Played in Britain: Michael Billington on the Missing Plays
The V&A's Played in Britain app highlights 100 British plays from 1945 - 2010. Plays that created a contemporary stir, either by provoking public outcry, or by breaking new ground.
However, such a rich period of theatrical history produced far more plays than could fit into one app. In the videos below, Guardian theatre critic Michael Billington comments on the selection and suggests ten additional plays that he might have included...
Read more about Played in Britain: Modern Theatre in 100 Plays 1945-2010
Introduction
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Michael Billington: The first thing to say is that to choose a hundred plays covering a period from 1945 up to the present is an incredibly difficult thing to do and when I first looked at this selection of plays I thought, absolutely astonishing really, you know, because it seems to me, obviously its divided up into decades and what the list does is find the key plays. You know, I'm looking at the first list and Waiting for Godot has to be in there, Look Back in Anger has to be in the second list, etc. the key plays from each decade. And I thought yes, and also it covers different nationalities, it covers agendas; male and female, and it also it covers racial diversity. But than as with any list, when you look at it more closely, you begin to think 'I wonder what happened to X, Y, Z?' so with each period I could come up with some suggestions for plays that could have been included.
1. Accolade, Emlyn Williams, 1950
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Michael Billington: There's one writer who's not there, whom I think highly of, called Emlyn Williams, who hasn't been much done lately; his most famous play was called Night Must Fall, which was about actually a serial killer who always hid the heads of his victims in a hat box. And I remember going to see this as a child and being haunted by image of a hat box containing a severed head. But that's not play of his I would like to see, there's a play called Accolade he wrote in 1950, which was revived recently by the Finborough Theatre in London, and very briefly its about a man who on the eve of his investiture as a knight is discovered to have a dubious sex life; he's been having sex with an underage girl in Rotherhithe, not that he was aware perhaps she was underage. And, you know this sort of dark private life explodes on the very eve of his public accolade.
Now, we're perhaps not so surprised these days that public figures have private lives, but of course in 1950 that was quite a controversial, dodgy thing to write about, particularly on the West End commercial stage; the idea that the pillars of society were sort of hollow at the core as it were. It's a wonderful play and when it was revived it absolutely packed out the theatre and people said this should transfer to the West End but it never did. And I just think Williams is a writer who deserves to be there.
2. Sargent Musgrave's Dance, John Arden, 1958
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Michael Billington: Yes, I mean 1958 was a very significant year; two writers appeared that year, one of them was John Arden with a play called Sargent Musgrave's Dance which was done at the Royal Court Theatre. It attracted I think, twenty eight per cent capacity business but those who liked it liked it enormously and wrote letters to the paper saying 'this man is a major writer'.
Whenever I see the play, and it's quite often revived, it's an incredibly morally ambiguous play about violence. It's about a group of deserters from the Crimean War who take over a northern mining town and try to hold the citizens to ransom, to bring home the violence of war. The point about the play is you never quite know where Arden stands; the leading character is both a missionary and a madman...
3. The Birthday Party, Harold Pinter, 1958
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Michael Billington: The other play from 1958 is by Harold Pinter, it's called The Birthday Party, it was famously done at the Lyric, Hammersmith in '58, it lasted one week, closed on the Saturday. The day after Harold Hobson writes a review in The Sunday Times that says 'this man is a master' and compares him to Henry James and everyone else and says this is a great play and of course it had closed the night before. But what that review did was to put Pinter's name on the map; it led to Pinter being commissioned by the BBC to write radio plays and of course, the rest is history; Pinter became a part of our theatrical landscape. But that was the play that really established him, or didn't establish him but established his reputation.
4. Black Comedy, Peter Shaffer, 1965
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Michael Billington: Suddenly after came this explosive farce by Peter Shaffer, Black Comedy, which is about a house that is plunged into darkness. But as all the lights go out, the lights on stage come up, so what you're watching is actors feeling their way around the furniture, and each other, in supposed darkness and of course we can see everything. I mean it is a hilarious and brilliant play so that should be there.
5. A Day in the Death of Joe Egg, Peter Shaffer, 1965
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Michael Billington: Well yes, Peter Nichols is a major writer and in 1967 he wrote a play called A Day in the Death of Joe Egg, a comedy but it's a comedy about disability and what it's like for a married couple to grow up with a severely handicapped child. Now this play was written out of personal experience; Peter and Thelma Nichols had had exactly that. And what the play says is you can't treat this minute by minute, hour by hour, as a terrible tragedy; you have to find a way of living with it, of coping with it and the way is to make comedy out of it. I think that was an important play because it sort of shifted people's attitudes to this very subject. It made us aware yes, of the awful problems of bringing up a disabled child but it also showed us how people cope with it. Brilliant play.
6. The Philanderers, Christopher Hampton, 1971
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Michael Billington: 1971, Christopher Hampton, who'd an earlier success, but he wrote a play called The Philanthropist which was was hugely popular. It was done for the Royal Court, filled the Royal Court; the Royal Court was going through one of it's puritanical phases and was rather horrified by this popularity and didn't approve of the play. It then moved to a commercial theatre, The Mayfair and ran for two years or so and then went to Broadway. And it is about what it's title implies; it is about a man who actually sees every point of view and is philanthropic and generous and kindly in his instincts. And it's about the awful life he finds; how he copes with it, how you cope with being not sort of partisan or polemical in life, but being a nice, liberal, middle-of-the-roader. Wonderfully funny play.
7. Noises Off, Michael Frayn, 1982
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Michael Billington: Michael Frayn, as we all know, is a hugely massive intellect and has written plays about nuclear physics and all sorts of things but Noises Off is a backstage farce really, and it's about it's about what happens when a farce goes wrong. And it just gets the audience in paroxysms of laughter; people claim to have seen people literally rolling in the aisles in this play with uncontrollable laughter. But like all Frayn's plays there's an idea behind it. And what he's saying is we try to impose order on life but chaos is always there underneath and is about to erupt. And what he shows, of course, is what happens when a farce, the most disciplined of forms, surrenders to chaos and disintegrates on stage...
8. Run for Your Wife, Ray Cooney, 1983
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Michael Billington: Well I just wanted to bring in Ray Cooney, because again he is an example of the popular writer farce. I mean, he's had huge commercial success here and abroad; Run For Your Wife was the classic example of the distressed man with various females popping in and out of various doors etc. Embarrassment, panic, fluster, all those qualities that make for farce. We tend to equate British drama with the high seriousness of the politics and Osbourne and Pinter but there is another level to it and that is the popular level and I think Cooney is a craftsman who needs to be acknowledged.
9. A Small Family Business, Alan Ayckbourn, 1987
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Michael Billington: The ninth play is again, a comedy, but I think a comedy that says something. It's a play called A Small Family Business which Alan Ayckbourn wrote in 1987; the date is significant because this is the decade of Thatcherism and the word Thatcher is never mentioned in Ayckbourn's play but that's what it's about. And what Ayckbourn shows is the contradiction between the celebration of family values and the idea that money is the ultimate goal in life. And he shows these two things, which are the core of Thatcherism, are totally incompatible, and what you see in the play is a family falling apart and trying to pursue integrity but finding their business is based on corruption, double-dealing and the Mafia. It makes you laugh but my god, it makes you think.
10. Dead Funny, Terry Johnson, 1994
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Michael Billington: Dead Funny, is again, about the English love of humour; it's really about The Benny Hill Appreciation Society and what happens on the day they discover poor Benny Hill has been found dead. But it's also about the strange nature of English humour; the sexism that lies behind it but also the, as it were, the fear of real contact with other human beings, particularly men and women...
