And so to the theatre. The National Theatre production of
Alan Bennett’s latest play is on at the Grand in Leeds. Now, as you may or may
not be aware, there are some other wargames blogs which would like you to
believe – for some no doubt nefarious end of their own – that Mr Bennett is no
longer with us, that he has ceased to be, that he has shuffled of this mortal
coil. Happily this is not the case and he continues to amuse us. He is
furthermore, and certainly since the demise and disgrace of the other chap that
we don’t mention any more, Leeds’ most famous son and the theatre was suitably packed.
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| "I write plays about things that I can't resolve in my mind" |
The large audience was rewarded with some fine acting and a
lot of laughs. Whether there was any deeper message is more debatable. The main
character spent so long proclaiming that her story wasn’t a metaphor for the
state in which England (sic) finds itself that one must surely assume that in
fact that’s exactly what it was supposed to be. However, personally I don’t
have either empathy or sympathy with the rich fallen on hard times so it all
rather passed me by. The author scored points at the expense of relatively easy
targets such as Thatcher, the National Trust, oligarchs, but I can’t have been
the only one to be uncomfortable with his benign view of pornography; those
scenes were however rather funny and very well staged.
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| The National Trust is a Nazi trust, smash the National Trust |
So, an entertaining night out, but not – for me anyway - a
classic. For a genuine classic on a similar theme try reading Lampedusa’s ‘The
Leopard’; “Si queremos que todo siga como está, es preciso que
todo cambie”, which I think is probably the point that Bennett is trying to make..
Bennettgate - I claim I was misinformed - it takes strength and purity of heart to admit to past errors, but I admit to this one anyway.
ReplyDeleteSince muted reference to the other son we do not mention implies that sons of Leeds who are actually dead are in scope, I had a squint to see what members of my personal pantheon come/came from that worthy city - interesting. Tom Fairfax, for one, and in the not-yet-dead category I noted Ray Illingworth with approval - lots of people, in fact, though Wikipedia's list of rugby league players is lost on me. The stand-out for me apart from Mount Bennett (I observe that he has been mountainised in your post - and about time too) is Jake Thackray - I used to listen to Jake a lot - excellent - Yorkshire's very own Belgian chansonnier - possibly suffered from being a bit clever for popular taste. The politicians and racing cyclists you can keep, thank you.
I think they named a mountain after him as soon as the news came through that he was dead; it was then too late to rename it when the happy truth was revealed.
ReplyDeleteYour mention of Black Tom Fairfax gives me an idea for a blog posting which, while not actually interesting, will relate to wargaming; and so I won't say too much here except that he wasn't from Leeds. His birthplace is currently in North Yorkshire more or less at the point that Leeds, Bradford and Harrogate meet, but back in the day would have been in the West Riding, but a long way from Leeds as it then was.
And if Wikipedia really doesn't name the man then his deserved disappearance has been even more remorseless than I thought. He is still frequently mentioned on news bulletins however.
I approve of your praise of the great Jake Thackeray though.