Black Beech and Honeydew

by Ngaio Marsh

  The six months that followed seem in retrospect to have had something of the character of one of those dreams that rocket to and fro between horror and reassurance. We opened in Sydney with The Devil’s Disciple, a play that grew colder and colder in my hands the more I tried to blow some warmth into it. Dissonances of all sorts broke out in the company, the houses faded, gnawing anxiety and depression settled upon us. After eight weeks a decision was taken to tour New Zealand with Twelfth Night, a revival of Six Characters and The Devil’s Disciple. As soon as we began to work on the new plays, the temper of the company changed and lightened. My health by this time was becoming increasingly groggy but I managed to keep this circumstance to myself and rehearsals prospered. Twelfth Night seemed to work its own miracle. We gave it a Watteau-like setting with delicate pavilions, striped silk awnings and a flowery swing in which the young Olivia dreamed her silly-billy fantasies. Biddy Lenihan in gallant blue made a darling of Viola. Feste, all frill and Watteau-esque stripes, was enchantingly realized by John Schlesinger. This admirable actor was already beginning to turn his attention towards film-making. Frederick Bennet, an excellent Shakespearean, was a toby-jug Toby with a touch of elegance and breeding, and Peter Howell, later of Emergency Ward 10 fame and later still in the cast of The Affair was a nicely batty Aguecheek. Peter Varley made a wonderful praying mantis of Malvolio.

  Three years later the editor of Shakespeare Survey No. 8, the annual that is published in Stratford-upon-Avon, asked me to write an account of this production. I venture to re-introduce it here because it defines, as adequately as I could contrive, my feelings about the presentation of Shakespeare’s comedies.

  A NOTE ON A PRODUCTION

  OF TWELFTH NIGHT

  Each decade creates its own fashions in Shakespeare and only actors of distinction can survive them. The Shakespearean costumes of Macready’s stage now ‘date’ almost as markedly as the crinoline itself. Is it not probable, moreover, that if we could look through the wrong end of our opera glasses at the Lyceum of the 1880s, the mannerisms of the lesser players would make us titter while Ellen Terry or even Irving would still command our applause? In the portrait of Garrick as Lear the authentic look of madness in his eyes effaces the oddness of his wig and costume. One is able to believe that his performance, if we could see and hear it, would transcend the mannerisms of his period.

  Fashions in acting and presentation are as extreme as those that control the garments worn by the actors. The points of view held by producers, critics, actors and designers are forever changing: there is a feverish anxiety in our theatres to keep up with, or better still, anticipate the mode. It is in the presentation of Shakespeare’s comedies that this kind of stylistic snobbism is seen at its extremity and it is about an attempt to escape from fashion that I propose to write, with specific reference to the comedy of Twelfth Night.

  The modern producer of Shakespeare’s comedies believes himself to be up against a number of difficulties. Much of the word-bandying is, he says, disastrously unfunny while many of the allusions are obscure and some so coarse that it is just as well that they are also incomprehensible. He must cut great swathes out of his script and for the rest depend on eccentric treatment, comic ‘business’ funny enough in its own right to amuse the audience while the words may look after themselves. If he is honest he dreads the obligatory laughter of the Bardolators as much as he fears the silence of unamused Philistia. These are reasonable fears, and, in my opinion, he does well to entertain them.

  There are, however, contemporary producers who in their search for a new treatment of an old comedy forget to examine the play as a whole and fall into the stylistic error of seizing upon a single fashionable aspect of a subtle and delicate work and forcing it up to a point of emphasis that quite destroys the balance of production.

  In 1951 it fell to my lot to produce Twelfth Night with a company of British actors on tour in the antipodes. As soon as I was made aware of my fate I began to look back at the many productions I had seen of this comedy. Some had been by distinguished producers with famous companies, others by repertory theatres and touring companies like my own. Of them all, the best, it seemed to me in retrospect, had been the simplest; the least pleasing, the most pretentious; and the most pretentious, those in which producers, actors and designers had apparently exchanged glances of dismay and asked each other what they could do to put a bit of ‘go’ into the old show. They had done much. There had been star Malvolios and star Violas. There had been remorseless emphasis on a single character or sometimes on a single scene. The words had been trapped in the net of a fantasticated style, lost in a welter of comic goings-on, coarsened by cleverness or stifled by being forced out of their native air. I had seen Andrew wither into a palsied eld, Malvolio as a red-nosed comic and Feste, God save the mark, as bitter as coloquintida or the Fool in Lear. I had seen productions with choreographic trimmings and with constructivist backgrounds. I had, however, missed the production on skates.

  It seemed to me that my best, indeed my only chance, was to put aside everything that I had seen, forget if possible the current fashions in Twelfth Night and start humbly with the play itself. It is, after all, a very good play. If I venture now to retrace this production of Twelfth Night, it is with the hope that in doing so it may be possible to examine some of the problems of its presentation. Because it is also a very difficult play.

  As I read it again I saw that in his story Shakespeare shows us the several aspects of love. He begins with Orsino’s romantic absorption with the idea of loving the inaccessible Olivia and repeats this theme, burlesqued, in Malvolio’s assumption that Olivia loves him. This in turn modulates into Olivia’s completely unreal ‘crush’ on Viola. Through these three aspects of fancied passion he weaves three aspects of true devotion: Viola’s for Orsino, Antonio’s for Sebastian and, a delicate echo, the Fool’s almost inarticulate adoration of Olivia. These variations on a dual theme are linked by the sundazzled flowering of Sebastian’s love for Olivia, while skipping discreetly through the pattern is the buffo romance of Toby and Maria. Andrew’s foolish acceptance of the role of suitor to Olivia is the final detail in an exquisitely balanced design. It is a pattern made by setting fancy against truth, dream against reality. Of course one did not hope, when one discussed the play with the actors, that an audience, in the ripeness of time, would go away muttering: ‘We have seen a comedy of eight variations on two aspects of love.’ One merely hoped that the production would be an honest one because the actors had referred their job back to their author.

  As I prepared the script it seemed to me that if, following Stanislavsky’s rule, one were to say in a single word what Twelfth Night was about, that single word would be Illyria. It chimes through the text nostalgically as if Shakespeare would make us desirous of a place we had visited only in dreams.

  Viola. What country, friends, is this?

  Captain. This is Illyria, lady.

  Viola. And what should I do in Illyria? My brother, he is in Elysium…

  Andrew is ‘as tall a man as any’s in Illyria’. Maria is ‘as witty a piece of Eve’s flesh as any in Illyria’. And so it goes on. The rehearsal period was a journey in search of Illyria; the performance, we dared to hope, would be our arrival there.

  And what happens in Illyria? By day the sun shines with a golden richness on boscage, on palaces and on well-tended gardens. At night a full moon presides over revels that for all their robust foolery are tempered with wistfulness. The inhabitants move with a certain precision. Toby, Andrew, Maria and Fabian step across their landscape to an antic measure, now lively, now reflective but always compact and articulate. Orsino, the Renaissance man in love with love, moons in the grand manner over the young countess Olivia, whose principal attraction rests on her refusal to have anything to do with him. She, for her part, mopes with adolescent excessiveness over the death of her brother. And moving between these two strongholds of romantic nonsense are the Shakespearean girl-boy, gallant and wise, and
Feste, the errant Fool. The whole most lovely play is set down in words that are so exact an expression of its aesthetic tone that one wonders how one dare meddle with them.

  However, meddle we must and one of our first concerns would be the visual presentation of Illyria in terms of a touring company. How must it look and what must its inhabitants wear? After consultation with our young Australian designer, it was decided to use a Watteauesque décor. The dresses of Watteau belong to no precise historical period: they are civilized, rich and fantastic, and they have an air of freshness. We had three little pavilions of striped poles and airily draped banners. There were flights of steps, dark green backgrounds, platforms and a cyclorama. A traverse turned the half-stage into the interior of Orsino’s palace. A jointed screen in two sections mounted on wheels and painted with a formalized seaport design was pulled across for the front scenes. These changes, effected by two nimble pages in view of the audience, took a matter of seconds to complete. For the letter-reading scene, there was a formalized boxtree hedge and a group of flamboyant statuary with which Toby, Andrew and Fabian associated themselves to comic effect. A giant beribboned birdcage, prominent throughout the garden scenes, afterwards became Malvolio’s mobile prison, being clapped over his head, leaving his legs free. The colour throughout in paint, fabrics and lighting modulated from grey and blue-pink to full Watteau-esque gold and turquoise.

  As I read the play again, I caught – and who could miss them? – its overtones of regret. It has a character that is, I believe, unique in English comedy, a particular tinge of sadness that is the complementary colour of aesthetic pleasure. One listens to it with the half-sigh that accompanies an experience of perfect beauty. This is an element that has much to do with music and nothing at all to do either with sentiment or with tragedy, and it is the quintessence of Twelfth Night. The warp of regret is interlaced with a vigorous weft of foolery. The producer’s job is to retain them both in their just proportion. It is because Twelfth Night is so gay that it is also so delicately sad.

  I planned a swiftly running production with only one interval. This would come after the letter-reading scene and the coda of laughter that follows it. Toby would pick Maria up in a pother of giggles and petticoats and carry her off, Andrew and Fabian would follow arm in arm and the curtain come down. My aim at this stage of production was to catch the measure of the whole. That measure would be sustained by the occasional use of music. For this we chose Purcell’s ‘Golden Sonata’, which seemed to me to be perfect Illyria.

  It was now, when the script was plotted, the music chosen, the design in preparation and first rehearsal called, that I was most forcibly reminded of the influence of theatrical fashion upon actors. I had in my company a number of young actors and actresses who had worked under distinguished direction and one senior actor of great talent, experience and discernment. It was among the youngest players that the fashionable attitude to Twelfth Night was most tenderly embraced. At least two of them were consumed with the desire to play up the regretful overtones for all and more than they are worth. ‘Infinite sadness’ was a phrase much bandied about during the earlier rehearsals, minor overtones were remorselessly insisted upon, the horrid ghost of I Pagliacci seemed to lurk behind the boxtree hedge. I had seen all this sort of thing done and very cleverly done and had felt it to be an error in taste and discernment. The Fool in Twelfth Night is not the Fool in Lear, Malvolio’s downfall was not conceived as a tragic downfall. He would not, therefore, be allowed to gloom himself into a sort of cross-gartered Richard II. No, he would be as acid as a lime and as lean as a praying mantis. He would have such an air of creaking dryness that when his transformation came about it would be as if he were galvanized into egregious gallantry. There must be no nonsense about making him sympathetic. Shakespeare disliked the fellow and so must the audience.

  With Olivia I was able to air what had long been a fervent belief. There is another fashion in our theatres (stemming from who knows what forgotten managerial charms) that would make a mature woman of Olivia. For far too long, more than mature leading ladies have confronted us with the not very delicate prospect of solid worth extended in corseted melancholy upon some comfortless chaise longue, distressingly besotted with a girl-boy and finally marrying the latter’s twin brother. Could anything be less Illyrian? I defy the fashionmongers to find in the text one single hint that the spoilt young countess is in fact anything but very, very young. There is not a ponderable note in Olivia, the bloom of adolescence adorns every word she speaks. Viola’s impatience is with a girl of her own age who is making a little silly-billy of herself. Our Olivia was as pretty as a rosebud, her mourning was as nonsensical as Orsino’s lovelorn dumps. Having shut herself up in a charming prison, she fancied herself head-over-heels in love with the first personable boy to walk into it and was exasperated beyond measure when he failed to respond. None of my cast had ever thought of Olivia being played in this key. The concept of the stricken dowager dies hard.

  There are, however, no fashions in Violas. She has, as far as I know, withstood the most determined onslaughts of the modish ‘fun’ merchants and has neither hallooed Olivia’s name through a megaphone to the reverberate hills nor yet disguised her fair and outward character in a track suit. Our Viola fulfilled the first requirements of a heroine in a Shakespeare comedy by being an accomplished actress, very young, intelligent and a darling. She moved through the play with charm, wit and good breeding. By the command of a certain quality in her voice she was able to alight on her lyrical passages and in so doing bring about that sudden stillness in a theatre that tells an actress she is safely home.

  And Feste? It was with Feste that fashion threatened most insistently to put up her unlovely visage, for it is through him more than any other of the Illyrians that Shakespeare shows us the reverse side of the coin of comedy. I had of late seen Festes who, by plugging at the minor theme in their part, had administered a series of excruciating nudges in the ribs of their audiences. ‘Goodness!’ they seemed to exclaim, in Morley’s phrase, ‘Goodness, how sad! Look!’ But Feste is not Lear’s fool. He must play against his own ruefulness and if he does this his ruefulness will speak for itself. It shows most markedly in the songs. ‘Youth,’ Feste sings, ‘is a stuff will not endure’ and ‘What’s to come is still unsure.’ Beauty, he says, is a flower, and elsewhere the Duke reflects that

  women are as roses, whose fair flower

  Being once displayed, doth fall that very hour.

  Viola agrees:

  And so they are: alas, that they are so!

  To die, even when they to perfection grow!

  Olivia swears by the roses of the spring. The shroud of white in the Fool’s song of death is strewn with yew and ‘not a flower, not a flower sweet’ on his coffin shall be strewn. This flower image is scattered through Twelfth Night like the daisies on a Botticelli lawn and it is Feste who most often expresses it. He wanders about the play mingling with its several themes. He is by turns listless and brilliant. He has an artist’s resentment for Malvolio’s criticism of his professional status and can be waspish. He is all things to all men and yet very much himself and very much alone. His devotion to Olivia drifts across the text with no more insistence than a breath on a looking glass. He can be ruined by an actor who sees in him a chance to make a big thing of a light part. He sets the tone of the play.

  I felt that there should be some visual expression of his function and looked for it in the flower image. On Olivia’s first entrance, Feste, who has played truant from her household, sets about fooling himself back into her good graces. Our Feste mutely asked her for the rose she carried. It was refused and given to Fabian, that oddly occurring character whose sudden appearance is thought to have some reference to the departure of Kemp from Shakespeare’s company and the arrival of Armin to take his place. Fabian seems to have been brought in arbitrarily to replace the Fool in the letter-reading scene and perhaps to suggest a rival to him for Olivia’s favour. It was to sustain this
suggestion that Fabian escorted Olivia on his first entry. Later, on his line ‘So beauty’s a flower’, Feste snatched the rose from Fabian and wore it on his motley for the rest of the play. At the end he was left alone to sing his wry song of the wind and the rain. At its close he laid down his lute on the stage and broke the rose between his fingers. The petals fell with a faint tinkle of sound across the strings. Feste tiptoed into the shadows and the final curtain came down on the lute and rose petals, vignetted in a pool of light. This use of a visual symbol in the rose was the only piece of extraneous production imposed on the play and even this could be referred back to the text. There was comic ‘business’ enough, certainly, in the buffo scenes, but it was kept in style and played strictly to the general tempo of the production. The result, surprising to actors and audience alike, was the discovery that the comic scenes in Twelfth Night are funny.

  It remains to say that with the intelligent and patient cooperation of the actors this treatment of Twelfth Night became articulate. It was successful in performance. This, I am sure, was because we came freshly to the text and, seeking its true savour, bent all our thought and energy to serving it.

  ‘If that this simple syllogism will serve, so: if it will not, what remedy?’ None, I am sure, in any approach to the play that imposes an extrinsic fashion upon it. Whatever the style for Twelfth Night, it must be ingrain. Only so will it endure the wind and weather of production.

  All went well with this play and with Six Characters for which the company turned out to be particularly well equipped. We achieved a pace and immediacy that I think bettered the London production. Basil Henson gave a compulsive edge to the Father.

  We opened in Auckland with Twelfth Night to rave notices and packed houses whose enthusiasm seemed to mount as the season continued. I think if we had stayed in Auckland we might possibly have established a residential company making occasional tours. However, we were booked for the south and left while we were still ‘turning them away’.