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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