My sister gave kindly me some theatre vouchers for my birthday. Well, actually that’s not strictly true. She looked into it, and Malvern Theatres apparently don’t accept standard theatre vouchers. So what in fact I received were some folded notes in a card that said “Imagine this is a Theatre Voucher. To be spent only on Culture”. I decided that I would spend it on something that I wouldn’t otherwise necessarily go to see, and today I went to the matinée of Another Country, the play by Julian Mitchell.
It’s a play loosely based on the early life of the spy and traitor Guy Burgess, imagining what may have happened during his schooling to influence him and encourage him to betray his country. It’s set in the Sixth Form of a public school in the 1930’s where the Burgess character is an outsider due to his homosexuality, and makes close friends with the other outsider, a committed communist.
I have to say I found it pretty hard work. There were ten actors in all, all male, nine of whom were playing students. Apart from the two main characters, I found it very difficult to tell all the others apart, which made following the plot rather challenging. Some of the actors didn’t speak particularly loudly or clearly either, and gabbled their lines, and since I was about half way back in the stalls it was quite difficult to make out what was going on, at least until I “got my ear in”.
I’m not entirely sure what point the play was making. Possibly something about the hypocrisy and claustrophobia of a public school education fostering excessive loyalties to the “House” and school, and when those are betrayed there is only a small further step to betraying one’s country. I’m sure that Christopher would have had much more idea than I did about what the plot and sub-plots were on about, and I really wanted to be able to talk to him about it. As it was, my abiding impression was one of horror at how much the boys were left to govern themselves, with physical punishments including beatings handed out by prefects, and no sign of any teachers providing authority. I suppose that’s how public schools were in the ’30s, and probably much later too, but I’m sure that wouldn’t be acceptable these days.
It was a very interesting way of spending the afternoon. I’m still not sure whether or not I actually enjoyed it.
