Art and Politics: London Theatre Since the Fifties

Abstract

, The single most significant development in the decade 1968 to 1978 was the rise of socialist theatre'. Christopher Bigsby's remark in Contemporary English Drama betrays a certain parochialism: a more striking phenomenon during these years, one would think, is the failure of socialist theatre to rise, like an ill-cooked souffle. Though, as Stages in the Revolution and New Theatre Voices of the Seventies both document, a substantial number of talented and ambitious playwrights, directors, and theatrical companies during these years sought to give socialist convictions practical dramatic form, nothing resembling a 'socialist theatre' has been created in London or now exists. The failure of left-wing theatre is perhaps symptomatic of the greater failure of British socialism during these years, the long retreat from the hopes and ideals of 1945. Whatever one may say about the current state of British society, the London theatre is in some ways flourishing, far more than at the time of 'The London Theatre in Crisis' (LONDON JOURNAL, 1, 1975). The Royal Shakespeare Company has played to full houses and regularly received good reviews, with Nicholas Nickleby the hit of London and New York in successive years. For the last few years the company has run two simultaneous London seasons, with a studio theatre at the Warehouse as well as the main London house, the Aldwych, and has recently moved to a glamorous, purposebuilt theatre at the Barbican. It remains to be seen whether the RSC can maintain its high artistic standards in the new venue; the move to a new theatre always requires a good deal of adjustment, and financial pressures may prevent it from providing a home for the experimental and potentially unpopular, like the invaluable Warehouse. The RSC is a genuine repertory company, which hires actors on a long contract, rather than bringing in a new cast for each production, and the practice of mounting separate Stratford and London seasons each year (with occasional touring productions as well) keeps the actors from falling into a rut, allows them to develop artistically by meeting new challenges, and promotes the development of an ensemble, rather than a series of unconnected star turns. As for the National Theatre, it has improved immeasurably over the last few years, largely as the result of assigning different artistic directors to each of its three constituent theatres, the Olivier, the Lyttleton, and the Cottesloe. For some time after its move to the South Bank, the NT made few concessions to experimentalism, and even now a substantial proportion of its productions, especially at the Lyttleton, consists of efficient West End comedies. But in the last few years it has built up one excellent ensemble company under Bill Bryden (associated with the Cottesloe, but now working in the Olivier), and its choice of plays is becoming more adventurous. Productions like Lark Rise to Candleford made creative, imaginative use of the acting space at the Cottesloe, involving the audience in the action (at one point I and my neighbours were turned into a field of corn and barely avoided being scythed down by mimed mowers). Certainly no company which can launch an all-male, masked, chanted Oresteia can be accused of excessive caution. The most significant development in British theatre over the past two decades has been the growth of the two national subsidised London companies to a position of absolute dominance and artistic confidence. The hopes of Kenneth Tynan, expressed in a 1963 interview which Charles Marowitz