Yesterday saw two of the year’s more interesting, quirky prize-givings – and though it was a little weird that they took place just an hour apart on either side of the river, I got to both. The beleaguered Theatre Museum served one of its more useful functions as a theatrical social gathering place for the presentation of the Society for Theatre Research’s annual Theatre Book Prize. In the words of administrator Howard Loxton, “The Theatre Book Prize was founded to encourage more and better theatre publishing”, and he added, “it is not the big publishers who necessarily make the biggest contribution.”
He’s right: the two most prolific theatre publishers in the UK nowadays are small independents: Nick Hern Books and Oberon, the latter of whose The Coming of Godot made it onto the shortlist for the prize this year. But the actual award was taken by James Shapiro’s 1599: A Year in the Life of Shakespeare (published by Faber and Faber). Judge Ruth Leone wittily (and honestly) commented: “There are lots of books, including some with my name on their spines, which are a waste of tree. Then, every now and then, along comes a book for which it is worth chopping down an entire forest.” Shapiro’s fell into this category. She concluded, “I have been carrying this book around with me since I first bought it last year. It is probably the best book about Shakespeare, his life, his times and his adopted city that I have ever read.”
Then it was on to the National, where the Critics’ Circle gave a lunch to honour Alan Bennett and present him with their award for Distinguished Service to the Arts. In a typically self-deprecating acceptance speech – interrupted three times, in a moment that could have come from a Bennett play, by the announcements of the matinee performance about to begin in the Lyttelton downstairs – Bennett thanked the assembled throng for “being very well treated over the years – I’ve got off very lightly most of the time, and got away with it, really.” There was one critic, however, that he said he’s never had good relations with – “the one on my shoulder, the voice in my ear”. It was that critical voice, he admitted, that made certain passages of The Madness of George III unwatchable for him – he would have to dart out of the director’s box at back of the Lyttelton when they came around, in and out of the theatre like a French farce.
There are, he said, only five or fix things he’s written that he wouldn’t alter now: “Three or four of the Talking Heads, An Englishman Abroad, and latterly and wonderfully, The History Boys”. He paid tribute to how good the National has been to him, and particularly his relationship with Nicholas Hytner with whom Richard Eyre paired him for The Wind in Willows in 1990, since when he has worked with no one else. “To work here, you get time and consideration and space and everyone at every level is bending all their efforts to the production”.
He concluded by craving our indulgence for the future: “It’s a dangerous time as one gets older for a playwright: you’re boxed in by what you’ve done, people expect you to write a certain sort of play.”
