You were best to call them generally...

After my visit to York last week, I was spurred into action by Maurice Crichton's comments about the way Benson's company might have reflected Shakespeare's own, with specific roles marked for particular players. His interest in the range of roles played by actors within the repertory, has led me to think about how to start thinking about the actor's perspective of the company. 

I'd wrestled before with trying to catalogue actors who were part of the company across the years of its existence, and had been defeated because I didn't know what I would find most useful and in trying to record 'everything' I quickly became overwhelmed by it. However last week's conversation led me to think much more about the kinds of information that I actually need to know, the best way to document it and and how it could be made usefully accessible. 

Midweek, something did suggest itself as providing a potentially useful sample - a kind of 'snapshot' of the company across its many iterations.   J.C. Trewin includes a table as an appendix to his book which covers the 1900 Lyceum season and the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust has cast lists for all the productions at Stratford.  Looking at these creates a possible starting point.  Hopefully, then, by supplementing this with reviews and advertising, it might be possible to create comparable data for the  'missing' years when the Company wasn't in Stratford, and even potentially extend that into information about the North (B) and South (C) companies.

I tried to think about what information that would be the most use to anyone who was sufficiently interested to look at it.  As well as knowing what roles any actor played, it might be useful to see if any 'career progression' could be noticed and to note when people joined, left or returned to the company.  When I began to look closely at the SBT material, it was clear that there were also a number of 'one role' people each season - could they be locals, recruited for the Festival, rather than regular members of the company? And then there are the doubling 'names' - Walter Plinge and F.Anney being, famously, the ones most employed, although  M.Argate, B. Righton and (my personal favourite) L,Oakall  all appear on cast lists! (There's also good chapter in 'The Dillen' about local supers -there are some fabulous bits about the theatre and FRB in there, which I will return to in a later post!)

I've used Microsoft Excel to create a spread sheet with three separate pages, using the same information slightly differently on each. The main page is arranged in listings for each season to allow for searching across a specific production or year; the second focuses on actors in alphabetical order with their chronologically arranged roles across the years to show career progression and continuity, and the third lists the 'extra' one-role actors and doublers.  

After two days of pretty solid work - and a steep learning curve as far as Excel is concerned! - I've reached 1906 and am already noticing interesting patterns. Benson purchased what was basically an 'old fashioned' stock touring company from Walter Bentley and the structure of that seems to have remained largely unchanged, with actors employed for a specific 'line' of roles.  Some years are 'watershed' years with a high turnover within the company - 1900/01 being the main one because of the financial fallout from the London season - but there is a surprising amount of stability within the Company, generally provided by a backbone of  actors like George Weir, H.O. Nicholson and Arthur Whitby.  

Casting for events like the 'Histories' and the 'eternity' Hamlet in 1901 show a challenging range of roles which were out of the usual rep.  And I had no idea that there were so many characters called 'Balthazar' across Shakespeare's plays. Usually played by an actress, poor Leah Hanman (who was also the Company's resident Puck) must have had to keep her wits about her to remember which Balthazar she was playing each day!

As the Festival grew, and the number of performances increased, there are 'guest' returners for specific parts - Genevive Ward for Volumnia, Alice Denvil and Eleanor Aickin for Mistress Quickly - and later on I know there are many guest appearances by former Bensonians - Henry Ainley as Orlando, Matheson Lang and his wife Hutin Briton as the Macbeths etc - and guest 'stars' - Constance Collier, Lena Ashwell and Ellen Terry.  These 'non typical' repertory weeks will certainly need to be supplemented by material from touring reviews and programmes as it would be more useful to me to know who played these roles on a day-to-day basis

Programme from Theatre Royal Belfast 1899 

I don't know, without that conversation last week, whether any of this would have occurred to me. As it is, it has come at a perfect point - I'm now desperate to 'get going'  - and amassing background material like this can only be a useful occupation! Being 'accepted' as a student again (my official ID card arrived this week and my log-in details work on academic publishing websites) has also made me feel I once again have the right to spend hours pouring over all this stuff and can stop feeling guilty about it!

And this is only one of several things I jotted down after speaking to Maurice - a timely reminder that sharing knowledge and hearing others' opinions can only improve my thought processes!

Programme from Theatre Royal Belfast 1899 

(Hopefully, next week's post will be accompanied by a link to the spreadsheet - once I've finished its first iteration and figured out how to convert it to Google Sheets!)

Make me merry, York!

Today - August 1st - is Yorkshire Day: highly appropriate for a blog post about my dash down to York this week.  Tempted by the prospect of seeing two Bensons brought to life on stage, I decided to make a proper trip of it, booked a B&B near the Theatre Royal and a direct train from Sunderland.

I love York.  It is a city I am very familiar with and which never fails to delight and York Theatre Royal is one of my very favourite theatres.  Apart from its history and quirky magnificence, I love the fact that it feels like a theatre with its roots very firmly in the community it serves.  The play I went to see - 'His Last Report' - was a perfect example of this, telling a local story - that of the social conscience of the Rowntree family, using a huge cast made up of the people of York to tell it, alongside two professional actors.

In less competent hands, this could have become a piece of self-serving historical nostalgia - rather like one of the popular historical pageants referenced in the text - but the material had been carefully shaped, structured and staged to create something that was both impressive and thought-provoking, making some searing points about poverty - both financial and cultural - then and now.  The play made excellent use of its theatricality to link the past and the present and to underline the fact that the kind of responsibility Seebohm Rowntree felt for his workers is something still sadly lacking in much of today's commerce and industry. 

Of course, my main motivation was to see how the Bensons were used as part of this storytelling.  I knew of Brynhild's employment as a gym instructress from Catherine Hindson's blog post from March last year: The Rowntree Society | Brynhild Benson: Star of the Cocoa Works Stage - The Rowntree Society and was excited to see how she would come across on stage. Played with exuberant energy - and formidable gymnastic skills - by Christie Barnes, Brynhild emerged as someone brimming with enthusiasm and that kind of zeal which was a very recognisable Benson-family trait. Her excitement at the prospect of introducing Morris Dancing to the Rowntree workers was tangible!

I had wondered how FRB could fit into the plot and how he would be represented - what 'take' the researchers and writers would have decided on to make him part of the story.  I admit to a little concern that there might be some 'hamming up' to create 'old fashioned' acting, but I need not have worried.  Frank, as played by Maurice Crichton, hit the perfect note between skilful theatricality and poignancy and really did Benson justice!  The decision to show the end of King Lear deliberately echoed the scenes of child mortality which had been the motive for Seebohm Rowntree's actions earlier in the play, and provided a real moment of reflection, played as far downstage as possible with the youngest members of the cast as a rapt onstage audience of school-children.  

Review: His Last Report | YorkMix

Out of role as Lear, Benson's lines also rang true as he expressed his belief in Shakespeare's plays as something alive and life-enhancing (and as a former English and drama teacher I wholly endorsed his views on Shakespeare in Education!)  It was a pleasure and a privilege to see that such care had been taken to present him as a believable character and to position his ideas within the context of socially progressive movements of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries which he would have recognised. 

Having the opportunity to meet Maurice afterwards and discuss - at length! - Benson and the Bensonians was an extra treat and I left the theatre - at a rather late hour, it must be confessed! - with a sense of renewed enthusiasm and motivation and the feeling that I, too, must do justice to Benson.  

Wednesday morning gave me a chance to browse the bookshops - both new and second-hand - before going to see my second play of the trip.  The Grand Opera House in York is an old music hall venue, now run by ATG, which bares some similarities to the Tyne Theatre.  A gorgeous Victorian auditorium is hidden inside an unprepossessing exterior - you could easily walk past it and miss it!  

'A Man for All Seasons' is a gem of a play and I have always wanted to see Martin Shaw on stage and never quite managed it before.  He is now eighty years old, incredibly, but his energy and commitment to this mammoth role was unwavering and he could easily have passed as someone much younger. He has an incredible stage presence as well. 

The supporting cast - particularly Gary Wilmot as Everyman and the wonderful Edward Bennett as Cromwell - gave this a real 'ensemble' feel rather than the 'star vehicle' it might have been, with an impressively clever set and some well- directed choices.  I left the theatre walking on air.

I couldn't help thinking of Frank in his seventies, still touring, touring, touring and the audiences that would have turned out, perhaps remembering him as a much younger man but grateful for another chance of seeing him on stage.

A combination of serendipity and impulsiveness have enriched this week -  a timely reminder that I need to seize chances as they arise and not find excuses to let them pass!  (And on the way back to catch the train home, Bettys came up with a bag of Fat Rascals and some tomato chutney to keep the York merriment going just a little longer!)