Notes on the Finborough production of The Truth About Blayds by A.A. Milne

 

When I wrote about this play's imminent revival a few weeks ago I wasn't quite sure what to expect. Would there be the appropriate balance of seriousness and comedy in the playing? Would contemporary theatregoers take this example of Milne's adult work to their hearts as readily as the audiences a hundred years ago, weaned on his pieces in Punch magazine? The answers, based on the performance I saw last night, would appear to be yes and yes. It is very well cast, with William Gaunt, as the Great Man, particularly memorable during his time onstage in the first act. The production serves Milne very well, and the time seemed to whizz by, which is always a good sign.

Gaunt's performance made it easier to understand why, as discussed in that earlier post, some critics - and even Milne's idol J.M. Barrie - wished that he had kept Blayds alive for the duration. But, for better or worsem that's not the play he was interested in writing: as his intention was to explore "What happens in a religious community when its god is discovered to be a false god?" having the discredited hero hanging around would have been an irrelevance. 

One consequence of a well-acted production, however, is that the intrinsic limitations of a play can become apparent, and it's possible to argue, as Frank Swinnerton did, that the survivors of such a calamity are an easy target: 

To castigate the meanness and hypocrisy of those who, after an earthquake, are trying to pretend that there has been a shower, is to bully the demoralized. 

But there's no doubt that Milne manages to wring a great deal of humour out of the efforts of the poet's son-in-law, keeper of the flame, to find a face-saving solution to the dilemma. The play is best understood as a comedy, in fact, despite the essential seriousness of its theme. View it as a straight drama in the Galsworthy mode and we might complain that a pompous character like the son-in-law is rather one-dimensional, more than happy to deceive himself and others to preserve his little dreamworld; take Blayds as a comedy or satire, however, and the thought of caricature becomes less of a problem. The same could also be said of a rather convenient get-out for the family at the end - but then letters have been cropping up unexpectedly in well-made plays since Victorian times.

Watching the play makes it especially clear how well-crafted and satisfying it is from a structural point of vew: by the end, all possible questions in the audience's mind about Blayds' deception have been addressed, and along the way we have enjoyed the light and witty dialogue which had long endeared Milne to audiences by the time Blayds was first produced. It stems from the writing style he had perfected in the aforementioned Punch (he had been assistant editor before the Great War), writing his pieces at the very last moment, just before the magazine was going to press, whereupon invention would flow. 

I don't know how Milne wrote his plays but I suspect, in the case of Blayds at least, that once his theme and all the possible consequences had been thoroughly worked out the writing itself came rapidly.  W.A. Darlington called the dialogue in another, lesser, Milne play, Sarah Simple, "so beautifully turned that it almost speaks itself", but that late work didn't have much of a plot to speak of, whereas Blayds has the twin strengths of a firm backbone plus dialogue which is never less than engaging.

Well, almost never - according to some. There were critics of the original West End and Broadway productions who took issue with a romantic subplot, the most savage of them being Stark Young in The New Republic. He enjoyed the attendant exposing of hypocrisy in the second act but complained of "several hundred words ... that make us squirm for sheer embarrassment ...", so I was particularly interested to see how this love stuff might be handled in the Finborough production.

 

Actually, rereading the script today, there doesn't seem all that much to feel embarrassed about. In Act Two Blayds' daughter Isobel, who threw away a chance of personal happiness in order to nurse her father, laments to her former suitor about what might have been, and perhaps the odd cloying detail does creep in. But at the end of that act she is provoked by her brother-in-law's self-pity to share her sense of loss and waste with her family and this is pretty powerfully done in this production, bolstered by the director's almost daring us not to take it seriously: the lighting gradually changes and dramatic music is brought up, making us feel that we are in Isobel's head, experiencing her emotions with her, rather than being distracted about the naturalism or otherwise of the lines. This is also true to Milne's stage directions:

     Isobel looks in front of her, seeing nothing which they can see.

There is ultimately a happy ending for Isobel in the final act, with some lines which perhaps verge on the cringe-making, but as her suitor, Royce, who speaks them, has thoroughly established his integrity by this point they can more or less be nodded through.  

The script as played at the Finborough has some very minor trims - usually only a line or two - but in Isobel and Royce's last conversation alone in Act Three there is a slightly more substantial cut. At first I thought it might have been to avoid a bit of Barriesque or Punch-style whimsy: in the script as published, Isobel invites her suitor to play-act proposing to her as though she were her own mother rather than herself (the child whom Isobel felt herself to be in more hopeful times being long "dead"). On reflection, however, it seems more likely that as the ages of the two actors involved don't appear to fit with the characters as described by Milne it was deemed wiser to cut the passage. And you could argue that the actors' being somewhat older adds a greater poignancy to this second chance of a life together.

Nothing of any real substance, then, has been removed for this production (unless you are minded to count a passing reference to the Shakespeare-Bacon controversy, possibly not quite such a hot potato these days). And assuming that the published edition of the play faithfully reflects the script as acted on Broadway Stark Young's sneering comment that "love needs the whole floor" in Act Three is misleading: most of the act consists of the sorting out of the legal and moral mess into which Blayds' confession has plunged the family. 

Mention should also be made of the actors playing the grandson and granddaughter: they are smart and irreverent, like the pair in You Never Can Tell (Milne "thought well of Mr Shaw"). Over the course of the play our sympathies shift towards the one who proves to be morally superior, but - unlike the cut-and-dried characterisation of their father, Blayds' son-in-law - this is a gradual process. And having lived under the shadow of their grandfather's fame all their lives you are more inclined to be sympathetic towards them. I will say that I did wonder at times whether some of the grandson's lines in the first act might have been more casually thrown away, but I'm not sure whether this is correct. Maybe a Shavian-style play needs precision throughout. (I'll be seeing the play again in a couple of weeks so may add a postscript then.)

There was a suspicion, too, on the night I saw it, that William Gaunt was occasionally reliant on Catherine Cusack, as his daughter-cum-nurse, for the odd prompt, but as this seemed in character - an old man momentarily forgetting just where he was in another oft-told anecdote - it would only be apparent to saddoes following with the script afterwards, which is a thing we never do. Possibly it was a decision of the director's, anyway, and either way there's no doubt that Gaunt's performance was rivetting: a man struggling for the right words when everyone around him is fully in control of theirs, especially the self-serving son-in-law carefully weighing every pronouncement with an eye on posterity.

In short, despite the above nitpickery, this revival has been done as well as one could reasonably hope - and it seems to be selling well, according to the theatre, so if you are interested please bear in mind that there are only three weeks to go. I missed the production of Milne's The Dover Road at the Jermyn Street Theatre a few years ago, but if The Truth About Blayds is the success it deserves to be then there are certainly other Milne plays worth staging. 

At the time of writing a joint biography of Milne and his collaborator on the Pooh books, E.H. Shepard, has just been published, and there is a forthcoming book by Gyles Brandeth described as "a biography of A.A. Milne and Winnie the Pooh", to be published before the end of the month. I shall report on these shortly, though I wonder whether there can be much new material for those who have read Anne Thwaite's biography of Milne. Christopher Milne's own The Enchanted Places is an excellent read.  And Shepard wrote his own, abundantly illustrated, memoirs. 

 

Links:

The Truth About Blayds runs until 4th October; visit the Finborough website, here, for more details.

Photographs of William Gaunt as Blayds and Rupert Wickham and Catherine Cusack as Royce and Isobel by Carla Joy Evans; see more here. 

My earlier post about the play can be found here. 

 A.A. Milne Part 1  (Goodbye Christopher Robin)

A.A. Milne Part 2  (Goodbye Christopher Robin)

A.A. Milne Part 3  (Lovers in London)

A.A. Milne Part 4 (Sarah Simple)

Radio play about E.H. Shepard and Christopher Milne

More Milne-related radio plays

A.A. Milne and Brian Jones

Lloyd Price musical coming to London

 

If you are able to get to London's Royal Festival Hall there will be two performances of a new musical about R&B/rock'n'roll pioneer Lloyd Price on Saturday 11th October.

 Audio of an extensive 2005 interview with Price can be found on Matt the Cat's site here, but for all the undoubted importance of Lawdy Miss Clawdy to the development of rock'n'roll (none of which seems lost on Price himself in that interview) Daniel Wolff's biography of Sam Cooke suggests that the recording was actually part of an ongoing process for Specialty Records owner Art Rupe, and that he'd already been experimenting with accentuating the beat on gospel recordings:

"Actually," Art Rupe has declared, "I dug gospel music even more than rhythm and blues," and the producer often made his own crucial modifications to the songs. In 1952, he seems to hear a new, beat-heavy sound on the horizon. A month after this [February] Stirrers's session, he'll go to New Orleans and cut "Lawdy Miss Clawdy," a run-away #1 r&b hit by Lloyd Price that sells to both white and black fans.

Here [Wolff continues], Rupe approaches from the gospel end, adding drums to the Stirrers's usual mix. At first, it's an awkward fit. Compare the single of "It Won't Be Very Long" to the alternative takes, and you can hear the predictable beat dumbing down the complex rhythms. But towards the end, an odd synthesis starts to happen. The lead voices jump with urgency, and the group seems to open up and let the drums in. Social critics have argued that the concept of the teenager was an invention of the 1950's. If so, here's evidence that it happened not just in the malt shop but across the street, in church.

This seems to be the take which Wolff is talking about: 

 

 And here is the original 1952 Specialty version of Lawdy Miss Clawdy, with Fats Domino on piano:

 

Links:

The information above was extracted from a longer post about Sam Cooke and the Soul Stirrers entitled Waxing/Waning Crescent Moon, which can be found here.

 Matt the Cat's highly recommended Juke in the Back series, which provides excellent musical overviews of R&B artists and record labels, can be found here. I haven't listened to it yet but one programme is devoted to Lloyd Price's Specialty sides and includes excerpts from the interview mentioned earlier.

If the above has whetted your appetite details about booking for the Lloyd Price musical can be found on the South Bank Centre website here. 

A.A. Milne Part 4 (Sarah Simple)

 

As with A.A. Milne's first novel (of sorts), Lovers in London, the mere fact of this play, Sarah Simple, being available again is welcome news. It's not included in the various collections which still crop up in secondhand bookshops, and I'd been searching for a copy for quite some time. Before the publication of Anne Thwaite's biography of Milne I had only come across a single mention of it, in a history of theatre published in the 1930s. 

It is not, however, a neglected masterpiece - something which it has in common with that novel. If you're already familiar with Milne's work for the theatre there will be little here to surprise you: a wife, presumed to have divorced her husband, suddenly reappears as he is on the verge of marrying a somewhat more stolid partner. Once, long ago, I embarked on a dissertation on Milne's plays but my tutor was not keen, joshing about his struggles to remember which missing spouse featured in which play. (In the end I switched to Tennessee Williams and still slightly regret it).

In praise of Rock & Roll Graffiti (1999) again

  

If, like me, you've been tantalised by the many clips on youtube of a TV show entitled Rock & Roll Graffiti, the good news is that most of that show, hitherto available only as an expensive DVD box set, can now be obtained on two reasonably priced 3 disc sets; I'm based in the UK and ordered them from America for around £14 each around ten years ago though you will need to round that up to £20 or thereabouts now. These are the covers to look for:

For those unfamiliar with this show, DJ/producer Larry Black and singer Gene Hughes of the Casinos (Then You Can Tell Me Goodbye) assembled a number of rock'n'roll, pop and soul stars of the late 50s and early 60s in a TV studio in 1999, got them to reminisce over several days about their experiences and sing one or two of their most famous songs, backed by a versatile and sympathetic band called Sons of the Beach. With the performers given the dignity and context they deserve but don't always receive the results are, at times, deeply moving and never less than thoroughly entertaining and informative.

Unvarnished Soul: Sonny Til

 

 

Today marks the centenary of the pioneering doo wop/R&B singer Sonny Til, lead singer of the Orioles. They are perhaps best known for Crying in the Chapel (1953) but here's the story of how the group came to record It's Too Soon to Know, now widely regarded as the first doo wop record, in 1948.

Deborah Chessler, the young songwriter behind it, had been trying to make sense of her feelings after a disastrous early marriage. It's Too Soon to Know wasn't her first song, though earlier pieces also had a direct and conversational tone in their titles and lyrics (Jerry Leiber was an admirer), and It's Too Soon to Know coaxed out a correspondingly fresh and emotional style of singing from Til and the group.

The number which kickstarted the whole doo wop shebang - or shboom? - came about when a supportive male friend who was helping with Chessler's divorce suddenly declared his own love for her. Normally it's parents who counsel caution in these matters but  her mother was all for it; it was Deborah who told her mother: "How can he love me? It's too soon to know."

The sharpest blades: C.S. Calverley and A.A. Milne

 

The poet who features in A.A. Milne's play The Truth About Blayds, soon to be revived at the Finborough Theatre in London, may have been Milne's own creation - but he did pinch the name.

A.A. Milne's The Truth About Blayds to be revived

 

A.A. Milne's 1921 play The Truth About Blayds is about to be revived at the Finborough Theatre in London. This is good news as Milne's plays for adults are rarely produced these days. William Gaunt is playing the Blayds of the title, an elderly, much-revered, poet; having played King Lear as well as sitcom patriarchs he ought to have the necessary gravitas.  

Milne had a run of hit plays in Britain and America between the wars but Blayds, more serious in tone than most, did not receive the level of acclaim he thought it deserved, and it rankled: he dwelt upon its reception in his 1939 autobiography It's Too Late Now, his disappointment still keen almost twenty years after the event. 

The problem, as he saw it, was that after the first act critics and audiences seemed to be expecting a different sort of play:

"Like an HM Bateman cartoon. Only with budgies."

 

Today marks 61 years since comedian Freddie Davies's debut on TV talent show Opportunity Knocks - and eleven since the publication of his autobiography Funny Bones, which tells the story of that life-changing experience.

New Jake Thackray book to be published in August

 

 

 

I have just learnt from Paul Thompson, cowriter of the excellent Jake Thackray biography Beware of the Bull, that a collection of Thackray's prose will be published by Scratching Shed on 1st August. As the title, The Unsung Writer, suggests, this will offer readers a chance to explore the full scope of his writing and perhaps get a deeper sense of his character than is possible through those artfully constructed songs - or another side of his character, at least.

Skylark

When I think of the Hoagy Carmichael-Johnny Mercer song Skylark it's an unlikely recording which first springs to mind. Memory had insisted that it was acapella, which turned out to be wrong when I heard it again recently after a gap of about fifty years.

New edition of Rebel Rebel about to be published

 

For those who don't own a copy of the original edition - and even for those who do - the first volume of Chris O'Leary's excellent song-by-song Bowie study is about to be published in a considerably revised and expanded version, as depicted above.  

Based on posts in his blog Pushing Ahead of the Dame, Rebel Rebel originally appeared in 2015. I haven't yet read the refashioned tome but with ten years to amass more information, drawing on memoirs published after Bowie's death as well as the posthumous release of so many outtakes and demos, there will be a lot of new stuff to enjoy - and in addition to analysis of newly unearthed songs there has been an all-round revision.

The first edition of Rebel Rebel wasn't a simple transfer of blog to book; there was more detail, in print, about how songs worked musically - though not so technically phrased that the non-musical reader might feel alienated. 

Lost Tapes: One

I freely admit that I haven't researched this meticulously but it seems to me that, more and more, any new TV documentaries which revisit the familiar tale of some much-loved comedian or double act seek to entice viewers by incorporating the words "The Lost Tapes" or "The Unseen Tapes" into the programme's title. 

More often than not this turns out to be misleading, to put it politely. Even if the tapes for some old show have not been seen for a while on telly they are often easy enough to find online. And in the rare cases where something unxpected has been unearthed we may be presented with no more than a few slivers of fresh material, the rest of the programme padded out with the usual well-worn anecdotes so the makers can get an hour out of it, frustrating though such superfatted displays may be for aficiandos.

Having got the above off my chest, rest assured I will not be talking in this post about batons left in Chicago or other reheated dishes. This is the first of a series about genuinely lost tapes which have some personal significance for me.

Walking With Wilson

 

Hearing of Brian Wilson's death yesterday my immediate thought was of the duophonic cassette of Pet Sounds which had been my regular companion on late-night walks in the early eighties, slotted into one of the bulky Walkmans of the day. Water was an integral part of the scene - not a surf-tormented shore but a loch, centrepiece of the local country park, which I would circle.  

Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman documentary and books

 

I have just watched AKA Doc Pomus, a documentary about the songwriter best known for his partnership with Mort Shuman in the late 50s and early 60s. The mix of images, interviews and the obvious taking of pains has resulted in a compelling and satisfying account which feels like the last word: we see, for example, not only footage of Pomus's wedding but also the song ideas he scrawled on the backs of unused wedding invites - including the one which was to result in Save The Last Dance For Me, one of Ben E King's finest moments as well as its writers'.

And if that isn't enough Pomus's wife, the addressee of the song, is on hand to talk, with understandable emotion, about her response when first hearing it - although here and elsewhere you never feel the director is exploiting the situation, merely recording the depth of feeling which these songs and their creator evoked in so many.

Tweet in store as Blackpool Show goes legit

I have just learnt that the 1966 episode of The Blackpool Show featuring Freddie "Parrotface" Davies at the height of his fame can be found on a newly released Blu-ray edition of The Punch and Judy Man; Tony Hancock is hosting the show, hence its inclusion.

As far as I am aware this is the first legitimate release of this programme, the only one which survives of the series; Bob Monkhouse also appears, so possibly the recording originated from his famously extensive collection. 

Reasonable-quality pirate DVDs of The Blackpool Show have been available for some years but according to the Tony Hancock podcast Very Nearly an Armful a great deal of work was put into restoring The Rebel for a companion release, so here's hoping The Blackpool Show has received a bit of a boost too. (The above image is not from the new release.)

I believe that, despite the name, The Blackpool Show was essentially a continuation of Blackpool Night Out (1964-65), only without Mike and Bernie Winters, the earlier hosts. It was recorded at the ABC Theatre, where Freddie, enjoying the early years of his fame after his 1964 breakthrough on Opportunity Knocks, was appearing every night in summer season. 

Variety theatres had closed in the 1950s, but major seaside resorts still had what were in effect fixed variety bills with a major star headlining (the form later migrated to cruise ships, where it has stayed). Bob Monkhouse also appears on the show but seems a bit too wordy for the crowd; it's the psittacine one, on home ground, who makes the more audible impact (not only had he been appearing on the same stage every night but he was living in Blackpool at the time).

Compere is not a role Tony Hancock was best suited to, as several biographers have said.  Nor was he comfortable with the terrain, as Freddie told me:

Cheapo Cheapo resurrected for Black Friday?

This almost defies belief, and I'm still not sure whether it's just an elaborate wind-up, but according to the information I have been given the much-missed Cheapo Cheapo Records of Rupert Street, Soho, will be resurrected, or regenerated, or what you will, for "a month and a day", starting on Black Friday (November 29th).

It's an appealing idea in theory, but from the little which I've been told about the project it sounds like a rather Disneyfied way of bringing the beloved record shop back to life - and not cheap, either: instead of free admission and handing over a few pennies for bargain finds would-be customers will be obliged to hand over a tidy sum simply for the privilege of revisiting its racks once more. 

Despite that it'll be a case of "look but don't touch" - or at least "look and touch but don't take to the counter or slip surreptitiously under your roomy coat": none of the stock is available to purchase until the installation is dismantled on or around New Year's Eve. 

Forever Doo-wop: review of book by Cadillacs' backing musician

 

For those who might be interested in a book about doo wop which is more than just a history of the changing personnel of a group or groups, let me draw your attention to John Michael Runowicz's Forever Doo-wop, published in 2010. It examines how the music is perceived by different sides: the largely white audience who pay to see live acts; the increasingly elderly singers, still making a living from serving up their past - significantly fewer in number now in 2024, of course - and those in the middle who promote and make money from the enterprise.

A Distant Signal: Scott Walker

 

Scott Walker died five years ago today, the 22nd of March. I first heard about it on Radio 4's Today Programme on the morning of the 25th and immediately sat down to write the following.

 The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore, as recorded by the Walker Brothers, is one of those rare non-Beatles songs remembered from childhood before I became any kind of conscious music fan (the Beatles, part of a fraternal bond, were obligatory). But even when I started buying records, for a long time I didn't have - didn't want - a copy of it in any form, fearful of holding the experience up to the light. This went beyond stereo/mono snobbery or any notion of good taste or coolness: for me the magic was in the memory of the warmth and fuzziness of first hearing it on a medium wave radio in another room in another house.

New Peter Skellern CD on kickstarter - pledge by March 8th

 

For those who might be interested, Richard Moore, who has already put together two comprehensive collections of Peter Skellern's recordings, thus rescuing Skellernites or Skellernatics like me from the frustration of earlier random collections, is doing it once more for Happy Endings,  the album of the TV series for which Skellern wrote the songs and in which he appeared. 

The songs were issued on LP at the time - that's the image which adorns the top of this post - but the forthcoming CD expands that compilation - and judging by Mr Moore's earlier CD releases it is likely to be in top-notch sound, and comes, moreover, with the approval of the Skellern family. There are only a few days left so hurry, if you're interested. It's great that someone has taken the time to put together the kind of release which major companies obviously don't think will be cost-effective. 

Outrageous: new book by Kliph Nesteroff

 

Kliph Nesteroff is the author of the book The Comedians,  a gossipy, scandalous, irresistibly written history of the underside of the development of American stand-up comedy. But although you get all sorts of juicy details along the way (the Mafia figure prominently) it does also provide an excellent overview of how the form evolved in America and is hugely enjoyable. His new book, Outrageous, overlaps to some extent, as comedians feature prominently, but its focus is on the culture wars in the US - far from a recent phenomenon, as Mr Nesteroff reveals. He starts in the 1800s with a discussion about blackface, and the many protests by successive immigrant groups - Irish, Jewish, Italian, among others - to stereotypical depictions by comics. The long-running Amos 'n' Andy radio show had two white performers playing black characters whose personae had been stolen from two black performers, who were never remibursed; when, much later, it moved to TV there were black actors surrounding the two stars, and despite protests from the NAACP those actors defended the show on the grounds that without such programmes, demeaning as they were, there'd be no work for them at all.

Waterloo Sunset excerpt

 

I must have been eight years old when I first heard Waterloo Sunset, in the year of its release, and - like just about everyone else in the world - realised it was something special.

Perhaps for a child the fact that it wasn't, strictly speaking, a love song had something to do with it, even though lovers figure in it. But for someone growing up in Scotland the song's setting was enough in itself to suggest something magical, even if the Engerland in my head may not have swung like a pendulum do. My childish notions of the country and its capital came largely from Ealing films on the telly, all decency and community spirit, tempered by odd glimpses in police series of a modern day city seemingly awash with criminals, spies and pyromaniacs like George Cole  (below) in Gideon's Way.

Whatever the reason, the song stayed in my imagination. A few years later, when a family holiday finally necessitated an overnight stay in London, I eagerly craned out of my room's tiny window to take in the stretch of water in the reddening dusk: it was Waterloo Sunset.

We were in Camberwell at the time.

New play about Thomas Hardy on in London until Saturday 2nd December

My recommendation comes rather late, but if you are based in London and interested in the relationship between Thomas Hardy and his wives I can recommend the play What I Think of My Husband by David Pinner, running at the Grey Goose Theatre in Camberwell until Saturday, 2nd December. 

You can find fuller details at the theatre's website (link at end), but for those who are unfamiliar with the story the essential facts are that the writer Thomas Hardy's marriage to his first wife Emma soured over time, with the couple eventually living largely separate lives under the same roof, but an outpouring of grief and guilt after Emma's death led to a sequence entitled Poems of 1912-13, generally agreed to be his best work in that form. 

Merely Players? Pah!

  

 

There is, or so I've been given to understand, One who has numbered all my days.

Despite the occasional pointer in the form of various aches and pains, however, no clear indication of the date of my last go-round has been vouchsafed to me as yet. 

Which is a bit annoying, though not because I'm desperate to husband such energies as remain in order to produce one final creative flourish before gasping my last or anything like that.

Permit me to explain. 

I listen to music via an mp3 player, a model which is no longer manufactured. Its inbuilt battery has a finite life and cannot be removed or replaced unless you know about things like soldering and the match last night. So I regularly find myself on a well-known auction website in search of backup devices.

Most of the replacements I've bought - only ever this favoured model - are secondhand, and I can't tell how long they will continue to operate. I've had reasonable luck with purchases so far, even though the average playing time between charges for a pre-loved one is a little less than that of a pristine device. But a day inevitably comes when its power reading starts falling from 100% and I know that I must steel myself once again for the sadness ahead.