Tim Bannerman's Theatre Chronicles – Part 14: 1984 – “No Name”
“Two roads cross, and not a house in sight
Except ‘The White Horse’ in this clump of beeches.
It hides from either road, a field’s breadth back;
And it’s the trees you see, and not the house,
Both near and far, when the clump’s the highest thing
And homely, too, upon a far horizon
To one that knows there is an inn within.”
from Edward Thomas’ “Up in the Wind”
My idea was to bring Edward Thomas’s poem “The Other” to life in a similar way to my approach to Joe Orton’s “The Ruffian on the Stair”. It would combine the media of film and theatre, illustrating the pursuit by Thomas of his doppelgänger through the narrative of the poem, using, as a filmed, scenic counterpoint to the live performance, the real Hampshire country on my doorstep in 1984, as it was his country on his doorstep, above the nearby village of Steep, near Petersfield, 70 years earlier. The film would also allow for Thomas, as the single character on stage, to interact with a wider cast of characters on the screen behind him.
I would, I write in my proposal of 7th June 1984 to Stephen Barry, Artistic Director of The Redgrave Theatre, Farnham, take the approach that I had, more or less successfully, applied to Orton’s play three weeks earlier, to Thomas’s poem and take it to another level altogether in a one hour show. It was Stephen who had so kindly propositioned me in the theatre Gents on several occasions to offer me acting roles over the previous year and, most recently in that year of 1984, the directing and writing roles for “Ruffian” in the Studio and the Theatreaction Theatre in Education pieces to take on tour round local primary schools in the area. So I thought it was a good bet to suggest “Tim Bannerman’s proposals for the future – if he should have one”, while the iron was hot.
My rock-bottom budget production of “The Ruffian on the Stair” I had described to the reviewer from the Farnham Herald as follows:
“Ruffian on the Stair” is a ludicrous (Orton’s word) play which depends on absolute sincerity and realism to achieve a successful blend of comedy and menace in performance. Events are outrageous, circumstances grotesque and yet the whole is, and must be, passed off as the most natural thing in the world.
A retired prostitute and ex-boxer hit-man have established a quaint domesticity between them. This is disturbed by the arrival of a young man on a mission of inverted revenge for the death of his brother, with whom he had an incestuous, homosexual relationship, at the hands of the boxer. Briefly, the young man wishes his brother’s murderer to murder him.
Under these circumstances, one’s normal terms of reference become somewhat dislocated. And it does not seem so strange to establish a parallel perspective on “reality” and its essential elements – which is effect what we are achieving in our fusion of two performance media – video and live stage.
As far as I know, this is a unique approach and demands an unusual technique from the actors and the stage manager who presses the buttons. None of it would have been possible without the expert and priceless presence of our camera-persons, editors and technical advisors, Malcolm Jenkins and Alina Dobraszcyc, of the West Surrey College of Art and Design, for whom I hope you will all come and witness a daring voyage into the unknown.”
For the first lunchtime performance of “Ruffian”, we had four, yes 4, people in the audience. Strangely this relieved me because there is a kind of unwritten law that if the cast outnumbers the audience then they can call the whole thing off, not that I ever saw it happen. It got slightly better later on and I think we crept into double figures at one point. But that didn’t matter. What mattered was that, on at least one show over the two week run, everything went perfectly.
The actors timed their off-stage dialogue for the filmed elements that we had recorded without words to, well, perfection. I’d decided to have the filmed parts played for the emotions and actions, rather than the words that went with them, with the actors watching the screen from their position off-stage in the wings, hidden from the audience, speaking the lines live as the recorded sections played out on the screen during the performance. It required split second timing to achieve the right effect. As did their appearance on stage for the live theatre elements, which was timed to coincide with their departure on film, usually by leaving through a door, or entering to return to the video scenario. In this way, we could have a real bedroom with Fergus and Yvonne appropriately entwined, and, in the final Scene 5, the following sequence, as written in my video outline:
VIDEO: Bedroom sequence.
Joyce in the bedroom with Wilson.
Wilson goes out to bring in goldfish.
Wilson brings in goldfish in glass bowl. Puts it on the table.
Mike enters with revolver in hand.
Mike shoots goldfish bowl. Bowl shatters leaving goldfish on table among shards.
Mike shoots Wilson.
Wilson staggers out – onto STAGE.
Joyce follows onto STAGE.
Mike left alone in bedroom holding gun.
Joyce leaves STAGE.
Joyce enters bedroom. Collects sheet from bed.
Close-up on shattered goldfish bowl and fish flapping.
Mike enters on STAGE leaving Mike on VIDEO.
Mike on STAGE watches Mike on VIDEO.
ENDS
It took quite a few takes to make the shooting of the goldfish bowl work – how did we do it? I wish I could remember but I think we had a duplicate or three (at some dent to the budget) at which we did actually fired a gun – an air rifle? – and took several goes before we captured a usable shattering, quite possibly by having broken one of the bowls in advance and sticking it back together so that the slightest knock would make it fall apart. Also, in case you were wondering, as far as I remember, no living creature was caused any suffering, or flapping for that matter, during the making of the film, apart from me.
Technically, we had a few challenges, not least establishing a level of lighting that allowed the action on the two largest available (which was not very large in 1984), video tv screens either side at the back of the stage, to be clearly viewable by the audience as well as lighting the action on stage.
This earned me what actors call a “note” from Stephen, who had entrusted me with the production, to the effect that, if the actors on stage were not properly lit, then not only could you not see the full impact of their performance – for actors on stage act not just with their voices – your hearing switches off in sympathy. You, literally, lose the plot. This is a lesson that has stayed with me ever since, to the annoyance of many a lighting technician-cum-stage manager along the way, some of whom still think you can perform in semi-darkness
The screens were set like two cat’s eyes with a vertical slit from a part-opened door as the screen backdrop to the otherwise minimally furnished stage, only coming alive when characters exited off-stage for the video sequences. The intention was to play to the air of menace within this strange, dark comedy, and I think it worked – when technical issues didn’t get in the way.
All filming was in black and white. What else? The intention was, to quote from my treatment for Malcolm: “to highlight the escalating psychotic state of the characters, using hand-held, poor quality video, in brief bursts – 1 to 2 minutes – with just sound effects to shock – brick through window, smashing of door, shattering of goldfish, shooting of Wilson – with synchronised dialogue spoken live off-stage to add to heightened paranoid atmosphere and uncertainty as to whether events are actual or imagined.”
Music, as always, played another key role in establishing the appropriate mood for a given scene or the piece as a whole and my theme tune for “Ruffian” was, what else again, Lou Reed’s iconic 1967 track from The Velvet Underground and Nico album, “Waiting for the man”. It began just before the lights went down at the start and rose in volume until the snap of lights on stage and the first entrance of Wilson at “Here he comes, all dressed in black”. I can feel the same shiver of joy I had every time just thinking about it.
In contrast, Scott Walker’s 1969 “If you go away” infused a faux sentimentality to the queasy domesticity of Mike and Joyce, with Walker’s gorgeously rich baritone in ironic counterpoint to this bizarre and “ludicrous” world of Orton’s.
And finally, to send you off with a gutsy blast, Chuck Berry’s 1958 “Johnny B. Goode”, as the light fades on the dead body of Wilson, the shattered goldfish bowl and the stunned Mike and Joyce at the end of the play.
I mean, come on. If you’re going to have music, it’s got to have class.
Did the production have class? It was an interesting idea. It had its moments. It had great music. It had David Thewlis. It was definitely different. And more people enjoyed it than not, or so they told me. But it tried a bit too hard. I made lots of mistakes – fundamentally by making it too complicated. As ever, simple is best in nearly all circumstances. If it’s a good play.
“Ruffian” was Orton’s first play and not his best, even though it puts a marker down for his original and highly recognisable style and in some spooky way, foretells his own death at the hands of his lover, Kenneth Halliwell. But it can work, as I’ve seen elsewhere. The moral being: let the play do the work. Don’t muck about with it – unless it’s Shakespeare where, seemingly, anything goes as long as you keep vaguely to the plot and speak the verse as he gave it to us, trippingly on the tongue.
But, for sure, without “Ruffian” there would have been no follow-up proposal for “The Other”. And yet, like so many things, it didn’t happen.
I had the perfect partners in Malcolm and Alina, who had maintained an impervious calm through the stresses of putting “Ruffian” together. They loved the idea of taking our concept to a more ambitious level. Using a single large projection screen, large enough to enable the characters on film to appear life-sized on stage and create a scenic background from the roads, hills and wooded hangers of Hampshire – it was all entirely feasible, they said enthusiastically.
The real coup de théatre, and biggest challenge, however, was to make the screen of a material and/or design, a kind of plasma, in effect, that would enable the central character of Thomas to pass through it, both ways, à la “Alice Through the Looking Glass”. In this way, Thomas could join or leave the characters and landscape on film in much the same way as we had done with “Ruffian”. Easily done on film but less evident in passing from live performance to the filmed narrative and back again. These days, no doubt, there would be all sorts of tricks and technology to achieve it effortlessly. Less so in 1984.
In my outline, Thomas would both observe and engage with some of the key protagonists in his life – Helen, Frost, Eleanour and, of course, The Other, with maybe additional encounters depending on budget. He would inhabit the stage area alone, doggedly pursuing his Other through episodes of his life, with the poem as the core text, along with other poems, all spoken by him as the narrator of his life, interspersed with encounters at key points along the way, including with himself, both played by me, from stage to prerecorded screen. And, at the end, both he and The Other would finally meet, Thomas on stage, The Other on screen, on the look-out tower at Arras, waiting for the shell that would be the release, the moment when he and his Other, simultaneously, would cease.
It may not surprise you that, at my then age of 32, with not dissimilar features to those of Thomas at a similar age, and a passion for his work, let alone shared interests in nature, landscape, poetry and pubs, I intended to play both Thomas and his “Other”. This was no doubt helped by having a favourite watering-hole in the same pub that was the subject of Thomas’s first ever poem called “Up in the Wind”.
“The No Name” pub stands alone down a track off the road high up above the aptly-named village of Steep near a favourite hill of Thomas’s called “Shoulder of Mutton Hill”. It was easy to imagine him escaping from his ugly red brick “New House” at Froxfield where he and his family lived for a while and sitting himself in the settle by the fire with a pint of Ringwood’s “No Name” (very) strong ale.
They were, both pub and ale, called No Name because of the absent pub sign with only “post and empty frame” to show for the hidden hostelry, true name The White Horse, beyond. It’s still there, still with “no name”, if somewhat expanded since my days back in the ’80s and Thomas’s 70 years before. And it was there, by the same fire, that I first discovered his poems, including his first, about this very pub and the comic barmaid within, called “Up in the Wind”, framed on the wall. It was all too easy to become seduced by this melancholy soul who found such salvation in the countryside around, if never quite in his heart. There I too met many an interesting stranger passing through, or local to the area. And often too, fragments in the back of books speak of quiet times alone, content, at peace.
But, like many another idea/project/proposal/the odd commissioned work, even a crafted and accepted university course on one occasion, it will number among my “others” – the ones that got away.
The commissioned work, in 1988, for which HTV Wales kindly paid me but never used was called “The Agent Mariner”. It was about the pursuit of Coleridge and Wordsworth across the combes of the Quantocks by the Government secret agent, George “Spy Nosy” (as C&W called him after Spinoza) Walsh, at the time of the Napoleonic Wars and fear of invasion by the French. Why never used? Over-dramatised and far too expensive for the documentary he had in mind, the commissioning editor told me, in a nicer kind of way.
It was 2nd February 1988 that I met the man from HTV who had the courtesy to tell me to my face that my efforts with “The Agent Mariner” were not to be rewarded. All those hours in the old British Library with Coleridge’s priceless, original, manuscript Gutch Memorandum notebook – or did I dream that? – and so many books including the extraordinary 1930 American edition of John Livingstones Lowes’ “The Road to Xanadu”, that sucked the marrow from the Memorandum, bought from the irreplaceable Petersfield Bookshop, again still there if reduced in scale, for £16 the year before.
All that work up in the little room below the clock in the old stable block of Thedden Grange, which became the hub of “The Clocktower Theatre Company” which is all it ever was – a hub of ideas, stories, poems and plays, some of which saw the light of performance, such as “Armada” for the Young National Trust Theatre, later in ’88, but most, as is the way of things, gathering mould and dust in boxes in the workshop at the bottom of the garden.
But the beating of the clocktower clock, the dove droppings that fell through the boards above onto my head and my keyboard, Beethoven’s piano concertos blasting through my newly-discovered headphones, as I worked on through the night to weep at dawn as the final words emerged after nights upon nights to end the given piece of work – it all had its place. None of it was wasted. All were voyages of discovery, elation, despair and selfish bloody-mindedness even if, most of the time, like Faust, I had no idea of the way.
As Mephistopheles warned: “Kein Weg. Ins Unbetretene” – there is no path, it’s all untrodden hereon in. As writer, you just have to hack, fumble and feel your way through before the roebuck reveals itself at the heart of the thicket. And sometimes, quite often, there’s nothing there but thorns.
Having driven to Cardiff and back to receive the bad news, I took my sorrows to the lonely “No Name” where, as always, I found succour.
The No Name Inn
That evening, sitting by the wide, warm, beech-logged blaze in the public bar, I wrote in the back of my battered paperback copy of Wordsworth and Coleridge’s “Lyrical Ballads”, 1798 edition (with additional poems from 1800 and the Prefaces):
“In the White Horse, Froxfield – Thomas’s “No Name” pub with the astounding Ringwood’s No Name beer – where a couple, he American, she English, engage me as I sit. They are connoisseurs – of pubs, ale, and people, perhaps. “I am a good judge of faces,” he says. She states simply that their niece was run over and killed that morning. They know Eli’s or the Rose & Crown at Huish Episcopi. They recommend the Golden Heart at Birdlip, just off the Roman road between Cirencester and Gloucester, and The Royal Oak at Hook’s Way, between Petersfield and Chichester. I show them Edward Thomas’s “Up in the Wind” framed on the wall behind us. They leave. I drink deeply of No Name and enter in.”
