22 April 2010: Bennett, The Habit of Art
Lyttleton Theatre, National Theatre, London. Performed Live, transmitted in HD to Amherst Cinema, Amherst, MA
A wonderful, thought-provoking play, which is also extremely funny without losing any of its power. “The habit of art” is a phrase attributed to the famous English poet W. H. Auden, who explains that the way art is created is through habit, on the part of artists, poets and others, who simply get on with it. “On.” It is the same word that stage managers use when a rehearsal is being run: “On.” That is, continue. The point about rehearsal is relevant here because the play stages a rehearsal of a play that is about to open but is still quite disconcertingly in flux. The play is about Auden and the composer Benjamin Britten, who had collaborated some years before on an ill-fated opera, for which Auden wrote the libretto. The setting is Auden’s “pig sty” quarters in college, in Oxford. In the course of the play, Auden is paid a visit by Britten, who is lonely and frustrated and needs much cheering up in order to get on with the new opera on which he is now engaged. Through much indirection, and almost nonstop talking on the part of Auden, the play explores human relationships in much detail, almost always with a view toward how they relate to the creation of art.
This is a very difficult play to summarize. Perhaps one should resort to taking Auden’s own advice: an effective play, or opera, should be able to be summarized in a single sentence, in just a few words. Let me give this one a try: “Benjamin Britten revisits his former colleague W. H. Auden, looking for encouragement, and gets some, though probably not enough.” If that does not sound highly promising, then see the production, to understand how the author Alan Bennett’s genius as a dramatist transforms this material into the stuff of art.
A word about this play as a rehearsal play. There is a wonderful inside-and-outside quality to it. We never forget that we are, technically, watching a rehearsal. But, of course, this is actually a play in performance. After the performance is over, we could reflect on the formal quality, but while the play is actually being performed, notwithstanding its indicated nature as a “rehearsal,” we become deeply immersed in the “reality” of it all. That’s all well and good, but Bennett gets much more out of it than this. There is a kind of typical British undercutting of seriousness going on here, such that Bennett allows Auden to say some deeply serious things, while at the same time, or immediately after, there is a hiatus in the proceedings, or an intrusion of some kind, that reminds us that we are watching a rehearsal. Thus, the continuity of constant performance here allows us to absorb this serious material while at the same time we are being mightily well entertained by the discontinuity, often comical, or at least undercutting the seriousness, that is characteristic of rehearsals. This is the true mode of th