The Recruiting Officer – Footnotes
The Footnotes to our episode on The Recruiting Officer include observations on the multiple meanings of its title and the extraordinary story of its first production in Australia in 1789.
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.
Nancy Carroll and Ffion Edwards in The Recruiting Officer
Donmar Theatre 2012.
Photograph: Johan Persson
The First Fleet’s production of the play
One of the extraordinary stories in the history of The Recruiting Officer is that of its being performed by a group of convicts in the newly-founded settlement in New South Wales in 1789. The ‘First Fleet’ carrying 1,400 people on eleven ships set sail in 1787 to establish the penal colony at Botany Bay under the command of Captain Arthur Philip. As the Governor in Chief of the new colony Philip was an unusually enlightened leader, for he saw that in the future the convicts would have to be constructively assimilated into the new settlement. Perhaps this vision inspired his initiative to stage their unlikely dramatic production. The performance was timed to honour King George III on his birthday on 4th June 1789.
The choice of The Recruiting Officer as the play for the convicts to perform seems appropriate to the circumstances of the colony. The Royal Marines sent with the convicts to establish the outpost colony were themselves recruited to this challenging mission, and the convicts were of course selected for their part in the venture in the same way that petty criminals were often impressed into the army.
The story of the convict production of the play was re-told in Thomas Keneally’s novel of 1987 The Playmaker. The Artistic Director of the Royal Court Theatre in London at the time, Max Stafford-Clark, was planning a new production of The Recruiting Officer when he came across Keneally’s novel. He was inspired to commission playwright Timberlake Wertenbaker to adapt the story into a new play that could run alongside their revival of The Recruiting Officer. Wertenbaker’s wonderful play Our Country’s Good premiered at the Royal Court in 1988, almost exactly 200 years after the extraordinary original performance.
113 – Arcadia by Tom Stoppard
Published 24th August
Tom Stoppard’s 1993 play, Arcadia is viewed by many as his finest play, renowned for the breadth of its intellectual interrogations and its formal invention. The play is a structural masterpiece of ideas, as well as a teasing detective story, joyous comedy, and emotionally rich exploration of love and loss.
As we record this episode a wonderful new production of Arcadia is playing at the Duke of York’s theatre in London’s West End, following its acclaimed run at the Old Vic theatre earlier this year. I am delighted to share the challenge and the pleasure of exploring Stoppard’s dazzling drama with the director of the new production, Carrie Cracknell.
112 – Glengarry Glen Ross by David Mamet
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David Mamet’s modern American classic, Glengarry Glen Ross, is a blistering commentary on the cut-throat reality of the American dream, and its poisonous impact on those who have bought into the myth and machismo of that dream. The play had its world premiere in the small Cottesloe theatre at the National Theatre in London in September 1983, and was first performed in New York the following year, winning the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Mamet also wrote the extended screenplay for the star-studded 1992 film version.
As we recorded this episode a new production of the play was playing at the Old Vic theatre in London, with an all-female cast. This is a particularly provocative idea, because one of the primary themes of this play is masculine identity, and the salesmen in this Chicago office do not hold back in their display of machismo.
To explore Mamet’s unflinching slice of 1980s dog-eat-dog capitalism, I am joined by arts journalist Mark Lawson.
111 – The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui by Bertolt Brecht
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Bertolt Brecht’s ‘gangster spectacle’, The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, is both an exuberant and funny piece of theatre, and a chillingly topical political satire. Set in the 1930s Chicago of Al Capone, Brecht presents a parody of the rise of Hitler through the character of the gangster Arturo Ui. The play is a universal cry for vigilance against the rise of unscrupulous, populist leaders who threaten democratic societies and global peace.
As we recorded this episode a new production of the play by the Royal Shakespeare Company was playing in Stratford-upon-Avon, starring Mark Gatiss as the title character.
I am delighted to be joined by both the show’s translator, playwright Stephen Sharkey, and by Brecht scholar, Professor Tom Kuhn, to guide us through Brecht’s political parody.
The 2020 Theatre Diary – March
Before the theatres went dark this month I was lucky enough to see Caryl Churchill’s A Number at the Bridge, and spend more than seven hours in thrall to Robert Lepage’s Seven Streams of the River Ota at the National. Plus, some thoughts on what we miss when there is no theatre.
The 2020 Theatre Diary – February
Another great mix of shows this month, from Tom Stoppard’s new play, to Ibsen, Beckett and newer plays in smaller London venues.
The 2020 Theatre Diary – January
The January roundup included both classic plays, such as The Duchess of Malfi, Uncle Vanya and Three Sisters, as well as recent musicals Dear Evan Hansen and Girl from the North Country …
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