Unpublished Rattigan

For this, Rattigan’s centenary year, Nick Hern has released five new volumes of Rattigan plays. The Spring saw Cause Célèbre and Flare Path, coinciding with productions at the Old Vic and Haymarket. The summer saw the first ever publication of First Episode.

This Autumn we’ve released Love in Idleness/Less Than Kind and Who is Sylvia?/Duologue, bringing the total number of volumes in the series to twelve. Both of the new volumes include never-before-published plays. Less Than Kind is a earlier and very different draft of Love in Idleness, much more serious, much more left-wing than the final draft. My introduction takes the reader through the long process of writing and revision and considers the relative merits of both versions, based on new archival research. Duologue is a stage adaptation of his 1968 television play All On Her Own and is published here for the first time. Who is Sylvia? is a curiosity in Rattigan’s canon; usually seen as a light comedy at a time when he should really have given up writing light comedies, it is actually, I think, an experiment in subjective fantasy and play construction, designed to address both Rattigan’s own and his father’s promiscuous sexual desires.

In researching the introduction, I found - for the first time I believe - his first, abandoned draft of the play, as well as several pages of detailed notes on construction and the intended meaning of the play. I think I’m the first person to look at this document because it had been miscatalogued by the British Library as something much less interesting, so no one - certainly not his biographers - bothered to look in the file, and everyone took Terry at his word that his tore that first draft up.

Between the five volumes this year, they represent around 35,000 words on Rattigan and, I hope, offer a substantial addition to academic writing on this terrific playwright.

Higher Education for Profit

I’m proud to be one of the 500 signatories on this letter in today’s Telegraph, urging that the Coalition’s plans to aggressively open up Higher Education to private providers be scrapped. The text of the letter is as follows:

SIR – We are deeply concerned about the Government’s proposals for higher education, which would give private, for-profit companies substantial access to publicly subsidised loans and would allow companies, including private equity firms, to acquire struggling universities.

The record of private equity firms in delivering public services is exemplified by the recent debacle at Southern Cross. In the United States (the higher education system the Government is now trying to emulate), the private sector is well established, with students and taxpayers suffering the consequences.

For-profit companies offer derisory graduation rates, crushing levels of debts and degrees of dubious value. According to the US Education Trust, only 20 per cent of students at for-profit colleges complete a four-year course and the same proportion of those who do finish default on their loans within three years.

American companies recruit just 10 per cent of students, but consume 25 per cent of government-backed loans. To allow institutions driven by the pursuit of short-term shareholder value to get a foothold in higher education will be to condemn generations of students to a similar future, while the taxpayer will pick up the cost.

The Deep Blue Sea

Nick Hern Books have just republished my edition of The Deep Blue Sea with my general introduction and a special introduction by Sean O’Connor, the producer of the new film adaptation, written and directed by the wonderful Terence Davies. O’Connor is also the author of Straight Acting: Popular Gay Drama from Wilde to Rattigan, which drew on a couple of my early Rattigan editions, so that nicely completes a circle. It’s a lovely-looking edition, with Rachel Weisz and Tom Hiddleston smouldering icily on the front.

Conor McPherson

I chaired a platform this evening with Conor McPherson on the set of his new play The Veil, which he also directed in the Lyttelton at the National Theatre.

Conor was a great interviewee. At first quite shy, I thought, but he seemed to enjoy the questions. My favourite question was ‘do you believe in ghosts?’ to which he gave, it seemed to me, an interestingly agonised answer. The moment where the play really lit up for me was when he said that the play was a picture of an individual mind portrayed as a haunted house. This has already sent me back to the play with fresh eyes.

Good house, 500 or so people, and, apparently, a long, long queue for book signing afterwards.

Andrew Jarvis

This coming Saturday, 22 October at 12.30,  I’m interviewing the distinguished actor, Andrew Jarvis, currently playing Gonzalo in Trevor Nunn’s production of The Tempest.

Andrew’s career has spanned almost 40 years and he’s played in everything from new plays to classics, Richard III to Peter Pan. He is probably best known for Shakespearean roles and spent nine years at the RSC.

Andrew will be discussing his career and the pleasures and challenges of acting Shakespeare. Tickets available from the Haymarket website.

On Walking Out

I’ve written another piece for the Guardian, after a few months’ silence. This is a response to Stuart Jeffries’s article  on why he walked out of Top Girls. I thought Jeffries’s piece was interesting and appropriately provocative. But what surprised me was that he didn’t just talk about the pros and cons of walking out but also felt informed enough to explain what the play was about. My article is really an attempt to unpick what I think is the mistaken view of theatre involved in that statement. It’s here

• http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage

Inevitably, alongside some thoughtful debate, it’s already attracted a handful of hilarious and outraged combatants. Hold my coat, I’m going in.

Whistleblower Cast

Got word yesterday that Whistleblower, the play I’m developing with the Manchester Royal Exchange, has now been cast. The play is a two-hander and the Exchange have given us - that is, me and the director Lucy Kerbel - a week in the Studio working with actors on a first draft, culminating in a public showing on the Friday. The two actors are Joe Ransom and Diane Peck. Both very exciting up-and-coming actors and I’m really excited to start working with them. Better get back to writing it.

Essay on Philip Ridley

The Methuen Drama Guide to Contemporary British Playwrights is just out with an essay on Philip Ridley by me. It’s a huge book, 520 pages, and really comprehensive. Good collection of authors too. Available in all good bookshops and, you never know, it’s probably snuck into a few of the bad ones.

Whistleblower

In September and October, I’m developing a new play with the Royal Exchange, Manchester. Thanks to the good offices of Sarah Frankcom (who many years ago directed Showstopper), the Exchange are paying for a week of research, some writing time, and then a workshop week with actors, which will culminate in a public showing of a rough staging of the draft play at lunchtime on 21 October. I’m working on it with Lucy Kerbel, who directed Manchester last year, and we’re developing it together.

The play will be a two-hander, dealing with a soldier offering to blow the whistle on war crimes committed in a foreign war. As his testimony unfolds, the story gets more complicated and unnerving. It’s a play about what is right and what is wrong, personally and globally.

Rattiganiana # 2

I’m up to various bits of Rattigan activity in the next month or two.

• 2 September: 5pm. I’m on the Terence Rattigan Celebration Panel at Chichester Festival Theatre talking about Rattigan alongside Michael Billington, Holly Hill, Philip Franks and Michael Darlow.
• 8 September: 5.30pm: I’m giving a talk, ‘Terence Rattigan and the Theatre of Emotion’, at Harrow School.
• 20 September: 6.00pm: I’m back at Chichester, giving as pre-show talk, ‘Rattigan & Hare’, to accompany the new pairing of The Browning Version with David Hare’s new play South Downs.
• 27 October: 12.00pm: I’m talking about Rattigan to the English Speaking Union in bedford.
• 5 November: 2.30pm: I’m giving a talk ‘Terence Rattigan and the Curious Case of Aunt Edna’ at Birkbeck College to the University of London Extra-Mural Literature Association.

Meanwhile, I’m finishing off two more volumes in the Nick Hern Books series which should be out by the end of the year.

(I realised, as I compiled this list and got it all in one place, I’m doing it for me more than you.)

Kitchen Platform

On Friday 9 September at 6.00 in the Olivier Theatre at the National, I’m interviewing director Bijan Sheibani about his new production of The Kitchen by Arnold Wesker. I’m looking forward to the production immensely and the platform too. I did a platform with Bijan at the National in October 2009 about his production of Our Class by Tadeusz Slobodzianek and he proved to be a delightful interviewee, thoughtful, wry and smart.

You can, if you wish, book tickets here.

Woman Killed with Kindness platform

On Monday 22 August, I’m chairing a platform at the National Theatre, with Katie Mitchell discussing her new production of Thomas Heywood’s 1601 play A Woman Killed With Kindness. I’ve done several of these platforms with Katie before (Iphigenia in Aulis, The Seagull, The Director’s Craft, ...some trace of her...) and she’s always fascinating to talk to, thinks deeply and talks articulately and seriously about her work. Should be interesting.

I Still Get Excited When I See a Ladybird

I’m chairing a post-show discussion of Katie McCullough’s first full-length stage play, I Still Get Excited When I See a Ladybird. I’ll be interviewing Katie and the show’s director-dramaturg, Melissa Dunne. I first met Katie when I ran a workshop at the Soho Theatre and we’ve kept in touch, sort of, ever since. I think she’s a writer with talent and a great attitude. The show’s at Theatre503. Everyone go see; I’m sure it will be smashing.

First Episode published

My edition of First Episode by Terence Rattigan and Philip Heimann is now out, published by Nick Hern Books. This is Rattigan’s first professionally-produced play, which opened at the Q Theatre in Richmond and transferred to the Comedy Theatre London in January 1934. It was not a spectacular success, though it got some excellent reviews and caused a minor scandal at the time for its vivid portrait of louche undergraduate morals. Rattigan never published it and at one point claimed to have burned his only copy.

In fact there is a copy in the Rattigan archive. Actually, there are six versions of the play in existence. They’re all slightly different. Most of them have their own annotations and additions, making something like 10 implied versions of the play. In preparing this edition, it was necessary to establish a reliable text; this was partly about trying to reconcile typescripts but also making artistic judgments about the best possible version of the text. I’m pleased with the result.

Meanwhile, the introduction tells the full story of the play’s writing, its sources, background and production. I try to show that the play’s development revealed Rattigan’s sure dramatic instincts and reveals it as a surprisingly complex piece of work. It would now be interesting to see the play performed.

Divadlo a globalizácia

Well this is fun. Theatre & Globalization has been translated into Slovak by the Theatre Institute of Bratislava. They’ve also done Theatre & Education in the same series by my colleague Helen Nicholson.

From this book I have discovered two things. First, that in Slovak they translate names, presumably because nouns have different case-endings and names are part of the same system. Hence, Helen, on the cover of her book, becomes , Helen Nicholsonová. My name is untampered-with, curiously. The second thing I have discovered is that the title of John Galsworthy’s The Skin Game in Slovak is Podfuk.

Rattiganiana

I’ve been doing various Rattigan things in this centenary year. I wrote a programme note for the production of In Praise of Love at the Royal and Derngate, Northampton. On Monday, I gave a talk about Flare Path at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket. I’m working on three new editions of the plays, which has included tracking down the six existing copies of his unpublished First Episode to produce a definitive edition. I’m also giving talks at the CMP Festival in Brighton, Chichester Festival Theatre and Harrow School over the next few months. Last week I was onBBC Radio 4's Front Row, talking about Terry (and sounding rather alarmingly like David Hare, I thought).

Cherry Orchard Programme

In the programme for the current National Theatre production of The Cherry Orchard, I’ve got an interview I conducted with the play’s director, Howard Davies, and its designer, Bunnie Christie. Both very interesting about the play and the process they go through in their collaboration. Having seen their work together on Philistines and The White Guard, and Davies’s production of Flight still being one of my most cherished theatregoing memories, it was a pleasure to talk to them both and I think the interview has come out pretty well.

Head of Department

Feels a bit odd announcing this on the blog, but hey it’s news. I was interviewed this morning and it’s been officially confirmed that I’m going to be the next Head of the Department of Drama and Theatre at Royal Holloway, University of London. The job starts in January.

It’s really not a job I ever thought I’d want to do but having really thought it through over the last couple of months, I think I could do some good, steering the Department through the choppy waters of a forthcoming Research Excellence Framework in 2013 and the advent of £9k fees.

Review

Rather to my surprise, I’ve just had perhaps the best review of my life from the Times. You can read it here without needing to vault the paywall. Hah, in your FACE, Murdoch.

​You can feast your eyes on it here. Oh and we're pick of the week too.

London Road platform

This evening at 6.00 in the Cottesloe, I’m chairing a Platform conversation at the National Theatre about London Road. On the panel will be the writer Alecky Blythe, composer Adam Cork, and director Rupert Goold. It’s a terrific show but it’s generated some controversy as well, so it should be an interesting discussion.