For the next two months we are going to read plays about a (different) Labour MP. The first is set in the 70s, by Alan Bennett, and the second is contemporary by modern playwrite James Graham and takes us through a (very) potted history of U.K. politics in the last 20+ years intertwined with the reality of a constituency office and their internal politics.
Getting On was Alan Bennett's second play, and concerns a disillusioned Member of Parliament, his family, a colleague, and the vicissitudes of their lives. It is a comedy with serious overtones.
The characters expound on their frustrations, their disappointments, their brushes with mortality and their brushes with social norms.
Afterwards Bennett complained that the play had been "clumsily cut without my presence or permission and some small additions made: the jokes were largely left intact while the serious content of the play suffered”, but the text we will read is his original.
The reason for his absence was a clash with the film star Kenneth More, who was playing the central character and who took a dislike to Bennett. "We just did not hit [it] off," More said. It is reported that: "Trouble brewed from the beginning, when More refused to say certain lines he felt his public would not accept, despite Bennett's protestations that the play would be 'disembowelled'."
Just before a try-out performance More found Mona Washbourne, who played his mother-in-law, in tears after Bennett had spoken to her about her character. More insisted that Bennett be barred from the theatre.
Later a director came to Bennett's defence. "Alan felt that Mona was making the part much sweeter than it should have been and told her so. He dislikes sentimentality and sweetening up in any form. I'm sure he was artistically right. Anyway, it's easy to reduce actors to tears. I should know."
Interestingly when I looked for some images for this post, there were none of Bennett and his actors!
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