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Kenneth Tynan - A Life
By Dominic Shellard
399 pages
Published by Yale University Press at £25
Dateline: 9th November, 2003
"His reviews were seductive, alluring, appealing, erudite, outrageous
and funny, funny, funny. The apt quotations with which he sprinkled
his writings were bonuses, ones you'd never come across before, so you
were learning at the same time that you were laughing. These pieces
changed one's mood".
This is the verdict of the perhaps greatest victim of Kenneth Tynan's
Jekyll and Hyde character, his first wife Elaine Dundy. They are a couple
that one would love to meet at the dream dinner party.
It is Dominic Shellard's view that Ken Tynan was a great theatre critic.
He spends the greater part of this biography proving his point with
long extracts from key reviews. The remainder of Tynan's life is less
well covered and sometimes, this book can feel more like a social history
of Britain and its theatre in the fifties and sixties with particular
reference to Tynan's influence on it.
Few famous people can have had a more unusual start. The subject's
father led a double life with a family and a knighthood in Warrington
and another family, including young Ken, in Birmingham. This is enough
to breed insecurity in anybody.
After a degree at Oxford, the flamboyantly-dressed, stammering graduate
decided to make his way as an actor and director. By the age of 24 though,
he had already become a theatre critic on the Evening Standard regularly
mauling poor Vivien Leigh and Donald Wolfit (who actually sued him)
with tremendous style.
Within a year he was chief critic and, soon afterwards, joined the
Observer at a fortuitous time. After the War, British theatre had stagnated.
Tynan delighted in attacking the moribund upper-middle class, "Loamshire"
theatre of the early 50s. "Loamshire is a glibly codified fairy-tale
world, of no more use to the student of life than a doll's house would
be to a student of town planning ".
In 1956 the artistic world changed with a single play, John Osborne's
Look Back in Anger. The ideal critic to report such a revolution
was the left-wing young man at The Observer who produced "One of
the most famous theatre reviews in history".
Already he had built a healthy rivalry with the conservative Harold
Hobson at The Sunday Times that helped sales of both papers. The quality
and different styles of the two men's writing shine through even fifty
years later.
From there, after a sabbatical in New York, where he introduced Tennessee
Williams to Ernest Hemingway, Tynan satisfied a long-held ambition when
Olivier finally set up the National Theatre at the Old Vic. He was appointed
Literary Manager, dramaturg and general right-hand man to the future
lord. A full description of his duties, ranging from postboy to acting
artistic director, takes no fewer than 14 lines.
He spent ten years there, championing Brecht and trying to recreate
the vitality of the Royal Court and Stratford East. During this time,
he received no pay rise and was more often anguished than happy.
The coverage of the National years can be a little sketchy and the
chapters on the final period with Tynan as failing impressario and including
his second marriage, appropriately for a man suffering from emphysema,
are breathless. This time includes spanking, Oh Calcutta and
the pioneering TV "fuck"- all addressed by Shellard with puritannical
distaste.
After a life of battles with authority including the Lord Chamberlain
(the Government's censor) and the sinister anti-Communist SSIS (Senate
Internal Security Sub-committee) in America, Tynan eventually came to
an impecunious end in California.
The final conclusion is that Tynan was one of the great critics whose
work is now scandalously out of print. He was also a very complex man
whose private life is not always explored in the greatest depth. The
reason to buy this book though is for the reminders of wonderful writing
at a unique time in British Theatrical history.
Philip
Fisher
You
can buy Kenneth
Tynan: a Life from the BTG Bookstore at £18.56
Articles Indices:
Articles from 2004
Articles from 2003
Articles from 2002
Articles from 2001
Articles from 2000
Articles from 1999
Articles from 1998
Articles from 1997
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