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The Royal Court Theatre 1968-1975: Fraught and Fruitful Years

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The Royal Court Theatre 1968-1975: Fraught and Fruitful Years i The Royal Court Theatre 1968-1975: Fraught and Fruitful Years S A Healy Doctor of Philosophy 2018 ii The Royal Court Theatre 1968-1975: Fraught and Fruitful Years Susan Ann Healy A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the University of Lincoln for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy February 2018 iii DECLARATION I declare that this thesis is my own work, and has not been submitted in substantially the same form for a higher degree elsewhere. Copyright © 2018 Susan Ann Healy All Rights Reserved iv Acknowledgements I am sincerely grateful for the guidance I received at the University of Lincoln, specifically from my supervisors Dr. Jacqueline Bolton, Dr. James Hudson and Professor Dominic Symonds. I am thankful for their intellectual support and their generosity in the time and care taken in responding to my work throughout the course of my PhD research. I would also like to extend my heartfelt thanks to Professor Mark O’Thomas of the University of Greenwich for his earlier involvement in my supervision and his encouragement and feedback as I launched my journey. I am grateful to the Fund for Women Graduates (FfWG) for their grant during the final year of this research, and the University of Lincoln for their award of a fees scholarship which partially enabled this research. I am appreciative of the time kindly provided by those who agreed to be interviewed and particularly grateful to Jim Haynes for making me so welcome in Paris. A very special thank you to Donald Howarth for his generosity in granting me access to his extensive personal archive and for having me in his home so frequently, and to Graham Whybrow for facilitating that access. Further thanks to others who buoyed me on my journey: Ronan Campbell, Sol Sato, Marianne and Roseby Enchill-Balogun, Maria Murphy, Michael Power, Fiona Flavin, Geraldine Aron, Valerie Ritchie, Dr. Priscilla Morris, Maria Teresa Zoppello and Jim Nolan. Very special mention must be made of Dr. Edwin (Monty) Passes and his family as this research would not have been possible without the help, encouragement, support and relentless kindness shown to me by the extended Passes clan ever since my arrival in London in 2014. Finally, to my own family: Tommy, Laura, David, James, Eoin, Jack and Lily and my parents, Aiden and Paula Healy, thank you for everything. This thesis is dedicated with love to my sister Kate Healy (1976-2015). v Abstract From the establishment of the English Stage Company at The Royal Court Theatre in 1956 through to the late 1960s, the Court was widely viewed as a champion of theatrical freedoms and progressive ideals, playing a decisive role in the abolition of censorship as exercised by the Lord Chamberlain until 1968. Narratives of the ensuing 1968-1975 period tend to recount an era when the Court fell out of step with contemporary developments in theatre, with blame frequently placed on intergenerational tensions between the Court’s established management and a band of emerging male English playwrights who claim to have been unsupported by the theatre at this time. This study goes against the received scholarly grain concerning these years at the Court, and maps an alternative reading of this narrative. This thesis provides evidence that the Court of the early 1970s experienced a time of significant seed-sowing, that these were years in which the Sloane Square institution experimented with alternative theatre and enthusiastically programmed subaltern and female playwrights, and that this was a move in- step with contemporaneous international trends in theatre. By revealing this understanding of events, the thesis contends that the artistic directorship of Oscar Lewenstein (1972-1975) was a direct reaction against an elitist culture at the Court and an institutional habitus which was rooted in and informed by the decline of the British Empire and a related fear of the foreign. This thesis proposes that the subsequent occlusion of this version of events is due in great part to the consistent and ongoing privileging of negative accounts of the period by the emerging young white male English playwrights of the era, over the more positive commentary provided by their subaltern and female counterparts who were empowered under Lewenstein’s aegis. vi Contents Declaration ..................................................................................................................... iii Acknowledgements ......................................................................................................... iv Abstract ............................................................................................................................. v Contents ............................................................................................................................ vi Introduction ............................................................................................................................ 1 I. Literature review .................................................................................................... 4 II. The need for a reassessment of the received narrative ......................................... 23 III. The need to examine the culture at the Court 1968-1975 .................................... 27 IV. Theoretical framework .......................................................................................... 29 i. Habitus ........................................................................................................ 29 ii. Postcolonialism ......................................................................................... 32 V. Methodology ......................................................................................................... 34 i. Archives ...................................................................................................... 34 ii Interviews .................................................................................................. 40 VI. Chapter breakdown ............................................................................................... 42 Chapter One: 1.0 Positioning the Royal Court on the theatrical landscape of 1968-1975 ............. 47 1.1 A reflection on criticism of the Court during this era ............................................... 48 1.2 The social and historical context .............................................................................. 50 1.3 The rise of alternative theatre ................................................................................... 53 1.4 The Court at a critical juncture ................................................................................. 63 1.5 The Court responds with the Theatre Upstairs and the Come Together Festival ...... 66 1.6 A consideration of ‘humanist’ plays programmed at the Court in this era ............... 74 1.7 A consideration of work by the ‘political’ playwrights programmed at the Court .. 81 1.8 Conclusion ................................................................................................................. 95 Chapter Two: 2.0 The impact of the decline of empire ...................................................................... 96 i. Post imperial tensions and anxiety in Britain ......................................... 96 ii. Social change is reflected in theatre ...................................................... 102 iii. Social change is reflected at the Court ................................................. 103 2.1 The Court’s power structure viewed via Bourdieu’s theory of habitus ................. 104 i. The Court’s institutional habitus ........................................................... 106 2.2 A fear of foreign influence within British society .................................................. 108 i. A fear of foreign influence mapped at the Court .................................. 109 2.3 American influences in British theatre ................................................................... 111 2.4 British culture focuses on empire era ..................................................................... 116 i. British theatres home in on empire ........................................................ 120 ii. The Court homes in on empire .............................................................. 121 2.5 The British class system under threat ..................................................................... 122 i. The Court as a middle-class institution .................................................. 126 ii. The working class at the Court ............................................................... 129 2.6 Racial tensions in British society ........................................................................... 131 i. The Court’s poor support for black writing in the 1960s ...................... 133 ii. Subaltern theatre and the Court, via the theories of Foucault ................ 135 2.7 A close consideration of Osborne’s ‘empire plays’ at the Court ........................... 136 i. Mapping commentary on empire in The Entertainer .............................. 137 ii. Mapping commentary on empire in A Patriot for Me ............................ 145 vii iii. Mapping commentary on empire in West of Suez .................................. 148 2.8 Conclusion .............................................................................................................. 152 Chapter Three: 3.0 Oscar Lewenstein, the outsider ...........................................................................
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