Alan Bennett is still pushing the boundaries
Alan Bennett’s new play imagines WH Auden and Benjamin Britten coming face to face. Diane Parkes spoke to the playwright.
Writer Alan Bennett is every inch the English gent as he enters the room in his slightly crumpled linen jacket, shirt, neatly knotted tie and slacks.
With his gently lilting Yorkshire accent, his large square-framed glasses and his air of comfort there is something very homely about Bennett.
Now aged 76 and with a lengthy career featuring blockbuster plays such as The Madness of George III and The History Boys, which were both made into successful films, plus the televised series of monologues Talking Heads, Bennett is a bit of a British institution.
And he admits that he does sometimes have to struggle with that stereotype.
“We had a lot of trouble when we used the ‘c’ word in The History Boys,” he says. “If it is Jez Butterworth nobody is shocked but when it is me I am not supposed to say something like that. But then I can see a play and they can have more swear words in the first five minutes than I have in my whole play.
“But the thing I have coming out next is a story for the next issue of the London Review of Books and that is slightly pornographic.”
The reason this subject is being discussed is because Alan’s latest play The Habit of Art, which comes to Birmingham Repertory Theatre this autumn, has more than a few rude words in it.
Featuring an imaginary meeting between poet WH Auden and composer Benjamin Britten, it focuses on culture but it also turns the spotlight on the two men’s homosexuality and features a visit by a local rent boy offering a range of services.
The drama is in the form of a play within a play. Set in a rehearsal studio, The Habit of Art features a cast of actors, colourful characters in their own rights, who are taking on the roles of Auden and Britten in a new drama. Juxtaposing past and present, it also allows the audience to compare the changes in social acceptability.
And Alan says the boundaries have been pushed a long way since the days of Auden and Britten.
“It is very rare that we are shocked and it is hard to shock people,” he says. “I was watching the television the other night and was watching the comedians Mitchell and Webb and suddenly one of them appeared as a Christ character carrying a cross and I thought that was a bit strong and I actually thought how rare that was. But I was shocked by it and was still thinking about it after the programme had finished.”
The Habit of Art was premiered at the National Theatre in London last November. Directed by the theatre’s director Nicholas Hytner, its cast originally featured Richard Griffiths and Alex Jennings. This autumn it tours the UK with Desmond Barrit and Malcolm Sinclair in the two lead roles.
Alan had actually written the Auden part specifically for Michael Gambon but needed a rapid rethink when he became poorly.
“Michael was ill and we postponed it for a week and then he came back and we were in the rehearsal and he suddenly collapsed,” says Alan. “He had some kind of recurrent bleed in his stomach and was taken to St Thomas’s Hospital. And even as he was going off in the ambulance he was saying ‘I know what they are doing now – they are all in the canteen re-casting.’
“And he was right. Those kind of conversations are always very funny because you mention a name and someone will say they have worked with that person before and couldn’t possibly do so again!”
