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The New Orthodoxy in British Theater
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16506 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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| Issue
Date : |
11 / 1989 |
2,788 Words |
| Author
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Herb Greer
Herb Greer is an American writer and playwright who lives in
Britain and on the Continent. |
In London now, in the very sleek Queen's Theatre on Shaftesbury Avenue, there is a double bill of short plays by the writer Alan Bennett, called Single Spies. One of these, A Question of Attribution, deals rather sympathetically with the spy Anthony Blunt; the other first appeared five years ago on BBC television under the title of An Englishman Abroad. Based on a meeting in Moscow between a British actress and the traitor Guy Burgess, it presents an affectionate portrait of this rather nasty man. Nothing happens in the play except that the actress is invited to meet Burgess, and he asks her to help him order some clothes from his London tailor and bootmaker.
The impact, such as it is, comes from the portrayal of Burgess himself, not as an evil or bad person but as an eccentric exile, holding on for dear life to his English identity in the seedy environment of a Moscow flat. He is a drunk, he is louche, homosexual, and ill-mannered, but he is so terribly British for all that, having his clothes and shoes made in London and being altogether such a character, that the audience is coaxed into indulgence for him.
Particularly Flagrant
Guy Burgess, though a "character," was not a clown; he became known to the British public and the world as a particularly flagrant and unpleasant traitor, who, with the help of Kim Philby, escaped to Moscow and the tacky life portrayed in this show. Aside from the notoriety of his espionage, Burgess had and has no public significance--which does not stop Bennett from exploiting the notoriety while belittling the moral aspect of the espionage.
Writing about the television production in 1984, I referred to the famous E.M. Forster quote, "If I have to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I shall have the courage to betray my country." The excuse for preferring a friend to one's country is that a friend might support you where your country would regard you as expendable. However, Forster said in the same quote that he hated the idea of causes; and Burgess' choice was not between friend and country, but precisely between causes: Western democracy on the one hand, and on the other, Stalinist communism.
Bennett said at the time of the play's television premiere that he did not know what treason meant. The tone of this confession implied that Bennett did not consider such knowledge worth having and did not feel that its consequences mattered very much. This
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