Collected Columns

by Michael Frayn

  Some actors I’ve worked with can effortlessly hit every stress in a line except the right one. I am overcome by stress-blindness myself, reading my own plays through to directors. I can’t remember for the life of me what stress I had in mind when I wrote the line. All I know is that it’s certainly not the one I’m managing to produce.

  But now another explanation altogether has come to me. We’re surprised to be told that the cabin staff will be serving lunch because we were taking it for granted that they would be. But maybe we were taking it entirely too much for granted. Maybe the serving of lunch is no more pre-ordained than anything else in life. Cabin staff are human beings, not automata. They are free citizens, not slaves. They have ideas of their own about whether lunch should be served or not – and a tremendous debate has probably been going on about it in the galley ever since take-off. ‘We won’t serve lunch!’ say some of the attendants. ‘We may, in certain circumstances,’ say others. ‘We could … we should … we must’ – the argument rages. The passengers ought to be asking each other, ‘Will they, or won’t they?’ They should be taking bets on the outcome. So that when the Chief Stewardess comes out of the negotiating chamber and goes on the air to announce ‘We will be!’ she is issuing hot news. We should all cheer.

  Evidently the same kind of thing is going on up there in the cockpit. A battle royal has been raging about the flight-plan, ever since the Chief Stewardess predicted confidently, shortly before take-off, ‘We will be departing for Cincinnati.’ This was in line with well-informed forecasts by both the airline and air-traffic control. But now, up there in the cockpit, the Captain has suddenly raised the possibility of flying to somewhere else altogether.

  ‘I favour Decatur, Illinois,’ he tells the First Officer. ‘I’ve heard good things of Decatur.’

  The First Officer, a man of little imagination and rigid principles, is frankly astonished. ‘I don’t understand,’ he says. ‘We’re cleared through to Cincinnati.’

  ‘I don’t much care for Cincinnati,’ says the Captain.

  ‘But this is Flight JQ407,’ says the First Officer. ‘For Cincinnati.’

  ‘As I understand it from Operation Control,’ says the Captain, ‘Flight JQ407 went to Cincinnati yesterday.’

  ‘Exactly!’ says the First Officer.

  ‘I believe it also went to Cincinnati the day before yesterday,’ says the Captain, ‘and the day before that.’

  ‘It goes to Cincinnati, every day,’ says the First Officer.

  ‘Then it has gone to Cincinnati often enough,’ says the Captain. ‘The possibilities of flying to Cincinnati have been very adequately explored. We have had Cincinnati.’

  ‘But we are contractually bound to go to Cincinnati!’ cries the First Officer, who read jurisprudence at North-Western before he went to air college. ‘The front office sold the passengers their tickets on the basis of an implied undertaking to go to Cincinnati!’

  These powerful stresses have no effect upon the Captain, because captains don’t normally stress any words at all. When they talk to the passengers, as you may have noticed, they remain notably laid-back and unemphatic. And this particular captain happens to have read moral philosophy at UCLA.

  ‘We also have a duty to ourselves‚’ he explains calmly, ‘to realise our true potential, to behave with spontaneity and authenticity. I don’t think that can best be done by going to Cincinnati.’

  For some reason this catches the imagination of the Flight Engineer. ‘It’s not just us!’ he cries, with hitherto unsuspected passion, and a wild storm of emphases. ‘It’s all those poor grey passengers back there! Let’s bring a little colour into their lives! A little of the romance of the unknown! Some faint echo of the days of the great clippers, when, you were at the mercy of the four winds of heaven, and you never knew for sure which continent you were going to end up in!’

  No one pays any attention to him. Too many stresses, possibly.

  ‘We don’t even know if there’s an airport at Decatur!’ says the First Officer.

  ‘OK,’ says the Captain, ‘so here’s what we do. We go down to treetop height and bop around for a bit, see what we can see. There may be a field. There may be a freeway where things are reasonably quiet.’

  ‘I’ve got another idea!’ says the Flight Engineer. There’s this girl I know in Cedar Rapids, Iowa …’

  ‘Well, I say we’re going to Cincinnati!’ shouts the First Officer.

  ‘I say we’re not,’ says the Captain, finally driven to emphasising words himself. ‘And I am the Captain.’

  ‘You are the Captain, right!’ says the First Officer, by which he means that if the Captain is the Captain then he should behave like the Captain.

  But the Captain misses this implication. They didn’t do rhetoric at UCLA.

  ‘I am the Captain?’ he says. ‘OK, if that’s the way you prefer it – I am the Captain. No, hold on, I was right the first time, I am the Captain. Is that what I said? You’re getting me a little confused here.’

  ‘What do you mean, I’m getting you confused?’ screams the First Officer.

  ‘No? OK. You’re getting me confused … You’re getting me confused … It sounds funny whichever way. It’s these damned stresses! I am the Captain … I have a feeling that language is becoming meaningless. I don’t know where I am, or what I’m doing. It’s all like a dream …’

  You probably noticed that the cabin staff didn’t serve lunch immediately in spite of having been so very insistent that they were going to. That’s because they were all in the cockpit, tying up the Captain. And that supposed turbulence, somewhere over Altoona? That’s when they were disarming the First Officer, and trying to resuscitate the Flight Engineer.

  Don’t worry – the plane is being flown by a very level-headed stewardess who saw a film once where this kind of thing happened. But clearly a firm statement had to be issued before rumours began to circulate back in the cabin. Well, you heard what the Chief Stewardess said: ‘We will shortly be landing in Cincinnati!’

  It was Churchillian.

  Though when she added: ‘We hope you’ve enjoyed flying with us,’ I thought I detected the faintest note of doubt.

  (1994)

  I think I’m right in saying

  Orators of any standing no longer orate, and it’s a pretty third-rate writer nowadays who is reduced to writing, These antique forms of communication have been replaced by the interview. Would you agree, Mr Frayn?

  – Oh yes, entirely.

  I believe I’m right in saying that you yourself have given up writing, Mr Frayn, and have instead put yourself in the hands of a competent interviewer. Tell me, is this forward-looking move aimed at easing the strain of thinking, or is it purely an attempt to gain status?

  – A bit of both, I think.

  I wonder if you agree with me that this technique is capable of considerable extension? It seems to me demeaning in the extreme for Lord Mayors and others to be forced back on the monologue form at ceremonial occasions. It would surely add tone and dignity to the occasion if a good interviewer asked the Lord Mayor:

  ‘What does it give you, sir, to be present here today?’

  ‘Very great pleasure‚’ the Lord Mayor would reply.

  ‘And what organ is this good cause very close to?’

  ‘My heart.’

  ‘I see. But I believe you’re sure that people haven’t come here to do one thing?’

  ‘To listen to me talking.’

  ‘So what do you intend to proceed without?’

  ‘Any further ado.’

  ‘One last question, sir. What do you declare this home for asthmatic engine-drivers?’

  ‘Open.’

  What do you think of these proposals, Mr Frayn?

  – Oh, admirable.

  I feel (perhaps you will agree with me) that the whole course of human history would have had much more tone and class if these techniques had been put into practice earlier.

  – Yes, I suppose so.


  I was thinking, for instance, of the rather tedious monologue which Mark Antony delivered to the crowd in the Forum. How much more satisfactory it would have been if some well-informed commentator had introduced him.

  ‘Friends, Romans, countrymen,’ he might have started off, ‘lend that well-known personality, Mark Antony, your ears. Mr Antony, it’s a great honour to have you with us here in the Forum. What exactly is the purpose of your visit?’

  ‘I come to bury Caesar,’ Antony would reply.

  ‘Not to praise him?’

  ‘Definitely not.’

  ‘Mr Antony, you’ve been quoted in some of the Londinium papers as saying that the evil that men do is oft interred with their bones. Would you care to comment on this?’

  ‘I’m afraid they’ve got hold of the wrong end of the stick entirely. What I actually said was that the evil that men do lives after them. It was the good, I said, which was oft interred with their bones.’

  ‘And your attitude is, if I may put words into your mouth, “So let it be with Caesar”?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  The mob would have remained completely calm and orderly under these circumstances, don’t you think, Mr Frayn?

  – What? Oh, yes.

  Do you think the technique could also be used in the parliamentary and political fields? Would it add interest and variety to speeches that of necessity contain lists of proposals? For instance, I can imagine a good political journalist helping out with:

  ‘Welcome back to the dispatch box, Mr Churchill. I think the question that’s uppermost in all our minds tonight is what you, as Prime Minister, have to offer the English people.’

  ‘Nothing but blood and sweat.’

  ‘Nothing else at all?’

  ‘I’m afraid not.’

  ‘How about tears?’

  ‘Oh well, yes, some tears, if you like.’

  The same man could have done wonders at the Labour Party Conference at Scarborough.

  ‘What do you propose to do, Mr Gaitskell? Fight or not?’

  ‘Oh, rather.’

  ‘Which, fight?’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘I said “fight” again.’

  ‘Oh, again and again and again.’

  Well, thank you, Mr Frayn, for coming along and answering my questions so frankly.

  As a matter of fact, Mr Frayn’s gone to bed, suffering from creative exhaustion. I’m the interviewer who’s come to interview you. Perhaps you’d care to start off by telling us all what it’s like to be a famous interviewer …

  (1961)

  In funland

  Sigismund Cortex, that keen Psychomanian student of British affairs, is greatly excited by the idea of Miss Joan Littlewood’s Fun Palace. The only trouble is, he can’t understand exactly what a Fun Palace is.

  He keeps alternately interrogating me and hunting through a stack of English–Psychomanian dictionaries. He says they have plenty of palaces in his country, but so far as he can tell they don’t have any fun. I mean I know what a Fun Palace is, but it’s damned difficult to explain it to him.

  ‘Is a Palace of Culture?’ he asks keenly.

  ‘Not exactly,’ I reply helpfully.

  ‘Is a Palace of Varieties?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Is a sports stadium?’

  ‘Oh no.’

  ‘Ah, now I see! Is a house of prostitution?’

  ‘Certainly not.’

  He turns some more pages in the dictionary.

  ‘You see, Michael, it is important that we in our country keep up with the technologically more advanced nations. We refuse to be excluded from the comity of fun-loving nations. Now excuse me, please. I read in a newspaper that this Fun Palace would contain six-screen cinemas, mobile cycloramas, warm-air curtains, optical barriers and static-vapour zones. Tell me, please, are these the funs?’

  ‘No, the fun’s what goes on the screens and between the barriers.’

  ‘Describe this fun, please.’

  ‘Well, I don’t think they’ve decided what sort of fun they’re going to have in there yet.’

  ‘No? They build the building first and then find the fun afterwards?’

  ‘I think that’s the idea, Sigismund.’

  He suddenly finds a new word in the dictionary.

  ‘Ah, now I understand!’ he cries. ‘Is a funfair!’

  ‘I’m sure it’s not. I’m sure it’s dedicated to a much higher and broader concept of fun than that. You see, Sigismund, we have more and more fun in our country these days because we have more and more leisure to have fun in. What we believe now is that almost anything can be fun, if you go about it in the right spirit.’

  ‘Almost anything?’

  ‘If it’s fun to do.’

  ‘Aaaaaaaah! You do fun? Fun is something you do?’

  ‘Oh no – fun’s something you have.’

  ‘Aaaaaaaah! You have fun! Like you have flu?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘You mean, if this dictionary has fun I catch fun?’

  ‘No, if the dictionary is, you have.’

  ‘Excuse me, please. Where is the fun? In me or in the book?’

  ‘I’m not absolutely sure.’

  ‘But the book does not have fun?’

  ‘Certainly not.’

  Sigismund makes a careful note of these points.

  ‘In Psychomania,’ he says, ‘we have sports, pastimes, amusements, diversions, hobbies and various erotic activities. We also have jokes and laughter. You know laughter? Laughter goes ha, ha, ha.’

  ‘We have jokes and laughter in our country, too.’

  ‘Ah! Now, is jokes and laughter fun?’

  ‘Certainly. But fun isn’t just jokes and laughter, you know.’

  Sigismund starts to plough through the dictionary again, his eyes great pools of blankness.

  ‘Look, Sigismund, the point is this. Nice things can be fun. But in this country we believe that nasty things can be fun, too. Mathematics can be fun. Culture can be fun. Even work can be fun.’

  ‘Work can be fun?’

  ‘Certainly. No man of real integrity in this country would dream of working if he didn’t find it fun. Otherwise he’d just be selling out, wouldn’t he? Why do you think the Prime Minister is slogging away up there in Downing Street?’

  ‘Well, now, because he feels a patriotic duty to …’

  ‘That’s an unkind thing to say, Sigismund. I can assure you he does it simply because it’s fun. Why do you think perfectly intelligent university graduates go into advertising?’

  ‘Surely, because they are paid a lot of money …’

  ‘Good heavens, Sigismund, you are a cynic! No, they do it because everyone knows advertising is tremendous fun. Why do you think Milton wrote that damned great poem of his? Because he was a fun person and it was a fun thing to do. “I had a lot of fun writing it,” he told reporters, as you probably know, “and all I hope is that people have as much fun reading it.”’

  ‘He said that?’

  ‘Certainly he did. We live in a fun culture, Sigismund. It’s fun to dance till dawn in a topless dinner-jacket at the Reform Club. It’s fun to get down on your hands and knees and scrub the floor with new magic Elbo-Grees.’

  ‘Michael, this I never knew. But what are the symptoms of having fun?’

  ‘Well, one finds oneself saying “Gosh, this is fun!” Or “Heavens, I am having fun!”’

  ‘Excuse me, I make a note …’

  ‘Yes, write it down, Sigismund. P-E-O-P-L-E A-R-E F-U-N. That’s our great humanistic creed. It’s fun to be alive. It’s fun to drop dead.’

  (1964)

  In the Morris manner

  Two very different styles of life are defined by the two styles of architecture which seem most pervasively influential in our time – the austere classicism of Mies van der Rohe and his followers on the one hand, and the currently more fashionable informality of Charles and Ray Eames on the other.


  It’s not easy to know which to aspire to. So I think it’s worth saying that there is a third lifestyle, fundamentally different again, which has been developed over the years by our friends Horace and Doris Morris and indeed our good selves. All we lack at the moment is an architecture to put around it.

  In the Miesian canon, if I understand it, the overriding goal is perfection of form. The skin of the building is the most formally perfect solution possible of its function, expressed (usually) in terms of glass to keep the weather out and steel to hold up the glass. The contents are as important to the form of the whole as the transparent skin; so they, too – furniture, carpets, pictures, the lot – are as strictly located by the architect as the drains.

  An architect friend of mine who recently visited the famous Glass House that Philip Johnson, Mies’s associate, built for himself in Connecticut reports that discreet marks are placed on the carpet, when new staff are engaged, to show exactly where each chair is to stand.

  I see the attractions: four days out of seven I should like nothing better than to have an authoritarian architect design my life for me. But then I see the attractions of the opposite conception, too, as developed out of the Mies tradition by Mr and Mrs Eames, and enshrined in the house they have built for themselves at Santa Monica, in California.

  According to Geoffrey Holroyd, in an issue of Architectural Design devoted to the Eameses recently, ‘the house is filled with a huge collection of toys – objects of indigenous Santa Fe folk culture, tumbleweed, driftwood, desert finds of great variety – placed everywhere … Mies wants all glass and no clutter; Eames wants clutter, “functioning decoration.”’ The house is also full of Eames chairs – ‘the first chairs,’ according to another contributor, ‘which can be put into any position in an empty room.’