If you were casting the role of the
spiky, irascible headmaster of a public school, about to retire,
watching and even acting in a sort of revue of the twentieth century
and constantly interrupting it to cut the scenes he disapproved of...
could you imagine more ideal casting than Richard Wilson? That’s what
director Daniel Evans has done for his forty-nine-years-on revival of
Alan Bennett’s
Forty Years On
at Chichester, where Evans is the new hand on the artistic reins. But,
both sad and surprising to say, that casting hasn’t worked out, so far
at any rate.
Wilson is a pro from his balding, shaven head to his still-nimble-at-80
toes, and I’ve no doubt that the rest of his lines will embed
themselves quick-smart. As of opening night, however, he was noticeably
stealing frequent surreptitious glances at copies of the script,
disguised as the order of service or the headmaster’s pages in the show
(yes, disguising a script as a script, but a
different script – tricksy!), and
it just lets all that delicious Wilsonian steam dissipate. You can feel
an explosion building, then... glance... and it just goes
flump. So if you’re thinking of
going to see it, give it a while to run in.
Because it’s worth the wait. Evans is a canny director who looks like
pandering just enough to the more hidebound elements of the Chichester
audience so that he can take them on the interesting adventures he
really wants. Here, he punctuates the action with a Flying
Pickets-style a capella rendition of “I Vow To Thee, My Country”, a
school-choir-and-solo-tap-dancer version of the Thirties novelty number
“Little Sir Echo”, and several interruptions by the school rugger team.
He and musical director Tom Brady also have some 50 boys from
Chichester’s youth theatre to really fill out the action and the songs.
As the headmaster-designate, director and star of the revue, Alan Cox
makes full use of his skill at remaining almost entirely deadpan yet
somehow signalling to us that he knows this is pretty ridiculous. Jenny
Galloway as Matron has a couple of nicely understated scenes, and Danny
Lee Wynter gets to run the gamut from earnest and subdued to, almost
literally, Lady Bracknell on speed.
Alan Bennett always lampoons Englishness while also embracing it, and
this is where he established the formula: the very name Albion House
makes clear that the school is an emblem of the country as a whole.
When it premièred in 1968, I suspect this meant pricking national pride
about the still relatively recent Second World War; in Brexit Britain
2017, it may feel more like reinflating those myths for us to take
refuge in. Either way, it’s a deft balancing act.
Written for The Lady.