What is Tony Randall talking about?
Tony Randall has been publicly miffed over the lack of something called a “national theater” for what feels like decades now. It’s never been very clear what he means by this, but thanks to his recent article in the online Arts 4 All, we now know why: He doesn’t know himself what he means by it.
He begins on a sane note, describing how in his boyhood a visit from Les Ballets Russes to Tulsa amounted to a once-in-a-lifetime event because the US had no professional ballet companies. He then notes that this has completely changed for most of the performing arts, given that every state has a ballet and that at least half of the world’s top orchestras are American.
Randall turns darkly pensive at this point, observing that “we are simultaneously seeing the frightening shrinking of the theatre. The United States today has no classical repertory theatre.” Huh? Does that dearth include American Repertory Theatre, Yale Rep, Berkeley Rep, Milwaukee Rep, etc.? The quality of these and similar institutions may vary, but they do stage classics, operate more or less on the repertory model, hire some of the nation’s top artists, and have high production values (which is not one of my standards for great theater, by the way). Acknowledging their existence strikes me as reasonable, given the innumerable, barely remunerative hours people pour into them.
So what exactly is Randall bemoaning?
Maybe it’s the absence of a federally subsidized behemoth like Britain’s National Theatre or Royal Shakespeare Company:
Every civilized country but ours has a classical repertory theatre which is the pride of its nation. France has the Comedie Française, founded by Louis XIV for Molière 400 years ago; Israel, the Habima; Japan, the Kabuki; Ireland, the Abbey Theatre in Dublin; Russia has the Moscow Art Theatre, and the list goes on. Yet the United States has none. This, in my opinion, is not only a crime, but a scandal.
Randall doesn’t explain why American dance is doing fine without its own version of the Royal Danish Ballet. Presumably, he thinks theater is somehow a special case. This would be in keeping with how seriously people in our industry take themselves, but the lament still makes no sense. The countries Randall names as exemplary could almost all fit snugly in Texas. In a country as vast as the US, no city is central to enough of its citizens to host a theater that could reasonably be called “national.”
Which is why Russia’s great theaters are thought of as regional entities rather than national ones, at least within Russia. The Moscow Art Theater may be the most celebrated internationally, but the Maly in St. Petersburg and the Altai State Drama in Siberia understandably have more importance to people living less than half a day’s drive from them.
In that sense, we do have a national theater, made up of regional giants such as ACT in San Francisco, the Guthrie in Minneapolis, the Alley in Houston, and so on. They don’t all meet Randall’s demand that shows be done in repertory, but they produce large seasons comprised of classics and (at least supposedly) groundbreaking new works, and they attract the nation’s best talent. Many receive a chunk of NEA money for their funding, but the strength of each resides in the committed, local elites who are willing to donate large sums and buy subscriptions. I wouldn’t go so far as to compare the Guthrie favorably with the RSC, but in a country with a comparatively brief theatrical history, I can’t help thinking we’re off to a decent start.
More than existential angst
“Comedies of menace” has been the prevailing description of Harold Pinter’s plays for some forty years. It shows up on just about every website that references the playwright (his official website is an exception). Stylistically, the term seems fitting enough. It especially suits definitive plays like The Caretaker and The Homecoming, in which characters grasp with comic desperation at familiarity and control amid growingly mysterious circumstances.
The term is less satisfying as a description of the substance of the plays. And I’ve often wondered whether Pinter’s plays are nourishing beyond the fascination they provide. Do they do more than play on modern audiences’ fear of a world that appears, despite its advances, increasingly elusive and hostile?
After seeing a preview of the Roundabout Theatre’s Caretaker, I’ve decided that at least one of them does. In contrast with most of Pinter’s pre-Betrayal output, The Caretaker holds out a belief in the possibility of human relationships that transcend power and dependency. Though fainter, it’s the same conviction that brings a golden glow to Chekhov’s otherwise melancholy universe.
First, a counter-example: In The Homecoming (considered the most prototypical of Pinter’s plays), a working-class household consisting of an elderly man, two of his sons, and an “uncle” are visited by another son, a professor at an American university. The professor brings his wife with him. The house the ex-patriots visit is run chaotically, with power continually shifting to whichever of its mostly volatile males best intimidates the others at any given time. Initially hesitant and afraid, the professor’s wife gradually brings an end to the chaos by embracing the savagery of her new surroundings. She voluntarily disowns her husband (and two children back home) to become a whore-servant to her in-laws. By dispensing a calming, sensual femininity on her own terms to a household that, through death and sexual haplessness, could not replace it otherwise, she at play’s end has effectively assumed all power for herself. The final scene depicts the beefy younger son with his head leaning submissively on her knee, the other son gazing on from a distance, and the father pleading impotently that she share the wealth a little. (The ex-patriot son has left.) A coldly Nietzschean logic has played itself out, whereby power is the sum end of human interaction and bridge-burning self-reinvention is the key.
The Caretaker left me with a very different feeling. It proceeds similarly, with a wary protagonist being led into a strange environment. This time, it’s a homeless man (Davies) being brought by a mildly mentally ill man (Aston) into his modest flat. Davies is unsure why he’s been invited there, and is even more confused when offered a bed and keys to the room. While Aston does set occasional boundaries, they fade beside the voluntary lengths he goes to on his guest’s behalf—running errands for him, bringing him shoes, giving him a few bob for tea. Aston in time offers his guest permanent accommodation in exchange for light caretaking. By this point, it has become clear that Aston’s generosity has no ulterior motive. And a moment unique to Pinter has occurred, where a character’s inexplicable behavior appears to have nothing but benevolence behind it. Davies declines to accept the caretaker position outright, but neither does he seem inclined to leave. He makes repeated Godot-like references to Sidcup, a place to which he needs to travel in order to collect his “papers” and thus get “sorted out,” but the trip never happens. A long-term relationship based on the equal terms of give-and-take is thus passed over, and a tenuous one of benefactor / receiver remains in its place.
The play’s requisite element of menace is provided by Aston’s brother Mick, who claims to own the flat and drops in on Davies while the latter is alone. Mick’s behavior swings psychopathically from extraverted sociability to explosive brutality. The dominance Mick is able to wield from both frightens Davies at first. But Davies also finds it alluring, and he finds himself accepting from Mick the same offer of caretaking that he refused from his brother. It is disturbingly unclear whether Mick is ever being sincere or merely gaming, but Davies’ head swells nonetheless with the sense that he’s aligned himself with someone powerful. So when Aston confronts him about the noise he makes at night, Davies becomes flippant and belittling, then goes so far as to make additional demands on his host.
By the final scene, Mick’s offer has been abruptly withdrawn and Aston has asked Davies to leave. In those last moments of the play, I experienced something more than the captivated creeped-outness I usually get from a Pinter play. I could see in gnarled, troll-postured Patrick Stewart the remorse of rejected opportunity, of happiness discarded in pursuit of the popular, the thrilling, the instantly gratifying. It’s a moment I recognized all too well and a moral universe I can relate to. I didn’t know the younger Pinter was capable.