“…’Twere well it were done quickly.”
The poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge called Macbeth Shakespeare’s “most rapid” play, and as Emma and I discussed in the podcast, the action certainly flies along. There is a very deliberate sense that events are running out of control, for at each stage in the plot the Macbeths act precipitously. The idea of time running ahead of them is established from the start – the announcement that the King and his company will stay with them catches them by surprise – Macbeth barely has time to get home before they are due to arrive and they can’t but be hastily prepared to host the court. Duncan staying with them immediately after they’ve learned of the witches prophesy also presents them with an unexpected opportunity; one that they’ve not had time to consider and which they must act on that very night.

In their acting to kill Duncan they obviously disrupt the normal sequence and pace of succession. When Duncan bestows his favour on Macbeth in making him the Thane of Cawdor, he tells him “I have begun to plant thee, and will labour/To make thee full of growing”. This would be the natural time scale, where Macbeth’s progress would be nurtured over time

Macbeth’s need to act fast is not only a practical one, it is also psychological. When he steels himself to do the deed quickly, he expresses the reflexive instinct not to want to look too closely at the fact of what he is doing. Indeed this urge to avoid thinking about his actions only accelerates: “From this moment/The very firstlings of my heart shall be/The firstlings of my hand. And even now,/To crown my thoughts with acts, be it thought and done.” His evil thoughts do not bear examining or arresting: “Strange things I have in head, that will to hand/Which must be acted, ere they be scanned.” 

Macbeth recognises the moral failure of his actions from the start – he cannot look clearly at himself for this would be to take responsibility: “To know my deed, ’twere best not know myself.” His disavowals suggest that he is trapped in a form of self-created trance. In one of her lectures on the play, Emma cited a mock modern court case that put the Macbeths on trial for murder in which they pleaded ‘diminished responsibility’ in their defense. Was Macbeth in the grip of a temporary madness? Or perhaps even of the controlling power of the witches?

After the relentless frenzy of Macbeth’s actions, Shakespeare suggests at the end of the play that the natural pace of time will be restored, when Malcolm proclaims that he will act judiciously “in measure, time and place.”

The Recruiting Officer
There is an additional richness in Our Country’s Good that comes from the parallels between its story and themes, and those in the play-within-the-play, The Recruiting Officer. The Recruiting Officer presents a satirical portrait of society in the country town of Shrewsbury, focussing particularly on the activities of several army officers whose mission is to recruit local men to serve in the army. Along the way officers don’t mind enjoying the hospitality of the local ladies, who in turn are seeking to recruit partners of their own. Although the play is a comedy of love and deception, like Our Country’s Good it also has serious things to say about social class, women’s position and prospects, and the realities of military service.

The many specific parallels between the plays begin with the simple fact that the Royal Marines sent to establish the colony in Our Country’s Good are of course recruits themselves. In fact a number of them do not appear to be happy that they have been selected for this challenging mission. By contrast to The Recruiting Officer, which is set in 1706 when the army were buoyed by a recent victory over the French, these officers have just suffered an historic defeat in America. It’s safe to say that morale is not high in the camp here. The fate of the convicts is also not dissimilar to the way that petty criminals were often impressed into the army – many are victims of trumped up charges or excessive sentencing.

Somewhat ironically the marines in Our Country’s Good express concerns about the specific choice of the play that the convicts are to perform. Ross and Tench, for example, are fear that the immorality of the officers on display in The Recruiting Officer could encourage insubordination or worse  in the company. The officers’ objections may partly be based on their understanding that The Recruiting Officer was notoriously candid in its references to sexual relationships, including overtones of homosexuality in the army, which may of course been too close to the bone for the service men.

Their assumptions about the immorality of the theatre may also stem from the historic view that actresses were commonly associated with being prostitutes – a connection which Major Ross makes about the prospect of the convict women being in the play: ‘Filthy, thieving, lying whores and now we have to watch them flout their flitty ways on the stage.”  Reverend Johnson underlines the point when he observes that his wife would certainly not entertain the idea of acting in a play: “My wife abhors anything of that nature. After all, actresses are not famed for their morals.” When the Reverend seeks reassurance from Captain Clark that The Recruiting Officer is a play that promotes marriage, there is further irony in the captain’s partial answer: “They marry for love and to secure wealth”, his failing to mention the other less salubrious behaviour of the officers.

The two plays literally overlap when characters in Our Country’s Good quote lines directly from The Recruiting Officer, and we cannot but draw parallels between the characters and the roles that they are playing. When Ralph and Wisehammer rehearse Plume and Brazen’s contest over Jack Wilful, for example, they are also enacting their own rivalry over Mary. When Arscott quotes Kite’s great speech about his being born a gypsy where he learned “canting and lying”, Dabby exclaims “That’s about me!”. The overlap is most strikingly felt in the magical scene on the beach where Ralph and Mary act out the exchange between Plume and Silvia dressed as Jack Wilful, when the force of their attraction all but overwhelms them and Silvia asks him to say “what usage she must expect under his command”. Ralph and Mary yield to the power inherent in the speech and consummate their love.

Our Country’s Good finishes with the opening speech of The Recruiting Officer. It’s a rousing, theatrical speech which promises a triumphant performance, triumphant simply because of the collective energy and purpose that have made it happen against the odds.

The Recruiting Game
There is at the very least a twin meaning in the title of The Recruiting Officer. We first assume that it refers literally to Captain Plume, or perhaps also collectively to Kite and Brazen, as the officers who have arrived in town to recruit local men for the army. Of course the officers are also open to recruiting women for their pleasure, if not to marry. In fact as Plume confesses, he often achieves both goals by targeting the women to get through them to their male acquaintances, as he does with Rose in pursuit of Bulloch and Cartwright.

It is also true that the women in the play are out to recruit, in their case long-term romantic or economic partners. Silvia’s mission is to recruit Plume; Lucy seeks to enlist Brazen; Rose will be happy to snare either Plume or Jack Wilful. The parallels between the recruitment games of the sexes come together of course in the figure of Jack Wilful himself, or herself. Plume believes that he is recruiting another man for his army, while also inadvertently advancing his and Silvia’s matrimonial negotiations.

And the twin meanings of the recruitment game are further articulated in the use of military language to describe the campaigns of love: Melinda is likened to Helen of Troy, requiring a ten-year siege to win, and when Worthy laments that he was “forced to blockade” when his “general advance” on her was repulsed, Plume urges him to “redouble his advance”.  The reciprocal metaphors are also used:  Plume is “married” to the regiment, and finally of course Plume settles down to marry Sylvia and to “raise recruits” of his own – their children –  who will perhaps become another generation of ‘recruiting officers’ as the cycle continues.

The title of the play
In our conversation Patrick revealed that Leopoldstadt had not been the original working title of the play, but it was an appropriate title. The checkered history of the Leopoldstadt area of Vienna certainly reflects the historical vicissitudes of Jews in Austria. It’s association with the Jews goes back to 1625 when Jews were banned from living within the city walls, and huddled together in a ghetto on the other side of the Danube. They were evicted again in 1669 by Emperor Leopold 1, and the site of their synagogue was cleared to make way for a church dedicated to St Leopold. The area was named Leopoldstadt by the Christian population in gratitude to the Emperor.

After Emperor Joseph issued his Edict of Tolerance in 1782, Jews began to return to Leopoldstadt, although they were still generally banned from the city itself for another century. By the late 19th and early 20th century the area was again associated with the Jews, particularly following the first world war by the poorest people. 

In the Reichskristallnacht pogrom of 1938 the area was once again the focus of persecution when six synagogues and thirty-one prayer houses were destroyed. Today, the Leopoldstadt area of Vienna is no longer Jewish: following the 20th century wave of expulsions only 3% of the population is Jewish.

So the origin of the name Leopoldstadt represents a bitter irony in its association with the Jews of Vienna. The title of the play is a short-hand for targeted discrimination, but it is also a definition of community; a place where people of a kind live together whether by choice or necessity. It’s history also testifies to the way that the identity and interpretation of a place and people can change almost arbitrarily through the currents of history. As the play itself asserts, it is important not to forget the realities of the past that can be lost or obscured over time.  

Installation artist
When I asked Lisa Dwan about the striking visual tableau that we see on stage in Happy Days, she described Samuel Beckett as an “installation artist”. The visual settings of his plays are extraordinarily arresting. They are simple, yet mysterious and powerful. The lone tree in the otherwise empty place where Vladimir and Estragon wait for Godot, or the room with the windows set high up in the wall, two dustbins and a single throne-like chair in Endgame. We are aware that these particular locations are part of a larger world, but the characters do not have any agency to change or exit their self-contained space. Their constrained circumstances prompt many questions – what is in the world beyond? How have they arrived in this situation? How do they practically survive without the usual necessities?

In fact it is notable how quickly we put aside such questions and accept the status quo of the world we are witnessing. We understand very quickly that the space that the characters occupy is a metaphoric one. As Lisa observed, Beckett’s landscapes reflect a “psychological state”. We experience directly the state of existential uncertainty and enquiry the characters do, and we also understand that there are no rational explanations for what we are seeing. We accept that any answers are going to be unknowable, and we simply adapt to the circumstances we are presented with, as the characters do.

In stripping back the physical world to a minimum Beckett also imbues it with a sense of existential challenge, so that what we witness and experience is essentially consciousness itself. How we respond to psychological pressure, doubt, or fear. As Lisa so succinctly put it, Beckett was “putting the mind on stage”.

Filming Escaped Alone during lockdown
I am privileged to be a member of the play selection committee at my local amateur theatre club, and during the past 18 months it has been very difficult to plan future productions in our theatre. We decided that one way we could continue to make theatre happen in some form would be to stage a play in the theatre without an audience, and film the result for presentation online. We knew that with various lockdown restrictions in place we would have to choose a play that we could mount while complying with the legal and moral criteria in place. This meant choosing a title with a small cast – we might be limited to having no more than six people together during rehearsal for example; and that also required a relatively simple single set, and minimised the physical interaction within the cast. We selected Escaped Alone firstly therefore because with its cast of four sitting fixed in their garden chairs throughout it could be practically staged maintaining social distancing.

There were a number of other equally compelling reasons that we wanted to do Escaped Alone: the play offered four wonderful roles for older women, a fact that is probably unique on the stage; it also displays all of the challenging power as well as the humour characteristic of Caryl Churchill’s wonderful language; and finally, because of the extraordinary prescience of its vision of a world overcome by collective disaster. The play speaks to our fears about the future of the planet, as well as our personal anxieties, for example when isolated by age or the pandemic, while also offering some salvation in the strength of our community, as friends, neighbours or open-minded theatre goers.

When it came to staging the play our director, Daniel Wain, had the vision to realise that we had an opportunity to film the play not just as a record of a single theatrical performance, but as a film in its own right. This meant that we could shoot the production in multiple takes and with different camera angles and perspective, rather than as a single run-through. We hoped that this would  provide additional detail and texture to the dynamics between the characters, as well as an enhanced focus on the intense personal monologues that each of the women deliver. It also offered an opportunity to suggest a particular interpretation of Mrs Jarrett’s role as the messenger or narrator in the form of the play.

After weeks of rehearsal with the text via Zoom, in our gardens and finally in the empty theatre, we were ready to film. We spent a day constructing the set, and setting up the lighting, sound and camera infrastructure; followed by four long, intense days of filming to complete the 124-page shot list. The cast were phenomenally patient and professional, delivering funny, deeply moving performances, often many times over! It was an enormously rewarding, collaborative experience, which felt like an appropriately resilient and communal response to the challenge of the pandemic. One that we hope is also true to the spirit of Caryl Churchill’s prophetic play.

Teddington Theatre Club’s film of Escaped Alone will be broadcast online for five nights from 02-06 September 2021. Click here for more information and to buy tickets to watch.