Seventy years ago, a new play had its first performance at London’s Royal Court Theatre. Look Back in Anger had a mixed reaction from the press. The Observer’s theatre critic Kenneth Tynan was enthusiastic. Others were not so impressed by John Osborne’s portrait of youthful discontent in a shabby flat-share. No wonder audiences were slow to book for the play.
The Royal Court needed a success. This was the first season for its new owners the English Stage Company. Its founders had an innovative – and risky – mission: to produce new plays that spoke directly and realistically about contemporary life. Something different from the glamour and smart chat dominating West End plays. But with only modest takings, the project looked like it would be bankrupt only a few months after it had begun.
Then something extraordinary happened. BBC Television – only 20 years old – broadcast a live extract from the play in October 1956. Viewers were excited – some, no doubt, enraged – by youthful characters railing against the stuffy conventions of the time. The box office went into immediate overdrive, carrying Look Back in Anger to the West End, Broadway and cinema screens. Seventy years on, the Royal Court is still thriving and committed as ever to producing new playwrights who take an unflinching look at the world around us.
My first play was produced by the Royal Court 30 years ago. So I was delighted when I was asked by Radio 4 Extra to curate a week of historic BBC radio productions of the best of the theatre’s work. The week begins – where else? – with Look Back in Anger, starring Ben Whishaw. It continues with a series of plays from seven decades of lively and, at times, challenging drama. There’s an honesty and integrity about all the plays. There’s also a development: the very male swagger of Osborne’s play gives way, as the week progresses, to more diverse voices, each with a unique story to tell.
Over the years, there’s been no formal agreement between the Royal Court and the BBC. Individual plays have caught the attention of programme-makers and have found their way onto radio and, occasionally, television. The plays have been broadcast far beyond the confines of a modestly sized theatre in Chelsea and into the nation’s homes.
Would, I wonder, someone in the future have the same rich choices from the archive that I’ve enjoyed in choosing my week of plays? I sincerely hope they do. But I worry that spaces for full-length plays have become increasingly scarce on radio and television.
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A good play needs time to take the audience into a world, to develop characters and an argument. A play such as Mark Rosenblatt’s recent Royal Court hit Giant wouldn’t work if it were squeezed into a 45-minute or hour-long slot. Listeners of today – and the future – must be given the opportunity to catch up with exciting new work from theatres from across the four nations of the UK. In an often polarised society, new plays open up a space for empathy and understanding.
It’s great, then, that Radio 4’s Spotlight still offers 90-minute slots for original drama and productions of classic plays. As part of the celebrations for the theatre’s anniversary, Spotlight is offering a new audio production of Lucy Kirkwood’s excellent 2016 Royal Court play The Children. Without sensation and with a steady eye, Kirkwood shows the effects of a major disaster at a nuclear power station in rural England.
Let’s hope these collaborations between new theatre-makers and BBC drama continue. Playwrights bring news from the front line, lives and stories beneath the headlines. We should all have the opportunity to experience that. In a crowded media landscape, it’s something a public service broadcaster must provide. Not only in this archive season but now and in the future.
Radio 4’s collaboration with the Royal Court Theatre starts with The Children on Saturday 26 September at 3pm. There’s a selection of Mark’s curated plays throughout the week on Radio 4 Extra, starting with Look Back in Anger on Saturday at 8.30pm.
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