The Habit of Art

I don't really know why, but i sort of had this feeling i wouldn't like The Habit of Art, Alan Bennett's play about a fictional meeting between the composer Benjamen Britten, nervous about his new opera Death in Venice, and lascivious poet W.H (Wystan) Auden - living in indulgent squalor in Oxford in the early 1970s, which is currently running at the National. well, as it turned out, i was wrong, totally wrong - i really enjoyed it, so much so that i even tried not to flinch/freak out/violently bash her when next to me my mother's gaffawingly appreciative laughter rang out seemingly 75 million decibels louder than anyone else's in the auditorium - i could actually see that she had a point. and she's seen it 5 times. seriously. it's still funny apparently.

The structure is a play within a play - usually a construct that has the propensity to grate, but here it works well because there's space to mull on concepts beyond the subject of a single play about the meeting of the two men. To explain a bit better, the 'actors' are on set, together with the stage manager, playwright et al rehearsing a play about the aforementioned fictional meeting between Britten and Auden - a meeting supposedly interrupted by the entrance of Humphrey Carpenter, interviewing Auden for the BBC, and a local rent boy hired by Auden. The reunion between Auden and Britten is twenty or so years after they collaborated on several operas and films etc, the last of which was Paul Bunyan (1949). Britten has come to seek advice, solace and reassurance from Auden. During this meeting you learn as much about their personalities as the relationship between poetry and music, ageing and creative virility, differing expressions of homosexuality, maturing relationships with art, and how hard habits are to change - both in art and life. The introduction of a narrator to the play being staged, in the form of Humphrey Carpenter (who went on to write the biographies of the two men), brings the concept of biography (as art, as fiction, as fact, as history) into effect - one of the pivotal points upon which the play turns. but this concept is only something that is fully explored through the post-modernist construct - ie when the play within the play breaks off.

The presence of the stage manager (Frances de la Tour) and the play's author (Elliott Levey) plus various other stage hands on stage mean that the actors playing Auden, Britten, Carpenter and the rent boy (Richard Griffiths, Alex Jennings, Adrian Scarborough and Stephen Wright) can break away from their conversations and discuss their relationships with each other. It's in this rehearsal time that exploration of the concepts of biography, creativity, homosexuality, love, theatre and performance really develop as the actors ask questions about their characters, or the cultural, historical and political context, and each person tries to accurately inhabit and present their character. The audience are thus complicit in the theatrical exploration of the nuances, implication and significance of the dialogue between the two men, but also understand more about what it is to perform, to act, to inhabit someone who lived, to create a world that explores people, concepts etc - parallel almost to the work of a biographer, or playwright.

I'm not sure if i'm making it seem complicated, but multitasking isn't my forte and i have my father watching TV on one side of me, my mother listening to the radio on the other and i've also been trying to chat to my sister in Argentina on skype, and i've also quaffed half a bottle or so of wine over lunch, so over-complication seems likely... still, in the main, it's very easy to watch, and very funny and sharp, and so interesting on so many levels - the import and intrigue of which which slowly sink in as you watch, but continue to play on your mind long after the curtain's dropped.

I completely recommend booking tickets to watch a live broadcast at cinemas across the country on April 22 as the (extended) run has completely sold out.