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Realism and Politics in Alienated Space: Trevor Grifﬁths's Plays of the 1970s in the Television Studio

Leah Panos

New Theatre Quarterly / Volume 26 / Issue 03 / August 2010, pp 273 286 DOI: 10.1017/S0266464X10000461, Published online: 11 August 2010

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0266464X10000461

How to cite this article: Leah Panos (2010). Realism and Politics in Alienated Space: Trevor Grifﬁths's Plays of the 1970s in the Television Studio. New Theatre Quarterly, 26, pp 273286 doi:10.1017/S0266464X10000461

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Downloaded from http://journals.cambridge.org/NTQ, IP address: 134.225.69.52 on 18 Dec 2012 Leah Panos

Realism and Politics in Alienated Space: Trevor Griffiths’s Plays of the 1970s in the Television Studio

The television studio play is often perceived as a somewhat compromised, problematic mode in which spatial and technological constraints inhibit the signifying and aesthetic capacity of dramatic texts. Leah Panos examines the function of the studio in the 1970s television dramas of socialist playwright Trevor Griffiths, and argues that the established verbal and visual conventions of the studio play, in its confined and ʻalienatedʼ space, connect with and reinforce various aspects of Griffithsʼs particular approach and agenda. As well as suggesting ways in which the idealist, theoretical focus of the intellectual New Left is reflexively replicated within the studio, Panos explores how the ʻintimateʼ visual language of the television studio allows Griffiths to create a ʻhumanizedʼ Marxist discourse through which he examines dialectically his dramatic charactersʼ experiences, ideas, morality, and political objectives. Leah Panos recently completed her doctoral thesis, ʻDramatizing New Left Contradictions: Television Texts of Ken Loach, Jim Allen, and Trevor Griffithsʼ, at the University of Reading and is now a Postdoctoral Researcher on the AHRC funded project, ʻSpaces of Television: Production, Site and Styleʼ, which runs from July 2010 to March 2014.

TREVOR GRIFFITHS gained critical acclaim Although his first performed plays were during the 1970s for plays which often dealt produced in the theatre, Griffiths had long- with issues and dilemmas facing the Left and standing links with television, having writ - the question of how to be a socialist. This ten several unrealized scripts for television article explores how Griffiths’s use of the during the 1960s, and having worked as a television studio produces a particular kind Further Education Officer for the BBC. Like of exploration of the socialist subject, facilit - many playwrights of his generation, it was ating his investigations into the relationship only after he made his name in the theatre that between the personal and the ideological. Griffiths went on to have tele vision plays Furthermore, it develops wider questions produced, and several of his theatre works about how the studio functions in Griffiths’s were also later seen on tele vision. However, work, examining how its qualities of alien- even his theatre ‘break’ was indirectly ation, construction or ‘constructedness’, and enabled by television, since his first big ‘hit’, intimacy operate dynamically in his tele - Occu pa tions (performed in 1970), was ‘prod - vision texts. uced at a fringe theatre subsidized by Granada These issues are addressed by focusing on Television as a means of recruit ing writers three plays by Griffiths, all produced for tele- for its expanding drama depart ment’.1 vision in 1974: All Good Men (Play for Today, During the 1970s Griffiths repeatedly BBC1, 31 January 1974); Absolute Beginners stressed his preference for working in tele- (Fall of Eagles series, BBC1, 19 April 1974); vision, maintaining that he mainly continued and Occupations (Granada TV, 1 September to work in theatre for the increased leverage 1974). I want to explore how the studio space, it gave him in television.2 For a writer with discursive form, and shooting strategies an explicit political message, television was interact in specific instances with Griffiths’s important as a medium that could reach a texts to reinforce meaning. large national audience.3 It also had greater ntq 26:3 (august 2010) © cambridge university press doi:10.1017/S0266464X10000461 273 http://journals.cambridge.org Downloaded: 18 Dec 2012 IP address: 134.225.69.52 cross-class appeal compared to the theatre, tu ally become the Com mu nist Party, explor - which he still perceived as a bourgeois cul- ing the often disturbing implications and tural sphere. Griffiths agreed with the notion consequences of Lenin’s vanguardism. that the regular television play was ‘the Occupations, Griffiths first full-length play nation’s theatre’, remarking that ‘there are for the stage, had its premiere at the Stables fewer cinemagoers in Britain now than there Theatre, Manchester, in 1970. Subsequ ently are anglers; fewer regular theatregoers than adapted for television, it explores the philo - car-rallyers. For most people, plays are tele - sophical and tactical differences between vision plays, “drama” is television drama.’4 Christo Kabak, a Bulgarian member of the Commu nist International, and Antonio Gramsci, lead ing Italian Marxist intellectual, ‘The Quality of Listening’ during the 1920 Fiat factory occupations in Contrary to the common association of the Turin, comparing the characters’ respective so-called ‘golden age’ of the television play jaded pragmatism and humanist idealism with a few well-known all-film dramas,5 via their conversations and interactions in throughout the 1970s the television studio Kabak’s hotel room. remained the predominant site for television All three of these plays deal extensively drama. For various technological and cul- with political issues, and the historical tural reasons, theatre had exerted a strong dramas have a particular complexity, since influence over television drama’s forms and their subject matter is further removed from practices, as well as audience expectations of the viewer’s frame of reference than All Good the medium, and although this began to be Men, which refers to recent British politics, challenged in the mid-1960s with techno- although it also makes challenging ideolo - logical advances and institutional shifts, gical points. theat rical forms of drama remained preva - While ‘scripted’ dialogue was expected in lent. The acceptance that words, rather than studio plays, Griffiths’s excessive reliance on visual form, were where television drama’s words has been noted, perhaps partially as a meanings really lay was one sense in which result of the breaking down of theatrical television drama retained connections to conventions that was taking place during both theatre and radio, and the writer rather this period, but also because of the intensely than the director was considered the ‘author’ discursive political ideas being dramatized.6 of a television work. Griffiths himself later remarked, ‘A lot of my This accepted emphasis on word over early plays are about hearing; they’re actu - image was undoubtedly important in influ- ally about the quality of listening in the encing the kinds of plays that Griffiths wrote theatre,’ and he goes on to contrast this with in the 1970s, enabling him to organize them his later emphasis on ‘looking and the around highly structured, lengthy political quality of seeing’.7 The verbal emphasis also conversations and analyses of ideas. In his suggests that these plays have an affinity debut single play for television, All Good with radio as much as with theatre, and al - Men, an aged Labour MP, Edward Waite, is though there are advantages in making them engaged in intense political discussion about as television plays they are not specific ally the failure of social democracy by his Trot - tele visual pieces. skyite son, William, during birthday celebra- Griffiths has, at moments, expressed tions at the family home. reser vations about the prevalence of rhetoric Absolute Beginners, which was commis - in his early works. He revealed in an inter- sioned as one episode of a thirteen-part BBC view with John Wyver that he believed he historical drama series, Fall of Eagles, deals had made ‘a significant technical and formal with political manoeuvrings around the 1903 advance’ with his all filmed, less exclusively Second Congress in which Lenin moved to dialogue-led drama, Country: a Tory Story restrict membership of the Russian Social (Play for Today, BBC1, 20 October 1981). It Democratic Labour Party, which would even- was ‘a move away from the lengthy, articu-

274 http://journals.cambridge.org Downloaded: 18 Dec 2012 IP address: 134.225.69.52 lated ratiocination which is one way, a rather knowledge which is based on the conscious dumb way, of characterizing my earlier application of directing principles and ideas, plays’.8 Here he seems somewhat ambivalent arrived at or controlled by reasoning’.11 about these works’ wordiness, simultane - This encapsulates the different imperatives ously defending and criticizing his excessive informing respectively the filmed documen - verbalization of political ideas as a fictional tary drama and the theatrical recorded tele- mode at that time. vision studio modes of Loach and Griffiths It is no accident that Griffiths developed a during the 1960s and 70s. The former strives more significant visual dimension in his to represent itself as making socio-political writing through working exclusively with arguments through the observation of real film in the all-film Country, and and in four environments and people, while the latter cinema screenplays written during the makes a case through presenting a consci - 1980s.9 However, the verbal discussion that ously and obviously constructed set of ideas the early works foreground enables a very in a controlled environment. direct relationship between dramatic and The empirical–idealist distinction also political debate to be established, utilizing informs the sense of whose account is being the capacity for analysis that this affords. heard in the drama, and how far dialogue is These plays are also more suited to the dem- ‘authored’. The methods of documentary ands of recorded television studio drama, drama encourage the illusion of the image with its limited space and de-prioritizing of and dialogue as unmediated, and Loach has mise-en-scène due to the aesthetic limitations spoken of one of his main motivations as of the environment. being to ‘give a voice to those who are often There is a large element of highly scripted denied it’;12 but it is Griffiths’s own ‘voice’ and polished dialogue in Griffiths’s plays of that comes through strongly in his plays of the 1970s, and while such ‘literate’ speech this period, through the educated radicals was an aspect of many television authors’ who populate his plays, and through the works, it is significant that Griffiths wrote in recurrent casting of Jack Shepherd in roles this way during a period in which television which voice the writer’s own concerns.13 practitioners making work on and about the ‘Empiricism’ was to become a term of Left tended to favour ‘filmed drama where abuse for critics influenced by structuralist realism involved a drive towards social ideas, who argued that a focus on observing exten sion’.10 The studio mode undoubtedly the experience of the subject is insufficient promoted the prioritizing of ideas expounded and that further theoretical analysis is requ - through dialogue over matters of represen - ired in order to understand the structure of tational authenticity, the latter being of such society, institutions, and the subject. Griffiths’s fundamental concern to film-makers such as use of radical intellectuals conducting theo - Ken Loach and Tony Garnett, motivating their retical and historical discussions allows his pio neering work outside the studio. dramas of this period to transcend the level of political and structural analysis in other dramas concerned with socially extending Empirical and Idealist Approaches rep resen tations. The differences between Ken Loach’s and The distinction between empirical and Griffiths’s methods and concerns echo a idealist forms of enquiry also overlapped wider division within the New Left at the with older socialist traditions of what time between empirical and idealist app- Andrew Milner has termed ‘class-based’ and roaches, which cohered around a dichotomy ‘ruling ideas’ Marxism. Milner says the cen - of experience and theory. Raymond Williams tral question was ‘whether or not socialist clarifies the ‘general modern use’ of empir- consciousness could develop spontaneously icism as concerned with ‘the broad distinc- out of working-class life experience, especi- tion between knowledge which is based on ally that of industrial conflict’, or whether observation (experience and experiment) and ‘workers had to be led to socialism through

275 http://journals.cambridge.org Downloaded: 18 Dec 2012 IP address: 134.225.69.52 the politico-ideological interventions of a use a lot about the socialists and Marxists in socialist political party’.14 bourgeois cultures’.17 As Milner explains, the latter position was In their article, ‘Who Framed Theatre? The reinforced by the 1902 publication of Lenin’s “Moment of Change” in British TV Drama’, pamphlet What is to be Done?, which argued Madeleine MacMurraugh-Kavanagh and for the role of the revolutionary vanguard Stephen Lacey point to how the studio party, and it is significant that the role of a environment provided greater opportunities political party is an issue that Griffiths’s for ‘dramatic “licence”’ than filmed drama, work repeatedly addresses. For example, which Absolute Beginners deals with the events and issues surrounding Lenin’s attempt to refine spoke a different ‘language’, an idiom that re - the nature and role of the party and conso - sisted metaphor and environmental innovation in lidate his leadership, while Occupations is its adherence to surface realism [and excluded] a range of alternative experiences and represen - also concerned with the power held by the tations for which it was too ‘big’, too ‘social’, and vanguard and the responsibilities that this too externalized.18 entails.15 Griffiths’s own role within the contemporary political vanguard of the New They make a case for the television studio as Left is also worth noting, since his texts a space that was conducive to exploring demonstrate a concern with educating the ideas through non-naturalistic visual and audience about historical–political events, verbal forms, as and with providing an analytical locus of ideas for the Left. already essentially ‘unreal’ in terms of the veri - The theatrical mode of these works similar [it] allowed for freedoms within language, prompts the question of how far they adhere image, and metaphor that seemed to be denied 19 to bourgeois concepts of cultural ‘value’ as to film. ‘well-made’ plays. They are, in a sense, related to the ‘drawing-room’ plays to which Indeed, there is a sense that the studio as an much post-1956 theatre opposed itself, with ‘alienated’ space removed from society en - their focus on middle-class characters and abled such theoretical material to be realized, intellectual dilemmas, their use of educated, suspended away from the material world; literate language rather than the demotic, of and by this logic Griffiths’s political discus- southern rather than northern accents, and sions and scenarios are under less pressure often the casting of actors with a theatre pedi- to offer experiences that relate directly to the gree, such as Patrick Stewart (who joined the outside world. As well as deriving from the Royal Shakespeare Com panyin 1966) as hermetically sealed physical space of the Lenin, and Donald Pleasence as Kabak.16 studio, Griffiths’s texts also demonstrate the However, the middle-class connotations of wider sense of the television single play as a the dramatic form are offset by the overtly ‘space for ideas’ within television schedules, Marxist analyses and dilemmas which are a conceptually exploratory area that exists the play’s content. outside television’s continuous everyday flow. However, the solipsism of the studio also Alienation and Socialism has potentially negative connotations. On one The fact that long discursive socialist dia - level the remove which the studio im plies logues were occupying prime-time television can be interpreted as a reflection of ideo- suggests that Griffiths was employing the logical alienation, as if the marginalization theatrical mode in order to subvert it from and lack of general social currency of social- within, and to enable his interventions in the ist discussion is demonstrated by this dram - mainstream. Indeed, Griffiths has described atic distance from the outside world. It also his pursuit of an agenda of ‘strategic penet - suggests a failure to engage directly with rations’, which he describes as, ‘a phrase I contemporary society; indeed, Loach and

276 http://journals.cambridge.org Downloaded: 18 Dec 2012 IP address: 134.225.69.52 Garnett’s move outside the studio confines ween these two characters’ stances, recogniz - was motivated by precisely their perception ing the limitations of both approaches and of the need to reconnect with society and implying that a synthesis is necessary. experience material reality. The sense of the studio as an ‘alienated’ This point seems to be crucially connected and ‘abstracted’ space connects with the to the sort of political intervention that detachment of the vari ous characters’ from Griffiths makes, since Occupations, Absolute the outside world in several of Griffiths’s Beginners, and All Good Men are not about plays of this period. Edward Waite’s class society so much as socialist tactics and belief alienation is depicted in All Good Men and systems. The theoretical discussions, particu - political, personal, and ideological alienation larly in Occupations and Absolute Beginners, is dealt with in Occupations and Absolute relate to specific historical problems that, Beginners. In All Good Men it is suggested that while relevant to the Left’s theoretical posi- the Labour MP Edward Waite, soon to be tion, are detached from contemporary made a peer, has lost touch with his working- instances of militancy, echoing the wider class roots and lives at a remove from the phenomenon within the New Left in the people that he should be representing. The 1970s of an increasing gap between intellec - play draws attention to the disparity bet - tual and proletarian factions. ween Waite’s extolled Labour principles and his own comfortable life-style in a large country property. A Deficit of Experience Massing ham, the upper-class television This also highlights how the middle-class producer who visits Waite, is surprised by radicals’ surplus of theory existed in relation the affluent surroundings, remarking, ‘It’s a to a deficit of experience of militancy on their lovely house. I wouldn’t have thought Surrey part. Although the theoretical discursive form . . . right, somehow, given your life.’ Later, of his plays suggests Griffiths’s position is William criticizes his father for moving out within the camp of ideas rather than experi - of his own working-class constituency to a ence, the problematic issue of the relation - middle-class area: ‘Four bedrooms, attics, ship between theory and practice is a subject cellars, gardens, playschools, parks. . . . Not explored in them. For example, in All Good the sort of house you’d find in Beswick now, Men, the young Trotskyite William is critic - was it? Because Beswick was single-class ized by his father, Edward Waite, for his lack housing. Working class.’21 of experience, to which William responds by Earlier in the play, in preparation for a highlighting his father’s ideological and television interview that Massingham will imaginative bankruptcy: conduct, Waite tells him some facts about his early life as one of six children in a family waite: It’s all so easy, isn’t it? You sit there living in dire poverty in Manchester, adding behind your little desk in your little room in how, in spite of their terrible circumstances: your little ivory tower and you read your Marx and your Trotsky and you get your slide We had each other. Down the street, up the rule out and do a couple of simple calculations street, round the corner, down the next one. and you have your blueprint. Revolution. We were all in the same boat. Bound to each Total change. Overnight. Bang. Especially other, you might say. Aunts and uncles and bang. You have to have your bit of theatre cousins and . . . just neighbours. There as well, don’t you? Reality isn’t like that. . . . mightn’t have been much hope around, but We live in the same world. It doesn’t change there wasn’t too much despair either.22 because we shut our eyes and dream. william: It doesn’t change unless we shut our eyes and dream.‘I take my desires for reality, Waite’s mention of the kind of intensely because I believe in the reality of my desires.’20 socialized conditions that he grew up in highlights his current isolated and private As with many of his works during this mode of life. The studio mode of represen- period, Griffiths establishes a dialectic bet- tation fits the theme of Waite’s withdrawal

277 http://journals.cambridge.org Downloaded: 18 Dec 2012 IP address: 134.225.69.52 from the community and his geographical ress, whom he finally abandons. Lenin alien - and political distance from ‘the people’. ates himself from his close colleagues during Waite’s allusion to the collective structure of the play, while making the difficult decision working-class life, based around their close to expel certain factions from the Russian proximity and sense of a shared living space, Social Democratic Labour Party, incurring highlights the middle-class interior of his the wrath and anger of the former comrades pre sent house and reflects on how the mode whom he has turned against for political of the studio play is unable adequately to reasons. represent the life of a working-class com- Later in the play, we learn that a comrade munity in the way that Loach and Garnett’s from the Soviet Union has arrived, seeking an filmed locations do. As MacMurraugh- audience with Lenin over his wife’s suicide, Kavanagh and Lacey note, ‘film drama was which occurred after she was impreg nated seen to involve and reflect the “mass” in and slandered by their political associate, terms that studio drama could never effect Agent Bauman. Lenin refuses, argu ing that (as a result of the necessary facts of imposed Bauman is an ‘outstanding agent’, and dis- structure and environmental suspension from missing Martov’s concern for the party’s the world)’.23 ethical consciousness as ‘meta physics’, since Occupations and Absolute Beginners are ‘just now we’re trying to make the revolution both centred round characters who are living possible’. The theme of closing off contact in some form of seclusion from the world with others thus functions on more than one around them, and the studio spaces within level, and the sealed space of the studio which they are shot enhance the sense of echoes the disconnection of these figures them living in a state of controlled suspen- from the populace and their lack of wider sion from social interaction. In Occupations, a accountability to the people whose interests Bulgarian Soviet agent, Kabak, is conducting they supposedly serve. covert business affairs and political meetings The few brief filmed inserts that feature in from a hotel room in Turin, admitting a range Absolute Beginners tend to add a symbolic of invited guests into his suite until eventu - rather than socially extended dimension of ally a government official orders him to meaning. The location-filmed opening scene, leave the country the following morning. set in Tsar Nicholas’s light and spacious Absolute Beginners is set during Lenin’s period palace, as well as demonstrating his wealth of exile in London, and the main setting is provides a contrast to the shady, cramped the boarding house in which he lives and world which the revolutionaries occupy. works. When Trotsky arrives, he must give a Later, Lenin and Martov chat as they walk coded message and a password to Lenin’s past the British Museum, a symbol of imperi - wife Krupskaya before he is allowed ent- alism and knowledge, and in the penultimate rance into the space, demonstrating the scene, in which the break between Lenin and secrecy of Lenin’s location and increasing the his former colleagues is cemented, the group sense of it as an exclusive space. is gathered around Karl Marx’s grave, As well as the notion that the secrecy of emphasizing that this enforced tactical divi- these characters’ presence necessitates their sion between factions by Lenin is occurring existence in such spaces, there is a further in spite of the common source of their ideas sense that, aside from their enforced physical from Marx himself. separation, they choose to remain aloof from others for reasons connected to their political The Studio and Structured Ideas sensibilities. The alienated space of Kabak’s hotel room seems to reflect his own ideo - MacMurraugh-Kavanagh and Lacey argue logical alienation from the masses – a poten- that the obvious construction of the tele - tial source of the crude instrumentalist view vision studio play frees it from some of the of the workers that he relates to Gramsci, and constraints of verisimilitude, expanding the his emotional alienation from his dying mist- range of subjects that can be dealt with and

278 http://journals.cambridge.org Downloaded: 18 Dec 2012 IP address: 134.225.69.52 the ways in which they can be addressed. In response to a comment about his work I would develop this idea further in relation being ‘firmly in the realist mode’ Griffiths to Griffiths’s work in two related ways: first, himself has noted, ‘there’s something about a the manner in which they negotiate the boun- speech that lasts for twenty minutes . . . that dary between being structured interventions changes the nature of what’s happening’.26 while still retaining reflectionist aims; and Although he remained committed to realism second, related to this, the way that political (rather than non-naturalistic form), here he analysis is achieved through realist charac- shows an awareness of how his dramatic ters, challenging the Brechtian notion that dia logue stretches verisimilitude. There is this is not possible. also a greater reliance on dialogue to fill in Discussing David Mercer’s play, Let’s social and class dimensions which the studio Murder Vivaldi (Wednesday Play, BBC1, 10 situation cannot provide and, with the April 1968), MacMurraugh-Kavanagh and expec tation of more foregrounded dialogue, Lacey state that an increased opportunity for directly verbal- izing issues that are normally implied in a a determinedly claustrophobic interiority resists more action-based mode. the exterior world to such an extent that, in the For example, in All Good Men Griffiths midst of the drama, it proves difficult to imagine the characters existing within the various realms develops the theme of class conditioning by (offices, shops, etc.) to which they refer.24 continually foregrounding characters’ class dimensions within their own observations While Griffiths’s television texts are not con- about each other, providing a sort of social sciously non-naturalistic in the way that structural commentary woven into the play. Mercer’s play is, the sense that a character’s It is not just the Trotskyist William who is a existence as ‘fully rounded’ often seems to be conduit for these ideas, for Waite’s daughter secondary to their function as agents of Maria, a secondary-school art teacher with discussion, and they do not fulfil the liberal- no clear political agenda, also delivers a humanist criterion for fictional characters to scathing critique of the class background of appear to ‘have a life’ off the page or screen, the television producer Massingham: which is often employed in judging the 25 maria: Too bright for Eton. Marlborough. adequacy of a character. massingham: This is true of much studio and theatre Winchester. maria (laughs): Yes. I should have recognized drama as a result of the constraints of the that distinctive, ‘I’m not important’ style of form, the remove from social spaces, and the arrogance. necessity of delivering the play’s themes massingham (smirking): It’s amazing. You’re through dialogue. However, as Griffiths’s exactly the way I expected your father might agents’ discussions are more explicitly poli- be. maria: Don’t tell me, it’s ‘chip on the shoulder’ tical than those in most plays, the very nature time. You’re all the bloody same. The moment of the dialogue also pulls away more fre - your sleek charm fails to make the requisite quently from char acters’ particular lives and impression, you fall to whining about chips towards the realm of an ‘impersonal’ social on the shoulder. Your dispensation isn’t dimension. For example, William’s clim actic natural, you know, or God-given. It’s bred. Like my resistance. I’d have thought they’d discussion with his father in All Good Men, have told you that when they were ‘making’ when he is held to account for his party’s you.27 record in office, is partly an ‘objective’ assess- ment of the failures of the post-war Labour Such discussions seem to test the extent of government, conducted in a rheto rical ques - class discourse the scenario will comfortably tion-and-answer style, and partly an emotive permit, both within the scenario itself and for familial conflict, based on William’s rejection the audience as ‘realistic’ drama. The subject of his father’s hypocrisy and his cosy per - of the discussion makes Massingham uncom- sonal existence detached from the working fortable, because he prefers to elide class class. differences, but William, as a passionate and

279 http://journals.cambridge.org Downloaded: 18 Dec 2012 IP address: 134.225.69.52 angry young socialist, overrides the social to the text’s formal construction, rupture etiquette that might have been expected textual unity, and destroy the illusion of the within a middle-class family home. unmediated image. Griffiths’s work of the Griffiths goes to some lengths to contain 1970s does not, in the main, experiment with and contextualize William’s speeches within such devices, but sustains a continuous, the narrative scenario, reinforcing the limits character-based narrative scenario. While of his dialogue’s subversion of naturalism Brecht polemicized against the conventions and demonstrating the line that he treads of realism, believing it was necessary to between a concern for the interpersonal nar - abstract from the viewpoint of individual rative and wider ideas being communicated. characters in order to understand the world, William’s antagonistic relationship with his Griffiths has sided with Brecht’s opponent, father is established in an early conversation Georg Lukács, in his belief that ‘individuals between Waite and his daughter Maria when had access, through their own personal she asks, ‘Have you had a chat with William experi ence, to the social whole’,30 and con - yet?’ to which Waite replies, ‘I’ve never had a curring with ‘that whole idea of character chat with William in my life. You can have a working as a confluence of important social fight with him, or a flaming good row, or you and political and moral forces in society, in can try and make the occasional interruption real historical time’.31 to his speeches, but a chat with him?’ 28 Although the Lukácsian model of realism Further references are made to ‘speeches’ offers the useful notion that characters can throughout the drama – as, for example, when bridge the individual and social, the specific Massingham, anticipating an attack on his and the typical, Lukács’s ideas about realism upper-class background from William, tells were formulated in relation to nineteenth- him, ‘I believe I’ve already had the next century forms, and have limited application speech from your sister.’29 As well as con - to a consideration of audio-visual dramatic textualizing William’s mode of address within form. Furthermore, it is arguably not strictly the narrative, Griffiths is reflexively referring a Lukácsian model that Griffiths is adopting, to the wordy mode he is using to deliver his since he relies heavily on particularly en - own ideas via the character. While the play lightened and politically aware characters, uses William as a conduit to deliver its including Lenin and Gramsci, with insights critique of Labour policy, it poses his method beyond that of the ‘typical’ individual at of doing so (verbally attacking his sick, aged each juncture of history that he deals with, father) as problematic, and implicitly sug- seemingly supporting Brecht’s view of the gests that his insensitivity may be represen - limitations of such characters in his use of tative of a wider tendency among socialists strategies beyond the unified, Lukácsian to alienate others by putting politics before ‘intensive totality’, in which social forces are interpersonal concerns, an issue I explore dissolved into typical concrete phenomena. further below. This points towards how the In addition, since the question of how to plays negotiate the boun dary between the be political and to locate the meeting point of personal and the political. personal qualities and political tactics are central questions in the plays, they contain a self-reflexive and potentially contradictory Socialist Subject and ‘Intimate Screen’ relationship between ideas and experience An idealist approach to socialism, informed by that Lukács’s theory does not address, focus - European theory as articulated in Griffiths’s ing instead on the personal and the historical texts of this period, is often equated with the as fully integrated elements instead of com - use of Brechtian, modernist, and non- ponents of a dialectic which is itself the issue naturalistic modes, such as that adopted by in question. French New Wave cinema, and particularly This dialectic of the individual and the by the director Jean-Luc Godard. Godard con - socio-political is at the centre of both Occupa - sciously adopts devices that draw attention tions and Absolute Beginners, which explore

280 http://journals.cambridge.org Downloaded: 18 Dec 2012 IP address: 134.225.69.52 the connections between humanist ethics work rather than experimenting with alter- and revolutionary tactics. While the plays’ native, more fragmented forms, seems to suit historical contexts are of direct relevance to his concern to ‘humanize’ Marxism and the post-1968 period in which Griffiths is constitute it as something other than an writing, the plays’ most central concern is analy tical structure of ideas, detached from the relationship between morality and poli - personal concerns. tical necessity. Thus, in Occupations, Gramsci’s humanist philosophy is counterposed with The Interiorizing Process Kabak’s cynical, instrumentalist opinion of the masses as a ‘machine’ with which to The scale of the television studio and the make revolution, and the play asks whether established visual language for shooting Gramsci’s reluctance to risk harming the studio drama were also conducive to the workers led to a lost opportunity for revolu- relaying of big ideas within small interper - tionary action, as well as associating Kabak’s sonal exchanges. Right from the birth of cold, detached view with the capacity for television up to the present, practitioners atrocities such as later occurred under Stalin. and critics have argued the benefits of tele- Absolute Beginners explores Lenin’s belief in vision’s language of medium and close-up the necessity to limit the Russian Social shots for exploring character interiority, and Democratic Labour Party in order to create have even maintained that this confinement, an effective vanguard party, thereby putting and the sense of intimacy that it encourages, political necessity before personal morality. is television’s specific strength as a medium. Griffiths explores the personal as well as For example, Dennis Potter maintained that the political level of socialist subjectivity by using realist characters, retaining the ‘sub- Television is equipped to have an interior lan - ject’ as the site in which this is achieved. guage. Certainly one of the strands in TV drama is that of the interiorizing process, the concern with Dorrian Lambley has discussed the fact that people’s fantasies and feelings about the shape of Marxist drama has often failed to posit ‘a their lives and about themselves.34 coherent theory of subject’ due to ‘the assum p tion that the existence and function - There are many grounds for challeng ing the ing of the subject is subsumed by his/her essentialism of such a claim.35 But the estab - position in the social discourse’, and so lished beliefs and dominant practices asso - neglecting ‘to theorize the subject of desire ciated with the ‘fetishization of the close-up within its ideological structure’.32 style’36 and the ‘intimacy’ of ‘a small-scale Griffiths’s dramas reassert the presence of production, few characters, concerned with a ‘desiring’ subject in Marxist drama by add - emotional drama rather than spectacle’,37 ressing socialist characters’ personal relation - serve and condition Griffiths’s scenarios, ships, decisions, and emotional anguish. In which utilize this up-close focus in their considering the place of individual morality development of the personal aspect of their and responsibility in political decisions, the personal–political dialectics. As well as the plays clearly present questions related to limited site of the drama which is conducive socialist humanism, a key strand of New Left to a small cast and contained dramatic loca- philosophy that was developed by E. P. tions, Griffiths also exploits the camera’s Thompson, largely in response to Stalinism’s closeness to the actors, capturing intense ex - dehumanized system, which ‘reasserted the changes in medium shots and close-ups and importance of ethical commitments for exploiting the sense that ‘nearness to the social ists’, and proposed that socialism ‘be actor’s face was analogous to nearness to reconstituted as the creation of individual thought’.38 human subjects’.33 Griffiths dramatizes the very processes by Griffiths’s decision to work within a which political characters repress and over - realist model, using narrative continuity and rule personal concerns. Absolute Beginners developing characters at the centre of the foregrounds the continual acts of mental and

281 http://journals.cambridge.org Downloaded: 18 Dec 2012 IP address: 134.225.69.52 physical discipline and self-repression that of a direct relationship between external and are necessary for Lenin to retain the disci- internal realms of experience, as well as the pline and rigour that he demands of himself. audience accessing his thoughts. When we first see him in the play, he is Another interesting application of the performing press-ups; later, he refuses to close-up occurs when the play opens on a allow his wife Krupskaya to call the doctor close-up of Waite speaking, as Griffiths’s when he has a painful bout of shingles, as he script specifies: has political duties to attend to. In a further domestic scene when Krupskaya offers to (Quietly, as though to a question.) Twenty-six sing to him he refuses, saying, ‘No more was the turning point, I suppose. . . . You couldn’t work in the pit as I did and not be music. It’s too . . . moving. It softens’; and 41 this is followed by a shot of him writing at his affected. (Pause.) Politically, I mean. desk at 3.00 a.m. while Krupskaya sleeps.39 As soon as he finishes this line, the shot changes to a high-angle establishing shot Exploring Contradictions in Close-ups showing him sitting by himself in a conser- Tight shots often increase the capacity of vatory referring to a sheaf of papers, imply - performance – and of facial expressions in ing that what we have just heard is being parti cular –to explore and expose contradic- rehearsed from a script, while around him a tions between political proclamations and television crew are setting up their produc- personal sentiments. For example, Lenin’s tion equipment. troubled personal conscience is expressed By shooting the opening scene in this tight during his nightmarish delirium while ill, close-up, Lindsay-Hogg was exploiting the revealing personal doubts that he would intimate connotations of the close-up shot never consciously express. A close-up of his before demonstrating that a false confidence face, eyes closed and sweat dripping off him is being constructed, using the closeness of as he tosses and turns, captures his torment, the shot to command our attention on Waite which the dialogue explicitly links to his and suggest his sincerity, while concealing political differences with Julius Martov over the activity that is occurring around him and the creation of a vanguard party: ‘It’s simple. the fact that he is rehearsing his lines. See. I am the Party. Right. Party Organ . . . This strategy connects with wider themes unh? . . . unh? Central Committee . . . Right? in the play regarding how political figures Central Organ, Central Committee . . . See . . . and historical events are constructed by the I am the Party . . . No, I . . . Mmm? Mmm? . . . media, the illusion of the unmediated image Julius, you’re not listening. Martov!!’40 and spontaneous speech, and politicians’ In All Good Men, director Michael Lindsay- selec tive cultivation of their public identity. Hogg used expressionistic camerawork to While the television studio’s ‘intimacy’ is represent the burden of confused and pain - useful for exploring the subject’s internal ful memories leading up to Edward Waite’s contradictions, in other respects its lack of mild heart attack. The snippets of various social extension hinders the full realization historic Labour speeches, and voice-over of of characters in political drama. Such an Waite’s ex-wife Ann alluding to an affair and effect is evident in Gramsci’s two speeches to to her dominance in their sexual relation- the striking Fiat workers in the television ship, are accompanied by a pattern of quick, version of Occupations. In the theatre pro - repetitive camera zooms from long shots to duction of the play, Gramsci addresses the medium close-ups, and from medium close- audience directly, placing them in the posi - ups to close-ups of Waite as he sits alone at tion of the workers. In the television version, his dining table. The repeated camera move - aside from the unavoidable lack of a live ments towards him generate a sense both of audience there are further representational the outside world and of us, the spectators, problems arising from camera framing and entering into his head, reinforcing the notion mise-en-scène that affect the mode of address.

282 http://journals.cambridge.org Downloaded: 18 Dec 2012 IP address: 134.225.69.52 Both speech scenes are shot in black and ing strategies such as ‘a jerky and perman- white, the shift from colour (used in the rest ently shifting system of close-up shots which of the drama) instantly differentiating them, effectively corresponded with the movement and having connotations of documentary of the observer’s eye’,43 is contrasted by film footage. His first speech, in which he MacMurraugh-Kavanagh and Lacey with the encour ages the striking workers and con tem- presentational mode of the studio, which plates their tactics, is framed in a low-angle accords the onlooker more critical distance medium close-up, with three workers posi - from the subject by not immersing us in the tioned in shot behind him, and the spatial world represented. capacity of the barn location where it was Jason Jacobs also explores the different shot is not visually evident, only alluded to processes by which meaning is created through the echo of the room’s acoustic through filmed and television recording (which also suggests that it is empty). methods of capturing actors’ performances. The tight focus of the shot (presumably at He quotes the actress Sybil Thorndike, who least partly due to possibilities limited by discusses how the acting technique required budget constraints) denies us any real sense by television differs from that of theatre and of Gramsci as a public figure capable of film: inspiring the masses, and renders his add - ress in such a way that it becomes more like Television is going to give us an entirely new kind an intimate soliloquy, revealing his own of acting. Different from stage acting because the thoughts and feelings, than an inspirational nearness of the camera makes it more intimate. But even more different from film acting because address to a mass rally, demonstrating the the acting is continuous and the emotional pattern political impact of his actions in the exterior of the character is decided by the actor as he acts world. Although Jack Shepherd gave a pas- and not by the director on the floor or by the 44 sion ate and convincing speech, his perform - cutter in the cutting room. ance, matching the scale of the visual language, does not seem to be a fully public Jacobs also quotes Grace Wyndham Goldie’s mode of delivery. remark that Thorndike’s ‘face became a win- The second speech scene, in which Gramsci dow through which she let us see into [her announces the results of the referendum in character] Widow Cagle’s mind’, sug gesting which a deal is struck with the employers, is that the centrality of the actor’s per for mance shot even more tightly, with no workers fully places the spectator in a different relation- in shot (just the arm of one figure visible). ship than is achieved in films: Gramsci’s disappointment is expressed in Jack Shepherd’s performance and the slightly Being ‘let into’ Widow Cagle’s mind is not the high angle which conveys a sense of his same as thinking and feeling like Widow Cagle: diminished confidence. instead of cinematic identification (seduction) here, this account suggests some thing more like close, intimate observation . . . It is as if Thorn dike does Television Drama and Distance the work of identification for us . . . deciding on the ‘emotional pattern’, and then showing it to the 45 Several critics have remarked that tele vision attentive, monitoring, television cameras. studio drama allows the spectator critical distance from the subject, and this has inter - However, the spectator’s position as ‘obser - esting potential applications with regard to ver’ is not just determined by the actor’s per - the positioning of the spectator and the pre - formance but also by the script and shoot ing sentation of arguments in Griffiths’s works. strategies which determine how she is posi- The sense of audience participation which is tioned. In the aforementioned accounts there achieved in Up the Junction through features is the implicit suggestion that film ‘sutures’ ‘made available by location-filming (includ - the viewer in more than television cameras ing street-sound, natural daylight, traffic, a do, putting the viewer in an identifying rather populated world, movement)’,42 and shoot- than observing position. But this is not always

283 http://journals.cambridge.org Downloaded: 18 Dec 2012 IP address: 134.225.69.52 the case, and it would be misleading to draw Indeed, the predominant recurrent use of a convenient technologically essentialist dis- a ‘classical’ shot/reverse-shot strategy over tin c tion between the shooting patterns the static frontal mode associated with the adopted in each medium, as many film and theatre audience member, suggests that the television dramas use similar strategies. level of visual audience interpolation is In the Griffiths television texts discussed greater in television studio plays than some here, it is the script rather than the camera critics suggest, and that any distance is built which seems to condition the ‘presenta - into the plays’ scenarios rather than being tional’ rather than identifying mode, and this created through a theatrical presentation of seems to be true of much ‘theatrical’ dia - the material. logue which asks to be presented rather than This suggests that Griffiths’s television inviting us to occupy a particular perspec - plays invite a degree of emotional and psy- tive. In All Good Men, Absolute Beginners, and chological engagement (relating to the ‘hum- Occupations, shot/reverse-shot patterns and anist’ dimension of the drama) while at the two-shots are most frequently adopted for the same time refusing the spectator any easy rhetorical dialogue exchanges, and close-ups object of identification as well as detracting are used in a variety of ways, but prima rily from the personal narrative with broader to encourage us to understand their subjec - socio-political and historical issues (relating tive states, and heighten moments of tension. to a ‘structural’ dimension). Griffiths has These strategies are also shared by conven ti - made it clear that the lack of resolution in his onal or ‘classical’ film-makers, and it appears plays and the presentation of opposing view - that it is not so much the camera that deter - points is a strategy that is intended to gal- mines our relationship to characters as the vanize the audience into considering the fact that the writing favours the overall issues for themselves: scenario over the individual, chang ing the parameters of our identification. I’ll probably never complete a play in the formal Griffiths’s writing often presents two sense. It has to be open at the end: people have to characters in opposition without an obvious make choices, because if you’re not making choices, you’re not actually living.48 preference for one character’s point of view, and this balancing of arguments influences the fact that the audience is not ‘seduced’ (to This quote is reminiscent of the Brechtian use Jacobs’s term) into identification. For notion that the audience must be aroused to example, although we are aligned with make interpretive decisions and, indeed, of Kabak and Lenin more than with Gramsci the underlying respect for the intelligence of and Martov as the personal lives of the latter the audience that this implies. are not represented, the plays encourage us to see the limitations and contradictions in Conclusions all of the characters’ political and moral per - spectives (revealed through key speeches in The television studio is a site that enabled the the case of Gramsci and Martov). prioritizing of ideas and concepts over John Bull has argued that television allows socially extended, action-based narratives, Griffiths to present ‘a more pressing version and this is well adapted to Griffiths’s con - of the dialectic’, due to its ability ‘to present a cern with socialist theoretical problematics, multiplicity of viewpoints’.46 In contrast to his exploration of ‘ruling ideas’ Marxism via the sense of critical and experiential distance radical intellectuals, and his use of discur- that some critics have stressed, Bull says that sive form. The relation between ideas and in Griffiths’s televised works the audience is experience is an issue that is both refracted ‘able to become involved to some extent with through the form of Griffiths’s highly theo - the experience and analysis of a number of retical dialogues and is often the very issue differing characters’, instead of ‘looking in being addressed in his narratives, pointing on the total event’ as in the theatre.47 towards the disparity between the high

284 http://journals.cambridge.org Downloaded: 18 Dec 2012 IP address: 134.225.69.52 theoretical development of the New Left and would enhance his bargaining power when dealing with television’. the lack of collective engagement in militant 3. In an interview for Plays and Players (April 1972), action during the 1970s, and the question of p. 83, Griffiths states, ‘It’s in television that I think as a how useful a theoretical critique of strategy political writer, I want to be, because very large numbers of people, who are not accessible in any other way, are is while it remains detached from action. accessible in television.’ Cited in Janet Wolff, Steve As an obviously constructed form free Ryan, Jim McGuigan, and Derek McKiernan, ‘Problems from certain constraints of verisimilitude, of Radical Drama: the Plays and Productions of Trevor Griffiths’, in F. Barker, J. Coombes, P. Hulme, D. Mus- the studio also allows greater socio-political selwhite and R. Osborne, ed., Literature, Society, and the analysis than a socially extended naturalistic Sociology of Literature: Proceedings of the Conference held at mode. The ‘realism’ of Griffiths’s scenarios is the University of Essex, July 1976, p. 133–53. 4. Trevor Griffiths, Preface to Through the Night and constantly under negotiation as tensions bet- Such Impossibilities (London: Faber, 1977), p. 7. ween political debate and the interpersonal 5. This canon of drama includes works such as Up narratives that contain them are evident and the Junction (Wednesday Play, BBC1, 3 November 1965), Cathy Come Home (Wednesday Play, BBC1, 16 November the competing imperatives of intervention 1966) and Edna the Inebriate Woman (Play for Today, BBC1, and reflection are in flux. The dichotomy of 21 October 1971). socio-political analysis and the represen ta - 6. In ‘Who Framed Theatre? The “Moment of Change” in British TV Drama’, New Theatre Quarterly, XV, tion of individual experience is kept active No. 1 (Feb. 1999), p. 58–74, MacMurraugh-Kavanagh by Griffiths in his explorations of the socialist and Lacey detail how audiences grew increasingly dis - subject; the intimacy of the television studio satisfied with the ‘artificiality’ of studio drama after the advent of the Loach–Garnett filmed mode. mode enables a closer focus on the personal, 7. Interview on The Late Show, BBC2, January 1992 – felt dimension that was an important consid - the day before The Gulf Between Us opened at West York- eration for the New Left both in terms of shire Playhouse. 8. Trevor Griffiths, ‘Countering Consent: an Inter- understanding changes in class conscious- view with Jon Wyver’, in F. Pike, ed., Ah! Mischief: the ness and in reassessing the category of the Writer and Television (London: Faber, 1982), p. 38. individual in Marxism in the post-Stalin era. 9. Of the film scripts that he wrote in the 1980s only Reds (1981) and Fatherland (1986) were produced. Contradictions between political commit - 10. MacMurraugh-Kavanagh and Lacey, p. 72. ments and personal feelings are emphasized 11. Raymond Williams, Keywords: a Vocabulary of and there is a continual dialectical move ment Culture and Society (London: Fontana, 1983), p. 117. 12. Loach interview with Jeremy Isaacs on Face to between structural and humanist levels in Face, BBC2, 19 September 1994. both dialogic form and content. While critics 13. In Griffiths’s televised dramas during the 1970s have pointed to the critical distance estab- Jack Shepherd was cast as William Waite in All Good Men, Antonio Gramsci in Occupations, Dr Pearce in lished within much studio drama, filming Through the Night (Play for Today, BBC1, 2 December techniques that invite our alignment and 1975), and in the title role in Bill Brand (Thames TV, empathy with different characters are fre qu - 7 June–16 August 1976). 14. Andrew Milner, Class (London: Sage, 1999), p. 28. ently used, but Griffiths’s recurrent strategy 15. Another Griffiths text which explores the poten - of presenting the contradictory flaws within tial of political parties is the eleven-part series Bill Brand every character’s approach in his strongly (Thames TV, 7 June–16 August 1976), about a young Trotskyist’s experiences as a Labour MP. dialectical dramas means that there is no 16. Pleasence acted with the Birmingham Rep and obvious solution to the dilemmas presented, Bristol’s Old Vic Company, as well as on Broadway and his texts remain open. alongside Laurence Olivier, and on the London fringe before turning his attention to a screen career in the mid- 1950s. He took many roles in Armchair Theatre, as well as 1956 Notes and References important dramas such as Nineteen Eighty-Four ( ) and the popular series The Adventures of Robin Hood (ITV, 1. Mike Poole and John Wyver, Powerplays: Trevor 1955–60). Griffiths in Television (London: BFI Publishing, 1984), p. 7. 17. Cited in Michael Patterson, Strategies of Political 2. This information is from an interview with Theatre: Post-War British Playwrights (Cambridge: Camb - Griffiths conducted on 8 May 1979 by Edward Braun. In ridge University Press, 2003), p. 67. Braun’s chapter on Griffiths in George W. Brandt, ed., 18. MacMurraugh-Kavanagh and Lacey, p. 67–8. British Television Drama (Cambridge: Cambridge The line quoted was a slogan of the May 1968 Paris up - University Press, 1981), p. 56, Braun summarizes that risings. Griffiths told him, ‘he had already reached the point 19. Ibid., p. 67. where . . . he saw writing for the stage largely as the 20. Trevor Griffiths, Collected Plays for Television necessary means of sustaining a reputation which (London: Faber and Faber, 1988), p. 68–9.

285 http://journals.cambridge.org Downloaded: 18 Dec 2012 IP address: 134.225.69.52 21. Ibid., p. 67. Purser, ‘Dennis Potter’, chapter in George Brandt, ed., 22. Ibid., p. 41. British Television Drama (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer - 23. MacMurraugh-Kavanagh and Lacey, p. 70. sity Press, 1981). 24. Ibid., p. 72. 35. In The Intimate Screen: Early British Television 25. Jacob Leigh discusses the difficulties of com mu - Drama (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 123, nicating certain necessary political information while Jason Jacobs discusses in depth the issues surrounding retaining the sense that characters might ‘walk off by tele vision’s associations with intimacy, and points out themselves’, beyond the camera frame, in The Films of that the ‘“intimate” aspects of television drama – close- Ken Loach: Art in the Service of People (London: Wall- up acting, its interpretation and observation by the pro- flower Press, 2002) p. 12–13. ducer, and the close-up as the primary style of 26. Trevor Griffiths (1982), p. 39. visualization – were really expressions of the limited 27. Trevor Griffiths (1988), p. 50. critical thinking about television, rather than the actual 28. Ibid., p. 56–7. limits of the medium’. 29. Ibid., p. 53. 36. Ibid., p. 122. 30. Eugene Lunn, Marxism and Modernism: an His- 37. Ibid., p. 129. torical Study of Lukács, Brecht, Benjamin, and Adorno 38. Ibid., p. 122. (London: Verso, 1985), p. 87. 39. Trevor Griffiths (1988), p. 98. 31. Trevor Griffiths (1982), p. 39. 40. Ibid., p. 103. 32. Dorrian Lambley, ‘In Search of a Radical Dis- 41. Ibid., p. 39. course for Theatre’, New Theatre Quarterly, VIII, No. 29 42. MacMurraugh-Kavanagh and Lacey, p. 64. (Feb. 1992), p. 42. 43. Ibid., p. 65. 33. Michael Kenny, The First New Left: British Intel - 44. Ibid., p. 118. lectuals after Stalin (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 45. Ibid. 1995) p. 70–1. 46. John Bull, New British Political Dramatists (London: 34. Paul Madden, interview in Complete Programme Macmillan, 1984), p. 138. Notes for a Season of British Television Drama 1959–1973, 47. Ibid., p. 138–9. held at the National Film Theatre, 11–24 October 1976 48. Times Educational Supplement, 25 June 1976, cited (London: British Film Institute, 1976), cited in Philip in John Bull, New British Political Dramatists.

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