- 5 days ago
Royal Shakespeare Company actors Michael Jayston, Michele Dotrice, Gabrielle Hamilton, Davyd Harries, Paul Hardwick, Richard Moore, director Peter Hall, writer/director Michael Kustow, writer Rene Cutforth, in a wonderful documentary about the fascination of the theatre, with scenes from plays by William Shakespeare, J. B. Moliere, Harold Pinter, Augustin Daly.
"Sunday Night" S1 E19 "How To Stop Worrying and Love the Theatre" - February 20, 1966.
The scenes are from:
1. Arden of Faversham (author unknown).
2. Henry V (William Shakespeare) - St. Crispian monologue.
3. Hamlet (Willaim Shakespeare) - Hamlet to the actors.
4. Les fourberies de Scapin (Jean-Baptiste Molière) - "Scapin the Schemer"
5. Under the Gaslight (Augustin Daly).
6. The Birthday Party (Harold Pinter).
"Sunday Night" S1 E19 "How To Stop Worrying and Love the Theatre" - February 20, 1966.
The scenes are from:
1. Arden of Faversham (author unknown).
2. Henry V (William Shakespeare) - St. Crispian monologue.
3. Hamlet (Willaim Shakespeare) - Hamlet to the actors.
4. Les fourberies de Scapin (Jean-Baptiste Molière) - "Scapin the Schemer"
5. Under the Gaslight (Augustin Daly).
6. The Birthday Party (Harold Pinter).
Category
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PeopleTranscript
00:00The Aldwych Theatre, London.
00:26Tonight, the persecution and assassination of Marat as performed by the inmates of the
00:31asylum of Charenton under the direction of the Marquis de Sade.
00:36And all tickets are sold.
00:56When you look at all these people coming into the theatre, it's much the same crowd as
01:02it's coming into any London theatre.
01:05Solid middle class, students, the staple diet of the theatre, the people that keep the place
01:10going.
01:11At the Aldwych, they've become uneasy about this audience, not that they don't like them,
01:15they like them very much.
01:17Shouldn't they be reaching out to persuade a very much wider public that this is the
01:21place for them, and the plays are for them too?
01:26All right, reach out, but how?
01:29And what's the result?
01:31It's a story that tells itself really, and here are the ingredients.
01:36Take an area like Paddington, three stops on the underground from the West End, but full
01:40of people who normally wouldn't dream of going to the Aldwych.
01:44Take six actors from the Royal Shakespeare Company, persuade them to work even longer
01:48hours than their normal stint.
01:50Make a travelling team of them.
01:53Take a director, Michael Cousteau, who passionately believes that the theatre's true foundation
01:57is ordinary people.
01:59Let him put a show together and take it out to the audience.
02:02Make a tour of Paddington and talk to people who might go to the theatre but don't.
02:08Take the managing director of the Royal Shakespeare Company, a man who could well afford to
02:11sit back and rest on his reputation, but who doesn't feel like that, and now mix these
02:16ingredients together, and what happens?
02:19Let's start with Peter Hall at Stratford-on-Ave.
02:23We're uneasy about not the numbers that are coming, but who those numbers are drawn from.
02:31I would say, on the one hand, there's a small minority of kind of theatre-goers who go to
02:36the theatre, and that's a very tiny percentage.
02:38Then, blessedly, we have an enormous number of young people who have just left school or
02:42have just come out of university.
02:44But they're all kind of the intellectual kind, or they've had some intellectual training.
02:51I believe generally that standards of appreciation are going up, and we find that people have
02:58an appreciation who didn't know they'd have it.
03:00Now what's the best way to get them in, do you think?
03:02I think the best way to get them in is to go out and get them.
03:05Well what happens when they go out and get them?
03:08This is the Rutherford School Paddington.
03:11The audience comes from the houses, flats, and tenements that surround it.
03:15Four hundred people are coming, and many of them have never been inside a theatre or heard
03:19an actor live.
03:26Five hundred years before the birth of Christ, I came out of the clash of joy and sorrow,
03:32fertility and death.
03:34I came out of the turning of the seasons, men singing and dancing together, in a circle.
03:41I entered an action.
03:45One is naturally shy and worried about a situation like this.
03:48There's something a bit condescending about the idea of taking theatre to the masses.
03:53And it's not entirely aimed at that, this programme.
03:56But I think there are such cultural barriers in our age that the very word theatre, as a
04:01minority art, frightens a lot of people to death.
04:04We find the words Royal Shakespeare Company terrify people.
04:08One of the reasons I think that people don't go to the theatre is because when a bloke has done
04:13a hard day's work, and most people do, by the time they come home, and the thoughts of getting
04:19ready to go to the theatre, and perhaps go down there and pay, what, 25 or 30 bob for a seat,
04:24it's a bit much to ask, I would say.
04:27Well, I think the modern generation, I don't think actually they're more interested in it.
04:31Unless Shakespeare could be put on as a sort of musical or something like that.
04:35The people that are going, they're regular theatre-goers, they drift around in a different
04:41circle to what I do, I feel out of place in the theatre.
04:45When they come home, all they do is have a bit of a wash, perhaps it's so convenient to
04:51switch on the television, that's what they do.
04:54And I think that's one of the troubles with working class people.
04:57They take everything which is easy, and who can blame them, after all?
05:04But even as he makes whatever he makes, and no matter how much he makes, man longs to destroy
05:10the thing he has made.
05:12Finding no enemy, he becomes his own enemy.
05:15As he traps the horse, so he traps other men, but the others strike back, trap, closing
05:20on trap.
05:22Having eaten enough, man must build a wall around whatever food is left, and other men
05:28must pull down that wall, so the roof gets split, and the rain, and the changing air,
05:37wash away whatever is left of man and his cities, when men have done with them.
05:44Good.
05:45That's much better that time, you've got the verbs and the separate ideas much clearer.
05:55I think what, if we can get back into it now, is your original thing of the kind of character
06:01you're playing, as opposed to the one that David's playing, you know, a dueled inset, if
06:04you like, you know, a proper thing, especially after that is coming.
06:08Now tell me, what is it you're trying to do?
06:12What we're trying to do is to break out of a circle, a circle in which the theatre is imprisoned.
06:21Now, our theatre, as you know, is rooted in Shakespeare, and we believe, from the text
06:27and from what we know of the world of Shakespeare, that in his time the theatre spoke not just
06:32to a small group, a culture group, but to everyone, to the butcher and the baker as well
06:37as the nobleman, the courtier and the poet.
06:40And we think that a theatre that can do that is the only kind of theatre that really counts,
06:46and therefore what we're trying to do in this whole thing, this whole enterprise of travelling
06:49around London and playing in all sorts of odd places, is to reach the particular class
06:56of people that is conspicuous by its absence from the theatre.
07:02All human life is here.
07:04Now this could be the motto for this smash hit of the 1550s.
07:08What about this for a build-up?
07:11The lamentable and true tragedy of Mr. Ardner Feversham and Kent, who was most wickedly murdered
07:21by the means of his disloyal and wanton wife, who for the love she bare to one Mosley hired
07:30two desperate ruffians, Blackwill and Shakebag, to kill him.
07:37What?
07:39Twenty guineas?
07:40Give my fellow George Shakebag and me twenty guineas, and if they'll have their own father
07:45slain at our mercenary's land, we'll kill him.
07:48Aye, thy mother, thy brother, thy sister, all thy kin.
07:52Well, this is it.
07:57Arden of Feversham hath highly wronged me over diver's matters, that no revenge but death
08:02will serve the turn.
08:05Will you two kill him?
08:06Here's guineas down.
08:08Give me the money and I'll stab him as he stands pissing against the wall.
08:12Where is he?
08:14He's now in London at Aldersgate Street.
08:17He's as dead as if he had been condemned by act of parliament if once Blackwill and I
08:22swear his death.
08:24In this turbulent tempest of sex and passion, love's true course can scarce run smooth.
08:29Thrill to the fate of these two damned creatures!
08:33Alice!
08:34I pay thee, Mosley, let our springtime wither.
08:36Our harvest else will yield but loathsome weeds.
08:40Forget, I pray you, what has passed between us.
08:43For now I blush and tremble at the thought.
08:46What, are you changed?
08:48Aye, to my former happy state again.
08:51From title of an odious trumpet's name to Honest Arden's wife.
08:56Not Arden's honest wife.
09:00Even in my forehead is thy name engraven.
09:03That mean artificer, that low-born name.
09:06Nay, if you can curse, let me breathe curses forth.
09:09I left the marriage of an honest maid whose dowry would have weighed down all thy wealth.
09:13But now the rain hath beaten off thy guilt.
09:15Thy worthless copper shows thee counterfeit.
09:17Go, get thee gone!
09:19A copse made for thy hinds.
09:21I'm too good to be thy favourite.
09:23Nay, Mosby, hear me speak a word or two.
09:26I'll bite my tongue if it speak bitterly.
09:29Look on me, Mosby, or I'll kill myself.
09:33Sweet Mosby is as gentle as a king,
09:38And I too blind to judge him otherwise.
09:42Flowers do sometimes grow in fallow lands.
09:46Weeds in gardens.
09:48Roses grow on thorns.
09:50So whatsoe'er my Mosby's father was,
09:53Himself is valued gentle for his worth.
09:56Oh, are you women can insinuate and clear a trespass with your sweet-set tongue.
10:01I'll forget this quarrel, gentle Alice,
10:03Provided I be tempted so no more.
10:05Then with thy lips seal up this new-made match.
10:09Hark, somebody comes.
10:14Shudder at the dreadful murder which unties this tangled knot of greed and passion.
10:19Mosby, ladies, what will you do?
10:21Nothing but take you up, sir, nothing else.
10:23Here's for the pressing iron you told me of.
10:26And here's for the ten pounds in my sleep.
10:29What? Growns thou?
10:32Give him the weapon.
10:33Take this for hindering Mosby's love of mine.
10:36The most suspenseful drama ever staged.
10:42Mistress! Mistress the guests are at the door after they knock.
10:46What shall I let them in?
10:47Mosby, go thou and keep them company.
10:49Susan, fetch water and wash away this blood.
10:53Oh, mistress! Oh, mistress!
10:56The blood cleaveth to the ground and will not out.
11:01With my nails I'll scrape away the blood.
11:04Oh, the more I strive, the more the blood appears.
11:07Oh, what's the reason, mistress? Can you tell?
11:09Because I blush not at my husband's death.
11:12You chew your fingers to the toenails.
11:14Oh, mistress!
11:15Mistress, the mayor and the watch are coming towards our house with gloves and swords.
11:19Let them go fast. Let them not come in.
11:21Yes. Quick!
11:22Convey the body to the field.
11:23Hark! They knock!
11:27Now, Susans, let them in.
11:46How now, Master Mayor, have you brought my husband home?
11:50Arden, thy husband and my friend is slain.
11:54Ah! By whom, Master Mayor, can you tell?
11:57Nay, I know not, but behind the abbey there he lies murdered in most piteous case.
12:01But Master Mayor, are you sure it is, eh?
12:03Aye, then too sure would God were our wise.
12:06Find out the murderers. Let them be known.
12:08Aye, so we shall. Come you along with us.
12:10Wherefore?
12:11Know you this hand towel and this knife?
12:14It is the pig's blood that we had to suffer.
12:18Wherefore stay you? Find the murderers out.
12:20I fear me you'll prove one of them yourself.
12:22Aye, one of them. What mean is questionable?
12:24I fear me he was murdered in this house and carried to the fields.
12:27For from that place, backwards and forwards, may you see the print of many footsteps in the snow.
12:34Look, run this chamber where we are and you shall find part of his guiltless blood.
12:38Look, in the chair where he was wont to sit.
12:42See, see, his blood. It is too manifest.
12:46It is a cup of wine that Susan shed.
12:50Aye, truly.
12:51It is his blood which trumpet thou hast shed.
12:54And if I live, thou and thy campuses which have contrived and wrought his death shall ruin it.
13:00Tremble to the terrible retribution these wicked lovers.
13:03See them glory in their naked, sexful passion.
13:06You will never forget the searing story of Aden of Tavisham.
13:12Or next week with full supporting programme.
13:14Bye!
13:16I thoroughly enjoyed it.
13:26I could have gone on watching it and when the lights went up that was it.
13:29Yeah, but the thing about it Joyce, I mean we got some dirty little bits in it.
13:32Oh well that's alright, I like that. But it wasn't all dirty.
13:35No dirty.
13:36Ah, no, no.
13:37Now, if you're going to get people of a non-intellectual kind, with however many quotes around it,
13:41Yes.
13:42Do you think you're going to get them into the same sort of plays that you put on normally?
13:47Yes, absolutely. I don't believe you should lower your standards.
13:51Our experience is, we do Beckett, we do Brecht, we do Pinter,
13:55and it's only because people think that they are something highbrow that they don't come.
14:00Our experience is that a group of people from a factory coming to see a play of Henry Living's had a jolly good laugh.
14:07A people coming to see a play of Brecht said,
14:10Oh, we didn't know it had a good story.
14:12I mean it's this whole mystique of the theatre,
14:14which is something this very class conscious society of ours has set up.
14:18The theatre, I think they're a bit too toffee-nosed for me now, for a coat affair.
14:24Some people regard the working class in a very strange light,
14:29consider that bread, beer and skittles is efficient.
14:34The plays that are being put on now are a lot of rubbish, a lot of stuff,
14:39a lot of stuff that the ordinary working man doesn't understand.
14:43The plays are far too short.
14:45You get an hour and three-porters play, but you're in the theatre for two hours and a half.
14:51I'm doing it for several reasons.
14:53I suppose partly because I've got a nostalgia for this idea of a theatre that speaks to the whole of a society,
15:05or to as wide a group as one can think of,
15:07and partly because I suppose just instinctively one feels there's something wrong,
15:11there's something missing, there's, you know, it's just not enough what we're doing,
15:15and it seems the important thing to be done.
15:17I think Crab, my dog, be the sourest-natured dog that lives.
15:25I was sent to deliver him as a present to Mistress Sylvia for my master,
15:30and that comes no sooner into the dining chamber,
15:33but he steps me to a trencher and steals a chicken's leg.
15:37Oh, it is a foul thing when a kirk cannot keep himself in all companies.
15:41You shall judge.
15:43He thrusts me himself into the company of three or four gentleman-like dogs under the Duke's table.
15:50He hadn't been there, bless the mark, a pissing while,
15:54but all the chambers smelt him.
15:56What dog is that, says one?
16:02Whip him out, says another.
16:04Hang him up, says the Duke.
16:06Now, I, having been acquainted with the smell before,
16:12knew it was Crab, and goes me to the fellow that whips the dogs.
16:17Friend!
16:19Quoth I.
16:20You mean to whip the dogs?
16:22Aye, marry do I, quoth he.
16:24You doing them all wrong, quoth I.
16:27T'was I did the thing you what of.
16:29He makes no more ado than he whips me out of the chamber.
16:33How many masters would there that for his servant?
16:37Nay.
16:38I'll be sworn I sat in the stocks for puddings he had stolen,
16:42otherwise he'd have been executed.
16:44Eh.
16:45I'll study me.
16:49I'll study the pillar if a geese he hath killed,
16:51otherwise he'd have been hanged for it.
16:53Ah, I thinks not of this now.
16:55Nay.
16:56I remember the trick you served me when I took me lever,
16:59Madam Sylvia.
17:00Did I not bid thee mark me and do as I do?
17:04When did thou see me eve up my leg
17:07and make water against a gentlewoman's stockings?
17:10Did thou ever see me that such a trick?
17:15Well, if you haven't recognised it, that was from Two Gentlemen of Verona,
17:32a first play by a young playwright called William Shakespeare.
17:36Now, please don't panic, which has already shown you.
17:39It can be quite painless.
17:40When anyone said to me, would you like to go and see Shakespeare,
17:43I naturally thought of Macbeth and the Heavy.
17:45Yeah.
17:46Heavy.
17:47Heavy.
17:48Not for me, thank you very much.
17:49I like to see that, though.
17:50But that type of thing I could, what I saw was very good.
17:53Do you really see in your mind's eye an ordinary greater public audience for Shakespeare?
17:58Well, I think there is now.
18:00I mean, in television terms, maybe the total audience that we play to in both theatres of
18:05750,000 people is not very many, if you compare it with an evening's television viewing.
18:10But it's pretty enormous, and they're fighting to get in.
18:14And I believe there is a popular strength in the works of Shakespeare,
18:19and in many of our modern dramatists, which needs using.
18:26This day is called the Feast of Crispian.
18:31He that outlives this day and comes safe home
18:34will stand at tiptoe when this day is named
18:37and rouse him at the name of Crispian.
18:40He that shall live this day and see old age
18:43will yearly, on the vigil, feast his neighbours
18:46and say, Tomorrow is St Crispian.
18:49Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars
18:51and say, These wounds I had on Crispian's day.
18:55Old men forget, yet all shall be forgot.
18:59But he'll remember, with advantages, what feats he did that day.
19:03Then shall our names, familiar in his mouth as household words,
19:07Harry the King, Bedford and Exeter, Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester,
19:12be in their flowing cups, freshly remembered.
19:17This story shall a good man teach his son,
19:20and Crispian Crispian shall ne'er go by
19:23from this day to the ending of the world.
19:27But we in it shall be remembered.
19:31The only piece I didn't like was the speech from Henry V.
19:36I didn't understand it, so I didn't like it.
19:38Oh, well it does take a lot of understanding.
19:39I think if I'd seen the rest of it, I would have enjoyed it.
19:41But just seeing that little piece out of it, I didn't like it.
19:45But I enjoyed the rest.
19:47Yeah, well I expected it.
19:48But I think it was the actors though.
19:49We didn't understand it, the fact we don't go often enough.
19:51That's going to be like that.
19:52I'd like to go more often.
19:54I think it's like classical music.
19:56You have to be taught it to appreciate it.
19:58And if you're not taught it well, then it's all Shakespeare's like that.
20:02I don't think you can argue people into going to the theatre.
20:05I don't think you can talk, you know, can say it's good for you, or you'll enjoy it,
20:09or it'll open new horizons, even if these things are true.
20:12I think the only way you can do it is to show, is to show it to them and say here it is,
20:16to put it in their path.
20:17And that's why this whole exercise has taken the form of a show that is placed in front of people.
20:24Ah, that's the thing.
20:26Would you go down to West End to it?
20:28Well, yeah.
20:29If it wasn't too expensive, that's another thing.
20:32That's a thing, that's a thing.
20:33That's another thing, isn't it?
20:34I would go and pay 30 shillings to see it.
20:37Oh, no, I think it would die.
20:38I don't think it would die.
20:39All this is aimed finally at our new theatre in the Barbican, which is going to have 1,500 seats,
20:44and I hope enough cheap seats for people to make a regular habit of dropping in.
20:48And it should be called Bottom's Dream, because it hath no bottom.
20:55Shakespeare was an actor as well as a playwright.
21:07And by using a speech in Hamlet to a group of travelling players not unlike ourselves, he's able to give actors a few pertinent words of advice in no way different to the sort of notes we get from our director after every performance.
21:20And it always goes something like this.
21:23Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you trippingly on the tongue.
21:29But if you mouth it, as many of your players do, I had asleep the town-crier spoke my lines, nor do not soar the air too much with your hand thus.
21:42But use all gently.
21:46Oh, it offends me to the soul to hear a robustious, peri-wigged, painted fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags,
21:56to split the ears of the groundlings, who for the most part are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb-shows at noise.
22:04Now be not too tame neither, but let your own discretion be your tutor.
22:11And let those that play your clowns speak no more than is set down for them.
22:17That's villainous, and shows a most pitiful ambition in the fool that uses it.
22:23Suit the word to the action, and the action to the word, with this special observance,
22:31that you are step not the modesty of nature.
22:35For anything so overdone is from the purpose of play, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is.
22:48To hold as twere the mirror up to nature, to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image,
22:58and the very age and body of the time, his form and pressure.
23:05Well, do you find all these audiences have been about the same, or very different?
23:10No, very different. You see, they're different audiences from the theatre audiences we get anyway,
23:14but within that context, they're all very different each time.
23:17Every time we turn up somewhere, we have no idea what sort of audience they're going to be.
23:20I mean, they may never have been to a theatre at all, some of them.
23:23Some of them may be quite interested in theatres.
23:25Some of them might be very young, when we go to a youth club, for instance, 16, 17.
23:30It's other places and people older than me, if you can believe it.
23:34Do you find that some of them are very good audiences and some of them are very bad audiences,
23:39or are they much of a level on that?
23:41No, they change enormously.
23:43Sometimes they're very good, and sometimes...
23:45But our job, you see, is to get hold of them when we start,
23:48because they don't know what they're coming to see,
23:49and I think it's going to be something terribly arty,
23:51and they come with a certain reverence.
23:53Oh, dear, it's Shakespeare, that sort of thing.
23:55We have to get hold of them immediately and break them down.
23:57What the audiences have seen, and what has delighted them and surprised them,
24:01is, in fact, that they've seen an actor acting at close quarters.
24:06This hasn't detracted at all from what the actor's doing.
24:09Not one iota.
24:10In actual fact, it's heightened it.
24:12And one hasn't lost any of the magic of acting at all.
24:16But they've seen it at close quarters, and they like it even more.
24:19I mean, in fact, I think the audience for good theatre, in this country as a whole,
24:23has grown in the last ten years.
24:25I think our whole society is revaluing its standards,
24:28and our nation is revaluing its position in the world,
24:31and this has thrown up a lot of new writers,
24:33and a ferment of creative activity in all the arts.
24:36We are, God save the mark, suddenly an artistic nation.
24:40Lovely, I like the theatre, I like opera.
24:42Well, reality, mostly.
24:44No, I'm afraid when I was in school I went to,
24:46they wasn't very hot on Shakespeare.
24:48Oh, I like to see all nice, er, love stories.
24:54They told me that in Shakespeare's day,
24:56all the female parts were played by men.
24:59I suppose the acting profession's been a queer whole lot ever since.
25:05But you know, of course, that the theatre's always had its enemies,
25:08and the Puritans were attacking the Elizabethan stage
25:10even before Shakespeare came along.
25:12Let's listen to a few theatre-haters.
25:14Plays like a sink in the town where unto all the filth doth run,
25:19or like a bile in the body that draweth all the ill humour unto it.
25:24The Lord of his mercy, open the eyes of the magistrates
25:26to pluck down these places of abuse.
25:29This prayer was answered in 1642.
25:31Cromwell issued this proclamation.
25:33It is thought fit and ordained by the Lords and Commons
25:36in this Parliament assembled,
25:38that whereas these sad times
25:40and these set causes of humiliation do continue,
25:44public stage plays shall cease and be forbore.
25:48So, the theatres were closed, actors lost their jobs,
25:53and six years later Charles I lost his head.
25:57And when the theatre was restored together with Charles II,
25:59it was a very different place from the bustling Elizabethan playhouses.
26:03You see, before we used to play to the butcher and the baker
26:06as well as the courtier and the nobleman.
26:08But now we became the playthings of the aristocracy
26:11and we gave them brittle sex comedies
26:13which were copied from the plays that were shown in France.
26:17Just let's take a quick look at France for a minute,
26:21because about this same time there was a new comic genius there
26:24called Jean-Baptiste Molière.
26:27Now, Molière, like Shakespeare, had been an actor as well as a playwright,
26:31and he loved the tumblers and jugglers
26:33and the strolling players who came to France from Italy.
26:36So here's a scene from one of his comedies
26:38in which Gérant, an old man,
26:40has played a very nasty trick on his servant who is called Scappin.
26:44So the servant decides to get his own back on him.
26:47Enter Scappin.
26:48Oh, sir! Oh, my lord, look out!
26:50I escape! They're looking for you everywhere.
26:52They're going to kill you.
26:53Me?
26:54Yes, a great big angry gang shouting murder, murder!
26:56Scappin, what am I to do?
26:57I don't know, sir. What a dreadful situation.
26:59I'm terribly worried about you.
27:00Wait! Stop there!
27:02No, it's nothing, sir.
27:04Well, Scappin, can't you think up some way of getting me out of this?
27:07Yes, I can think of one thing, sir.
27:08Yes?
27:09Only I'd run the risk of getting killed myself.
27:10Oh, Scappin, show yourself a faithful servant.
27:12Don't desert me, I beg you.
27:14I'll do what I can, sir.
27:15I'm too fond of you to leave you here defenceless.
27:18You shall have these suit of clothes when I've worn it to be longer.
27:21Oh, look! The very thing to say to you, you must hide inside this sack.
27:25No!
27:26No, it's nothing, sir.
27:28You must hide inside this sack and keep as quiet as a mouse.
27:31I'll carry you on my back like a sack of potatoes past your enemies and safe home.
27:37It's a marvellous idea!
27:38I'll get my own back on him now.
27:40Keep writing, sir.
27:41Take care not to show yourself.
27:43And don't stir whatever happens.
27:44Oh, don't you worry about me!
27:46Oh, sorry, sir.
27:47Somebody come in now, sir!
27:48Hide!
27:49I want to kill Geronta.
27:50Don't move, sir!
27:51You man with the sack?
27:52Yes, sir.
27:53I will give you one pound if you tell me where Geronta is.
27:54What do you want him for, sir?
27:55I want to kill him.
27:56Oh, you can't do that to a gentleman like Mr. Geronta.
27:57What?
27:58That fool?
27:59That rascal?
28:00That scoundrel?
28:01Mr. Geronta is not a fool or a rascal or a scoundrel.
28:03Are you a friend of his?
28:04I certainly am, sir.
28:05Well then, you take this for me.
28:06I want to kill him.
28:07You man with the sack?
28:08Yes, sir.
28:09I will give you one pound if you tell me where Geronta is.
28:12What do you want him for, sir?
28:13I want to kill him.
28:14Oh, you can't do that to a gentleman like Mr. Geronta.
28:18What?
28:19That fool?
28:20That rascal?
28:21That scoundrel?
28:22Mr. Geronta is not a fool or a rascal or a scoundrel.
28:26Are you a friend of his?
28:28I certainly am, sir.
28:30Well then, you take this for me.
28:32You take this for him, then.
28:34Ow!
28:35Ow!
28:36Ow!
28:37Ow!
28:38Ow!
28:39Help!
28:40I'm being assaulted!
28:41Ow!
28:42Oh!
28:43Oh!
28:44Oh!
28:45Oh!
28:46Oh!
28:47Oh!
28:48Oh!
28:49Oh!
28:50Oh!
28:51Oh!
28:52Oh!
28:53Oh!
28:54Oh!
28:55Oh!
28:56Oh!
28:57Oh!
28:58Oh!
28:59Oh!
29:00Oh!
29:01Oh!
29:02Oh!
29:03Oh!
29:04Oh!
29:05Oh!
29:06Oh!
29:07Oh!
29:08Oh!
29:09Oh!
29:10Oh!
29:11Oh!
29:12Oh!
29:13Oh!
29:14Oh!
29:15Oh!
29:16Oh!
29:17Oh!
29:18Oh!
29:19Oh!
29:20Oh!
29:21Oh!
29:22Oh!
29:23Oh!
29:24Oh!
29:25Oh!
29:26Oh!
29:27Oh!
29:28Oh!
29:29Will you tell me what is in that sack?
29:31Never!
29:32Never?
29:33Never!
29:34Well, then, you take this for him, then.
29:39Ow! Oh, ow! Help! Ow! Ooh! Ah!
29:44Come back here, you terrible-looking...
29:47Scuffer! I've... I've nearly beaten to death.
29:50I'm... I'm dead already, sir.
29:52Yes, but why should he be dead?
29:54Look out! All over the place, sir! Surrounded!
29:59We've got to find your rat!
30:07Where my sartre am I?
30:09Over there!
30:10No, no! Here!
30:12All right, sir! You're surrounding!
30:14Ha-ha! This is the serpent!
30:17Where's your master, you rascal?
30:19Oh, don't hurt me, you ugly-looking lot of foreigners!
30:22Speak up! Quick!
30:24Oh, take it easy, masters!
30:26If you don't tell us where your master is, we'll beat you till you're black and blue!
30:31I don't care what you do to me! I'll never give my master away!
30:35Oh! So you want to get beaten up, do you?
30:38I don't care what you do to me! I'll never give my master away!
30:43Right, then! Here it comes!
30:54Now, if you're going to get a mass audience into the theatre, you'll have to reckon with this, that they've all been subjected to years and years of television.
31:01Are they on a very wet night, for instance, going to take the trouble to go to the theatre? Are you fighting a losing battle?
31:07I think we would be if the experience was the same.
31:10But what they see when they've turned on their switch and what they do when they've tramped through the rain and come into the theatre, what they see there, is something quite different.
31:18In that sense, the theatre is not archaic. It is a living thing in which the actual dialogue between what's on the stage and in the audience happens now, at this moment, in this building, this night only.
31:30It's very personal. Something quite different. It's passive, watching television.
31:34It's just television that's broke the whole conversation up between husband and wife now.
31:39I mean, you walk home in the evening there, the first thing you do, right, you get your dinner, crash onto the television.
31:47And an argument?
31:48Now, who wants to go out? I mean, you sit there and watch the television, what happens? You don't talk to nobody, anything like that.
31:54You don't even talk to the wife, she tries to speak to you. You say, shut up, we're listening to that. And that's exactly how he goes on.
32:00So we jump over 200 years, we leave France, come back to England in the middle of the 19th century.
32:05And there's a great boom in the theatre. They weren't interested in poetry, form, and the great questions of life. They were too tired.
32:12They wanted entertainment and relief and escape. So we gave it to them. We gave them pathos, suspense, and spectacle.
32:20And the new poet of the theatre was no longer the actor or the playwright, but the technician.
32:25Oh, where's he going?
32:27Down there.
32:28To the age, as you see, of the stage hand.
32:30He's good, isn't he? He's really good.
32:33Well, these two tapes are supposed to represent train lines.
32:38But, of course, in the Pavilion Theatre, Whitechapel, in 1865, they had real railway lines.
32:44And they built a real railway station, and they even had a real railway train.
32:49All the things, in fact, that nowadays we go to the cinema to see.
32:52But this is how they did it in 1865 in the Pavilion Theatre.
32:57The train seen from under the gaslight.
33:03Oh, it is impossible for me to go farther.
33:06This is the second time I've run away from home and friends.
33:10But now they shall never find me.
33:14Oh, the trains must have all passed, and there are no conveyances till tomorrow.
33:20Beggy pardon, ma'am. Are you looking for somebody?
33:32Oh, thank you, no. Are you the man in charge of this station?
33:36Yes, ma'am.
33:37When is the next train to York?
33:39York?
33:40Oh, not all morning.
33:42We've only one more train through here tonight.
33:44That's the down one.
33:45It'll be here in about 20 minutes.
33:47Express train.
33:48What is this place here?
33:49That?
33:50Oh, that's the signal station said.
33:52It serves for store roof, baggage room, everything.
33:55May I stay there tonight?
33:58There?
33:59Well, it's an odd place, and I should hardly think you'd like it.
34:03You shall have this if you let me remain here.
34:07Oh, well, I've looked up a good many things.
34:09There is my time, but I've never had a young lady for freight before.
34:15No, though rules is rules.
34:18Oh, you'll refuse me.
34:20Well, I shall only have to remain here all night.
34:23Here?
34:24Yes.
34:25In the open air?
34:26Yes.
34:27Why, it will kill you.
34:28Oh, so much the better.
34:31Oh, pardon me for questions, ma'am, but, well, you're a-running away from somebody, ain't
34:37you?
34:38Oh, yes, I am.
34:39Well, tell me this, then.
34:40It ain't the old man or the old man's home you're running away from, young lady.
34:44Ah, no.
34:45You good, honest fellow, no.
34:46I have no father.
34:47Oh, then, by Jerusalem, I'll do for you when I can.
34:48Ah.
34:49Anything but run away from them that have not their interests but yours and I.
34:50Ah.
34:51Come, you may stay there, but I'll have to lock you in.
34:52Oh, I desire that you should.
34:53You won't mind the baggage.
34:54There's old shovels and mowing machines, and what's there?
34:55Exists?
34:56Exists?
34:57Exists?
34:58Exists?
34:59Exists?
35:00Yes.
35:01Yes.
35:02Yes.
35:03Yes.
35:04Yes.
35:05Yes.
35:06Yes.
35:07Yes.
35:08Yes.
35:09Oh.
35:10It's little, bit of a package.
35:11There's old shovels and mowing machines, and what's that?
35:12Exists?
35:13Exists?
35:14Oh, what a bundle of axes!
35:16Lock me in safely, won't you?
35:18Ah, be sure I will!
35:19There, safe as a jail!
35:24Ten minutes, and down she comes.
35:25It's all safe this way, me noisy beauty, and you may come as soon as you like.
35:34Good night, miss.
35:35Good night.
35:39Ten minutes before the train comes.
35:41I'll wait here for it.
35:44Hello.
35:46I say, the train won't stop here too long, will it?
35:48Too long? It won't stop here at all.
35:50Well, I must reach the shore tonight.
35:52There'll be murder done unless I can prevent it.
35:53Murder, no murder. The train can't be stopped.
35:56That's a lie.
35:57By waiting the red signal for danger, the engineer must stop, I tell you.
36:00Do you think I'm a fool?
36:01What, disobey orders and lose my job?
36:04Then was to become of my wife and children in Paddington.
36:08I won't be thought.
36:10I will confiscate some farmer's horse about here and get there before him somehow.
36:15Then, when Bike arrives on his donkey cast,
36:17ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, he'll be ready to sit for a picture of surprise.
36:21Will he?
36:22Bike?
36:23Yes, Bike.
36:25Where's that pistol of yours?
36:26In my breast pocket.
36:27Just what I needed.
36:28You ain't going to shoot me?
36:30No.
36:31Ha, ha, well, I'm obliged to you for that.
36:32Just sit down, will you?
36:35What for?
36:36Ha, ha, ha, ha.
36:37Yes, sir.
36:38I don't mind if I do take a seat.
36:41Hello, what's this?
36:42You'll see.
36:45You'll see.
36:46Bike, what are you going to do?
36:48I'm going to put you to bed.
36:51Bike, you don't mean to...
36:53My God, you're a villain.
36:54I'm going to put you to bed.
36:55You won't toss much.
36:57In ten minutes, you'll be sound asleep.
36:59So, you'd get down to Virginia Water before me, would you?
37:03No.
37:03You'd dog me and play the eavesdropper, eh?
37:06No, no.
37:06Now do it if you can.
37:08When you hear the thunder under your head.
37:10Oh.
37:11And see the lights dancing in your eyes.
37:12Oh.
37:13And feel the iron wheels are put from your neck.
37:15No.
37:16Remember.
37:17Bike.
37:17No.
37:18No.
37:18No.
37:18No.
37:18No.
37:19No.
37:19No.
37:19No.
37:20No.
37:20No.
37:20No.
37:20No.
37:20No.
37:20No.
37:21No.
37:21No.
37:21No.
37:22No.
37:22No.
37:22My eyes.
37:23How can I aid you?
37:24Um, who's that?
37:28Tis I.
37:29Do you not know my voice?
37:31Indeed, I do.
37:32But I thought that it was an angel and that I was dead.
37:34Where are you?
37:36Well.
37:36I'm in the station.
37:37Well, I can't see you, but I can hear you.
37:39Now listen to me, miss.
37:40Yes, yes, yes.
37:41For I have only a few minutes to live.
37:42Oh, and I cannot aid you.
37:43Never mind about me, miss.
37:45I might as well die here and now as at any other time.
37:48You, do, do, do you hear me?
37:49Yes.
37:49Yes.
37:51Is there nothing in there?
37:51No crowbar, no hammer!
37:53There's nothing in here!
37:55Oh!
37:57Oh, the train!
37:59Oh!
38:01That's all right, the accident!
38:03Don't do it! Don't do it!
38:05Don't do it!
38:07Don't do it!
38:09Oh!
38:21Ladies and gentlemen, in this confusion,
38:23we introduce a temporary conclusion.
38:25You want to know what happened? Have no fear!
38:27She pulled the lever,
38:29switched the points, and here the couple
38:31stand in mutual affection
38:33while the train thunders off
38:35in that direction!
38:37Don't you think, though,
38:39that the actors and the actresses put it over
38:41very well? I think that the personality
38:43came out.
38:45I think a good majority
38:47of the people that went over
38:49to see, when we went to see
38:51this play.
38:53Honestly, look, well, we go
38:55as it's somewhere to go.
38:57That's right.
38:59It'd be dull, but it's somewhere to go,
39:01and I wouldn't mind betting
39:03that all of them that come out there
39:05come out with a different frame of mind
39:07that they went in with.
39:09Of course,
39:11the better the show,
39:13the more likely you are to gather
39:15an audience, I think, but I do not believe
39:17that any artistic medium
39:19should lower its standards in order
39:21to attract its audience.
39:23I think that's totally the wrong way
39:24of going about it.
39:25I'd like to know why you chose
39:27predominantly comedy.
39:29Were you afraid of ideas?
39:31Were you afraid of words that people
39:33wouldn't understand?
39:35You chose snippets from classical plays
39:37that were meant to entertain us,
39:39the movement entertained us,
39:41but why not?
39:43Some ideas,
39:45something that would move us.
39:47The trouble is that when you have excerpts,
39:49it's like when you go to the pictures
39:51and you see the excerpts of the next week.
39:52They look good,
39:53and then they're either disappointed
39:55or they show you a good piece.
39:57It's like a series on television.
39:59It's just getting interesting,
40:01and then it's to be continued next week.
40:03You see all of something to appreciate it.
40:05I think television is helping the theatre.
40:07I think it's ruining the cinema
40:09and about time too.
40:11I think the public is better informed
40:13because of television, more aware.
40:15The Wars of the Roses that we did
40:17reached millions of people on television,
40:19more than those plays have played to
40:21in their entire history since Shakespeare wrote them.
40:23This must drive at least
40:25two or three percent of those millions
40:27into the theatre.
40:29That's the whole point.
40:31Why do you sit in the door
40:32if you can go and sit in the door?
40:33Well, there you are.
40:34You've got it put in front of you.
40:35You're sure of having a good beauty.
40:37No, no.
40:39But you would get in the theatre.
40:41If they had a company like you had,
40:43and was to, say, have an agreement
40:45that you could use the school once every month
40:47or three months, you know,
40:49you'd get lots of people
40:51because you'd think, oh, they're coming in three months' time,
40:53I should remember that date in the diary,
40:55and you'd make a point of going.
40:57You'd expect these people to put these things right in your lap
40:59without making an effort to go
41:01to where they look their performance.
41:03No, I think they'd have lots more people, though.
41:05The theatre does provide something
41:07which no other media provides.
41:09If we could stop it feeling
41:11old-fashioned, intellectual, pretentious,
41:15highbrow, and middle-class and over 50,
41:19I think we could surprise a tremendous number of people.
41:21And three minutes from The Birthday Party by Harold Pinter.
41:27Take off his glasses.
41:41Webber!
41:45You're a fake!
41:47Where did you last wash up a cup?
41:49Christmas before last.
41:51Where?
41:52The Iron's Corner House.
41:53Which one?
41:54Marble Arch.
41:55Where was your wife?
41:56In answer.
41:57What were?
41:58What have you done with your wife?
41:59He's killed his wife.
42:00Why did you kill your wife?
42:01What wife?
42:02How did he kill her?
42:03How did you kill her?
42:04You throttled her.
42:05With arsenic?
42:06There's your man.
42:07Where's your mum?
42:08In the sanatorium.
42:09Yes.
42:10Webber, why did you never get married?
42:11She was waiting at the porch.
42:12You skedaddled from the wedding.
42:13He left her in the lurch.
42:14Blubber!
42:15Why did you change your name?
42:16I forgot the other one.
42:17What's your name now?
42:18Joseph.
42:19You stink of sin!
42:20I can smell it.
42:21Do you recognize an external force?
42:22What?
42:23Do you recognize an external force?
42:25That's the question.
42:26Do you recognize an external force responsible for you, suffering for you?
42:29It's late.
42:30Late, late enough.
42:31When did you last pray?
42:32He's sweating.
42:33When did you last pray?
42:34He's sweating.
42:35Is the number 846 possible or necessary?
42:36Neither.
42:37Wrong.
42:38Is the number 846 possible or necessary?
42:40Both.
42:41Wrong.
42:42It is necessary but not possible.
42:43Both.
42:44Wrong.
42:45Why do you think the number 846 is necessarily possible?
42:47Must be.
42:48Wrong.
42:49It is only necessarily necessary.
42:51We admit possibility only after we grant necessity.
42:54It is possible because necessary but by now means necessary through possibility.
42:58The possibility can only be assumed after the proof of necessity.
43:01Right.
43:02Right.
43:03Of course right.
43:04We're right.
43:05And you're wrong, Webber, all along the line.
43:06All along the line.
43:07Where is your lecture leading you?
43:08You'll pay for this.
43:09You stuff yourself with dry toast.
43:11You contaminate womankind.
43:12Why don't you pay the rent?
43:13Mother defiler.
43:14Why do you pick your nose?
43:15I demand justice.
43:16What's your trade?
43:17What about Ireland?
43:18What's your trade?
43:19I play the piano.
43:20How many fingers do you use?
43:21No hands.
43:22No society would touch you.
43:23Not even a building society.
43:24You're a traitor to the cloth.
43:26What are you for pajamas?
43:27Nothing.
43:28You verminate the sheet of your birth.
43:29What about the Albigensenist heresy?
43:30You water the wicked in Melbourne.
43:31What about the blessed Oliver Blonkey?
43:32Speak up, Webber!
43:33Why did the cheeky cross the road?
43:34He wanted to.
43:35He wanted to.
43:36He wanted to.
43:37He wanted to.
43:38He wanted to.
43:39He doesn't know.
43:40Why did the chicken cross the road?
43:41He wanted to.
43:42Why did the chicken cross the road?
43:43He wanted to.
43:44Why did the chicken cross the road?
43:45He wanted to.
43:46He doesn't know.
43:47He doesn't know which came first.
43:48Which came first?
43:49Chicken egg.
43:50Which came first?
43:51Which came first?
43:52Which came first?
43:53Which came first?
43:54Which came first?
43:55He doesn't know.
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