Exactly fifty years ago, a then 24-year-old director called Peter Hall, fresh from Cambridge and already running the Arts Theatre, found a play on his desk. Donald Albery, the West End producer, had sent it to him – “he informed me,” said Hall, “that he could persuade no actor to be in it. Many luminaries – John Gielgud and Alec Guinness among them – had refused. No director would direct it. The play was still running in a tiny theatre in Paris and Samuel Beckett had now re-written it in English. Albery wondered if I (and I was clearly his last resort) would like to do the English-language world premiere.”
Hall did, and the rest has become theatrical history. The play was Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, one of the iconic plays of the last century. Not that it was initially welcomed: “a really remarkable piece of twaddle”, was critic Bernard Levin’s overnight verdict. But the play overcame that hostility, and became that rare thing: a talking point.
For Hall, “The play changed my life. It brought me the friendship of Tennessee Williams and the right to direct his plays in London. It brought me in the post a new play by an unknown author who thought that I might like to direct him. The play was Pinter’s The Birthday Party.”
Today, Hall directs the play for the 4th time – at the Bath Theatre Royal, where he now has an annual residency, and will also be opening a new production of Shaw’s You Never Can Tell in rep with it tonight. But while the Shaw play – starring Edward Fox and Diana Quick – already has a future life pencilled in with a national tour scheduled, Godot can go no further than Bath.
Comments Hall, “It is bitterly disappointing that we will not be able to celebrate the anniversary of the play with some performances at the Arts Theatre in London, where it started. But from September 1 this year the rights of the play — and indeed most of the Beckett canon — will be owned jointly by the Barbican Arts Centre in London and the Gate Theatre in Dublin. Sadly, these two organisations, with the blessing of the Beckett Estate, have prevented us from performing Godot in London after our season in Bath.”
Apparently, he explains, “there are plans for a Centenary Festival of Beckett’s work to be staged at the Barbican in April 2006. We simply wanted our production to run for a celebratory two weeks in London in a 300-seat theatre, but that, the Barbican believes, will damage the takings for its production. The Royal Court, home to Sam for so long, is, it appears, also penalised by this situation and not allowed to present any of his plays either. I wonder what Sam would have said …”
But Hall’s ambitions may have also been thwarted by another, equally upsetting fact: that the Arts is now boarded up. The landlords have even expressed their wish to tear it down.
Two different kinds of commercial realities are at play here: real estate and theatrical estates. And money, sadly, still talks louder than art. But art will survive longer than money that has a nasty habit of running out. Hall may be understandably bitter; but his legacy of having given this play its first start in life will live forever.
