Plays: written and performed

My play Working Lives was performed on Wednesday, a one-off performance as part of a playwriting festival. It was a great experience, and it reminded me of all the stresses and rewards of writing for the stage.

When you create a script--sitting around brooding about characters and themes, and then pushing yourself to write down as much of what you have in your head as possible, and trying to mould it all into shape and keep quality control and all the other things you have to do to make something usable--when you're doing all this you're making something quite abstract, with parts that you think might work in front of an audience, it's all quite abstract and bloodless. In fact it's like a short story, but without descriptions and "fine writing."

This is fine. You feel you've done all the work, and having it performed is sort of an added extra. Then it gets passed over to the director and cast.

The rehearsal process, certainly this time, involved a rather complex combination of reactions as far as I'm concerned. The cast was very well chosen, and the director clearly knew exactly what he was doing, and seemed very sympathetic with my actual intentions. I saw three early rehearsals, then two late ones, including the tech run-through on the Monday two days before performance.

It was this rehearsal that made me very very anxious. At least two of the actors didn't know their lines, and while the performance was billed as "script in hand", the director wanted them to be off-book for the performance. So the actual run-through was very ropy, with some long embarrassing stalls. It was all very rushed--we had to be in the space and out again within an hour. The director afterwards assured the cast that he was very happy with their performances. I wasn't so sanguine.

On the Wednesday, the day of performance, the cast weren't able to get together again till about 6.30 (the play started about 8pm). A quick line-reading was all that was possible, and a cast member was having big trouble with two substantial scenes. He was forgetting lines, and persisted in skipping ahead in a scene bypassing about a page of dialogue. The director said (thank God) that it was okay for him to take the script on stage. One of the other actors also did this. But it was obvious to me that the performance would be very basic and I was prepared for a very embarrassing 45 minutes during the actual event.

And then.

It was to be the second play in a double-bill. I saw the first, an entertaining though afterwards rather unsatisfactory piece. We settled in for the second half. I was sitting next to the director. We smiled at each other, said each other was great, shook hands, and saw the lights go down. The play started. The first scene went all right. People laughed. The scenes progressed. One scene in particular, a job interview that goes disastrously wrong, took fire on stage--the audience laughed, really immediate, genuine laughter, and the director was almost creased double, in fits. And I knew the thing was working. The last scenes of the play turn very serious, but I think we held the audience right to the end. I was very relieved and very euphoric. There was much congratulation (genuine) and hugging and talk of taking the thing on tour. Don't know if it will happen, but it seems a real possibility.

What has all this to do with Gilbert? Well, rather famously, he wasn't able to watch his own first nights. He would leave the theatre, stroll on the embankment, go to his club or see another play, returning only for the curtain calls. This is a very idiosyncratic thing of his, an almost physical condition which made him sweaty and hysterical if he had to see his own plays performed in front of an audience. But I can understand it very well. It is simply a very stressful, though often very rewarding, experience. I believe at the start of his career he did witness his own plays. But there was a point at which he stopped. He decided it involved too much unnecessary suffering.

The W S Gilbert Society

It's strange how events crowd together. Through no one's fault the release of the book (two weeks ago) was followed last week by the printing of the latest W S Gilbert Society Journal, which I, as the Society's Secretary, had then to send out to the Society's members. That was last week. And in two days' time, a play that I wrote two years ago, called Working Lives, will be performed at the Bradford Playhouse as part of a new writing festival (and I'm supposed to be finding some last-minute props....)

This is in addition to the imminent prospect of a full-time job, coming at precisely the point when I am starting desperately to need the money.

The W S Gilbert Society has been going since 1985 but is still quite a small concern, with a membership of about 130. It should be much more, but at the same time I'm sort of glad it isn't, because the job of sending out the Journals would be so much less manageable.... It publishes a Journal twice a year, full of new information and ideas about the man and his work. What can I say? I'd be delighted if you wanted to join. Click on the link above, and you can do it.

I am also trying to write a novel. I've just written a little passage which puts into words how I feel for much of the time: as if there were too much for me to do in life and at the same time too little; it's as if nothingness were a physically real thing, which gets in the way of the somethings which I ought to be doing.

Speaking of which....

The book is unleashed

In a way I rather like the fact that practically no one is reading this blog. It takes the pressure off so much, and allows me to try out ideas. The book is now effectively published, even though the official launching date is at the beginning of May. Amazon is showing it as available. It is all rather frightening in that respect. I've been in contact practically all afternoon with someone in Marketing at The History Press; BBC Radio Scotland is showing an interest and I may be interviewed for two different programmes--one of them live!! The Sunday Express is taking a review copy, and The Stage, and probably others. I have a double attitude to this. I am very very keen for reviews in the proper papers, because it's the reviews, as far as I'm concerned, that publicise the book and lead to sales. But at the same time who knows what the fiends will say? I am aware that I myself have not proved very effective in organising publicity for the book. No interest in articles that I myself have suggested to others. But publicity is happening, not just organised by the publishers but also by friends and well-wishers. Ian Bradley apparently has written an article for History Today next month which refers to my book extensively. I also have another stupid idea, which however I am tinkering at because it might possibly work--a compilation of killer quotations from Gilbert. Things like this, from the opera Ruddigore: "Ah, you've no idea what a poor opinion I have of myself, and how little I deserve it." Or this, from a letter to The Times:

"In the face of Saturday the officials of the [London and North-Western Railway] company stand helpless and appalled. This day, which recurs at stated and well-ascertained intervals, is treated as a phenomenon entirely outside the ordinary operations of nature, and, as a consequence, no attempt whatever is made to grapple with its inherent difficulties. To the question, 'What has caused the train to be so late?' the officials reply, 'It is Saturday' — as who should say, 'It is an earthquake.' "

And there's more, much more, where that came from.....

It's arrived!

The first copies of the book arrived yesterday, and they're looking good! I was getting pretty neurotic about it, imagining that my corrections to the proofs might have been ignored or translated into nonsense. But the book seems to be all right (barring a couple of minor glitches). They arrived just in time, as I am going down to London to give a talk to the Gilbert and Sullivan Society, and will be able to sell copies. The big thing about the book is that it tells Gilbert's story as not just another Victorian success story, but as something more ambiguous and conflicted. It's a tale of struggle and opposition, and the success he achieved came at a price. There are some nice pics as well, particularly an unfamiliar one of Lucy Gilbert probably dating from the 1880s; she is magnificent in a formal gown, but there is an expression on her face which is impossible to describe. Most images of Lucy date either from her teenage years, when she had just married Gilbert, or from her years of age and serenity at the beginning of the twentieth century. I seem to have agreed to two interviews, one with the Stuart Box of the G&S Society and one with a guy who has a website. I'm just hoping I can be coherent and fluent on both occasions. We'll see.

Plugging the Book

Among other things, I've been writing pieces to plug the book recently. An article on The History Press's Facebook pages, for instance: here. And yesterday I emailed The Observer hoping to interest them in an article about Gilbert's war correspondence in 1870, written for The Observer and only recently discovered (by me). I haven't had a reply yet, and I shan't be surprised if they show no interest whatsoever. I'll be furious, but I shan't be surprised.

I've also, just now, set up a Facebook page for Gilbert, here.

I'm sorry about the brevity of this entry. This does not seem to be a good morning for writing. I'll try and see if I can find a nice Bab illustration to add before I publish it. Ah! Here's one.

More about The Hooligan

After submitting the previous post yesterday, I browsed through Googlebooks and found two (in my opinion) interesting references to The Hooligan. They confirm that the play was unusually shocking and caused extreme reactions in the audience.

I should mention that I have posted this information, and the information in my previous blog posting, to Savoynet, and that my friend Wikipedia Sam is in the process of adding these quotations to the entries for The Hooligan. So Wikipedia is copying from me, not I from it.

In Dornford Yates's 1952 book As Berry and I Were Saying (House of Stratus edition, 2001):

"Berry put in his oar.

"'D'you remember Gilbert's The Hooligan? He was an East-End Jew. And that master, Jimmy Welch, in the title role?'

"'Shall I ever forget it? Women screaming and fainting all over the place. Scene--The Condemned Cell. A cut about twelve by eight in a great back cloth. At The Coliseum, not long before the first war. Which goes to show that Gilbert knew his world.'

"'I'll say he did,' said Berry." (p167)

It may be important to add that Yates's later "Berry" books were really disguised reminiscences, and this fictional conversation clearly derives from Yates's own memories.

In Holbrook Jackson's essay "Why Do We Laugh?" in his volume of essays Occasions (Grant Richards, 1922):

"I always felt that the laughter provoked by [James Welch's] characterization in The Man in the Street was an expression of relief from the underlying tragedy of the thing. But if there is any doubt about that, there could be no doubt whatever about the small gasps of hysterical laughter during his realistic interpretation of the condemned man in Gilbert's little tragedy The Hooligan. The theme is so painful as to be almost unbearable. I have seen people walk out in the midst of this play unable to stand any more of it. Yet those who remained in the grip of the horror, watching Welch revealing the fear of a condemned man during his supposed last few moments on earth--the fear of a man who is half idiot, and who has very little worth preserving in his life--those who remained laughed every now and then at the humour of it. Some things may be too deep for tears, but nothing is too deep for laughter." (pp94-95)

The Hooligan

nd so Gilbert's last play, The Hooligan, is 100 years old. It was premiered at the Coliseum music hall on 27 February 1911. It is, in my opinion, one of his best works. It is certainly unique in his output. You can read the play here.

The WSG cartoons shown here are all taken from his column "The Comic Physiognomist in Bad Company" (Fun, 23 July 1864). The scan of the photo is taken from The Illustrated London News of 11 March 1911, and shows a scene from The Hooligan with James Welch.

I want to quote some of the responses to the original production, because I think they show that the play provoked a uniquely direct emotional reaction. I'm having difficulty thinking of a parallel in Gilbert's output. The nearest equivalent might be the reaction to Engaged over 30 years before, in 1877--many were shocked by Engaged, though not in the same way as with The Hooligan.

From The Illustrated London News of 11 March 1911:

"We all reckon any stage-work of that veteran, Sir William Gilbert, as peculiarly worthy of attention and respect, but how much more than usually must he challenge our interest when he, the successor of Robertson, the apostle of fantasy, suddenly elects to rival the newest school of our dramatists on their own ground! Has Mr. Galsworthy submitted to us his realistic tragedy of 'Justice' and pictured for us all the horrors of the isolation cell? Sir William Gilbert will go one better: he will confront us with that grimmest of all scenes of human misery--he will show us the condemned murderer being prepared for his fate on the very morning of his execution.... [Precis of plot follows.] So ends a drama that is absolutely sincere, unflinchingly realistic, and makes no concessions in the way of fine writing or sentiment. It bears the very stamp of truth, as it should do, for it is the work of a magistrate, and its whole pathos--and that is irresistible--depends on its never straining a point. If playgoers are not moved by the almost bald simplicity of the episode and by the superb acting of Mr. James Welch as the criminal, then nothing will move them. Mr. Welch's study of awful fear is really great and memorable art. And this play and this acting, if you please, are to be seen, not in an ordinary drama-theatre, but at the Coliseum, or so-called variety-house, for 'The Hooligan' is a 'sketch.'"

Here is a more disapproving reaction from The Observer of 5 March 1911, though I think the reviewer still conveys the power of the play:

"Those who are in search of a 'mauvais quart d'heure' had better hie forthwith to the Coliseum, where, with 'The Hooligan' in his condemned cell, they may be assured of finding what they want. That there are such seekers is shown at the Grand Guignol and elsewhere by the fact that for some men a good shudder is a luxury, just as is for some ladies a good cry. At the Coliseum, though they may be surprised, they will certainly not be disappointed by the masterly and relentless skill with which Sir W.S. Gilbert and Mr. James Welch between them administer the desired sensation as part of an evening's variety entertainment.

"[Precis of plot follows] How far such a subject as this is suited for illustration on the stage may be open to doubt. But there can be no question about the relentless art with which Sir William has elaborated his gruesome study of character, or about the remorseless sincerity with which Mr. Welch his made the grim picture a living one in its terrible fidelity to fallen nature. If the thing was to be done at all it could not have been done better, and there criticism must leave it."

Finally, a comment from the Stageland column in the Penny Illustrated Paper of 11 March 1911 (a more racy and perhaps more working class paper than the others):

"It disturbed everyone. Most to applause; a few to resentment. There was the ruddy, ample gentleman whom I met in the bar during what the Col. calls the 'Intermission.' 'You come here to be amused, not to be----" He groped for the word and lost it. 'A man of a morbid turn of mind might think it all right, mightn't he?'

"A play that can wing a ruddy, ample gentleman; leave him puzzled, gasping, unsettled; stir up vague doubtings about killing folk and giving them 'no chanst'--a play like that is a play which you ought to pop in and see at once."

Well--I've nothing to add to that!