Emlyn Williams (1905–1987), the Welsh actor and playwright, is probably best remembered for two plays, Night Must Fall (1935) and The Corn is Green (1938), in which he starred, and for his two excellent one-man shows, an impersonation of Charles Dickens’s dramatic readings from his novels and an account of Dylan Thomas Growing Up.
He can be seen on film as a very camp Caligula in Josef von Sternberg’s unfinished I, Claudius (1937). He wrote and directed the film The Last Days of Dolwyn (1949). He also wrote two autobiographies, published in 1961 and 1973, which were unusually frank about his own bisexuality.
Scandal has always been popular with the public in real life and in fiction. Accolade, an entertaining, if not always convincing, psychological thriller, dates from 1950, an era when the Lord Chamberlain (in his role of Censor) could decide what was allowed on the stage.
Will Trenting, a famous novelist, a Nobel Prize Winner, is about to go to Buckingham Palace to receive his knighthood from King George VI when a scandal breaks and he faces public disgrace and, almost certainly, prison. A blackmailer has photographs of him having sex with a 14-year-old girl (whom he thought to be in her twenties).
Trenting’s sordid novels have always been notable for their uncanny insight into the lower depths of society, and the reason they have been so persuasive is that they have always been based on his first-hand experience. He has lived a promiscuous double life with regular visits to a brothel above a public house in the East End.
Williams’s theme is we all have something to be ashamed about. Accolade, which took him longer to write than any of his other works, is not as razor sharp and as provocative as it once was and needs editing. There is too much unnecessary coming and going.
Ayden Callaghan is not convincing as Trenting, who leads a Jekyll and Hyde existence and is attracted to disreputable people. Honeysuckle Weeks plays his loyal wife, who has known all along his true character and has accepted it.
Narinder Samra, as the blackmailer, a miserable failed author who is envious of Trenting’s success, gives a very exaggerated and stylized performance. He seems to be in a different production to everybody else, a villain for a 1920s expressionistic drama.
Trenting also has two unlikely brash cockney friends who laugh very loudly in a vulgar way. The scene when he attempts to make a confession to his very young son would be more moving if it were played by a genuine child actor. The best performances are by Jamie Hogarth as Trenting’s valet-chauffeur-secretary and by David Phelan as his publisher.
Sean Mathias directs this touring production in two quite different styles, realistic and expressionistic; and they don’t gel. Trenting is discovered in a Perspex funnel, as if he were an exhibit in a horror movie. His son pulls the curtain across the stage between scenes in a meaningful way. And, finally, most dramatically of all, the living room set folds up and closes in on itself, entrapping the actors, ready to be packed for the next touring date.