Plays
and Players, 1978
There is nothing revolutionary, barely radical, in Christopher Fry’s
treatment of women and witchcraft—and that is what The
Lady’s Not For Burning is basically about.
It is, for example, quite unlike Caryl Churchill’s Vinegar
Tom, set in a similar period (also poetic in idiom and image), and showing
how superstition, religious bigotry and economic repression were consciously
cultivated methods of sexual oppression. But
Fry’s play was far from as predictable as my prejudices (about the religiously
biased verse drama of the 40s) had misled me to believe.
It is unusual for a start in using the style and form of drawing-room
comedy for its 15th-century setting and subject matter. And doing so
with a whimsical charm that is subtle, seductive and almost successful in
suggesting how little things have changed.
The tone, however, is ironic not angry—compatible with Fry’s
Christian world-view rather than Churchill’s radical socialism.
Or perhaps it was more Eileen Atkins’ portrayal of the ‘witch’
Jennet Jourdemayne than the text itself that made modern allusions from the
medieval material. For just her
auburn, wildly-Afro’d hair suggested a liberated 70s lady (most unladylike).
With a pre-Raphaelite look about her, she also communicated intellect,
intelligence and self-confident defiance. And
the set of her shoulders, her physical bearing suggested a ‘feminist
stance.’ All in character, and
provocatively out of context.
Certainly, despite the light and mock that is made (and the play is
Shakespearean in its leavening of comic relief, the production often on the edge
of the banana skin), the fact remains that she is regarded as dangerous and is
destined to burn at the stake. Charged
with turning an old tramp into a dog (!), her offence is obviously nothing more
than an individualism and nonconformity—god and the forces of law and order
forbid. She, the victim, is sad,
but resigned to her fate (she would have to be other than she is to be saved):
her persecutor is flummoxed by her ‘niceness’ (how inconvenient not
to have an ugly, haggy, warty stereotype to scapegoat), but set-jawed in his
determination to do that a male-chauvinist-upholder-of-social-mores-man’s
gotta do, however uncomfortable the corset of his hypocrisy.
That in itself is a statement about society, more revealed than concealed
by Fry’s wit. ‘Has death become the fashionable way to live?’
for example. Or ‘The day of judgement is tonight.’ Or ‘I t’s unwise to tempt providence with humor.’
Or ‘How does that strike you? (Pause) It takes a complete sentence.’
Or ‘Where am I now? Between
the past and the future where you were before.’
Or from Robert Eddison’s beautifully ethereal chaplain: ‘Life is so full of diversity, I lose sight of eternity in
the passing moment,’ his ‘life propelled by the dream of having
nightmares.’ Fry’s language is
not rhetorical, but rhapsodical, his turn of phrase piquant.
The play, within its terms of reference, effectively stands the social
order on its head. So while Jennet is condemned, seemingly doomed, Thomas Mendip
(Derek Jacobi as sardonic social commentator), suffering from suicidal
self-condemnation and depression about the impossibility of changing the world,
is damned if he can get himself hanged at the public’s expense.
(Murder doesn’t interest the magistrate, but innocent witchcraft
does!). That irony is followed
fully and funnily through the play. And there is a beautiful scene in the second act in which
they speak their minds in duet soliloquy—confessing their love and expressing
their existential anguish.
Surrounding this sober centrepiece is a merry-go-round of love unrequited
(a pair of tweedledee, tweedledum brothers falling in and out of love with the
same unattainable women and knocking about like Laurel and Hardy); love betrayed
(with listening at keyholes, lovers eloping, drunken louts locked in cellars);
justice performed and perverted (with Michael Dennison’s blustering magistrate
suitably duped, alas and alacking and dabbing at damp eyes).
But the story is basically one of falling in love and living happily ever
after to the strains of everybody loves a lover.
And by the end, the social order is back on its feet, even though
‘Justice’ turns a blind eye while Thomas and Jennet escape to elope.
‘I love you,’ says Thomas, ‘but the world’s not changed.’
And on that resigned, reactionary note, Fry leaves his lovers to run away
into their romantic sunset. This
Prospect production was low-key, but resonant.
--Catherine Itzin
THE
LADY’S NOT FOR BURNING by Christopher Fry.
Presented by the Prospect Theatre Company at the Old Vic on 3 July 1978.
Directed by George Baker, designed by Sally Gardner, lighting by Keith
Edmundson, music by Donald Fraser.
Richard, MICHAEL THOMAS; Thomas
Mendip, DEREK JACOBI; Alizon Elliot, KATE NICHOLLS; Nicholas Devize, CLIVE
ARRINDELL; Margaret Devize, BRENDA BRUCE; Humphrey Devize, OZ CLARKE; Hebbie
Tyson, MICHAEL DENNISON; Jennet Jourdemayne, EILEEN ATKINS; Chaplain, ROBERT
EDDISON; Tappercoom, JOHN SAVIDENT; Matthew Skipps, RONNIE STEVENS