traditional songs and video projections. In an important sense, the songs and projected elements do not adhere to ‘pure’ verbatim protocols, and the text as a whole is a hybrid of edited spoken material and fictionalised scenes. It also uses metatheatrical references since it dramatises the experience of playwright Gregory Burke interviewing members of Black Watch following its tour of duty in Iraq in October 2004. Moreover, it is intriguing to note that Richard Norton-​Taylor made one critical change in the sequence of the transcript: ‘the evidence is presented chronologically, with the exception of that of Dr Jones. He gave his evidence two days after Mrs Kelly. It is presented here before her evidence’ (Norton-​Taylor 2003: 7).4 There are also differences in the ways in which the two plays were adapted for television. Black Watch is a multi-​camera recording shot before a live audience in the Highland Football Academy in Dingwall, while Justifying War was transplanted to a studio and recorded without an audience. Despite the intervening months between the stage and television ­versions—​ two months for Justifying War and one year for Black Watch—​the explicit

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changes to the texts of the stage plays in the adaptation processes were minimal. This might be surprising in the context of Justifying War, since one might have imagined that Prime Minister Tony Blair’s testimony on 28 August 2003 or the evidence from the second part of the Inquiry (15–​24 September 2003) would be added to coincide with the publication of the official report some weeks later on 30 January 2004. Yet, from an acting point of view, Thomas Wheatley in an interview with Derek Paget (2008b: 12) claimed that the journey from stage to screen, in the case of the Tricycle pieces, [does not make] very much difference at all because the pieces … were in a small theatre. … and, anyway, it’s all quite … televisual already, frankly. … of course we’re doing it in the studio and … it is done better than just putting a video camera in the theatre. But apart from that, I don’t think it’s any different at all.

Here, Wheatley is referring to the specific acting style associated with verbatim theatre—​and especially the style employed in tribunal plays—​that offers different stimuli which are arguably closer to those that happen in the ‘real world’. Similarly, actor David Michaels, who performed in another tribunal play (Tactical Questioning, 2011), explains in a different context that he ‘probably could get applause if [he] decided to make [his speech] kind of impassioned. People don’t do that in an inquiry. It’s that fine line’ (Stoller 2013: 185). If the parallel between television and verbatim theatre acting has often been made in critical works (for example, Paget 2008a: 137; Esch-​ Van Kan 2011: 422), it would seem even more true of the tribunal plays, the purpose of which has been to recreate the experience of live television coverage. To come back to our argument, and if we are to follow Wheatley’s insights into the process involved, there may be little real difference at the point of performance between a verbatim stage play and a verbatim text for television. Less often acknowledged is a shift in the ‘pact of performance’ between production and audience which is unique to verbatim theatre and its dependence on the continuous flow of daily news. This ‘pact of performance’ refers to the set of expectations involved in the particular manner—​and moment—​ of viewing the work. The actualisation of the pact of performance because of new developments in the world beyond the plays inescapably affects potential interpretations of the performance. In the author’s note to the second edition of Black Watch, playwright Gregory Burke writes about the change in the political context which entailed that ‘the points that were made in the play the first time round […] have largely disappeared’ (Burke 2010: vii). And as Marcia Blumberg explains, the time that had elapsed between the opening night and the television broadcast was significant: ‘the first spectators of the play [in the theatre] shared a broader historical context that

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included Tony Blair’s rush to put troops into action in 2003 and the subsequent revelations that President George W. Bush’s rationale for the war (the notorious weapons of mass destruction) was simply untrue’ (Blumberg 2012: 80). It must also be recognised that the television viewers’ experiences are shaped by the screen production’s directors and producers. It may thus be the case that it is in the technical production for the screen that television verbatim plays would make a decisive break with the original stage plays. Put in another way, the change of medium can be said to impel a series of decisions that ultimately change the original production. National Theatre of Scotland’s head of external affairs, Roberta Doyle, sums up the BBC production of Black Watch in the following curious manner: it ‘is an expert and imaginative recording of a Highland performance of the play of Black Watch itself’ (quoted in Anon. 2007). Here, Doyle encapsulates one way in which television can creatively mediate live theatre. Clearly, editing shots together adds another layer of visual and artistic decision-​making onto stage director John Tiffany’s creative approach, but here it appears to have been conducted in a more systematic way. As such, and contrary to what one may have assumed, the recording of the performance does not merely attempt to approximate the original experience of being in the theatre and offers instead a different experience in the new medium. Consequently, the verbatim play on television is placed at the intersection of a number of strands (changes in the nature of the audience; different technological, economic and cultural contexts) that requires further investigation. In considering the differences between the stage and television versions of these plays, it should also be noted that much of the force of these plays lies in their sharp critique of the media’s projection of contemporary political events. In particular, as American Lieutenant Colonel Matt Whitney states in the second edition of the published playtext of Black Watch, the production was perceived as a corrective to the failure of the mainstream media at the time: What Gregory Burke and the creative team of the National Theatre of Scotland have brought to American soil is what a cavalcade of country singers and embedded reporters have completely failed to do for nearly eight years: to expose the hearts, hopes, triumph and pain of American soldiers to the people they serve. Soldiers like me want civilians to have that perspective; but we don’t know how to share it. The National Theatre of Scotland has figured that part out. (Quoted in Burke 2010: xiv)

Indeed, in the opening sequence of Black Watch, the young soldier Cammy speaks directly to the audience and challenges the consensual media discourse: ‘And people’s minds are made up about the war that’s on the now ay? […] They are. It’s no right. It’s illegal. We’re just big bullies’ (Burke

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2010: 4). In addition, the presence of a reporter and cameraman in Camp Dogwood is heavily ironised, as if to communicate the impossibility of an adequate representation: REPORTER:  It’s Fraser, isn’t it? CAMMY:  Campbell. […] REPORTER:  Right. Great. (Pause.) Have you heard much about all the controversy at home with the amalgamation and everything? CAMMY:  I dinnay really pay attention tay gossip, mate. REPORTER:  You’re not worried you might lose your job when they disband? CAMERAMAN:  Cammy. Can we have you smoking? REPORTER:  Can we? CAMMY:  No. Me mum would fuckin kill me. […] REPORTER:  I’m quite impressed—​everyone else has porn all over their wagons. CAMMY:  Do they? REPORTER:  You worry sometimes about the way that must play in the Islamic world? CAMMY:  Aye. Beat. They much prefer it when we’re shooting at them. […] REPORTER:  Right. Okay. Great. Brilliant. We just need to film that again, but without the swearing. (Burke 2010: 37–​8)

The interview scene ends in a brutal fashion with several explosions further enacting the failure of communication between the army and ‘the great British public’ (Burke 2010: 36). In Justifying War, the ‘complaints about […] the coverage of the war in Iraq by the BBC’ (Norton-​Taylor 2003: 43) are laid bare; this alone might be seen as a clear obstacle to its screening on the BBC at the time. In an interview with Press Gazette, Richard Norton-​ Taylor evoked these concerns regarding the BBC’s central role in the Hutton Inquiry: ‘They must have thought Justifying the War [sic] was fair—​I hope anyway—​otherwise they wouldn’t have agreed to show it […] I’m rather happy the BBC did decide to show it, albeit not on BBC Two but on BBC Four’ (quoted in Azeez 2003). But does the medium of television and its reception context work against the impact, and the politics, of verbatim theatre? It can be argued that the form’s key strength resides in the quality of its engagement with an audience, creating a space for them to experience collectively memorable and multifaceted painful emotions, small shifts of perception and perhaps even self-​perception as it combats the more familiar narratives of the mass media’s representations of the ‘real’. Categorically, for Paola Botham, ‘tribunal theatre gains its vigour from being experienced as live performance […] offering the simultaneity in space and time that encourages public responsibility’ (Botham 2009: 45–​8). Deprived of

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its vigour as a live event, verbatim theatre may then appear to be theoretically destabilised by its move to television, diminishing its capacity to ‘transform spectators into conscious witnesses, extending the scope of the public sphere’ (Botham 2009: 36). But is this right? The question focuses attention on the particular set of representational codes and conventions of each medium, and it is this to which we now turn.

Immediacy, hypermediacy and verbatim theatre It is standardly said that verbatim plays are grounded in truth and authenticity (Hare 2005: 112; Norton-​Taylor 2004b; Ralph 2008: 23), even if they may also include fictional elements.5 It may be suggested that verbatim plays adapted for television are further away from the ‘real’ since these productions are not created directly from first-​hand testimony, whether spoken or written, but from their previously dramatised versions. Despite the testimony of Thomas Wheatley quoted above, distance from the primary sources may be seen to make the whole verbatim project increasingly difficult to sustain, destabilising further the authority of the verbatim material. The debate may be illuminated by considering the notion of ‘remediation’ as originally conceptualised by Bolter and Grusin: the borrowing and refashioning of the representational practices of one media or media form into another […] such practices are constituted as a combination of technical choices and ideological positions. The measure of these practices is not a standard dictated by any essential features of a technology; it is instead their ability to capture the ‘real’ with reference to some cultural standard. (Bolter 2007: 201)

I would like to apply this idea to verbatim theatre and its supposedly privileged relationship with the ‘real’. It is worth remarking here that each verbatim screen play could be well described as ‘remediation’, since they take place against a certain memory of current affairs. Using Hans Robert Jauss’ idea, ‘the horizon of expectation’ has changed, inevitably altering the reception of these works despite the fact that the words remain the same. But this thinking also suggests that, if we take the example of Justifying War, making a verbatim play in the theatre is to reproduce in a different medium the representational codes of the tribunal to create a seemingly identical aesthetic object, which it could be argued is a remediation practice in itself. A second case of mediation—​from live theatre to recorded screen performance—​can then be identified when the testimonies are replayed for

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television. This was emphasised with regard to Black Watch when Andrea Miller, head of factual at BBC Scotland, stated: ‘throughout the production process we have come to share an understanding of the demands on both theatre and television production and have learned much from one another’ (Miller, quoted in Anon. 2007). In Remediation: Understanding New Media, Bolter and Grusin characterise a double logic of remediation. Remediation is to be understood as being divided into two distinct and contradictory visual styles: ‘transparent immediacy’, in which the sense of the medium is erased, and ‘hypermediacy’, which reminds the viewer of the medium and seeks ‘the real by multiplying mediation so as to create a feeling of fullness, a satiety of experience, which can be taken as reality’ (Bolter and Grusin 1999: 53). Hypermediacy therefore allows the audience to delight in the recognition that their experience is in fact mediated, while immediacy ‘dictates that the medium itself should disappear and leave us in the presence of the thing represented’ (Bolter and Grusin 1999: 5–​6). Applying this to the example of Justifying War makes such matters more concrete. In the tribunal play in the theatre, the sense of the ‘real’ is achieved by the logic of immediacy; its presentation is experienced as authentic by members of the audience who are effectively transformed into conscious witnesses literally taken ‘where no TV cameras had been: inside the Hutton inquiry’ (Billington 2003). The appearance of an unmediated mode of address combined with what Chris Megson has called ‘hardcore illusionism’ is one of the key strategies of the production: ‘theatricality itself was distinctly downplayed … there were no bows, no acknowledgement of the spectators, no invitation to applaud’ (Megson 2005: 370). It is revealing that members of the audience felt compelled to stand up during the minute of silence at the very beginning of the performance, although this was clearly a staged minute of silence, and that the audience was also reported to have applauded the actor playing Andrew MacKinlay at the end of the performance ‘not because of the actor’s performance but because of what he had said’ (Kent 2008: 167). In the same vein, as actor Jeremy Clyde has stated, the casting process lends further verisimilitude to the performance, often seeking to feature actors who resemble the person they are portraying: ‘Nick is very good at casting close to the person’ (Cantrell 2013: 121). Similarly, the television production’s creators maintained the illusion that viewers were not watching a theatre production. More precisely, the experience of the real (of the theatre production) is displaced and the atmosphere of the inquiry is recreated for the television viewer (see Fig. 13.1). It is as if, following the logic of transparent immediacy, television reconstitutes the experience of what watching the inquiry on television would have been like, even if this was in reality denied to the public. And this contrasts with the stage play, which recreated the

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Figure 13.1  The room of the judicial enquiry in the television adaptation of Justifying War: Scenes from the Hutton Inquiry (2004).

experience of attending the inquiry in person. In this respect, ­broadcasting the play on television coheres as part of a broader strategy to reconstitute the terms of a witness’ direct engagement with the courtroom and to efface the mediating processes at work. In Black Watch, the claim of the ‘real’ is not based on events that really happened, despite the opening caption that stated that the words the audience were about to hear were taken from interviews with soldiers, a claim that serves as its trademark. It is based instead on the immediacy and authenticity of the emotions provided for the viewer. The television production of Black Watch refashioned one of the stage presentations and, I would argue, tried to recreate the once-​live performance through the logic of hypermediacy. Viewers are thus made more aware than with Justifying War of a crafted simulacrum of ‘the real’ used to achieve the mediated experience, and they become ‘eavesdroppers’ on another audience: ‘the audience enter a large space with seating banks down either side creating an esplanade flanked by four scaffold towers’ (Burke 2010: 3). This is not, however, a wholly secure distinction, and it would be false to read the two television adaptations as inevitably caught in the theoretical dilemma just outlined. This is the case since these two logics are not necessarily mutually exclusive: ‘hypermedia and transparent media are opposite manifestations of the same desire: the desire to get past the limits of representation and to achieve the real’ (Bolter and Grusin 1999: 55). Here ‘the real’ refers to that which will prompt viewer’s affect: ‘it is that which would evoke an immediate (and therefore authentic) emotional response’ (ibid.: 53). Adaptations

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of verbatim plays for television therefore seek ‘the real’ sometimes through transparency, sometimes through hypermediacy. And these approaches indicate a determination to enlist an audience by the deployment of ‘strategies specifically to raise the emotional stakes’ (Taylor 2011: 234). Yet a suspicion of manipulation may be raised concerning the experience of watching the play on television as opposed to being present in the theatre. The television version carefully choreographs the camera and the mixing between shots, whereas each member of a theatre audience observes the play only from his or her point of view in the auditorium. Two hours and six minutes into Justifying War, the last scene featuring the evidence of Janice Kelly is heightened and made more intensely poignant through the gaze of the camera: ‘Well, we had delayed calling the police because we thought we might make matters worse if David had returned when we started to search. I felt he was already in a difficult enough situation. So we put off calling the police until about 20 to 12 at night’ (Norton-​Taylor 2003: 94). The actor playing Janice Kelly delivers these words in a way that suggests the great difficulty with which they originally spoken at the tribunal. The camera moves slowly from a medium shot of lawyer James Dingemans QC to the monitor screen displaying her picture before proceeding to a close-​ up. In a similar vein, in Black Watch, the shot choices arguably contribute to the screen version being a more moving version of the play, and in this way, they endorse public grieving (see Fig. 13.2). A good example is the visual, and also aural, strategy in the ‘casualties’ scene towards the end of the performance, described in the following way in the stage script: ‘Music. The Sergeant, Fraz and Kenzie are propelled into the air by the blast wave. They fall to the ground one by one’ (Burke 2010: 68). In the television version we hear ‘A Thearlaich Oig’—​a lament recalling the Battle of Culloden in 1746 when many Scots were slaughtered by the English—​as the dramatic intensity reaches its climax, with the screen recording accentuating this with slow motion effects. The sequencing and juxtaposition of camera angles gives the television audience a very different view from any that was possible for members of the theatre audience. The viewing modes through which the ‘real’ is represented on television in these adaptations reveal a genuine desire to connect with huge audiences lying beyond those who may be restricted by geographical or sociocultural factors from access to the minority art form of theatre. Oscillating between a sense of the ‘real’ and a creative interplay between the frame and the verbatim narratives, both Justifying War and Black Watch are centrally concerned with the experiences of the ‘real’. They involve the structured remediation of the ‘real’ in the practices that constitute their aesthetic production. The screening of these plays thus functioned to reinforce the potential for emotional engagement, further developing the initial response from live audiences.

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Figure 13.2  BBC Scotland’s television adaptation of Black Watch (2007).

A political remediation? Understanding the changes that took place in the translation of verbatim theatre plays to the screen demands consideration of the developing agenda of the BBC. Clearly, technology is only part of a television system that—​for theatre plays as for all other kinds of programmes—​involves human agency, demands and desires. Importantly, for Hilary Halba and Stuart Young, the politics of verbatim theatre are evident ‘in the nature of the mediation of the material presented’ (2013: 173). Why this may have been the case, and what impact this may have had on the productions, is the subject of this section. In recent years, television as a medium has been understood as being a significantly more constrained environment than the theatre for explicitly political writing. In 1998, for example, British playwright Sarah Kane noted the political difference between writing for theatre and for television: ‘I would never work in television, and they wouldn’t let me. There is too much censorship. As you cannot say what you want to say, I will not do it’ (Kane, quoted in Saunders 2002: 14). The political engagement of television drama has declined in recent decades in comparison with the 1960s and 1970s. Drama, it has been argued, has lost its ‘licence … to say what may not be said elsewhere within the discourses of television’ and its power to disrupt ‘the consensual flow of television’ (Bignell, Lacey and Macmurraugh-​ Kavanagh 2000: 28 and 30). It may therefore be thought that verbatim stage plays that have been translated to television would inevitably undergo a process of depoliticisation. Indeed, the return of verbatim theatre on the

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British stage was seen by many as a response to the failure of television to provide a constructive criticism of our times: ‘Everyone is aware that television [has] decisively disillusioned us, in a way which seems beyond repair, by [its] partial coverage of seismic issues of war and peace’ (Hare 2005: 28). Such ideas suggest that a televisual remediation may jeopardise the disruptive potential of verbatim theatre by creating a dependency upon the object of its critique. Writing about Justifying War, and the tribunal plays more broadly, scholar Anneka Esch-​Van Kan has argued that the desire to enlarge its audience reach may have been incompatible with its original political aims: ‘the commodification of political theatre becomes blatantly obvious when tribunal theatre is turned into a trademark of the Tricycle Theatre and when audiences and media evoke more excitement about the true-​to-​life impersonation of public personae than about the core issues of the plays’ (Esch-​Van Kan 2011: 423). Against this, however, one may argue that the television broadcast of Justifying War—​despite the BBC’s central role in the inquiry, including the participation of its journalist Andrew Gilligan and chairman Gavyn Davies—​in effect demonstrates the strength of the Corporation and its willingness to challenge political orthodoxy. It may therefore be argued that the potential of verbatim theatre to disrupt dominant ideological certainties as ‘a counter-​discursive medium’ (Filewod 2009: 69) does not always sit easily with a British broadcasting ecology in the 2000s characterised by a ‘perceived retreat by the mainstream broadcasters, more especially the BBC, from public service values’ (Wyver 2007: 80). Even The Colour of Justice, the most acclaimed verbatim play on British television to date, ‘was televised on the BBC in February 1999 after an initial rejection’ (Aragay and Montforte 2013: 101). As for Bloody Sunday: Scenes from the Saville Inquiry, another tribunal play from the Tricycle Theatre, ‘the BBC seemed to undergo a change of heart and declined to televise Bloody Sunday, with the effect that its potential impact on public opinion was constrained’ (Upton 2009: 185). One may interpret this as an attempt to silence what may have been perceived as offensive, politically risky, lacking in commercial interest or simply not endorsing the new values of the BBC. A further example of this may be the rejection by the BBC and Channel 4 of a project from Lloyd Newson’s DV8 Physical Theatre company. On the official company website, they indicated that they felt this to be an act of censorship: Can We Talk About This? is the company’s most recent stage production. It is a verbatim theatre work dealing with freedom of speech, multiculturalism and Islam. … Hotly debated in theatre foyers, blogs, comments and arts pages (including several 5-​star reviews), it did what it set out to do—​it got people talking about the sensitive issues discussed in the production. … We felt that it would be an excellent production to adapt for film, and approached both the BBC and Channel 4. C4’s commissioning editor for arts, Tabitha Jackson,

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who had seen the live performance in London, championed the project, but it did not get approval by the Channel 4 bosses. BBC’s commissioning editor for music and events, Jan Younghusband, who had commissioned The Cost of Living while at Channel 4, met with us, but informed us later that it was turned down for budget reasons. We offered to discuss the finances, but did not hear from her again. (DV8 Physical Theatre 2013)

In contrast to the argument that these separate cases exemplify a consistent ideology, there is also reason to think that the move to television has foregrounded the political significance of those plays that have been adapted for television. Indeed, because television is also a journalistic medium, the reverberations have consequences that are potentially directly political. Justifying War was televised, in part, to compensate the public for the banning of television cameras from the Hutton Inquiry (only Lord Hutton’s opening statement and lawyers’ addresses could be filmed, not the evidence of witnesses): only ten people were allowed into the courts of justice, to see it in Court 73 because there was only enough room so if you queued all night you could get in and 250 people at the end of the hearings would have got in. That isn’t very many compared to the 9,000 we can send it to. And maybe the 2 or 3 or 4 or 5,000,000 that would watch it if it was on television. (Kent 2003)

For actor William Hoyland, who has performed in six of the tribunal plays, the aspiration to have official inquiries broadcast is at the very heart of the Tricycle Theatre’s project: ‘in fact that is one of the reasons that Nick was so keen to do the plays like the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry—​they [that is, the official inquiries] are not televised. In many ways, that was the raison d’être for the whole tribunal shows’ (Cantrell 2013: 93). This point was given particular force when Lord Hutton’s report was published in January 2004: it concluded, to the surprise of many, that the BBC should be seriously reproached on its actions overall, that the government generally was found to have acted properly and further that the report dismissed the harm done to Dr Kelly and his family. Justifying War’s editor Richard Norton-​ Taylor even considered the report’s impact as follows: So unbalanced did Hutton’s report appear, that it ensured the debate will continue … Opinion polls immediately after the report’s publication showed a significant majority critical of it and in support of the BBC … The government responded to Lord Hutton’s report by publicly insisting it wanted to draw a line under the whole affair. But the unrelenting reverberations make that a forlorn hope. (Norton-​Taylor 2004a)

Nicolas Kent observed that the fact that more and more inquiries are being televised may mean that the genre of the tribunal play could eventually become obsolete (Norton-​Taylor, quoted in Hoggard 2005). However, as Janelle Reinelt has proposed, the tribunal plays succeed as testimony of the

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possibility of an alternative framework of understanding: ‘Justifying War now constitutes a reminder of the material and critical connections overlooked by Lord Hutton; it is a kind of counter-​discourse’ (Reinelt 2009: 17). This kind of counter-​discourse, which is typical of contemporary verbatim plays that serve an oppositional politics, then sees its voice being amplified by television, as Carole-​Anne Upton has persuasively argued: ‘it is conceivable that this kind of drama, through the medium of TV, might offer a forum for the mobilisation of a kind of truth process, or an independent community-​ based inquiry, with a high level of public engagement’ (Upton 2009: 191).

Conclusion Verbatim theatre has now achieved a mainstream cultural status well beyond that of its original outing in the 1960s and adaptations for television, and now the cinema and even VR are a further extension of this process. In 2017, BBC3 even launched a series of short verbatim films entitled ‘in their own words’ in a partnership with the charity Comic Relief to tell the difficult stories of the people that use services that receive their funding. The move to television acted as a stimulus for rethinking verbatim theatre as cultural intervention. This necessarily brief comparative analysis reveals the intricate politics of remediation that verbatim theatre undergoes in the hands of television practitioners. As this chapter has argued, Bolter and Grusin’s thesis of ‘the double logic of remediation’—​immediacy and hypermediacy—​captures the double stance that twenty-​first-​century verbatim theatre embraces in its move to television and also provides a productive reading strategy for investigation of the screen plays. Yet there remains a friction between verbatim theatre’s political purposes and the operation of television as a journalistic medium. Even so, whatever the relative merits of television treatment of verbatim performances, their impact has been felt in the wider culture. In the case of Black Watch, the move to television confirmed its status as ‘a cultural landmark’ (Blumberg 2012: 79), while the then-​prospective hypothetical broadcast of Justifying War by the BBC was even used as a legal argument by Geoffrey Robertson at the beginning of the Hutton Inquiry itself: Your Lordship, whether you like it or not, your inquiry will be televised because it’s very likely that a small theatre in North West London … will do it on the stage, and then it is likely to land up on the BBC, and I would suggest to you that it would be better if it was televised at first hand rather than at second hand. (Kent 2008: 163)

In an essay on David Hare’s Stuff Happens, another verbatim play on the diplomatic and political processes that triggered the American-​led invasion

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of Iraq (National Theatre, 2004), Tricia Hopton proposes an alternative reading of verbatim plays as adaptation and argues that this ‘opens up possibilities for creating a more scrupulous, discriminating group of media consumers, who may then become more active and engaged political citizens’ (Hopton 2011: 26). Hopton does not address verbatim plays on television, but I would suggest that these effects might just as easily be applied to them. In this context, the act of remediation becomes political, and verbatim screen plays’ ultimate influence lies in the refashioning of the ‘real’.

Productions discussed Black Watch by Gregory Burke. Dir. Bill MacLeod. BBC2 Scotland. 10.00–​ 11.30pm, Monday 27 August 2007. The Colour of Justice devised by Nicolas Kent. Dir. Nicolas Kent. BBC2. Sunday 21 February 1999, 10.10pm–​00.10am. Justifying War: Scenes from the Hutton Inquiry edited by Richard Norton-​Taylor. Dir. Nicolas Kent. BBC4. 8.30–​10.45pm, Thursday 8 January 2004.

Notes 1 Tribunal plays are verbatim reconstructions of public inquiries which typically gave a different perspective on current affairs (for example, the invasion of Iraq, human-​rights abuses and torture, racism in the police force, etc.). The Tricycle Theatre’s pioneering series started more than twenty-​five years ago in 1994 with Half the Picture on the illegal exports of tools for making arms to Iraq. See the edition of collected plays from Brittain, Kent, Norton-​Taylor and Slovo (2014) and Stoller (2013: 134–​209). Today, such plays are not totally extinct, and both Nicolas Kent and Richard Norton-​Taylor have continued to explore their political potential. In April 2018, Tricycle Theatre was renamed Kiln Theatre; the former name is used here for historical accuracy. 2 This is what I have called documentary realism elsewhere (Garson and Gonzalez 2015)—​ that is to say, a historical aesthetic exponent that unproblematically draws the audience into the reality of a particular situation, topic, event or narrative being dramatised and authenticated through verbatim sources. 3 Thanks to Richard Norton-​Taylor and Nicolas Kent for helping me access a copy of the BBC4 production of Justifying War: Scenes from the Hutton Inquiry. 4 Justifying War is the only play in the series to feature a slight change of chronology in the editing. 5 There is not the space here to trace this direction taken by a particular strand of British verbatim work. Black Watch is a good example of this practice as it combines verbatim material from soldiers that served in Iraq with imagined scenes.

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Another is the Tricycle Theatre’s Called to Account: The Indictment of Anthony Charles Lynton Blair for the Crime of Aggression Against Iraq—​A Hearing, which was verbatim but not based on a legal inquiry, although it was presented as such.

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References Anon. (2007), ‘Press releases: Black Watch on BBC Scotland’, 23 August 2007, online at www.bbc.co.uk/​pressoffice/​pressreleases/​stories/​2007/​08_​august/​23/​ blackwatch.shtml (accessed 25 November 2020). Aragay, M., and E. Montforte (2013), ‘Racial violence, witnessing and emancipated spectatorship in The Colour of Justice, Fallout and random’, in V. Angelaki (ed.), Contemporary British Theatre: Breaking New Ground (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan), pp. 96–​120. Azeez, W. (2003), ‘Norton-​Taylor’s Hutton Inquiry play goes to TV’, Press Gazette, 12 December 2003, online at www.pressgazette.co.uk/​norton-​taylor-​s-​hutton-​ inquiry-​play-​goes-​to-​tv (accessed 25 November 2020). Barnard, C. (2014), ‘Clio Barnard’, in J. Wood (ed.), Last Words: Considering Contemporary Cinema (New York: Wallflower), pp. 11–​14. Bignell, J. (2010), ‘Docudramatizing the real: developments in British TV docudrama since 1990’, Studies in Documentary Film, 4:3, 195–​208. Bignell, J., D. Paget, H. Sutherland and L. Taylor (2011), ‘Narrativising the facts: acting in screen and stage docudrama’, in M. Tönnies and C. Flotmann (eds), Narrative in Drama (Contemporary Drama in English, 18) (Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier), pp. 21–​52. Bignell, J., S. Lacey and M. Macmurraugh-​Kavanagh (2000, eds), British Television Drama: Past, Present and Future (Basingstoke: Palgrave). Billington, M. (2003), ‘Hello cruel world’, Guardian, 17 December 2003. Blumberg, M. (2012), ‘Unravelling the “golden thread”: performing the politics of Black Watch’, in J. Spencer (ed.), Political and Protest Theatre after 9/​11 (London: Routledge), pp. 79–​92. Blythe, A., and A. Cork (2011), London Road (London: Nick Hern). Bolter, J. E. (2007), ‘Digital essentialism and the mediation of the real’, in H. Philipsen and L. Qvortrup (eds), Moving Media Studies: Remediation Revisited (Frederiksberg: Samfundslitteratur Press), pp. 195–​210. Bolter, J. E., and R. Grusin (1999), Remediation: Understanding New Media (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press). Botham, P. (2009), ‘Witnesses in the public sphere: Bloody Sunday and the redefinition of political theatre’, in S. Haedicke, D. Heddon, A. Oz and E. Westlake (eds), Political Performances: Theory and Practice (Amsterdam: Rodopi), pp. 35–​54. Bradshaw, P. (2015), ‘London Road review—​gripping, macabre verbatim musical about real-​life serial murders’, Guardian, 11 June 2015. Brittain, V., N. Kent, R. Norton-​Taylor and G. Slovo (2014), The Tricycle: Collected Tribunal Plays 1994–​2012 (London: Oberon).

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Burke, G. (2010), Black Watch, 2nd ed. (London: Faber). Cantrell, T. (2013), Acting in Documentary Theatre (Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan). Dorney, K., and F. Gray (2013), Played in Britain: Modern Theatre in 100 Plays (London: Methuen Drama). DV8 Physical Theatre (2013), ‘Opposing censorship’, DV8, online at http://​dv8. co.uk/​lat​est-​news/​oppos​ing-​cen​sors​hip (accessed 10 September 2014). Esch-​Van Kan, A. (2011), ‘The documentary turn in contemporary British drama and the return of the political: David Hare’s Stuff Happens and Richard Norton-​ Taylor’s Called to Account’, in S. Baumbach, B. Neumann and A. Nünning (eds), A History of British Drama: Genres-​Developments-​Model Interpretations (Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier), pp. 413–​28. Filewod, A. (2009), ‘The documentary body: Theatre Workshop to Banner Theatre’, in Forsyth and Megson (eds), Get Real: Documentary Theatre Past and Present, pp. 55–​73. Forsyth, A., and C. Megson (2009, eds), Get Real: Documentary Theatre Past and Present (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan). Garson, C. (2013), ‘Verbatim theatre in translation: a triple metamorphosis’, Sphères, 1, 13–​22. Garson, C. (2014), ‘Remixing politics: the case of headphone verbatim theatre in Britain’, Journal of Contemporary Drama in English, 2:1, 50–​62. Garson, C., and M. Gonzalez (2015), ‘“What a carve up!”: the eclectic aesthetics of postmodernism and the politics of diversity in some examples of contemporary British verbatim theatre’, Études britanniques contemporaines, 49, online at https://​ebc.rev​ues.org/​2685 (accessed 25 November 2020). Halba, H., and S. Young (2013), ‘Making verbatim theatre: processes of mediation in Hush a verbatim play about family violence’, in L. Kempf and T. Moguilevskaia (eds), Le théâtre neo-​documentaire: résurgence ou réinvention? (Nancy: Presses universitaires de Nancy), pp. 171–​80. Hammond, W., and D. Steward (2008, eds), Verbatim, Verbatim: Contemporary Documentary Theatre (London: Oberon). Hare, D. (2005), Obedience, Struggle & Revolt: Lectures on Theatre (London: Faber). Haydon, A. (2013), ‘Theatre in the 2000s’, in D. Rebellato (ed.), Modern British Playwriting: 2000–​2009 (London: Methuen Drama), pp. 40–​96. Hoggard, L. (2005), ‘Out of crises, a drama’, Observer, 27 March 2005. Hopton, T. (2011), ‘Adapting verbatim theater: David Hare’s Stuff Happens’, in J. Stadler, P. Mitchell, A. Atkinson and T. Hopton (eds), Pockets of Change: Adaptation and Cultural Transition (Lanham: Lexington Books), pp. 15–​28. Kent, N. (2003), ‘Director Nicolas Kent dissects the Hutton Inquiry’, Theatre Voice, 30 October 2003, online at www.theatrevoice.com/​audio/​interview-​nicolas-​kent-​ the-​artistic-​director-​of-​the-​tricycl (accessed 25 November 2020). Kent, N. (2008), ‘Nicolas Kent’, in Hammond and Steward (eds), Verbatim, Verbatim: Contemporary Documentary Theatre, pp. 105–​68.

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Lane, D. (2010), Contemporary British Drama (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press). Martin, C. (2006, ed.), Documentary Theatre, a special issue of TDR: The Drama Review, 50:3. Megson, C. (2005), ‘“This is all theatre”: Iraq centre stage’, Contemporary Theatre Review, 15:3, 369–​71. Norton-​Taylor, R. (1999), The Colour of Justice: Based on the Transcripts of the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry (London: Oberon). Norton-​ Taylor, R. (2003), Justifying War: Scenes from the Hutton Inquiry (London: Oberon). Norton-​ Taylor, R. (2004a), ‘The Hutton Inquiry and its impact’, Guardian, 6 February 2004. Norton-​Taylor, R. (2004b), ‘Spirit of inquiry’, New Statesman, 7 June 2004. Norton-​ Taylor, R. (2005), Bloody Sunday: Scenes from the Saville Inquiry (London: Oberon). Norton-​ Taylor, R. (2007), Called to Account: The Indictment of Anthony Charles Lynton Blair for the Crime of Aggression against Iraq—​ A Hearing (London: Oberon). Norton-​Taylor, R., with M. Lloyd (1995), Truth Is a Difficult Concept: Inside the Scott Inquiry (London: Fourth Estate). Paget, D. (2008a), ‘New documentarism on stage: documentary theatre in new times’, Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, 56:2, 129–​41. Paget, D. (2008b), ‘Thomas Wheatley—​ interviewed by Derek Paget—​ 02 April 2008’, online at http://​docpla​yer.net/​142762​952-​Tho​mas-​wheat​ley-​inte​rvie​wed-​ by-​derek-​paget-​02-​april-​2008.html (accessed 29 October 2021). Paget, D. (2011), No Other Way to Tell It: Docudrama on Film and Television (Manchester: Manchester University Press). Ralph, P. (2008), Deep Cut (London: Oberon). Reid, T. (2011), ‘Post-​ devolutionary drama’, in I. Brown (ed.), The Edinburgh Companion to Scottish Drama (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press), pp. 188–​99. Reinelt, J. (2009), ‘The promise of documentary’, in Forsyth and Megson (eds), Get Real: Documentary Theatre Past and Present, pp. 6–​23. Saunders, G. (2002), ‘Love Me or Kill Me’: Sarah Kane and the Theatre of Extremes (Manchester: Manchester University Press). Stoller, T (2013), Tales of the Tricycle Theatre (London: Methuen Drama). Taylor, L. (2011), ‘The experience of immediacy: emotion and enlistment in fact-​ based theatre’, Studies in Theatre & Performance, 31:2, 223–​37. Tomlin, L. (2013), Acts and Apparitions: Discourses on the Real in Performance Practice and Theory (Manchester: Manchester University Press). Upton, C. (2009), ‘The performance of truth and justice in Northern Ireland: the case of Bloody Sunday’, in Forsyth and Megson (eds), Get Real: Documentary Theatre Past and Present, pp. 179–​94.

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Wake, C. (2013), ‘Headphone verbatim theatre: methods, histories, genres, theories’, New Theatre Quarterly, 29:4, 321–​35. Wilson, C. (2013), ‘Challenging the “fetish of the verbatim”: new aesthetics and familiar abuses in Christine Evans’ Slow Falling Bird’, in F. N. Becker, P. S. Hernández and B. Werth (eds), Imagining Human Rights in Twenty-​First-​ Century Theater: Global Perspectives (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan), pp. 121–​36. Wyver, J. (2007), Vision on: Film, Television and the Arts in Britain (London: Wallflower).

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The impact of television on scholarly editions of Shakespeare’s plays Neil Taylor

The chapters in this volume concentrate almost exclusively on television’s commissioning frameworks, production processes and reception contexts of theatre plays on British television. By contrast, this chapter discusses the impact of television productions on an influential group of academic texts—​ the major scholarly editions of William Shakespeare’s plays published in the UK since 1990. ‘Scholarly editions’ are taken to be the substantial versions of the texts rigorously prepared to recognised academic standards, annotated in detail and aimed primarily at fellow academics and sixth-​form, undergraduate and postgraduate students. I look in some detail at the use that the academic editors of these scholarly editions have made of television’s contributions to the plays’ performance histories, and I raise a number of issues in relation to the usefulness of performance history itself. Editors of scholarly editions of Shakespeare’s plays took a long time to recognise that their role necessarily included a discussion of the play in performance. The editors’ introductions in all the volumes of the first and second Arden Shakespeare series (hereinafter referred to as ‘Ard1’ and ‘Ard2’, respectively; Ard1 came out between 1899 and 1924, and Ard2 between 1951 and 1982) concentrated on textual matters and literary critical analysis, and only a few of the Ard2 editors included a little theatre history as well. The New Shakespeare series, which Cambridge University Press produced between 1921 and 1966 (‘Cam1’), devoted a small section of each volume’s introduction to a short stage history but farmed the task out to someone other than the volume editor.1 And all but the final edition (Cymbeline) of the New Penguin Shakespeare, produced between 1967 and 2005 (‘Penguin’), contained no performance history. The situation changed in the 1980s with the launch of two new series—​the Oxford Shakespeare (‘Oxford’) in 1982 and the New Cambridge Shakespeare (‘Cambridge’) in 1984. Both series are complete, although Cambridge is currently in the process of updating each of its editions. Together these two series effectively broke new ground by almost always requiring their editors

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to include in their introductions a clearly signposted section on stage history. However, while the Cambridge publicity promises attention to ‘the theatrical qualities of each play and its stage history’, Oxford publicity talks about ‘performance’. The recently completed third series of the Arden Shakespeare (‘Arden’), which launched in 1995, claims that each edition in the series provides ‘A full, illustrated introduction to the play’s historical, cultural and performance contexts’.2 In 1998, Cambridge University Press initiated a new series of editions, originating some years earlier under the title ‘Plays in Performance’, but now called ‘Shakespeare in Production’ (‘SP’). Finally, in 2005, Penguin began to update its editions: they now always include a brief section entitled ‘The Play in Performance’. Thus, over the last hundred years or so, scholarly editions gradually started to include discussion of a play’s stage history; and this stage history, again gradually, began to give way to the expanded concept of performance history. Shakespearean performance history encompasses not only stage productions (professional and amateur), but also sound recordings since the 1880s, films since 1899, radio broadcasts since 1923 and, since 1937, television. Indeed, Shakespeare has been by far the most frequently performed stage dramatist on television, at least within the UK. Even before BBC2 broadcast all thirty-​seven of his plays between 1978 and 1985 in the BBC Television Shakespeare series, all but four (Henry VIII, Pericles, Timon of Athens and Titus Andronicus) had already been produced and broadcast on BBC Television, some of them many times over. Furthermore, the audience reach of television Shakespeare has been huge. The original BBC Television Shakespeare received an average audience of over 900,000 viewers, with The Taming of the Shrew attracting 2.2 million and even Cymbeline 400,000. When Hamlet from this series was shown in the USA, it pulled in 5.5 million.3 In light of audience sizes like these, and the fact that Shakespeare has also, of course, been produced on other British television channels, and in many other countries throughout the world, one might expect that television Shakespeare would have become a staple of the performance history sections of the introductions to editions of Shakespeare’s plays.4 It is certainly there in places, but patchily; its presence is unevenly distributed across the field, and quite a few editors ignore it entirely. Some have argued that this reflects a deep-​seated resistance to the medium of television—​a resistance fuelled by intellectual, cultural and social snobbery. As Bernice Kliman put it in 2001, ‘Televised Shakespeare has been performance history’s disdained foster-​child’ (Kliman 2001: 464). Only four Ard2 editors ever mention television, and between them they only cite five productions.5 The picture improves in subsequent series. Television now features in twenty-​ two Cambridge, twenty-​two Oxford and thirty Arden editions; SP has only

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published editions of fourteen of the thirty-​seven plays, but of these fourteen television features in thirteen.6 The improvement in these figures has probably much to do with the arrival in the late 1970s of the BBC Television Shakespeare, since almost every editor in these four series has been able to watch them, either during the original broadcasts or subsequently via video recordings. What do editors do? Alongside writing the introductions to each play and providing detailed annotations to the text, they decide which of the earliest printed versions of a play should serve as their copy text, where to amend it when it does not make good sense, how to present it on the page (what the punctuation should be, which speeches are in verse and which in prose, what stage directions to insert, where the act and scene divisions should fall and so on) and how to defend all these decisions. Because these editions provide the basis of actors’ scripts and because the scholarship underpinning them colours a theatre (and indeed a film and television) director’s reading of the play, it could be argued that Shakespeare’s editors are themselves part of a play’s performance history. It could also be argued, of course, that many of the decisions which directors and actors make when they are working on a play constitute editorial decisions themselves. So when a production deviates from the text, editors naturally prick up their ears. Quite a few of the editors in the series discussed here do indeed comment on such ‘deviant’ behaviour and some forcefully criticise a production when text goes missing. The SP Taming of the Shrew castigates Jonathan Miller’s 1980 BBC production for omitting the whole of the Induction (the framing device featuring Christopher Sly), just as Miller’s production had done when he directed the play at the Chichester Festival Theatre in 1972. Whereas at Chichester this had been ‘simply another directorial decision, with the BBC production it was something more, since the BBC Television Shakespeare is marketed, in the USA at least, as “The Complete Dramatic Works”’ (Shakespeare 2002f: 74). In some respects, however, editors do not live up to their stereotypes. One might expect editors to object to departures from the text, but not all of them do. The Cambridge King Lear, for example, seems untroubled that in his 1983 Granada production Michael Elliott altered the text so that Laurence Olivier’s Lear could die convinced that Cordelia was still alive (Shakespeare 1992: 57). The SP Merchant of Venice is positively grateful that, in Miller’s 1974 ATV for ITV production, Lancelot Gobbo ‘was here (thankfully) reduced to almost nothing, and Old Gobbo did not appear at all’ (Shakespeare 2002d: 88). And the Oxford Henry IV Part Two approves of a condensed version of the two Henry IV plays, directed by John Caird for the BBC in 1995, which shifted material around, moving forward Bolingbroke’s soliloquy in the middle of Part Two to follow the Gad’s Hill

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robbery in Part One, and other material from the same scene to follow Part One’s tavern scene. ‘It will never be a purist Henry IV’, the editor writes, ‘but it made the two plays and their contexts readily accessible to contemporary mass audiences’ (Shakespeare 1998d: 77). Similarly, one might expect editors to call on television productions to illustrate the choices they themselves are making over textual cruces—​when, in other words, their copy text is nonsense or ambiguous and editors are required to supply solutions, but this almost never happens. A rare example is to be found in both the Arden and SP editions of Hamlet, which note that the line ‘O horrible, O horrible, most horrible!’, which occurs in one of the Ghost’s longer speeches in act 1 scene 5, has sometimes been given to Hamlet in earlier editions of the play. They point out that in the 1980 BBC version Derek Jacobi accepted the gift, although the two editions disagree about how much of the line he spoke and how much the Ghost retained (Shakespeare 1999d: 139; Shakespeare 2006a: 217). Again, turning the pages of the printed playtext and hunting through the detailed notes at the bottom of the page commenting on and explaining particular words or speeches, one might expect to come across references to television productions that illustrate how the passages in question have been interpreted. All but one of the fourteen SP editions do just this (some ­profusely—​the Antony and Cleopatra, for example, has ninety-​one notes citing one or other of the 1974 ATV and 1981 BBC productions of the play). This is to be expected. The use of past stage or television productions is, after all, the raison d’être of the SP series. But the picture in the other three series is surprisingly different. In the whole of Arden, there are just twenty-​ one such references. In Cambridge, there is one. In Oxford, none. If television productions are going to be cited anywhere in a scholarly edition, they are most likely to feature in the performance history section (if there is one) of the editor’s Introduction. Many television Shakespeare broadcasts, particularly in the early years of television, have been versions of pre-​existing stage productions, filmed either in the theatre with an audience, or in the theatre without an audience, or re-​staged in a television studio. Reading through the discussions of television productions in the Arden, Cambridge, Oxford and SP series, one is struck by the extent to which so many of them are described in exactly the same terms that editors employ when describing productions in the theatre. Here, for example, is the account of the only television production mentioned by the editor of the 1998 Arden edition of Julius Caesar: Though Roman enough in setting and manners, the values are of human drama rather than the engagement of colossi. Richard Pasco’s Brutus has the authority to make one believe that all is as he planned it, but at the same time subtly conveying the inner disturbance that will before long destroy him as well as

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Caesar. The moments of assassination, and of the ritual smearing of blood, are horrific in sudden realizations in Charles Gray’s Caesar from half-​second to half-​second as the daggers smite him. Here is a fine and faithful interpretation. (Shakespeare 1998a: 118–​19)

That’s it. An entirely measured and sensitive response. And a positive one, too. But there is nothing here to suggest that it is a television production nor that it was part of an institutional project, the BBC Television Shakespeare. Richard Schoch (2005: 236) has argued that the primary difficulty in writing performance histories of Shakespeare is ‘the normative force of institutional practices and conceptual biases’. Certainly there is evidence in many of these editions of a mind-​set formed through the practice of writing about plays on stages rather than on screens. An editor’s choice of vocabulary can be telling. When, for example, the Arden editor discusses the attempted rape scene in the 1983 BBC Television Shakespeare production of The Two Gentlemen of Verona, he describes how ‘Proteus grabs Silvia’s arm, then rips off the mask she is wearing and begins to grab at her before Valentine almost instantly interrupts, sword in hand’ (Shakespeare 2004a: 98). The term he uses in order to refer back to what he has just described is ‘stage action’; indeed, we might also note that his discussion takes place under the sub-​ heading ‘The Theatrical Tradition’ (ibid.). Similarly, the 2012 Cambridge updated edition of the same play discusses the same production under the sub-​heading ‘stage … interpretations’ (Shakespeare 2012: 48). It is not that there is a total absence of engagement with the nature of television. A handful of editors manage this, and do it well. But usually there is little to distinguish their approach to television productions from their approach to theatrical performances, and a number express their reservations about television Shakespeare—​and the BBC Television Shakespeare in particular. The overall judgement on a number of productions in the BBC Television Shakespeare is that they are ‘bland’. The epithet occurs in the SP Much Ado About Nothing (Shakespeare 1998f: 82), the Arden Troilus and Cressida (Shakespeare 1998c: 108), the Arden Timon of Athens (Shakespeare 2008a: 133), the Arden Merchant of Venice (Shakespeare 2010: 135) and the SP Romeo and Juliet (when describing Alan Rickman’s Tybalt; Shakespeare 2002e: 78).7 Another favourite word is ‘dull’, which is to be found in both the Arden Twelfth Night (Shakespeare 2008b: 121) and the SP Twelfth Night (Shakespeare 2009c: 74), while the Merchant of Venice is, in the opinion of the SP editor, ‘a prime example of the dullness which bedevilled the BBC Shakespeare series’ (Shakespeare 2002d: 88).8 Meanwhile, The Tempest is ‘mundane’ (Arden, Shakespeare 1999b: 117), Antony and Cleopatra ‘lacklustre’ (SP, Shakespeare 1998e: 115) and Measure for Measure ‘virtually featureless and therefore insipid’ (Cambridge, Shakespeare 2006b: 83). The blandest but, at the same time, most withering term of disapproval is

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reserved for the Richard II, which (it must be said, along with NBC’s production of the same play in 1954) the Cambridge editor describes as ‘generally unhappy’ (Shakespeare 2003b: 58). Of course, expressing disappointment that the opportunity provided by such a historically significant project as the BBC Television Shakespeare was not grasped with enough imagination or originality can be defended. A number of editors attribute the unadventurous nature of many of BBC Television Shakespeare productions to constraints imposed on the directors by the corporate sponsors Time-​Life. But some editors allow themselves to indulge in the kind of criticism one would associate with theatre reviewers in daily newspapers rather than with serious performance historians. For example, there is a certain amount of gratuitous sneering at the actors, the costumes and the scenery. The Arden editor tells us he finds the 1983 BBC Henry VI Part One unwatchable in more than small sections at a time on account of ‘a kind of amateurishness in much of the acting and filming … The effect is one of under-​rehearsal, cut-​price designs and some outstandingly ludicrous wigs’ (Shakespeare 2000a: 318). A fellow Arden editor, writing about the 1985 BBC Love’s Labour’s Lost, quips that ‘the wigs did a lot of the work of the men’s acting’ (Shakespeare 1998b: 94–​5), and the joke is felt good enough for the Cambridge editor to repeat it a decade later (Shakespeare 2009b: 49). The editors of the Arden Timon object to the columns in the interior scenes in the 1981 BBC production, which ‘appear to be made of plywood tinged with gilt’ (Shakespeare 2008a: 78), while the editor of the SP Romeo and Juliet complains that in the 1978 BBC production ‘The plywood soundstage Verona looks cheap and uninhabited’ (Shakespeare 2002e: 78). Some editors have surprisingly rigid views on how the speeches should be delivered. The Oxford Two Gentlemen of Verona complains that in the 1983 BBC production the actor playing Julia ‘has all the faults and none of the advantages of inexperience’ (Shakespeare 2008c: 13), going on to object that the production is ‘vilely spoken’. ‘This’, he explains, ‘is partly because of the naturalism that the television studio encourages, but chiefly, because few of the actors know how to speak verse—​the main fault is to stress personal pronouns when the text doesn’t—​which is the other side of inexperience’ (ibid.). The Oxford editor of Henry VI Part One, on the other hand, finds that, in this BBC production at least, ‘the verse is beautifully spoken’, but he cannot refrain from adding ‘despite Brenda Blethyn’s somewhat rickety Lancashire accent as Joan’ (Shakespeare 2003c: 38–​9). It is not immediately clear how a Lancashire accent affects the beauty of verse speaking. Or is it merely that the actor (from Ramsgate in Kent) is being castigated for not getting a Lancashire accent right? Other editors have equally rigid views on how tall or how old or how beautiful the actors must be. The Cambridge Antony and Cleopatra is

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disappointed that the leads in the 1981 BBC production, Colin Blakeley and Jane Lapotaire, were ‘not physically big enough for the greatness of their roles’ (Shakespeare 1990a: 66). Discussing Lapotaire in the same production, the SP editor complains that ‘she is the more obliquely cast (or miscast), having no trace of sensuality’ (Shakespeare 1998e: 116). When the SP editor of The Merchant of Venice writes about the 1973 broadcast of Jonathan Miller’s 1970 National Theatre production, he is struck by what television can reveal: ‘the age of the cast, with a 40-​year-​old Bassanio wooing (not very enthusiastically) a 44-​year old Portia, was more obvious in close-​up than it would have been at the Old Vic’ (Shakespeare 2002d: 88). He develops this insight when he turns to the 1980 BBC production, directed by Jack Gold and produced by Miller: ‘Gemma Jones … could hardly have found a role to which she was less suited than Portia: as is all too customary, at 37 she was too old for the part, and Gold and Miller did her no favours by making the fatal mistake of having a Nerissa, the lovely Susan Jameson, who was much better-​looking than her mistress’ (ibid.). The Cambridge King Lear, on the other hand, is relieved that, in Michael Elliott’s 1983 Granada production for ITV, ‘Diana Rigg stunningly conveyed Regan’s beauty’ (Shakespeare 1992: 57). Not only does this kind of criticism flirt with sexism and ageism, it also ignores the possible reasons a director might have for casting against what the editor might regard as type. Surely, there needs to be a good reason for mentioning an actor’s age or bodily condition? It is a relief to find the Oxford editor providing one when describing Sir Laurence Olivier in Elliott’s ITV King Lear: Just as Garrick’s 1776 performances were all the more affecting because audiences knew that they would be his last, so Olivier’s gains in poignancy because of the aged and ailing actor’s self-​evident frailty. Nevertheless his performance constantly illuminates the role, not simply in the pathos of the reunion with Cordelia, but especially in the unsentimental lightness of touch with which he plays the Dover Cliff scene. This Lear has passed beyond the tempestuous madness of the storm into a precarious serenity that looks forward to his vision of singing, with Cordelia, ‘like birds i’ th’ cage’. (Shakespeare 2000c: 77–​8)

Few of my examples so far illustrate editors engaging with the television medium itself. A number of editors attempt an analysis of a director’s use of the camera to participate in their interpretation of Shakespeare’s text. Some describe how close-​ups can help in communicating ‘psychological and motivational nuances’, as the Arden Richard II puts it (Shakespeare 2002b: 105), or creating a sense of intimacy, as the Oxford Measure for Measure argues (Shakespeare 1991: 41). The SP Henry V points out that, by looking straight to camera, Alec McCowen’s Chorus in the 1979 BBC production not only ‘performed an explicatory narrative function’ but ‘drew a kind of authority from televisual association of “talking heads” for news and other serious

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programming’ (Shakespeare 2002c: 71). Meanwhile, the Arden editor reads the 1979 production of Henry VIII in the context of ‘the BBC’s success in televising coronations and other large-​scale state events (itself productive of an escalation in the pomp of such events as the establishment seeks to reinvent royalty)’ (Shakespeare 2000b: 43). He finds it ‘pleasingly ironic’ that the notoriously low budget resulted in a Henry VIII which, ‘though meticulously archaeological in costume and architecture, denied the director the temptation to turn the tradition of pomp and ceremony into televisual spectacle (only glimpses are caught of processions) and obliged him to concentrate on the possibilities offered by the TV close-​up’ (ibid.). Even so, when editors venture beyond discussion of what a director gains through the power of the close-​up, it is usually to reflect on what is lost in the translation of Shakespeare to what they repeatedly call the small screen. Thus the SP Much Ado About Nothing considers that the camerawork in the 1984 BBC production ‘too often failed to resolve problems of overcrowding and restricted movement which were especially apparent on the small television screen’ (Shakespeare 1998f: 82),9 the Arden Henry IV Part One complains that in the 1979 BBC production the small screen ‘struggled to contain the enormous energies of the play’ (Shakespeare 2002a: 103) and the SP Romeo and Juliet finds the 1955 BBC version ‘awkwardly crowded into tight studio settings’ (Shakespeare 2002e: 77). Meanwhile, the Oxford editor of Pericles complains that the 1984 BBC production is ‘weakened by adopting a conversational style apt for television but at odds with the overt theatricality of the writing’ (Shakespeare 2003e: 21). Discussing the 1981 BBC Othello, the Oxford editor describes how Jonathan Miller ‘devised a consciously small-​scale domestic production … which virtually excluded Othello’s larger, political and social concerns’ (Shakespeare 2006c: 92). However, the SP editor believes that any inadequacies in the 1980 BBC Merchant of Venice were not inherent in the medium but a consequence of insufficient resources being allocated to the production: he praised Otto Schenk’s 1968 German-​Austrian Television Merchant of Venice for being shot on a set ‘large enough to allow tracking shots from room to room and a functional canal placed the action in Venice, not a television studio’ (Shakespeare 2002d: 87). And in order to escape the restrictions of the studio, a couple of BBC Television Shakespeare productions—​the 1979 Henry VIII and the 1978 As You Like It—​ventured outside. Editorial opinion of these adventures is divided. The Oxford editor thinks filming Henry VIII on location ‘solved some problems encountered in theatres’ (Shakespeare 1999c: 58), but the Cambridge editor of As You Like It ridicules the ‘misconceived’ decision to shoot on location at Glamis Castle. It was, he argues, a transgression beyond the ne plus ultra of nineteenth-​ century theatrical ­illusionism; … The Scottish midges that swarmed from the long grass of the

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castle park and that the actors had to swat away could not be turned into a counter-​pastoral motif but remained a distraction, a reminder of the moment of shooting which, by a convention appropriate to this kind of film, has to be occluded. (Shakespeare 2009a: 75)

References to the restricted budgets of the BBC Television Shakespeare productions occur quite often. The editors of the Cambridge Henry IV Part One comment that ‘these productions were filmed without the long rehearsal periods and the two seasons of repertory playing which so often strengthened RSC productions’ (Shakespeare 2003a: 54). But the Arden Henry VI Part One editor observes that, while ‘Financial considerations have effectively vetoed the stage revival of a largely unknown play with, by modern conventions, a larger than usual cast’ (Shakespeare 2000a: 305), the BBC Television Shakespeare project has allowed the director to use the same group of actors for all three Henry VI plays and Richard III, and film the whole sequence in a continuous period on a large single set. The editor of the Arden Henry VIII believes that the 1979 BBC production ‘demonstrates that the TV camera can serve to narrow rather than enlarge the visual focus of the play in a manner which would perhaps have pleased Poel or Greet’. In his opinion, the film’s small scale ‘suggests a workable, ongoing alternative to the epic style that has been so persistent in the play’s performance history’ (Shakespeare 2000b: 43–​4). Similarly, the SP Henry V editor can see that David Giles’ 1979 BBC production has successfully made virtue of necessity: ‘The constraints of studio shooting meant that this was inevitably a small scale production, favouring domestic-​scale angles and medium close-​ups, showing, for example, tears in Henry’s eyes after he despatches Scroop, Cambridge and Grey’ (Shakespeare 2002c: 69–​71). Thus, amidst those with reservations about television Shakespeare, there are editors who think screen adaptations can illuminate the texts. The SP Merchant of Venice editor feels that Bob Peck’s Shylock and Haydn Gwynne’s Portia in Alan Horrox’s 1996 Thames Television production ‘capitalised upon the intimacy of cinema sound to give fully nuanced readings of their key speeches, without having to raise their voices above a whisper’ (Shakespeare 2002d: 89). And when John Wilders, the Arden editor, considers two productions of Antony and Cleopatra (Trevor Nunn’s for ATV in 1974, and Jonathan Miller’s for the BBC Television Shakespeare in 1981), he recalls Emrys Jones’ theory that it might have been written for the small Blackfriars indoor theatre, because the play is quiet and conversational, working in short scenes, with small groups of characters, ‘and through effects of often minute delicacy’ (Jones 1977: 8). Wilders notes that these were the very effects created by both Nunn and Miller: ‘Both directors were compelled by the nature of the medium to reveal elements in the play which the Victorian actor managers had obscured’ (Shakespeare 1995: 26).

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There are two places in the canon of Shakespeare plays on television which stand out for the extent and depth of the treatment they receive at the hands of their editors. The first of these are 1983 BBC Television Shakespeare broadcasts of the first histories tetralogy, including the three, rarely performed Henry VI plays. This multiple production by Jane Howell makes a big impact on the relevant Arden, Oxford and Cambridge editors, all of whom discuss it at length, and most of whom admire it greatly. The Oxford editor of Henry VI Part Two, Roger Warren, thinks the plays were ‘a high point, if not the high point of the series’ (Shakespeare 2003d: 15). The Arden editor, Ronald Knowles, describes them as ‘one of the finest versions ever’ (Shakespeare 1999a: 20). Warren argues part of their success derived from ‘their skilful integration of the techniques of theatre and television’ (Shakespeare 2003d: 15), while Knowles calls them ‘powerfully unconventional’ (Shakespeare 1999a: 20). Writing in the same year that the tetralogy was broadcast, but writing about a very different television production (Michael Elliott’s King Lear for ITV, 1983), Stanley Wells reflected that while television was potentially a highly flexible medium ‘offering great opportunities for experimentation’, it was ‘generally so far working within traditions of naturalistic presentation related to those of nineteenth century theatre’ (in the Oxford King Lear, Shakespeare 2000c: 77). Jane Howell’s productions can be regarded as highly experimental, and there was considerable agreement among the Henry VI editors that she had absorbed Bertolt Brecht’s theories about the subversion of theatrical conventions (see Bingham 1988). Knowles identifies six features of Howell’s style which are Brechtian—​the anti-​naturalistic set, the absence of star actors, the emphasis on ensemble, the adoption of an acting style opposed to Stanislavsky’s psychological naturalism, the use of doubling and, finally, ‘putting situation before character’ (Shakespeare 1999a: 24). Michael Hattaway, the Cambridge editor of Henry VI Part One, adds that the text is taken ‘at a rattling pace, displaying a Brechtian sense of Spars (fun)’ (Shakespeare 1990b: 52), while John Cox and Eric Rasmussen, the editors of the Arden Part Three, talk of Howell’s ‘self-​conscious style [which] tends to disengage viewers from the production as “real” and therefore has affinities with Brecht’s alienation-​effect’ (Shakespeare 2001: 36–​7). Knowles gets closest to explaining how this Brechtianism affects the experience of watching a play on television as opposed to a play in the theatre. While the SP editor of The Merchant of Venice had objected to the 1980 BBC production because ‘the locale for the entire play, as it was for every BBC Shakespeare, was “a studio”, where no breeze ever blows, Gratiano’s instruction, “let no dog bark” is taken literally and no interior set even has a ceiling’ (Shakespeare 2002d: 88), the director Jane Howell deliberately sets out to keep the viewer aware that the performance was taking place

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in a studio. Knowles argues that ‘Howell’s genius was to recognize that the television medium could be used actually to complement the metadramatic’ (Shakespeare 1999a: 23). Very little else of the discussion in any of these first tetralogy editions refers explicitly to the challenging of dominant conventions of naturalism on television, as opposed to in the theatre. Indeed, much of the discussion could well be of a stage production, but in some respects this makes sense, since one of the things which characterised Howell’s approach to television was her commitment to theatre practice. Cox and Rasmussen argue that Howell’s production derived its stylised set from John Barton and Peter Hall’s Wars of the Roses, as staged by the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1963–​64 and broadcast by BBC Television in 1965, and its self-​conscious theatricality from Giorgio Strehler’s stage adaptation of the Henry plays, Il gioco dei potenti, which he produced in Milan in 1965. In his essays on ‘The Production’ in the BBC books accompanying the productions, Henry Fenwick writes of Howell’s ‘strong theatrical background’ and her decision to use a steady company ‘in theatrical fashion’ (Fenwick 1983: 2, 23); indeed, he even allowed himself to write ‘we were all very conscious that it was a stage production’ (Fenwick 1983a: 25). Knowles describes Howell’s use of ‘the Elizabethan theatre convention of the aside, here spoken directly to the camera’ (Shakespeare 1999a: 24). But soliloquies to the camera are no novelty in television productions of Shakespeare: the SP Taming of the Shrew points out that a 1950 production on CBS television featured Charlton Heston’s Petruchio addressing his soliloquies to the camera (Shakespeare 2002f: 69). More importantly, direct address to the camera is in fact one of the conventions of most programmes on television other than plays, so the alienation effect derives as much from the adoption of a convention as from the rejection of a convention. The second example of a production drawing very full and perceptive treatment from the editors is Jonathan Miller’s 1981 production of Timon of Athens, which he made for the BBC Television Shakespeare. Not only does the Oxford editor, John Jowett, devote a whole section of his edition to it, but what he writes is something of a model of how to write television performance history. In the first place, he tries to explain to his readers why they should read this section, and why he has given this production so much attention. Not only is it a good production, he says, but it is a rare representation of how the play can be adapted for the screen, and it is a resource available to many readers of this edition who may never see the play onstage (Shakespeare 2004b: 118). I am not aware that any other editor has addressed the issue so clearly and so powerfully. He then goes on to describe the nature and quality of the production, again with great clarity and simplicity, and the result is that the reader can quite easily visualise it, even if they have not, as yet, seen it for themselves.

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Carefully directed by Jonathan Miller, it takes advantage of the camera close-​ up to present a studied and softly spoken production. Plain monumental architecture with gaps and archways define Timon’s house and Athens. The woods are realized as an underlit pebble beach backed by the concrete of sea defences. (ibid.)

A little later, he turns his attention to a detail of the casting, explaining that Miller chose the satirists John Fortune and John Bird to play the Poet and the Painter. As time wears on, fewer readers will know these two actors/​ comedians, but in 1983 the television audience would have recognised them immediately and brought their knowledge of them into play, consciously or unconsciously. So, when Jowett writes that ‘they perform their roles with mannerisms recognisable from their performance style in satirical television programmes’ (ibid.), he acknowledges that for some viewers the metadramatic dimension will be lost without his help. Television is a culture, and an editor needs to be sensitive to the ways in which it works. (Similarly, the editor of Arden Merchant of Venice knows he has to explain to those readers who were not watching television in the late 1970s that Warren Mitchell, who played Shylock in the 1980 BBC production, was well known for his comic portrayal of racist bigot Alf Garnett in the long-​running sitcom Till Death Us Do Part.) Cuts and the structure of the production are then considered, with Jowett arguing that the one informs the other. Having listed a series of episodes which go missing he remarks: More innovative and interesting is the cut at the turning point of the play where Timon leaves Athens. The end of Sc. 11 and the first three lines of Sc. 12 are deleted, with the result that the rest of Timon’s soliloquy in Sc. 12 is played as a continuation of the mock banquet scene. As he delivers the soliloquy, Timon smashes pots and overturns furniture, giving ‘Take thou that too’ at 12.34 an immediate explanation. In the following scene, the servant’s ‘Such a house broke’ at 13.5 is true literally: the debris is all around. This arrangement has the advantage of providing an immediate context for Timon’s anger. It avoids the scene of transition, and simplifies the location sequence from Timon’s house to outside the walls, back to Timon’s house, and so to the woods. Thus it sharpened the divide of the play into two halves. (Shakespeare 2004b: 118–​19)

Jowett concludes his analysis with a vivid, poetic, gripping rehearsal of the process of Timon’s extraordinary decline and withdrawal. This phase of the play, it must be said, is also evoked by the Arden editors, who describe well the closing sequence of Timon in his bunker on the beach—​first a ‘surrealistic camera shot of his shadowed face upside down on the shingle, his mouth moving distortedly above his flashing eyes’, and then ‘a final shot of his bandaged hand grasping at pebbles’ (Shakespeare 2004b: 136).

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In his book chapter on ‘Theatrical study and editions of the plays’, John Russell Brown compares the 1991 Cambridge and Oxford Measure for Measures, much preferring the latter because the Cambridge editor merely discusses ‘moments’ in the performance of individual actors, whereas his Oxford counterpart gives the production a ‘physical and ideological context’ (Brown 2011: 15). This is persuasive, but an editor needs to give other contexts, too. As Robert Shaughnessy has argued, people will always turn to ‘the vicarious arena of theatre history because it offers a way of seeing cultures’ (2002: 194). Performance history can obviously concentrate on what goes on in the theatre or television studio, but it can also broaden out to consider a production’s social, political, cultural or historical contexts. If it is going to serve a useful scholarly function, television performance history needs to be more than a mere chronicle of past events or an excuse for an editor to write journalistic reviews. The editions considered here provide some evidence that television productions can be influential within, and have tangible effects upon, the arts community and beyond. As the Arden Hamlet editors point out, the availability of a television recording of the 1953 NBC production, starring the ‘historic Hamlet’ of Maurice Evans, means that influence needs no longer to be exclusively dependent upon an actor or director witnessing a live stage performance in the flesh (Shakespeare 2006a: 108). Edward Burns argues that when the 1960 BBC Age of Kings cycle was broadcast in half-​hour episodes on Sunday afternoons, ‘The resulting popular success was highly influential in establishing two staples of British TV drama, the “classic series” and a form of serial drama self-​consciously more “serious” than the American “soap”’ (Arden Henry VI Part One, Shakespeare 2000a: 69). He may well be right. And when the SP Othello editor discusses Trevor Nunn’s 1989 stage production at The Other Place, she notes that ‘What is new about the critical reaction … is the amount of space given to the women … the part of Emilia had never seemed so significant. And it has been the effect on many since, for whom the video of the television production [of Nunn’s staging] has only served to keep the question alive and more insistent’ (Shakespeare 2005: 99). An estimated 37.2 million people watched the original broadcasts of the BBC Television Shakespeare series in the UK alone, and television and film versions of Shakespeare’s plays have spoken and still speak to audiences so large that they probably dwarf all the audiences who have ever attended performances of at least some of those plays in the theatre.10 The editors of the Arden Henry VI Part Three take few risks when they predict that most people who see their play in the foreseeable future are likely to do so in the BBC Television Shakespeare production:

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This is because its initial broadcast in 1983 was followed by successful marketing on videotape: individual plays were much cheaper if the whole series was purchased than if they were purchased separately. The BBC/​Time-​Life version thus became by default the primary production used as a teaching resource for the play, because so many academic libraries purchased the series. (Shakespeare 2001: 16)

But almost all the productions cited in this chapter, and many more besides, can now be found on DVD, or through the internet, or by visiting particular archives. This means their audience is inevitably growing—​and will continue to grow indefinitely into the future. Considering how few television productions there have been compared with productions on the stage, the amount of space devoted to television productions in the performance history sections of some of these editions may seem disproportionately large, but in fact it could, arguably, be much larger. The old theatre history mind-​set may still persist, and editors may continue to quote other people’s accounts of productions which they themselves could view and analyse;11 but, unlike theatre historians, who are necessarily heavily reliant on second-​hand evidence, television historians, and the subset of Shakespeare scholars engaged with the medium, have no reason to be. The fact that the primary material can be realised as well as read transforms the performance historian’s practice, and those television productions which have not already been lost should always be with us. The performance historian will need to discuss them in their historical context, of course, but the editor who is also a performance historian, knowing readers can access the very same performances too, will be able to analyse them in ways and in a depth that very few of the editors under discussion in this chapter have even attempted.

Productions discussed As You Like It by William Shakespeare (The BBC Television Shakespeare). Dir. Basil Coleman. BBC2. 8.10–​ 9.35 and 9.40–​ 10.45pm, Sunday 17 December 1978. Hamlet by William Shakespeare (Hallmark Hall of Fame). Dir. Albert McCleery and George Schaefer. NBC. 3.30pm (c. 90 mins), Sunday 26 April 1953. Henry IV Part 1 by William Shakespeare (The BBC Television Shakespeare). Dir. David Giles. BBC2. 7.15–​9.50pm, Sunday 9 December 1979. Henry IV by William Shakespeare (Performance). Dir. John Caird. BBC2. 8.10–​11.05pm, Sunday 28 October 1995.

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Henry V by William Shakespeare (The BBC Television Shakespeare). Dir. David Giles. BBC2. 7.15–​10.05pm, Sunday 23 December 1979. Henry VI Part One by William Shakespeare (The BBC Television Shakespeare). Dir. Jane Howell. BBC2. 7.15–​8.45 and 8.50–​10.30pm, Sunday 2 January 1983. Henry VI Part Two by William Shakespeare (The BBC Television Shakespeare). Dir. Jane Howell. BBC2. 7.15–​8.50pm and 8.55–​10.55pm, Sunday 9 January 1983. Henry VI Part Three by William Shakespeare (The BBC Television Shakespeare). Dir. Jane Howell. BBC2. 7.15–​9.05pm and 9.10–​10.55pm, Sunday 16 January 1983. Henry VIII by William Shakespeare (The BBC Television Shakespeare). Dir. Kevin Billington. BBC2. 8.00–​9.30pm and 9.35–​10.45pm, Sunday 25 February 1979. Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare. Dir. Herbert Wise. BBC2. 8.05–​ 9.30pm and 9.35–​10.55pm, Sunday 11 February 1979. King Lear by William Shakespeare. Dir. Michael Elliott. Granada for Channel 4. 8.25–​11.25pm, Sunday 3 April 1983. The Merchant of Venice [Der Kaufmann von Venedig] by William Shakespeare. Dir. Otto Schenk. ORF and WDR. 26 October 1968 (Austria); 2 March 1969 (West Germany). The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare. Dir. Jonathan Miller. ATV for ITV. 9.45pm–​12.15am, Sunday 10 February 1974. The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare (The BBC Television Shakespeare). Dir. Jack Gold. BBC2. 8.10–​ 10.50pm, Wednesday 17 December 1980. The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare. Dir. Alan Horrox. Thames Television for ITV. 4.00–​5.25pm, Thursday 15 February 1996. Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare (The BBC Television Shakespeare). Dir. Stuart Burge. BBC2. 8.15–​ 10.45pm, Saturday 22 December 1984. Othello by William Shakespeare (The BBC Television Shakespeare). Dir. Jonathan Miller. BBC2. 7.15–​ 9.00pm and 9.05–​ 10.45pm, Sunday 4 October 1981. Othello by William Shakespeare (Theatre Night). Dir. Trevor Nunn. Royal Shakespeare Company /​Primetime Television for BBC2. 8.00–​9.40pm and 9.55–​11.40pm, Saturday 23 June 1990. Pericles by William Shakespeare (The BBC Television Shakespeare). Dir. David Jones. BBC2. 8.20–​ 9.58pm and 10.10–​ 11.20pm, Saturday 8 December 1984. Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare. Dir. Harold Clayton. BBC. 8.30–​ 10.45pm, Sunday 22 May 1955. Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare (The BBC Television Shakespeare). Dir. Alvin Rakoff. BBC. 8.10–​ 9.20pm and 9.25–​ 11.05pm, Sunday 3 December 1978.

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The Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare (Westinghouse Studio One). Dir. Paul Nickell. CBS. 8.00pm (60 mins), 5 June 1950. The Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare (The BBC Television Shakespeare). Dir. Jonathan Miller. BBC2. 8.30–​ 10.35pm, Thursday 23 October 1980. Timon of Athens by William Shakespeare (The BBC Television Shakespeare). Dir. Jonathan Miller. BBC2. 8.00–​10.10pm, Thursday 16 April 1981. The Two Gentlemen of Verona by William Shakespeare (The BBC Television Shakespeare). Dir. Don Taylor. BBC2. 8.00–​10.20pm, Tuesday 27 December 1983.

Editions discussed The Arden Shakespeare (Bloomsbury) Antony and Cleopatra, ed. J. Wilders (1995) Hamlet, ed. A. Thompson and N. Taylor (2006) Julius Caesar, ed. D. Daniell (1998) King Henry IV Part 1, ed. D. S. Kastan (2002) King Henry VI Part 1, ed. E. Burns (2000) King Henry VI Part 2, ed. R. Knowles (1999) King Henry VI Part 3, ed. J. D. Cox and E. Rasmussen (2001) King Henry VIII, ed. G. McMullan (2000) King Richard II, ed. C. R. Forker (2002) Love’s Labour’s Lost, ed. H. R. Woudhuysen (1998) The Merchant of Venice, ed. J. Drakakis (2010) The Tempest, ed. V. M. Vaughan and A. T. Vaughan (1999) Timon of Athens, ed. A. B. Dawson and G. E. Minton (2008) Troilus and Cressida, ed. D. Bevington (1998) Twelfth Night, ed. K. Elam (2008) The Two Gentlemen of Verona, ed. W. C. Carroll (2004)

The New Cambridge Shakespeare (Cambridge University Press) Antony and Cleopatra, ed. D. Bevington (1990) As You like It, ed. M. Hattaway (2009) The First Part of King Henry IV, ed. H. Weil and J. Weil (2003) The First Part of King Henry VI, ed. M. Hattaway (1990) King Richard II, ed. A. Gurr (2003) Love’s Labour’s Lost, ed. W. C. Carroll (2009) Measure for Measure, ed. B. Gibbons (2006) The Second Part of King Henry IV, ed. G. Melchiori (2007) The Tragedy of King Lear, ed. J. L. Halio (1992) Two Gentlemen of Verona, ed. K. Schlueter (2012)

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The Oxford Shakespeare (Oxford University Press) Henry IV Part 2, ed. R. Weis (1998) Henry VI Part 1, ed. M. Taylor (2003) Henry VI Part 2, ed. R. Warren (2003) Henry VIII, ed. J. L. Halio (1999) King Lear, ed. S. Wells (2000) Measure for Measure, ed. N. W. Bawcutt (1991) Othello, ed. M. Neill (2006) Pericles, ed. R. Warren (2003) Timon of Athens, ed. J. Jowett (2004) Two Gentlemen of Verona, ed. R. Warren (2008)

Shakespeare in Production (Cambridge University Press) Antony and Cleopatra, ed. R. Madelaine (1998) Hamlet, ed. R. Hapgood (1999) Henry V, ed. E. Smith (2002) Macbeth, ed. J. Wilders (2004) The Merchant of Venice, ed. C. Edelman (2002) Much Ado About Nothing, ed. J. Cox (1998) Othello, ed. J. Hankey (2nd ed., 2005) Romeo and Juliet, ed. J. L. Loehlin (2002) The Taming of the Shrew, ed. E. Schafer (2002) Twelfth Night, ed. E. Schafer (2009)

Notes 1 The stage histories were written by Harold Child up to the Second World War and by C. B. Young thereafter. However, John Dover Wilson, who shared the general editorship of the series with Arthur Quiller Couch, co-​wrote two: Love’s Labour’s Lost in 1923, and Henry V in 1947. 2 These quotations come from the dust jackets of volumes in each series. 3 The UK figures were supplied to me by the BBC in personal correspondence. The US figure come from Willis (1991: 39). 4 By 1987, the series had been sold to fifty-​two countries outside the UK and the USA (Willis 1991: 40). 5 A 1954 BBC musical Comedy of Errors; Coriolanus on the BBC in 1963, and on Irish television in 1972; Henry VI Part Three as an element of the BBC’s Age of Kings in 1960; and a 1952 BBC King John. 6 The one SP edition which does not feature a television production is Macbeth (Shakespeare 2004c)—​and surprisingly so, since it was edited in 2004 by John Wilders, the literary adviser for every play in the BBC Television Shakespeare!

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7 Stanley Wells used ‘bland’ when reviewing the 1981 Troilus and Cressida for the Times Literary Supplement (Wells 1981). 8 Banham (1980) wrote an article about David Giles’ 1979 BBC productions of the two parts of Henry IV and Henry V. 9 Henry Fenwick (1983: 28) quotes Jim Atkinson, senior cameraman for the BBC Television Shakespeare, as believing that ‘With Shakespeare, you need to see as many people all the time as you possibly can’. 10 In 1965, John Russell Taylor wrote that ‘it has been estimated that more people saw the Royal Shakespeare Company’s television As You Like It in March 1963 during one showing than had previously seen the play in its whole earlier history on the stage’ (Taylor 1965: 103). 11 For example, the Arden Henry VI Part Three editors describe the mise-​en-​scène in the broadcasts of An Age of Kings and both the Hall/​Barton and Bogdanov Wars of the Roses cycles using the words of Milton Crane (1961), Luke McKernan and Olwyn Terris (1994), and Michael Manheim (1994), rather than their own (Shakespeare 2001: 35, 34 and 34–​5, respectively).

References Banham, M. (1980), ‘BBC Television’s dull Shakespeare’, Critical Quarterly, 22:1, 31–​40. Bingham, D. (1988), ‘Jane Howell’s first tetralogy: Brechtian break-​ out or just good television?’, in J. C. Bulman and H. R. Coulson (eds), Shakespeare on Television: An Anthology of Essays and Reviews (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England), pp. 221–​9. Brown, J. R. (2011), Studying Shakespeare in Performance (Palgrave Macmillan). Crane, M. (1961), ‘Shakespeare on television’, Shakespeare Quarterly, 12:3, 323–​7. Davies, A., and S. Wells (1994, eds), Shakespeare and the Moving Image: The Plays on Film and Television (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Fenwick, H. (1983), ‘The Production’, in BBC, Henry VI Part 1 (London: BBC), pp. 21–​31. Jones, E. (1977), The Origins of Shakespeare (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Kliman, B. (2001), ‘Television’, in Dobson and Wells, The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare, pp. 464–​6. McKernan, L., and O. Terris (1994), Walking Shadows: Shakespeare in the National Film and Television Archive (London: British Film Institute). Manheim, M. (1994), ‘The English history play on screen’, in Davies and Wells (eds), Shakespeare and the Moving Image, pp. 121–​45. Rothwell, K. S. (2004), A History of Shakespeare on Screen: A Century of Film and Television, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Schoch, R. (2005), ‘Shakespeare the Victorian’, in B. Hodgdon and W. B. Worthen (eds), A Companion to Shakespeare and Performance (Oxford: Blackwell), pp. 233–​48. Shakespeare, W. (1990a), The New Cambridge Shakespeare: Antony and Cleopatra, ed. D. Bevington (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

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Shakespeare, W. (1990b), The New Cambridge Shakespeare: The First Part of King Henry VI, ed. M. Hattaway (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Shakespeare, W. (1991), The Oxford Shakespeare: Measure for Measure, ed. N. W. Bawcutt (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Shakespeare, W. (1992), The New Cambridge Shakespeare: The Tragedy of King Lear, ed. J. L. Halio (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Shakespeare, W. (1995), The Arden Shakespeare: Antony and Cleopatra, ed. J. Wilders (London: Bloomsbury). Shakespeare, W. (1998a), The Arden Shakespeare: Julius Caesar, ed. D. Daniell (London: Bloomsbury). Shakespeare, W. (1998b), The Arden Shakespeare: Love’s Labour’s Lost, ed. H. R. Woudhuysen (London: Bloomsbury). Shakespeare, W. (1998c), The Arden Shakespeare: Troilus and Cressida, ed. D. Bevington (London: Bloomsbury). Shakespeare, W. (1998d), The Oxford Shakespeare: Henry IV Part 2, ed. R. Weis (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Shakespeare, W. (1998e), Shakespeare in Production: Antony and Cleopatra, ed. R. Madelaine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Shakespeare, W. (1998f), Shakespeare in Production: Much Ado About Nothing, ed. J. Cox (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Shakespeare, W. (1999a), The Arden Shakespeare: King Henry VI Part 2, ed. R. Knowles (London: Bloomsbury). Shakespeare, W. (1999b), The Arden Shakespeare: The Tempest, ed. V. M. Vaughan and A. T. Vaughan (London: Bloomsbury). Shakespeare, W. (1999c), The Oxford Shakespeare: Henry VIII, ed. J. L. Halio (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Shakespeare, W. (1999d), Shakespeare in Production: Hamlet, ed. R. Hapgood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Shakespeare, W. (2000a), The Arden Shakespeare: King Henry VI Part 1, ed. E. Burns (London: Bloomsbury). Shakespeare, W. (2000b), The Arden Shakespeare: King Henry VIII, ed. G. McMullan (London: Bloomsbury). Shakespeare, W. (2000c), The Oxford Shakespeare: King Lear, ed. S. Wells (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Shakespeare, W. (2001), The Arden Shakespeare: King Henry VI Part 3, ed. J. D. Cox and E. Rasmussen (London: Bloomsbury). Shakespeare, W. (2002a), The Arden Shakespeare: King Henry IV Part 1, ed. D. S. Kastan (London: Bloomsbury). Shakespeare, W. (2002b), The Arden Shakespeare: King Richard II, ed. C. R. Forker (London: Bloomsbury). Shakespeare, W. (2002c), Shakespeare in Production: Henry V, ed. E. Smith (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Shakespeare, W. (2002d), Shakespeare in Production: The Merchant of Venice, ed. C. Edelman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

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Shakespeare, W. (2002e), Shakespeare in Production: Romeo and Juliet, ed. J. L. Loehlin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Shakespeare, W. (2002f), Shakespeare in Production: The Taming of the Shrew, ed. E. Schafer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Shakespeare, W. (2003a), The New Cambridge Shakespeare: The First Part of King Henry IV, ed. H. Weil and J. Weil (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Shakespeare, W. (2003b), The New Cambridge Shakespeare: King Richard II, ed. A. Gurr (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Shakespeare, W. (2003c), The Oxford Shakespeare: Henry VI Part 1, ed. M. Taylor (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Shakespeare, W. (2003d), The Oxford Shakespeare: Henry VI Part 2, ed. R. Warren (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Shakespeare, W. (2003e), The Oxford Shakespeare: Pericles, ed. R. Warren (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Shakespeare, W. (2004a), The Arden Shakespeare: The Two Gentlemen of Verona, ed. W. C. Carroll (London: Bloomsbury). Shakespeare, W. (2004b), The Oxford Shakespeare: Timon of Athens, ed. J. Jowett (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Shakespeare, W. (2004c), Shakespeare in Production: Macbeth, ed. J. Wilders (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Shakespeare, W. (2005), Shakespeare in Production: Othello, ed. J. Hankey, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Shakespeare, W. (2006a), The Arden Shakespeare: Hamlet, ed. A. Thompson and N. Taylor (London: Bloomsbury). Shakespeare, W. (2006b), The New Cambridge Shakespeare: Measure for Measure, ed. B. Gibbons (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Shakespeare, W. (2006c), The Oxford Shakespeare: Othello, ed. M. Neill (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Shakespeare, W. (2008a), The Arden Shakespeare: Timon of Athens, ed. A. B. Dawson and G. E. Minton (London: Bloomsbury). Shakespeare, W. (2008b), The Arden Shakespeare: Twelfth Night, ed. K. Elam (London: Bloomsbury). Shakespeare, W. (2008c), The Oxford Shakespeare: Two Gentlemen of Verona, ed. R. Warren (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Shakespeare, W. (2009a), The New Cambridge Shakespeare: As You Like It, ed. M. Hattaway (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Shakespeare, W. (2009b), The New Cambridge Shakespeare: Love’s Labour’s Lost, ed. W. C. Carroll (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Shakespeare, W. (2009c), Shakespeare in Production: Twelfth Night, ed. E. Schafer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Shakespeare, W. (2010), The Arden Shakespeare: The Merchant of Venice, ed. J. Drakakis (London: Bloomsbury). Shakespeare, W. (2012), The New Cambridge Shakespeare: Two Gentlemen of Verona, ed. K. Schlueter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

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Shaughnessy, R. (2002), The Shakespeare Effect: A History of Twentieth-​Century Performance (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan). Taylor, J. R. (1965), ‘Shakespeare on film, radio and television’, in T. J. B. Spencer (ed.), Shakespeare: A Celebration (Baltimore: Penguin), pp. 97–​113. Wells, S. (1981), ‘Speaking for themselves’, Times Literary Supplement, 20 November 1981, p. 1366. Willis, S. (1991), The BBC Shakespeare Plays: Making the Televised Canon (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press).

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Index

Note: Plays are listed under the names of their respective playwrights. 7:84 (theatre company) 26, 45 ABC Television 36, 46, 48, 112, 114, 122, 128, 134, 135, 136, 145, 146, 147 ACTT (technicians’ union) 161 Adams, Robert 59 Aeschylus, Oresteia (Channel 4, 1983) 27, 47 Alexandra Palace 7, 11, 15, 17, 19, 22, 32, 33, 60, 61, 70, 73, 74, 85, 100, 101 Ali, Jamal, Black Feet in the Snow (BBC, 1974) 9, 170–85 Allen Harker, L., and F. R. Pryor, Marigold (BBC, 1936) 17, 46 Almeida Theatre (London) 17, 29, 31 Amis, Kingsley, Question about Hell, A (Granada, 1964) 107 Amyes, Julian 151, 160 Anderson, Lindsay 23 Andrews, Benedict 43 Anouilh, Jean 41 Apted, Michael 162, 166, 167 Arden Shakespeare (edition) First Series (1899–​1924) 282 Second Series (1951–​82) 282, 283 Third Series (1995–​2021) 283, 285, 286, 287, 288, 289, 290, 291, 293, 294, 297, 298 Arden, John 165 Serjeant Musgrave’s Dance (BBC, 1965) 34

Serjeant Musgrave’s Dance (Granada, 1961) 48 Arena (BBC, 1975–​) 242, 243 Armchair Theatre (ITV, 1956–​74) 2, 36, 46, 48, 73, 115, 117, 128, 136, 137, 147, 241 Armstrong, Moira 167 Arts Council England (1994–​) 31, 47 Arts Council of Great Britain (1946–​93) 23, 25, 131, 134, 145, 162, 165 Arts Theatre (London) 112 Asmus, Walter 227, 239, 242 Associated Television 24, 35, 37, 45, 93, 134, 138, 145, 146, 147, 284, 290, 296 Associated-​Rediffusion (A-R) 24, 25, 35, 36, 46, 47, 93, 114, 146, 147, 154 Atkins, Robert 45 audience (television) 3, 15, 22, 27, 38, 40, 42, 73–4, 77, 79, 85, 100, 103, 112, 113, 117, 122, 188, 192, 206, 210, 217, 232, 233, 268, 283, 294, 299 audience research reports 8, 22, 121, 124, 127, 194–5, 197, 198, 199–200, 204, 205, 206, 240–1 Ayckbourn, Alan, Norman Conquests, The (Thames, 1977) 25 Ayres, Rowan 179, 180

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Index

Bailey, Lucy 43 Baird, John Logie 16, 44, 48 Bakewell, Michael 23, 112, 114, 117, 122, 124, 125 Barbican Theatre (London) 26, 31 Barrett, Billy, and Ellice Stevens, It’s True, It’s True, It’s True: Artemesia on Trial (BBC/​The Space, 2020) 31 Barrie, J. M., Little Minister, The (BBC, 1975) 8, 188, 200–5 Barry, Michael 38, 114 Bartlett, Mike Albion (BBC/​Almeida, 2020) 17, 31, 32 King Charles III (BBC, 2017) 29, 46 Sticks and Stones, formerly Bull (Tall Story Pictures, 2019) 30 Barton, John 23, 47, 292 Battersea Arts Centre (London) 31, 47 BBC Birmingham 134, 141 BBC English Regions Drama. See BBC Birmingham BBC Midland 134, 135, 145 BBC Radio 1, 4, 8, 16, 17, 20, 42, 47, 62, 74, 84, 92, 112, 113–15, 118, 119, 122, 128, 189, 283 BBC Radio Ballads (1958–​64) 134 BBC Scotland 264, 270 Bean, Richard 43 Beaumont, Francis, Knight of the Burning Pestle, The (BBC, 1938) 54, 55, 68 Beckett, Samuel 5, 8, 117, 226–42 Act without Words II (Channel 4, 2002) 239, 242 Beckett on Film (RTÉ/​Channel 4, 2000–​02) 43, 230, 231, 239, 240, 242, 243 … but the clouds … (BBC, 1977) 229–30, 232–3, 243 Comédie [Play] (film, 1966) 227, 238 Eh Joe (BBC, 1966) 232, 242

Footfalls (Channel 4, 1990) 238, 242 Ghost Trio (BBC, 1977) 229–30, 232–3, 243 Happy Days (BBC, 1979) 233, 242 Krapp’s Last Tape (BBC, 1963) 227, 229, 231, 232, 240, 241, 243 Krapp’s Last Tape (BBC, 1972) 231, 234–8, 242 Krapp’s Last Tape (BBC, 2007) 227, 234–8, 242 Krapp’s Last Tape (Channel 4, 1990) 234–8, 243 Not I (BBC, 1977) 227, 228, 229–30, 232–3, 238, 243 Not I (Channel 4, 2001) 240, 243 Play (BBC, untransmitted [1976]) 228 Play (Channel 4, 2001) 240, 243 Quad [Quadrat I & II] (BBC, 1982) 239, 243 Rockaby (BBC, 1982) 230, 233, 243 Shades (BBC, 1977) 229–30, 232–3, 239, 243 Waiting for Godot (BBC, 1961) 229, 231, 240, 243 Was Wo [What Where] (SDR, 1986) 227, 239 Bennett, Arnold 133, 135, 136, 137, 147 Bennett, Derek 94, 106 Bernstein, Cecil 152, 163 Bernstein, Sidney 151–3, 161, 163 Billington, Kevin 29, 200, 296 Birmingham Repertory Company 5 Birmingham Repertory Theatre 57 Birt, John 103 Birtwistle, Harrison 27 Black experience in Britain 170–85 Black Power 170, 171, 173 Black Watch (BBC Scotland, 2007) 9 Blair, Jon, Norman Fenton and Joshua Sinclair, Biko Inquest, The (Channel 4/​United British Artists, 1984) 25, 28, 45 Blakemore, Michael 29

503

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Index Bligh, Jasmine 81, 86 Blythe, Alecky, and Adam Cork, London Road (film, 2015) 30, 262 Bond, Edward, Sea, The (BBC, 1978) 42 Bond, Julian 167 Boucicault, Dion, London Assurance (BBC, 1976) 200 Bower, Dallas 73, 86 Branner, H. C., Judge, The (BBC, 1958) 37 Brecht, Bertolt 42 Life of Galileo, The (BBC, 1964) 38, 46, 95 Mother Courage and Her Children (BBC, 1959) 37 techniques of in television drama 170, 171, 175–6, 178–9, 181, 183, 185, 291–2 Brenton, Howard, and David Hare, Brassneck (BBC, 1975) 26, 45 Brian Rix Presents (BBC, 1952–​71) 47 Bridges, Alan 191, 192, 205 Broadcasting Act (1990) 102, 146 Bryden, Bill 27, 157 Big Picnic, The (BBC, 1996) 27 Ship, The (BBC, 1990) 27 Büchner, Georg Danton’s Death (BBC, 1959) 37 Danton’s Death (BBC, 1978) 42, 46 Death of a Private [Woyzeck] (BBC, 1967) 39 Bunyan, Carol, Sorry (1981) 26 Burge, Stuart 296 Burke, Gregory, Black Watch (BBC, 2007) 264–72, 273, 276, 277 Bury, John 23 Caird, John 284, 295 Caldwell, Peter 167 Callanan, Richard 101 Carroll, Tim 47 Cartier, Rudolph 34, 95, 192 Cartwright, Jim, Road (BBC, 1987) 28, 47

305

Casson, Philip 24 Cavander, Kenneth 47 Cellan Jones, James 191, 200 Cesbron, Gilbert, ‘It is Midnight, Dr Schweitzer’ (BBC, 1953) 34 Chayefsky, Paddy, Marty (NBC, 1953) 36 Cheeseman, Joyce, Anna of the Five Towns (ITV, 1971) 138–40, 147 Cheeseman, Peter 9, 131–46, 147 Chekhov, Anton 41, 43, 158, 164 Cherry Orchard, The (BBC, 1962) 5, 23, 45 Cherry Orchard, The (BBC, 1971) 5 Cherry Orchard, The (BBC, 1981) 5 Three Sisters, The (BBC, 2004) 29 Uncle Vanya (BBC/​Sonia Friedman Productions, 2020) 32 Chichester Festival Theatre 23, 284 cinema 1, 2, 4, 14, 15, 16, 17, 20, 30, 47, 72, 76, 283 cinema broadcasts of stage plays 2, 15, 30, 85, 150 Clarke, Alan 28, 42, 46, 47, 167, 191, 192, 200, 205 Clayton, Harold 296 Clements, John 25 Cock, Gerald 74, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81 Coleman, Basil 190, 192, 200, 295 Commonwealth Institute (London) 176–8, 181 Cooke, Dominic 46 Cotes, Peter 47 Covid-​19 2, 6, 31, 261 Coward, Noël 57, 107, 231 Cox, Harold 78, 81 Crimp, Martin 43 Croft, Michael 23 Crozier, Eric 32 Curtis, Simon 42, 103, 106, 246, 253, 254–5 Davies, Andrew 43, 228 Davies, Gareth 167 Davis, Barry 159, 166, 167

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Index

Davis, Desmond 199 Davis, Desmond, and George F. Kerr, Bardell vs Pickwick (Towers of London/​ITP, 1955) 35, 45 Dawson, Jennifer, Ha-​Ha, The (Granada, 1969) 158, 166 Dean, Basil 7, 16, 19, 72–86 Dekker, Thomas, Shoemaker’s Holiday, The (BBC, 1938) 54, 55, 56–7, 68 Denham, Dorothy 138, 147 Dews, Peter 37, 46 Dickens, Charles 26, 35, 46, 228 Digital Theatre (production company) 30 Diss, Eileen 125–7 Donmar Warehouse (London) 20, 29, 30 Donnellan, Philip 134, 148 Doran, Gregory 29 Dorté, Philip 78–9 Douglass, Stuart, Day They Buried Cleaver, The (Granada, 1970) 162, 166 Doyle, Roberta 267 Duffy, Carol Ann, and Rufus Norris, My Country (BBC/​NT, 2017) 30 Dunn, Nell, Up the Junction (BBC, 1965) 39, 155, 167 Dürrenmatt, Friedrich, Physicists, The (BBC, 1963) 206 DV8 Physical Theatre company 262, 274 Ealing Studios 76, 218, 233 Edgar, Barrie 46 Edgar, David Destiny (BBC, 1978) 26, 46 Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, The (Channel 4, 1982) 26, 46 Egoyan, Atom 43 Elgar, Avril 122, 124 Eliot, T. S., Murder in the Cathedral (BBC, 1936) 17, 18, 19, 47

Elliott, Michael 37, 45, 284, 291, 296 Embassy Theatre (London) 18, 59 English Stage Company 22, 34 Equity 22, 23, 153, 155 Euripides, Women of Troy (BBC, 1958) 37, 47 Evans, Graham 45 Exton, Clive 36 Eyre, Richard 24, 46, 158, 166, 209 Eyre, Ronald 45 Farquhar, George, Recruiting Officer, The (BBC, 1973) 200 Festival (BBC, 1963–​64) 37, 38, 46, 229, 231, 232, 240, 242 Festival (BBC, 1980) 42 Fight for Shelton Bar (BBC, 1974) 140–5, 147 Film on Four (Channel 4, 1982–​98) 28 Findlay, Polly 43 Finney, Albert 45 Fitzgerald, Prudence 229, 240, 242 Flannery, Peter, Our Friends in the North (BBC, 1996) 30 Flemyng, Gordon 94, 97, 106 Ford, Ford Maddox, Parade’s End (BBC, 1964) 116 Ford, John, ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore (BBC, 1980) 47, 68 Forman, Denis 92, 93, 151, 161, 163 Frears, Stephen 47 From the London Theatre (BBC, 1936–​37) 46 Fry, Christopher, The Dark is Light Enough (BBC, 1958) 37 Galsworthy, John Loyalties (A-​R, 1960) 36 Loyalties (film, 1933) 16 Garnett, Tony 3, 39, 155 Gay, Noel, Douglas Furber and Arthur Rose, Me and My Girl (BBC, 1939) 19 Gibson, Alan 242

703

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Index Gielgud, Val 114 Giles, David 192, 200, 290, 295, 296, 299 Goddard, Jim 46 Gold, Jack 288, 296 Goldie, Grace Wyndham 19, 65, 66–7, 68 Goold, Rupert 46 Grade, Michael 27, 43 Graham, James Quiz (Left Bank Pictures, 2020) 30, 47 This House (NT Live, 2013) 85 Granada Television 9, 21, 24, 35, 36, 46, 92–7, 106, 107, 114, 150–67, 284, 296 Granville-​Barker, Harley Voysey Inheritance, The (BBC, 1979) 206 Waste (BBC, 1977) 40 Gray, Simon, Quartermaine’s Terms (film, 1987) 28 green, debbie tucker 44 random (Channel 4, 2011) 29 Griffiths, Leon, et al., Company of Five, The (LWT, 1968) 154, 167 Griffiths, Trevor, Occupations (Granada, 1974) 165, 167 Gupta, Tanika 43 H. M. Tennent (theatre producers) 34, 35 Hall, Peter 23, 24, 27, 47, 154, 229, 292 Hamer, Robert 25 Hampstead Theatre (London) 158, 209, 211 Hanson, Barry 141 Harding, Sarah 105, 106 Hare, David 276, 279 Harrison, Carey 155, 167 Breaking It Gently (Granada, 1970) 155, 162, 166 In a Cottage Hospital (Granada, 1969) 155, 157–8, 166 Harrison, Stephen 46, 66

307

Harrison, Tony 27 Hart, Moss, and George Kaufman, Once in a Lifetime (BBC, 1937) 32, 69 Harwood, Ronald, Deliberate Death of a Polish Priest, The (Channel 4, 1986) 28 Haswell, Jonathan 47 Hayes, Michael 47 Hays, Bill 28, 166 Hegedus, Chris 230, 233, 243 Henderson, Michael 47 Hoffmann, Gert, Wedding Night (Granada, 1969) 155, 158, 167 Hopcraft, Arthur 165 Jingle Bells (BBC, 1973) 166, 167 Mosedale Horseshoe, The (Granada, 1971) 166, 167 Hopkins, John, Talking to a Stranger (BBC, 1966) 116 Horovitz, Israel, It’s Called the Sugar Plum (Granada, 1970) 158, 167 Horrox, Alan 290, 296 Houghton, Stanley, Hindle Wakes (BBC, 1950) 34 Howell, Jane 42, 291–2, 296 Hughes, Enda 239, 242 Huth, Angela, Special Co-​respondent (Granada, 1970) 167 Ibsen, Henrik 7, 8, 41, 188, 228 Brand (BBC, 1959) 37 Doll’s House, A (BBC, 1992) 247, 248–9, 251–2, 253–4, 255–6, 260 Ghosts (BBC, 1987) 247, 249, 252, 253, 254, 256–9, 260 Hedda Gabler (BBC, 1993) 247, 249–50, 253, 254, 260 Lady from the Sea, The (BBC, 1974) 206 Master Builder, The (BBC, 1957) 37 Wild Duck, The (BBC, 1971) 191, 205

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Index

Icke, Robert 31, 43 Incorporated Television Production Company 45 Independent Broadcasting Authority see Independent Television Authority Independent Television Authority 35, 42, 93, 146, 152, 161 Institute, dance-​drama (BBC/​The Space/​Gecko, 2020) 31 Isaacs, Jeremy 26, 27, 43 ITV Playhouse (ITV, 1967–​82) 166, 167 ITV Television Playhouse (ITV, 1955–​67) 47 Jackson, Angus 29, 46 Jacobs, John 37, 47, 48 Jarman, Derek 103 Jarrott, Charles 34, 38, 46, 112, 125, 128 Joffé, Roland 47, 68 Johnston, Joshua St, Compulsion (Size 9, 2009) 105–6 Jones, David 42, 296 Jonson, Ben 90 Volpone (BBC, 1948) 69 Volpone (BBC, 1959) 37 Jordan, Neil 43, 240, 243 Joseph, Stephen 132, 133 Karmitz, Marin 227, 238 Kemp-​Welch, Joan 46, 92 Kennedy Martin, Troy 3, 20, 39, 155, 237, 246 Kennedy, Margaret, Constant Nymph, The (film, 1928) 76 Kent, Nicolas 277 Colour of Justice, The (BBC, 1999) 262, 274, 277 Kirkwood, Lucy, Chimerica (Channel 4, 2019) 30 Kotcheff, Ted 36, 46, 48 Kustow, Michael 27 Kwei-​Armah, Kwame 44 Elmina’s Kitchen (BBC, 2008) 29, 46

Laurence Olivier Presents … (Granada, 1976–​78) 42 Left Bank Pictures 47 Leigh, Mike, Abigail’s Party (BBC, 1977) 9, 26, 45, 209–23 Levin, Bernard 215 Levinson, Nick 101, 107 Licensing Act (1737) 86 Lime Grove studios 33, 34 Lindsay-​Hogg, Michael 167 Lipscomb, W. P., and R. J. Minney, Clive of India (BBC, 1938) 73 Lloyd, Phyllida 20 Loach, Ken 39, 155, 167 London Weekend Television 154, 167 Lorca, Ferderico Garcia, House of Bernarda Alba, The (A-​R, 1960) 36 Lough, Robin 85 Luke, Peter 37, 232, 240 McCleery, Albert 295 McDougall, Gordon 9, 150–67 McGrath, John 27, 39 Border Warfare (Channel 4, 1989) 27, 28 Cheviot, the Stag and the Black, Black Oil, The (BBC, 1974) 26, 45, 145 John Brown’s Body (Channel 4, 1990) 27, 28 Macintyre, Blanche 43 Mackenzie, John 26, 45 Mackie, Laura 105 Mackie, Philip 92–7, 105, 106, 152 MacLeod, Bill 277 MacTaggart, James 68, 107, 200 McWhinnie, Donald 114, 122, 191, 228, 229, 235, 242, 243 Madden, Cecil 17, 18, 74, 78, 79, 83 Manchester Drama Group see Stables Theatre Company Manners, J. Hartley, The Queen’s Messenger (WGY, 1928) 48

903

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Index Marks, Louis 42 Marlowe, Christopher Doctor Faustus (BBC, 1947) 69 Edward II (BBC, 1947) 69 Edward II (film, 1991) 103 Marshall, Robert 30 Martin, Christopher 147 Matheson, Hilda 16 Matheson, Margaret 215 Matthews, Steve 106 Mendes, Sam 43 Mercer, David 40 Flint (BBC, 1978) 42 Messina, Cedric 8, 41, 98, 106, 188–205 Middleton, Thomas 7, 90–106 Changeling, The (BBC, 1974) 97–100, 103, 104, 106 Changeling, The (BBC, 1993) 102–5, 106 Changeling, The (Granada, 1965) 92–7, 106 ‘Scenes from The Changeling’ (BBC/​OU, 1972) 101, 107 Women Beware Women (BBC/​OU, 1981) 101–2, 107 Women Beware Women (Granada, 1965) 92–7, 106 Midgley, Robin 47 Milam, Wilson 30 Millar, Ronald, More the Merrier, The (BBC, 1960) 23 Miller, Arthur 41 All My Sons (Granada, 1958) 36 Crucible, The (BBC, 1981) 40 Crucible, The (Granada, 1959) 36 Death of a Salesman (Granada, 1958) 36 Miller, Jonathan 42, 103, 191, 197, 198, 205, 210, 284, 288, 289, 290, 292, 293, 296, 297 Mills, Brian 167 Minghella, Anthony 240, 243 Minton, Roy 154, 167

309

Mitchell, Julian, Another Country (film, 1985) 28 Mitchell, Katie 43 Molière, Tartuffe (BBC, 1985) 206 Moore, Harry 229 Morahan, Christopher 112, 119, 122, 124, 125, 128, 145 Morgan, Peter Audience, The (stage play, 2013) 44 Crown, The (Netflix, 2017–​) 44 Morley, Royston 47, 62, 66, 68 Morris, Colin, Reluctant Heroes (BBC, 1952) 22, 47 Morton, John Maddison, Box and Cox (BBC, 1928) 48 Moshinsky, Elijah 198, 247, 252, 260 Muller, Robert 39 Munch, Edvard 258 Mysteries, The (Channel 4, 1985) 27 Narizzano, Silvio 36, 94, 97 National Theatre 24, 26, 27, 29, 30, 32, 40, 46, 47, 48, 86, 150, 166, 211, 233, 254, 262, 288 National Theatre of Scotland 9, 264, 267 National Youth Theatre 5, 23 naturalism 8, 39, 237, 246–8, 254, 256, 260, 292 anti-​naturalism 163 arguments against 155, 246 television 155, 157, 166 theatrical 156 Naturalism (historical movement) 8, 246–60 Neal Street Productions 46 Neveux, Georges 21 New Cambridge Shakespeare (edition) 282, 283, 284, 285, 286, 287, 288, 289, 290, 291, 294, 297 New Penguin Shakespeare (edition) 282, 283 Newell, Mike 45, 46 Newman, Sydney 36, 38, 39, 40, 115, 136

310

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Nichols, Peter, Day in the Death of Joe Egg, A (BBC, 2002) 29 Nickell, Paul 297 Norris, Rufus 30, 262 Norton-​Taylor, Richard, Justifying War: Scenes from the Hutton Inquiry (BBC, 2004) 9, 29, 264–77 NT Live 30, 44, 85, 88, 89 Nunn, Trevor 24, 199, 290, 294, 296 O’Casey, Seán, Juno and the Paycock (BBC, 1938) 73 O’Donovan, Fred 19, 73 O’Ferrall, George More 19, 32, 46, 47, 60, 73 O’Neill, Eugene 33 Beyond the Horizon (Granada, 1960) 36 Emperor Jones, The (BBC, 1938) 60 Emperor Jones, The (ITV, 1958) 48 Mourning Becomes Electra (BBC, 1947) 33, 47 Strange Interlude (BBC, 1958) 37, 47 Old Vic (London) 1, 21, 22, 26, 32, 57, 288 On Stage: Live from Television Centre (2015) 31, 47 Open Door (BBC, 1973–​83) 9, 170–85 Open University, The 48, 100–2, 107 orature 170, 174–6, 185 Osborne, John 41, 151 Hotel in Amsterdam (BBC, 2004) 29 Look Back in Anger (BBC, 1956) 22, 34 Look Back in Anger (Granada, 1956) 21, 34, 46, 167 Other Place, The (Stratford-​upon-​Avon) 25, 294 Owen, Alun 36, 117, 167 Lena, O My Lena (ABC, 1960) 36, 46 Oxford Shakespeare (edition) 282, 283, 284, 285, 287, 288, 289, 291, 292, 294, 298

Page, Anthony 106, 151, 243 Parker, Charles 134, 148 Peacock, Michael 41, 116 Peiraïkon Theatron 24 Pennebaker, D. A. 230, 233, 243 Performance (BBC, 1991–​98) 29, 42, 102–5, 106, 231, 246, 247, 251, 253, 254, 260, 295 Pilkington Report (1962) 35, 36, 40 Pinero, Arthur Wing 16 Pinter, Harold 7, 36, 40, 112, 119, 128, 236 Basement, The (BBC, 1967) 7, 124, 125–7, 128 Night Out, A (ABC, 1967) 122, 128 Night Out, A (BBC, 1967) 7, 122–5, 128 No Man’s Land (Granada, 1978) 24 Slight Ache, A (BBC, 1967) 7, 118–22, 124, 128 Tea Party (BBC, 1965) 114, 125, 128 Pirandello, Luigi 33 Man with the Flower in his Mouth, The (Baird Television, 1930) 1, 17, 44 Plater, Alan 36 Play for Today (BBC, 1970–​84) 9, 26, 45, 46, 145, 165, 167, 209–23 Play of the Month (BBC1, 1965–​79 and 1982–​83) 8, 40, 41, 42, 46, 97–100, 106, 115, 188, 189, 190, 191, 192, 193, 194, 199, 202, 204, 205, 206, 231 Play of the Week (ITV, 1955–​74) 36, 46, 48, 92–7, 106, 107 Playfair, Nigel 18 Plowman, Gillian, Me and My Friend (Southern, 1991) 28 Plummer, Peter 166 Poel, William 58 Potter, Dennis 154, 167, 213 Powell, Tristram 230, 232–3 Prebble, Lucy 43 Price, Nancy 57, 68

113

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Index

311

Priestley, J. B. 25, 76, 77, 135, 232 Angel Pavement (BBC, 1967) 135 When We Are Married (BBC, 1938) 7, 19, 72, 75, 77–86 Primetime (production company) 29, 46, 296 public service broadcasting 8, 15, 23, 24, 33, 40, 44, 74, 106, 274

Royal Shakespeare Company 5, 11, 23, 24, 26, 29, 30, 32, 38, 42, 45, 46, 47, 101, 150, 154, 165, 166, 290, 292, 296 RSC Live from Stratford-​upon-​Avon 30 Russell, Ian 46 Rylance, Mark 29 Rylands, George 58–9

racial discrimination, depiction of in television drama 170, 263 Racine, Jean, Phèdre (NT Live, 2009) 30 Radical Alliance of Poets and Players (RAPP) 170–1, 176 Rakoff, Alvin 296 Ransley, Peter 165 Dear Mr Welfare (Granada, 1970) 165, 166 Fingersmith (BBC, 2005) 165, 167 Minor Complications (BBC, 1980) 165, 167 Rattigan, Terence 232 Winslow Boy, The (BBC, 1977) 206 Ravenhill, Mark 43 Rees, Alan 135, 147 Regent’s Park Open-​Air Theatre (London) 32 Reinhardt, Max 258 Reisz, Karel 43 Reith, John 16, 33, 74 remediation, theory of 9, 15, 262–77 Richardson, Tony 21, 22, 34, 46, 151, 167 Richman, Stella 154 Rickson, Ian 236, 243 Rix, Brian 22, 25, 45 RM Associates (production company) 46 Rondiris, Dimitris 24 Rose, David 140, 146 Royal Court Theatre (London) 5, 21, 22, 23, 28, 29, 34, 42, 93, 98, 103, 151, 167, 228, 233, 237, 240

Sandford, Jeremy, Cathy Come Home (BBC, 1966) 39, 155, 167 Sartre, Jean-​Paul, In Camera [Huis Clos] (BBC, 1964) 39 Saturday Night Theatre (ITV, 1969–​74) 166 Saville, Philip 39, 92, 122, 128 Savory, Gerald 41 Sax, Geoffrey 108 Schaefer, George 295 Schenk, Otto 289, 296 Schneider, Alan 235, 243 schools broadcasting 34 Scoffield, Jon 45 Screen Two (BBC2, 1985–​98) 28 ScreenPlay (BBC2, 1986–​93) 47 Second City Firsts (BBC, 1973–​78) 141, 145, 147 Second House (BBC, 1973–​76) 229 sex, depiction of in television drama 91, 96, 100, 101, 106, 256 Sexual Offences Act (1956) 107 Shakespeare in Production, formerly Plays in Performance, CUP (edition) 283, 284, 285, 286, 287, 288, 289, 290, 291, 292, 294, 298 Shakespeare Memorial Theatre Company 22, 46 Shakespeare, William 5, 7, 10, 23, 25, 29, 38, 41, 42, 43, 44, 47, 54, 58, 69, 70, 71, 90, 91, 92, 93, 98, 101, 103, 105, 106, 108, 116, 188, 228, 231, 112, 325 Age of Kings, An, series (BBC, 1960) 38, 294, 298, 299

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312

Index

Shakespeare, William (continued) Antony and Cleopatra (ATV, 1974) 24, 45, 199, 290 Antony and Cleopatra (BBC, 1981) 286, 287, 290 As You Like It (BBC, 1937) 32, 45 As You Like It (BBC, 1963) 23, 45, 299 As You Like It (BBC, 1978) 200, 289, 295 BBC Television Shakespeare, The, series (BBC, 1978–​85) 41, 103, 188, 191, 196, 199, 200, 201, 206, 283, 284, 286, 287, 289, 290, 291, 292, 294, 295, 296, 297 Comedy of Errors, The (ATV, 1956) 92 Coriolanus (BBC, 1965) 23 Cymbeline (BBC, 1937) 18 Cymbeline (BBC, 1956) 21 Cymbeline (BBC, 1982) 283 Edward IV (BBC, 1965) 47 Hamlet (ATV, 1956) 92 Hamlet (BBC, 1980) 285 Hamlet (BBC, 1982) 283 Hamlet (BBC/​Almeida, 2018) 31 Hamlet (BBC/​OU, 1971) 101 Hamlet (BBC/​RSC, 2009) 29 Hamlet (film, 1913) 16 Hamlet (NBC, 1953) 294, 295 Hamlet at Elsinore (BBC, 1964) 92 Henry IV (BBC, 1995) 284, 295 Henry IV Part 1 (BBC, 1979) 289, 290, 295, 299 Henry IV Part 1 (BBC, 2012) 46 Henry IV Part 2 (BBC, 1979) 299 Henry IV Part 2 (BBC, 2012) 46 Henry V (BBC, 1957) 37, 46 Henry V (BBC, 1979) 288, 290, 296, 299 Henry V (BBC, 2012) 46 Henry VI (BBC, 1965) 47 Henry VI Part 1 (BBC, 2016) 46 Henry VI Part 2 (BBC, 2016) 46 Henry VI Part One (BBC, 1983) 287, 291, 296

Henry VI Part Two (BBC, 1983) 291, 296 Henry VI Part Three (BBC, 1983) 291, 295, 296 Henry VIII (BBC, 1979) 200, 289, 290, 296 Hollow Crown, The (BBC, 2012 and 2016) 43, 46 Julius Caesar (BBC, 1955) 21 Julius Caesar (BBC, 1979) 296 Julius Caesar (BBC/​RSC, 2012) 29 King Lear (BBC, 1975) 191, 205 King Lear (Granada, 1983) 284, 288, 291, 296 King Lear (Granada, 1998) 24 Love’s Labour’s Lost (BBC, 1975) 200 Love’s Labour’s Lost (BBC, 1985) 287 Macbeth (BBC, 1937) 1 Macbeth (Thames, 1979) 24 Measure for Measure (BBC, 1979) 199, 286 Merchant of Venice, The (ATV, 1974) 284, 288, 296 Merchant of Venice, The (BBC, 1947) 60 Merchant of Venice, The (BBC, 1972) 8, 188, 196–200, 205 Merchant of Venice, The (BBC, 1980) 286, 288, 289, 291, 293, 296 Merchant of Venice, The (Thames, 1996) 290, 296 Merchant of Venice, The [Kaufmann von Venedig, Der] (ORF/​WDR, 1968/​69) 289, 296 Merry Wives of Windsor, The (BBC, 1955) 22, 46 Midsummer Night’s Dream, A (A-​R, 1964) 92 Midsummer Night’s Dream, A (BBC, 1971) 200 Much Ado About Nothing (BBC, 1967) 24 Much Ado About Nothing (BBC, 1984) 286, 289, 296

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Index Much Ado About Nothing (BBC, untransmitted [1978]) 191 Othello (BBC, 1950) 21 Othello (BBC, 1981) 103, 289, 296 Othello (BBC, 1990) 294, 296 Othello (Globe/​Heritage Theatre, 2007) 30 Othello (ITV, 2001) 43 Othello (NT/​BHE, 1965) 48 Pericles (BBC, 1984) 289, 296 Richard II (BBC, 1960) 38 Richard II (BBC, 1978) 287 Richard II (BBC, 2012) 46 Richard II (BBC/​NT, 1996) 29 Richard II (RSC Live, 2013) 30 Richard II: Live from the Globe (BBC, 2003) 29, 47 Richard III (BBC, 1960) 38 Richard III (BBC, 1965) 47 Richard III (BBC, 2016) 46 Romeo and Juliet (BBC, 1955) 289, 296 Romeo and Juliet (BBC, 1978) 286, 287, 296 Romeo and Juliet (film, 1908) 16 Romeo and Juliet (Granada, untransmitted [1969]) 160 Shakespeare Trilogy (BBC/​Donmar, 2016) 20, 21 ShakespeaRe-​Told, series (BBC, 2005) 43, 108 Spread of the Eagle, The, series (BBC, 1963) 38 Taming of the Shrew, The (BBC, 1980) 283, 284, 297 Taming of the Shrew, The (CBS, 1950) 292, 297 Tempest, The (BBC, 1980) 286 Timon of Athens (BBC, 1981) 286, 287, 292, 297 Troilus and Cressida (BBC, 1981) 286 Twelfth Night (BBC, 1939) 19, 20, 83, 86 Twelfth Night (BBC, 1974) 200, 201

313

Twelfth Night (BBC, 1980) 286 Two Gentlemen of Verona, The (BBC, 1952) 22 Two Gentlemen of Verona, The (BBC, 1983) 286, 287, 297 Wars of the Roses, The (BBC/​RSC, 1965) 23, 26, 47, 292, 299 Winter’s Tale, The (BBC, 1962) 40 Shakespeare’s Globe (London) 29, 30, 31, 32, 46, 47, 150, 260 Sharrock, Thea 46 Shaw, George Bernard 23, 41, 42, 43, 59, 107, 188, 205, 228, 231, 209, 215 Apple Cart The (BBC, 1975) 206 Dark Lady of the Sonnets, The (BBC, 1955) 22 Pygmalion (BBC, 1973) 8, 188, 191–5, 196, 205 Sheridan, Richard Brinsley, Critic, The (BBC, 1982) 40 Sherriff, R. C., Journey’s End (BBC, 1937) 32, 46, 69 Size 9 Productions 105, 106 Skilton, Brian 181, 182, 185 Solzhenitsyn, Alexander, Love-​Girl and the Innocent, The (BBC, 1973) 191, 200, 205 Sondheim, Stephen, and George Furth, Company (BBC, 1996) 29 Sophocles Antigone (BBC/​Barbican, 2015) 31 Electra (A-​R, 1962) 24, 46 Theban Plays, The (BBC, 1986) 40 space theatrical 5, 8, 23, 27, 31, 91, 96, 226–42, 248, 250–1 use of in television drama 5, 8, 36, 40, 60, 91, 95, 99, 104, 226–42, 246, 251–4, 257 Space, The (Arts Council England) 31, 166 St Denis, Michel 83, 86 St Martin’s Theatre (London) 72, 75, 77, 80

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314

Index

Stables theatre (Manchester) 153, 156 Stables Theatre Company 9, 25, 150–67 Staffordshire Rebels, The (BBC documentary, 1966) 134, 140, 147 Stage 2 (BBC2, 1971–​73) 188 Stephens, Simon 43 Stephenson, Ben 44 Story Parade (BBC2, 1964–​65) 116 Strehler, Giorgio 292 Strindberg, August 40, 247 Sunday Night Theatre (BBC, 1955–59) 34, 138, 147 Sunday Play, The (BBC, 1952–53, 1963) 34 Sutton, Shaun 191, 192 Tate, Reginald 32 Taylor, C. P. 167 Taylor, Don 40, 234, 297 Television Advisory Committee 83 television production design 95–6, 98, 101, 102, 104, 126, 137, 234–8, 252, 253, 258 graphics 62, 81 location-​shot 8, 29, 30, 39, 105–6, 126, 155, 171, 182 outside broadcast 1, 8, 14, 19–20, 21, 22, 23, 39, 72–86, 92, 189, 200–4, 207, 265, 267 post-​production 98, 126, 171, 182 recordings 56, 90 studio 5, 8, 14, 17–19, 20, 34, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 55, 56, 60–3, 85, 91, 92, 94, 95–6, 98, 103, 104, 106, 120, 122, 126, 136, 137, 138, 141–5, 150, 157, 158, 159, 160, 171, 190, 216, 229, 231, 232, 238–42, 246, 247, 254, 258, 260, 265 studio–​theatre hybrid 23 Television World Theatre (BBC, 1957–​59) 37, 46, 47, 48, 231

Terson, Peter Ballad of the Artificial Mash, The (ABC, 1968) 147 Heroism of Thomas Chadwick, The (ABC, 1967) 136–7, 147 Jock on the Go (BBC, 1967) 135–6, 147 Thacker, David 247, 251, 253, 260 Thames Television 24, 25, 48, 146, 147, 290, 296 The Largest Theatre in the World (BBC, 1962–​67) 128 Theatre 625 (BBC2, 1964–​68) 7, 40, 112–28, 188 Theatre Flash (BBC, 1956–​57) 23 Theatre in Camera (Southern, 1980–​81) 28 theatre management, resistance to television of 83, 84 Theatre Night (BBC, 1985–​90) 206, 231, 247, 260, 296 Theatre Parade (BBC, 1936–​38) 47 Theatre Royal (ITV, 1955–​56) 35, 45 theatre, television’s suspicion of 1, 2, 3–4, 20, 39, 41, 44, 73 theatre-​in-​the-​round 133, 139, 178 Theatres Act (1968) 108 Theatrical Management Association 22 Thirty-​Minute Theatre (BBC, 1965–​73) 116, 141, 231, 235, 242 Thomas, Stephen 18, 68 Thursday Theatre (BBC2, 1964–​65) 116, 188 Tiffany, John 267 Titchener, Lanham 68 Towers of London (production company) 35, 45 Traverse Theatre (Edinburgh) 151, 154, 155, 159 Tricycle Theatre 9, 29, 262, 264, 265, 274, 275, 277, 280 Turgenev, Ivan, Month in the Country, A (A-​R, 1955) 25 Turner, David 135

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United British Artists 25, 45, 48 van Gyseghem, André 18 van Hove, Ivo 31 van Someren, Tim 85 Vance, Dennis 147 Vardy, Mike 137, 147 verbatim theatre 9, 28–9, 140, 262–77 Victoria Theatre (company) 131–46 Victoria Theatre (Stoke-​on-​Trent) 8, 131–46 Waller-​Bridge, Phoebe, Fleabag (BBC, 2016, 2018) 44 Walsh, Aisling 167 Warner, Deborah 29, 247, 253, 260 Waterhouse, Keith and Willis Hall, Billy Liar (BBC, 1960) 23 Webster, John Duchess of Malfi, The (BBC, 1938) 7, 54, 55, 59–67, 68 Duchess of Malfi, The (BBC, 1949) 66 Duchess of Malfi, The (BBC, 1972) 68, 107, 200 Duchess of Malfi, The (BBC/​ Shakespeare’s Globe, 2014) 31, 46 Wednesday Play, The (BBC, 1964–​70) 2, 38–9, 40, 41, 73, 98, 115, 117, 155, 167, 223 Weldon, Huw 41 Wesker, Arnold 42, 116 Chicken Soup with Barley (BBC, 1966) 34 I’m Talking about Jerusalem (BBC, 1966) 34

315

Roots (BBC, 1966) 34 Whatham, Claude 107, 167 White, Leonard 136, 137 Whitehall Theatre (London) 22, 25 Whitehouse, Mary 97 Wilde, Oscar, Importance of Being Earnest, The (A-​R, 1955) 35 Wildeblood, Peter, People’s Jack, The (Granada, 1970) 167 Williams, Raymond 247 Williams, Roy 44 Williams, Tennessee 107 Willis, Ted, Woman in a Dressing Gown (A-​R, 1956) 36, 47 Wilson, Lanford, Gingham Dog, The (Granada, 1970) 162, 166 Wilson, Richard 166 Wilson, Ronald 200 Wise, Herbert 167, 192, 296 World Theatre (1959) 37 Wrede, Casper 37, 47 Wright, David, Would You Look at Them Smashing All the Lovely Windows? (Granada, 1970) 158–9, 167 Yasur, Maya Arad, Amsterdam (online/​ Orange Tree, 2019) 31 Yeats, W. B. 33 Zeffirelli, Franco 24 Zeldin, Alexander, Love (BBC/​NT, 2018) 30