The Habit of Art: Review

As a follow-up to my previous post...

The Habit of Art, Alan Bennett
National Theatre
Dir. Nicholas Hytner

3 stars

Auden has become a bore; Britten is paralysed by artistic doubts. Humphrey Carpenter, who later wrote both their biographies, floats on the periphery to provide what JD Salinger famously called ‘all the David Copperfield kind of crap.’ In The Habit of Art, Bennett brings the two artists together for a final (fictional) encounter and, in so doing, creates a play which explores the difficulties of recording a life: ‘I want to hear about the shortcomings of great men, their fears and their failings. I’ve had enough of their vision.’

We watch this play, though, at one remove: through the murky glass of a rather shambolic rehearsal. Richard Griffiths portrays, not only Auden, but also Fitz – the actor playing Auden; Alex Jennings plays not only Britten, but also Henry, the actor putting in his usual ‘plodding’ performance. And while a “play-within-a-play” can be a means of adding philosophical depth or knowing parody, Bennett’s “Russian doll” structure appears to be largely an attempt to excuse the play’s flaws, and smacks, instead, of navel-gazing.

The considerable strength of the play, however, lies with the characters at its core: Griffiths as Fitz and Auden effortlessly communicates the world-weariness of both actor and poet. Jennings as Henry and Britten presents a masterclass in pained restraint: what Auden in the play calls ‘England…taste, modesty’. The first half often shows Bennett at his best: here a joke seemingly out of nowhere, there an astute observation about life and art. Nicholas Hytner’s production is polished and lets Bennett’s erudite script take centre-stage. This is a work in which wit permeates every line and which, like The History Boys, wears its learning amiably on its sleeve.

The end of the play, however, is misjudged. Bennett has not one, but two plays to end: and he manages to conclude neither convincingly. Fitz interrupts, the Author dictates while Frances de la Tour’s mother-hen of a stage manager coaxes them all to the finishing line (‘Come on. Last lap’). In the final moments of the play, de la Tour delivers a bizarre eulogy to the National Theatre. Given that so much of the play is concerned with the people who are ‘left out’ (the rent boy, the author, the “real” Humphrey Carpenter), the decision to include a speech which immediately and drastically shrinks the play’s circle of relevance, seems short-sighted. Apart from anything else, it wipes out, at one fell swoop, any chance of a nationwide tour.

The Habit of Art feels, appropriately enough, like a work-in-progress: the script gives the impression of being the preparatory notes to a more polished and decisive play. In a diary entry from 1999, Bennett stumbles across notes he wrote for his play The Lady in the Van and finds himself ‘feeling…that [the finished play] is slightly to the side of a play I wanted to write.’ The Habit of Art, it seems, is the marginal annotation to the side of what could have been a much better play.

The Habit of Art is on at the National Theatre until April.