From time to time I have tweaked Lisa Rullsenberg, in the best possible taste, of course, because she is rather amusing in the Falstaffian sense of being 'not only witty in herself but the cause that wit is in others'. Now I am even more in her debt because she made me laugh out loud by pointing me to the following link which is a post in something called the Encore Theatre Magazine on the subject of the 50th anniversary of the Royal Court Theatre. The writer, an impeccably Left-wing 'Dave or Davina Spart' produces a tolerable impersonation of a retired colonel from Tunbridge Wells reading in his 'Daily Torygraph' that they're letting queers in the army! The writer is appalled, shocked, horrified and disgusted that the Royal Court has invited Sir Tom Stoppard (I mean to say, dammit, the fella's a Knight of the Realm, whatever next?) to preview his latest play Rock 'n' Roll. Stoppard is dismissed as "politically conservative" and a writer who "flatters his audience", as opposed, presumably, to the normal run of Royal Court writers who insult their audiences. Even worse, according to this latter-day Spartist, Stoppard "is a member of the establishment, a theatrical knight [who] rarely, if ever, engages with the world. We are not expecting sociology, but he has the kind of aloofness from the present that the Royal Court has always detested". The unknown writer goes on to list a number of worthier playwrights who should have had the honour on this auspicious anniversary year but, alas, I have never heard of any of them except Caryl Churchill, two of whose woeful and utterly forgettable plays I once had the misfortune to sit through.
The Royal Court has always struck me, on the base of an admittedly flimsy knowledge (going to see Stoppard's play just recently was my very first visit), as an organisation that was inherently ridiculous and verging on the ludicrous. I can imagine Stoppard's quiet, inward chuckle at the deliciousness of the joke in being invited to open his play there of all places. Also, it has provided me with a sly smile through the years that the one playwright with whom the Royal Court is indelibly linked, John Osborne, turned out to be more Right-wing than the current leader of the BNP. All of which goes to prove that the further reaches of Left-wing nuttery are hand-in-hand with their Right-wing brothers, and that the people who run the Royal Court are a bunch of ninnies!
Comments