Tag: Drama

Film Review: Separate Tables

I always derive great pleasure from watching a well-adapted film version of a stage play. I think it’s because fundamentally what makes a good story is its characters and a stage play is, in essence, nothing more than a study of its characters. Of course, there’s usually a plot of some kind that unfolds, twists and turns and events that occur to affect the behaviour of those in the tale and thereby expose more about them as people to us, the audience. For me, it always lays bare the artists’ talents in the writing and the performing departments because there’s no whizz-bang action and explosions to boggle our minds or death-defying stunts to draw our attention away from the human element of the tale. It really is basic storytelling, which some would argue is the purest kind.

Usually, a theatre audience will retain a certain detachment from the performance it watches, never really giving in to the world of make-believe on the stage, never completely forgetting that it is enjoying (or not) a group of performers. By contrast, the cinema audience gets drawn into the world on screen (assuming the director knows what he’s doing), the camera lens acting as its eye. Yes, we know the camera is mounted on a dolly which is being pushed by a Grip along a New York sidewalk but when it comes to watching the end product we forget this, we are there in the Big Apple jostling through the crowds on East 42nd Street and on into Grand Central Station. A scream comes from behind and the camera swivels around to investigate saving us in our seats the effort of looking over our shoulders. For all intents and purposes, we are the camera lens and we can get as close up and personal to the most intimate of moments between characters or we can stand on the edge of a bluff and behold the most spectacular of vistas below our feet. We’re not so much watching it as witnessing it. Think about it. It’s quite magical.

That’s why a well-filmed stage play can be so rewarding. There’s nothing to distract you from the humanity of the story. There’s no bustling sidewalks or majestic panoramas to enjoy. The entire story is expressed through dialogue and body language and little else. Yes, the camera (our eye) now has the freedom to move around the room, to close in on an object or a facial expression or some other detail but more often than not, there’s still a sense of confinement, of being indoors and away from the rest of the world. And in the case of Separate Tables this confinement is the ground floor of a small hotel in Bournemouth, a seaside resort on the south coast of England.

Based on two one-act plays by Terrence Rattigan (Table by the Window and Table Number Seven), Rattigan himself stitched them together and added a few characters to hide the seam. The film was directed by Delbert Mann who had, three years earlier in 1955, won the Academy Award for his romantic drama Marty, a film which also won Ernest Borgnine the award for Best Actor in a Leading Role. No question that the guy clearly knew what he was doing then.

Separate Tables boasts an all-star cast with David Niven, Rita Hayworth, Deborah Kerr, Burt Lancaster and Wendy Hiller – two of whom would go on to win Oscars for their performances.  Niven plays Major Pollock, a spiffing, moustachioed war veteran who happens to be hiding a shameful secret. Sibyl Railton-Bell (Deborah Kerr), is a meek and rather dour spinster suffocating under the firm control of her Victorian mother (Gladys Cooper) who also appears to be the hotel’s resident matriarch. The sober hotel owner Pat Cooper (Wendy Hiller) is in love with a long-term resident, the alcoholic John Malcolm (Burt Lancaster), who in turn gets a surprise visit from his ex-wife Ann Shankland (Rita Hayworth). The plot lines of these five individuals are woven together with a deft subtlety that is absolute poetry. Their characters start to evolve as soon as the film begins but it’s not until the sudden discovery of Major Pollock’s awful secret, a revelation that divides and illuminates at the same time, that we really get to see what these people are made of.

Niven’s performance is possibly one of the best of his distinguished career and garnered him his only Oscar. His Major Pollock is all bluff and twitter as he regales boorish tales of his time at Sandhurst Military Academy or during the North African campaign always with just a little too much zeal. It’s obvious from the get-go that he’s not all he seems and when his world does come crashing down, the contrast in his behaviour is extremely well-judged. Like-wise, Lancaster’s performance is spot on and the arrival of his ex-wife (Hayworth at first purring glamour and controlled serenity but then revealing pain and loneliness) claiming that they can’t live without each other gives him the opportunity to show how vulnerable and doomed his character is. Deborah Kerr, playing very much against type, is shy and awkward and again conveys a loneliness that seems to be very much prevalent in most of the characters here. Indeed, Major Pollock, having just been told by Sibyl that they know all about him and his secret, tells her that they are really much alike in as much as they are both afraid of life. She’s utterly reviled by Pollock’s guilt but totally devastated too because she was secretly in love with the old fellow. Finally, Wendy Hiller who won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for her role as the proprietress does a great job of keeping a level-headed perspective on the gossip and bigotry that affects her guest as well as coming to terms with the fact that the man she loves still loves his ex-wife. She’s without doubt the most sane person under her roof. Without giving too much away, the final scene of this film is simply perfect – at first excruciating in its uncomfortableness but then extremely moving. Bottom line, a classic drama that’s all about great writing and stellar acting. Highly recommended.

 

 

Here, There, Gone: An Interview with Sir Nicholas Hytner

Nicholas Hytner’s Othello was so good I saw it twice.  It’s not the first time Sir Nick has wowed the critics.  And I somehow doubt it will be the last.  I perch comfortably outside his office, staring at black-and-white action shots of hit after hit: Adrian Lester in Henry V, Simon Russell Beale in Much Ado About Nothing, James Corden in One Man, Two Guv’nors.  If there’s such thing as a grammar of theatre, Hytner is fluent in it.

These days, he needs little introduction: the Cambridge alumnus who arrived at the National Theatre in 1990 has become one of Britain’s most well-respected directors.  One bookshelf in his office hosts a glass poster for One Man, Two Guv’nors; another holds mugs commemorating the first night of each Shakespeare play he’s directed.  The Othello mug sits atop an unfingered script on the glass coffee table that separates us.

“None of these texts exists in isolation,” Hytner says, as if he’s noticed me looking at the mugs that sit side by side on the shelf.  “You kind of take [their] temperature;” he tells me, “every time you put them on, probably every time you read them, the temperature will change.”  Indeed, Hytner is well known for his modern adaptations (Othello takes place at a military base that recalls recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan), and that fact underpins much of his philosophy: “what it says about our world is as much to do with our world as it is to do with the text.”

The air conditioning shuts off.  Hytner apologises, gets up, fiddles with the machine.  It’s the first time I’ve looked outside since I entered the room.  Late afternoon, and the view must be one of the best in London.  The last sunbeams dance on buildings that spear the sky—Blackfriars Bridge, St Paul’s, the Gherkin beyond—each mingling with each.  It feels as though the current of the Thames is driving daylight away, pushing it inch by inch towards the margins of evening.  It’s not long before he returns to his seat, clears his throat, and resumes: “If you’re performing Shakespeare, you’re only ever going to take a snapshot of it.  There’s always next time.”

It’s difficult not to be drawn in by the wonderful mildness of Hytner’s voice, and the diagonal smile that flashes across his face whenever he stumbles upon the mot juste.  I ask which Shakespeare character he identifies with most.  For a moment, he sits forward in his black leather chair like a kid forced to pick between his favourite toys.  “Benedick I like enormously,” he concludes.  What attracts him so much to the protagonist of Much Ado About Nothing (aside from the actor he cast to play him, Simon Russell Beale) is his willingness to do “something suicidally brave for Beatrice,” his adversary-cum-lover, when he challenges his former best friend Claudio to a duel he has little chance of winning.  Hytner doesn’t even think “you’d want to hang out with Hamlet as much as you’d like to hang out with Benedick.”

On Hytner’s watch, Shakespeare has become a vital force in the National’s bloodstream.  In fact, an awful lot has changed since his first days in the job way back in April 2003.  He settles a jeaned leg lightly on the coffee table, before reminiscing: “I do look back on 2003 and think that almost every one of the big decisions could have gone the other way.”  Fortunately, they didn’t.  Jerry Springer the Opera turned out better than expected (“and the people it offended it was good news to offend,” he adds); new plays in the intimate Cottesloe Theatre saw success; and His Dark Materials took the plaudits.  “They all worked—every single one.”  His relief and disbelief, even ten years on, is palpable.

“I wonder what I would say,” comes his inquisitive reply when I ask what advice he’d give to his former self if he could rewind a decade.  He pauses for a while.  I’ve got used to his way of sending his words across to me like chess pieces, each move contemplated and considered: “I think I would say, ‘you will never regret being wild and bold, and turning down the tasteful option in favour of the rough, provocative one.’  That’s what I’d say,” he reaffirms, this time with certainty.  “Ticking over” isn’t the Hytner way.  “I’ve never regretted having messy things,” he says, “but I’ve regretted having boring things.  I’ve hated that.”

What people think of his work barely registers.  “I don’t care really.  I don’t care,” he reiterates firmly.  He seems more genuine than blasé: “I’m very happy to get from day to day, and year to year.”  His chair rotates slightly, and leans his chin gently against finger and thumb.  Theatre is demanding at the best of times, but it hasn’t jaded him.  “To a very large degree,” he continues, “if I get to my last day here without the place sliding down the pan; if I can feel that for 12 years, it has deserved its title and it was as good as it needed to be, I’ll be very happy.”

And his legacy?  Hytner’s not too bothered about that, either.  He draws a parallel, hands moving in sync with voice, between theatre and film: “movie directors very much build up a legacy: it’s there, it’s immovable.  They spend their retirement going from retrospective to retrospective and festival to festival being lauded and honoured,” he laughs.  But the beauty of theatre lies in its ephemerality; night after night, season after season: “it’s here, it’s there, it’s gone.”

Soon enough, that will be the fate of Sir Nicholas’ tenure at the National.  But, characteristically, he won’t make a point of his departure: “I don’t think I want to do a big farewell spectacular,” he tells me.  “I’ve got 18 months more, I’m just finishing off the planning for next year, and I think I should just try and do the same as I’ve always tried to do.”  He shifts in his chair and his voice sinks low, as if he doesn’t want to presume too far: “at some point, I guess I’ll want to do what everybody else has done—sit down and try to write about what I’ve found out so far.  But I’d much prefer just to go on and work.”

The National will be a strange place when Hytner steps down from his post in 2015.  I, for one, am too young to remember what it was like before he took the helm.  One thing is certain, though: his successor has the mother of all boots to fill.  We stand, exchange thanks, and he opens the door.  I take a last look out of the window, before exiting, stage left.