Like so many other art forms in the 1950s and 1960s, the post-war British theatre was in a state of flux. The upper-class comedies of manners of Terence Rattigan and Noel Coward were giving way to the kitchen sink dramas of Pinter and Stoppard, and the core of theatre in London was shifting from Shaftesbury Avenue to the ‘angry young men’ of the Royal Court. In the newly reissued 1995 book The Best of the West End, it is the aim of the actor, critic and theatre historian Charles Duff to reassess this shift and restate the oft-forgotten influence of the pre-Royal Court era. Though Duff does note with pleasure in his new epilogue the several West End revivals of Rattigan performed since 1995, his original text still remains a relevant account of a broad swathe of theatre history.
To Duff, a prime example of a lens through which to view this changing landscape of theatre in London was provided by the life of actor-turned-director Frith Banbury. The resulting biography thus occupies a strange middle ground between gossipy biography and serious historical analysis, and while this balance is not always perfectly struck, Duff nevertheless conjures a memorable and detailed picture of a bygone era.
Despite Duff’s more serious purpose, he excels when revelling in the anecdotal value of Banbury’s life. The book’s preface is charming in the obvious thrill it gets from the tale of Banbury’s parents meeting by chance in Jamaica and of his grandparents’ unethical business dealings. He holds affect and reverence for Banbury’s early scrapbooks of his theatre visits and near-religious love for the art form, despite the serious misgivings of his naval captain father.
Later on, a wonderful range of characters crop up across Duff’s account of the changing West End. There is the eccentric maverick director who calls his actor “very dull, but I’m sure you’ll get better”, and the aristocrat who slums it as an actress and is mocked for her amateur approach. Duff also has a surprisingly engaging way of writing about the plots of plays that have fallen into obscurity; particularly memorable is Trinidad-set ‘slice of life’ story Moon on a Rainbow Shawl, one of the first West End plays to feature Caribbean dialects, and Banbury’s first major work as a director, and Wynyard Browne’s Dark Summer, a fictionalised narrative of the playwright’s convalescence which Duff somehow manages to make thrilling even in a blow-by-blow summary.
Duff also knows when to step away from tantalising gossip when it comes to more sensitive topics. Overall Duff has a nuanced and sensitive view of Banbury’s Judaism and homosexuality, and of the homosexuality of various other figures from the period. When discussing impresario Hugh ‘Binkie’ Beaumont, Duff illuminates clearly the need for LGBTQ+ people in powerful positions to surround themselves with so-called ‘moral rectitude’ and assimilate to a censorious establishment. Duff is also strongly and pleasingly resistant to critics’ homophobic desire to stereotype the Rattigan era as glamorous, effeminate and more dominated by gay men than its Royal Court successors.
Duff tempers the anecdotal and biographical aspects of his narrative with a lifetime’s worth of insight about how the theatre operates. His reflections on the role of a director, which the reader learns was a relatively new innovation in the mid-20th century, are incisive, and his brilliant depictions of the Covent Garden music hall, packed after the theatres emptied for the night, is a vivid product of lived experience.
The chapters which one would expect to be dull, about the financial workings of West End theatres and their schemes to avoid the dreaded wartime Entertainment Tax, become gripping tales of the encroaching commercialisation of the West End. Occasionally, Duff’s in-depth knowledge of this area does become slightly overwhelming (he sometimes slips into detailed accounts of 1940s ticket pricing before actually describing the people working on and off stage), but the level of detail does contribute to the impression that this is a trustworthy picture of the period.
The Best of the West End is not always perfect in its balance of biography and theatre history, but still has a strong focus both on the rich gossip provided by the era, and on the author’s desire to educate about the theatre more generally.
Words by Clementine Scott
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