These four lines are very important in the history of the Tower Theatre being the first ever spoken in a production by the then Tavistock Repertory company. The play was The Woman from Alfaqueque by the Quintero brothers, Joaquin and Serafin, natives of Seville who, starting in the late 1880s, wrote over two hundred plays . The play was not performed in Spanish however; it had been translated into English by Helen and Harley Granville Barker. For along with his famous Prefaces to Shakespeare, his book on a possible National Theatre, and another on the study of Drama, this is what the Granville Barkers did together after their marriage. They translated plays. Lots of them.
Richard Nelson’s Farewell to the Theatre deals with the strange lacuna in Granville Barker’s life when in 1916 he lived in Williamstown , Massachusetts waiting for his divorce , and that of his putative second wife (the American poet Helen Huntington) to come through. We are painted a picture of struggling exiles in an educational enclave, but these exiles do not bond together in mutual aid as they are all puzzled and a little bit scared by their respective fates .Harley is travelling around giving lectures to pay the bills, grappling with his own prospects and those of the theatre in general. His presence delights a few, surprises some and annoys, even threatens still others. As a performer of dramatic recitations Frank is happy to have someone to talk shop with, brother and sister Dorothy and Henry, while apparently delighted, fear that his presence will increase their isolation in the local community, and Beatrice is taken aback by his presence as she is conducting an affair with young student Charles Massinger.
Mysterious George appears to be a bit of a hanger on, hoping that something might metaphorically drop from the table in his general direction, although nothing much will drop from the real table unless he goes to the shops. It’s worth mentioning at this stage Max Batty’s wonderful stage concept which has the action almost floating in space and which the actors and the costumed stage management team changed scenery as though for characters in a life sized doll’s house. All the men and women merely players. It was complemented by Andy Peregrine’s magnificent lighting making large sections of the play look like one of the biblical paintings of Georges De La Tour. Just enough light to see the unhappiness. If we stay biblical, Harriet Scopes as Beatrice was the woman taken in adultery. Wonderfully embarrassed as the true reason for her presence becomes more obvious, she is however unable to drag herself away to safety, rooted to the spot by her passion for a younger man. Bold and vulnerable at the same time this was a mature portrayal which reflected the real Beatrice’s suffragist belief in the rights of women to be equal in every respect, including “misbehaviour” - not committing the mistake of making her a modern woman but a woman advanced for her time.
Annemarie Fearnley’s Dorothy seemed to be a contrasting figure but in reality she was also in thrall to her life’s great passion, just covering it in mourning black, her life thrown into a darker relief by the deception of her late husband and the subsequent and ongoing humiliation by the locals in the know. She was fiercely protective of her equally battered brother Henry, a nervy and sensitive Dean Brown who is not paranoid - they really are all out to get him. He can have his greatest wish, but it will probably destroy him. They were a moving and distracted pair who showed fear and desperation as they were backed into one of life’s corners. Adam Forbes’s George moved in and out of the action like a slightly ashamed snake, languidly having most things done for him, faking academic excellence and concern for Henry - “I wanted to stand up and shout at the man” (at Henry’s theatrical humiliation) he says - but of course did no such thing, knowing that Henry’s difficulty was George’s opportunity. Sam Macqueen’s character was the only American in the Stateside scenario, painting a nervous sketch of a gauche young man “I’m not a boy!” in awe of his professional idol (Barker) and his romantic idol (Beatrice) unaware of his own shortcomings in acting and of the realities of the war Granville Barker has just been observing. I thought this was a charming performance, pitched just right to catch youth among jaundiced experience. And there were a lot of smiles when at the end he had to be an American faking an English accent while acting as St George in the company’s homage to the Old English Mummer’s play.
He was undoubtedly happier than Michael Bettell’s Frank who couldn’t even remember why he had come to America in the first place and was distracted by his wife’s illness. His recitation from Pickwick was a comic highlight but mostly he was marked by a dignified and wholly believable humanity. I loved his plaid suit too, spot on as with all of Irena Pancer’s costuming.
At the centre of things was Jonathan Wober’s intelligent portrayal of the slightly bewildered Harley; a man struggling with the idea of turning his back on his old life and moving to a new one. We were shown Harley the man rather than Harley the theatrical legend, who (as he says about drama) wanted now to be rather than to do, to get rid of the staging and concentrate on his inner dialogue. He was not a great man here but a real one: “Everything I do, I feel like I’m waiting for it - whatever it is to be over”. John McSpadyen’s direction gave life and punch to a group of people who were not exactly having the time of their lives, recognising in Thoreau’s words that “the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation”, not starry contemplation - even if they are, or were, stars themselves.