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Theatre Writings
By Kenneth Tynan
Nick Hern Books
£20
278 pages
Dateline: 24th March, 2007
It was great to be able to have the opportunity to congratulate Nick
Hern personally on the publication of this book and its twin sister,
Profiles.
Mr Hern has filled an inexplicable gap in the theatrical library, which
meant that for some years no book of the writings of Kenneth Tynan was
in print. The publisher may well get rich (or at least relatively so)
on the back of these books and, for the service that he provides to
the public by presenting them, deserves to.
As this book so ably demonstrates, Tynan was a genius of a theatre
critic who started writing well if rather colourfully when still a teenager
and swiftly moved on to become a legend while he was at the Observer.
The selections had been made and are introduced by the ideal person
for the job, Tynan's biographer Dominic Shellard.
This book contains over 100 of his reviews, together with significant
opinion pieces about his many bugbears. This was an opinionated and
very cultured man who cared deeply about theatre and that shines through
in both his positive and his negative pieces. In fact, his high points
are generally the demolitions.
As one reads Writings, Tynan's views on what should and shouldn't
happen on a stage become absolutely apparent. He was soon sick of Loamshire
with its safe and remarkably dull drawing-room comedies and desperate
for something exciting to happen in theatre. Constantly in his earlier
writings, he bemoans the lack of adventure in British writing while
lauding American musicals and the Europeans.
In 1955 and 1956 his wish was fulfilled when Waiting for Godot
was closely followed by Look Back In Anger and the arrival of
the Berliner Ensemble sadly bereft of its founder, Bertolt Brecht, who
died just before the inaugural British trip.
There is a fair possibility that without Tynan's personal efforts,
and those of his rival at the Sunday Times, Harold Hobson, the sea change
in British theatre would not have occurred. Their influence at the time
was amazing, like that of the New York Times today, and their successors
today can only marvel and aspire to such heights.
Tynan liked riding hobby horses and other subjects that were close
to his heart included a belief that censorship, and the Lord Chamberlain,
should be abolished, and the constant promotion of a National Theatre
that was needed in order to resurrect the British stage. The latter
eventually helped that cause but took Tynan away from criticism forever
when he became Olivier's right-hand man.
The period covered by Tynan's Writings was one in which some
of the greatest actors of the last century were appearing on stage together.
This led to a significant degree of bias and prejudice since Tynan worshipped
Olivier, the man with whom he was so closely associated at the National
Theatre when it was finally set up. However, at the same time he had
far less respect for Gielgud or Richardson and absolutely none at all
for Olivier's wife, Vivien Leigh, whom he constantly damned as nothing
more than "sweet".
The pleasure in this book is in the quality of the writing as much
as the critical opinion. Tynan himself believed that theatre criticism
was an art form that should be of interest to posterity, as much as
to readers who wanted to go to the theatre the following week. In some
ways, his rich style is reminiscent of another man of culture, Neville
Cardus, who brought to cricket and music what Tynan does to theatre.
This book is not so much recommended as required and there is no doubt
that anybody with an interest in theatre should have a copy of Ken Tynan's
Writings on their bookshelves. It is rather early but put it
on the Christmas gift list now, unless you love someone (yourself?)
enough to buy it sooner.
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