Never So Good E-Book

Howard Brenton

• Herausgeber: Nick Hern Books
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Serie: NHB Modern Plays
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 107

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

A fascinating portrait of Harold Macmillan in an epic play about the decline of British fortunes in the middle of the twentieth century. Set against a back-drop of fading Empire, war, the Suez crisis, vintage champagne, adultery and vicious Tory politics at the Ritz, Never So Good paints the portrait of a brilliant, witty but complex man, at times comically and, in the end, tragically out of kilter with his times. Harold Macmillan, the Eton-educated idealist who rushed, with Homer's Iliad under his arm, to do his duty in the Grenadier Guards, is tormented by the harsh experiences of war and an unhappy marriage. His career in the 1930s is blocked by his loyalty to Winston Churchill, and he nearly loses his life in the Second World War. When at last he becomes Prime Minister he is brought down by the Profumo scandal. Howard Brenton's Never So Good was first performed in the Lyttelton auditorium of the National Theatre in March 2008, directed by Howard Davies and starring Jeremy Irons as Macmillan.

Leseprobe

Howard Brenton

NEVER SO GOOD

NICK HERN BOOKS

London

www.nickhernbooks.co.uk

Contents

Title Page

Dedication

Original Production

Characters

Act One

Act Two

Act Three

Act Four

About the Author

Copyright and Performing Rights Information

To Jane

Never So Good was first performed in the Lyttelton auditorium of the National Theatre, London, on 26 March 2008 (previews from 17 March), with the following cast:

HAROLD MACMILLAN

Jeremy Irons

YOUNG HAROLD MACMILLAN

Pip Carter

NELLIE MACMILLAN

Anna Carteret

DOROTHY MACMILLAN

Anna Chancellor

RONALD KNOX

Tim Frances

YOUNG HARRY CROOKSHANK

Ben Addis

HARRY CROOKSHANK

Terence Wilton

WINSTON CHURCHILL

Ian McNeice

ANTHONY EDEN

Anthony Calf

SELWYN LLOYD

Peter Forbes

ROBERT ‘BOB’ BOOTHBY

Robert Glenister

SERGEANT ROBINSON

Nicholas Lumley

NEVILLE CHAMBERLAIN

Terrence Hardiman

DWIGHT D EISENHOWER

Clive Francis

SMITHSON

Jonathan Battersby

ENSEMBLE Sarah Head, Sioned Jones, Anne Kavanagh, Charlotte Melia, Roger Ringrose, Janet Spencer-Turner, Claire Winsper, Rupert Young

Director Howard Davies

Designer Vicki Mortimer

Lighting Designer Mark Henderson

Music Dominic Muldowney

Choreographer Lynne Page

Sound Designer Paul Arditti

Characters

HAROLD MACMILLAN

YOUNG HAROLD MACMILLAN

HELEN ‘NELLIE’ MACMILLAN, his mother

DOROTHY MACMILLAN, his wife

RONALD KNOX

YOUNG HARRY CROOKSHANK

HARRY CROOKSHANK

WINSTON CHURCHILL

ANTHONY EDEN

SELWYN LLOYD

ROBERT ‘BOB’ BOOTHBY

NEVILLE CHAMBERLAIN

DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER

SERGEANT ROBINSON

SMITHSON, a servant

AMERICAN LIEUTENANT

BUTLER

1ST SOLDIER

2ND SOLDIER

3RD SOLDIER

Also: Eton Wall Game players, a company of dancers, soldiers, staff at Downing Street, servants, Eisenhower’s aides, waiters, marines, security men, press men, film crew, crowds

ACT ONE

The Wound (1909-1916)

HAROLD MACMILLAN wanders onto the stage. White tie, an elegant cane in one hand, a whisky and soda in the other. He is very relaxed and addresses the audience.

MACMILLAN. I always had trouble with my teeth. Bad teeth in politics are not good. It’s cruel, but people will always make moral judgements from appearances. It got a lot worse when television came. The BBC was a dental nightmare.

He sips his whisky.

Enter the Eton Wall Game. Two teams of eleven young PLAYERS in pre-First World War games kit. Amongst them are the YOUNG HAROLD MACMILLAN and YOUNG HARRY CROOKSHANK.

As they enter they are singing the Eton Boating Song, raucously:

PLAYERS. Jolly boating weather,

And a hay harvest breeze,

Blade on the feather,

Shade off the trees,

Swing swing together,

With your bodies between your knees,

Swing swing together,

With your bodies between your knees.

The PLAYERS jam in a huddle against the wall.

They shout:

YOUNG CROOKSHANK. Bully! Bully! Bully! Bully! Bully! Bully!

They freeze.

MACMILLAN (aside). Winston always had good teeth. Despite the cigars, Cuban tobacco juices flowing in the root canals. It was probably the brandy kept the Churchillian enamel clean. When I became Prime Minister I had my errant incisors capped. I also grew my hair thicker, oiled it a little. And when I went to Moscow to meet the Communist leaders, I wore a furry, white Russian hat. Yes, in politics one learns to play the tart.

The Wall Game continues. One team – the Collegers – are struggling to form a phalanx, a tunnel at an angle to the wall.

YOUNG CROOKSHANK (shouting). College! College! Phalanx! Phalanx! College, phalanx!

The Wall Game freezes.

MACMILLAN (aside). Chipped a tooth in the Eton Wall Game. The rules allow a fist to be held permanently in the face of an opponent without actually punching them – a very English kind of brutality. Thoroughly enjoyed playing the Wall Game. Every century or so someone actually scores a goal. Which is meant to teach one something, though I haven’t the faintest idea what.

The Wall Game continues.

YOUNG MACMILLAN breaks away from the mass of bodies. The ball flies out to him. He is startled to find it in his hands.

YOUNG CROOKSHANK. Harold! Lines! Kick! Lines!

YOUNG MAC kicks the ball offstage. The other PLAYERS rush off shouting:

PLAYERS. Calyx calyx calyx! Ball in bad calyx! Well done, Harold! Ball in calyx!

YOUNG MAC and MACMILLAN pause. Then they talk to each other.

YOUNG MAC. I hated Eton.

MACMILLAN. That’s why I draw a veil.

YOUNG MAC. When Mummy took me out of college, they said I’d been sent away for buggery.

MACMILLAN. Draw a veil.

YOUNG MAC. Mummy told people it was pneumonia.

MACMILLAN. Yes.

YOUNG MAC and MACMILLAN both take out rimless glasses, put them on and look at each other.

Then YOUNG MAC runs off.

MACMILLAN smiles at the audience.

(Aside.) Anthony Eden. Anthony had wonderful teeth, a dazzling array for the television age. But not even that beautiful mouth in millions of living rooms could save him. And teeth weren’t my biggest physical problem. That began in the Great War. When my mother finally got me there.

Enter HELEN ‘NELLIE’ MACMILLAN. She paces. She reads a letter. She folds it into her hand.

Enter YOUNG MAC. He is in the civilian day clothes of 1915.

NELLIE. Harold, darling boy.

Kisses him.

Were you very late last night?

YOUNG MAC. Very.

NELLIE. How is Southend?

YOUNG MAC. Beastly.

NELLIE. But lots of sea air.

YOUNG MAC. Oh, billows and billows.

NELLIE. Well, that will do you good…

YOUNG MAC. To be stuck in the Royal Rifle Corps, and in Southend-on-Sea! It’s too bloody shaming.

NELLIE. You’ve been ill, Harold.

YOUNG MAC. The war to save civilisation breaks out and I get appendicitis! And put in a training battalion, where the only dangerous thing is a portion of fish and chips! Somehow, one way or another, I’ve just got to try to get shot.

NELLIE. No, Harold.

YOUNG MAC. Well, shot at. You do want me to fight, don’t you?

NELLIE. Of course I want you to fight! But I also think of what it means.

YOUNG MAC. It means glory.

NELLIE. Or vanity.

YOUNG MAC. Not… not… not if it’s glory in the eye of God.

She sighs.

NELLIE. Oh, Harold, you can be so serious, sometimes it makes my skin crawl.

YOUNG MAC. Oh. Very sorry.

NELLIE. It’s just that when you were a boy I wish you had… sometimes, you know, done things with frogs.

YOUNG MAC. What things with frogs? Pulled their legs off?

NELLIE. Well, yes.

YOUNG MAC. Amazing the ways one can disappoint one’s mother.

NELLIE. If you ever really disappointed me, Harold, you’d know it.

YOUNG MAC. Yes. I think I would.

They laugh. They kiss cheeks.

NELLIE. I’ve done a thing.

YOUNG MAC. What thing?

NELLIE. Don’t go cranky on me.

YOUNG MAC. What have you done?

NELLIE. Cranky, serious on me.

YOUNG MAC. Mummy… what?

NELLIE. I have, how to say this… I have prostituted my position in English society on your behalf. Well, at least, cashed my position in. I’ve got you a commission in the Grenadier Guards.

A beat.

YOUNG MAC. That’s a shocking thing to do.

NELLIE. I know.

SMITHSON, a servant, is approaching. With great respect he carries before him, on a hanger, the uniform of a Captain of the Grenadier Guards.

YOUNG MAC. Privilege of the worst kind.

NELLIE. I know.

YOUNG MAC. Really shocking!

NELLIE. Yes.

YOUNG MAC. And absolutely, tremendously wonderful.

NELLIE is delighted.

He sees SMITHSON with the uniform.

Oh, Smithson, I say.

A nod from NELLIE to SMITHSON.

SMITHSON. Perhaps, sir, you would like to change into the uniform of an officer and a gentleman?

NELLIE turns her back on them. YOUNG MAC, with SMITHSON’s help, begins to change into the uniform.

YOUNG MAC. The only privilege I’m taking is, I suppose, to get myself killed or wounded as soon as possible.

NELLIE. One thing I want you to promise: you won’t see Ronald Knox before you go.

MACMILLAN. Never leaves you, that nursery taste in the mouth. The late-night, ‘be a good boy’, ‘mother knows best’ kiss. So warm and smothering.

YOUNG MAC. I should see him…

NELLIE. Harold, listen to me. Never be dependent on men like that.

YOUNG MAC. He was a brilliant teacher for me, after Eton. And he was wonderful at Oxford…

NELLIE. I hated him being there with you.

YOUNG MAC. He was so hurt when you fired him as my tutor. I think he had a spiritual crisis.

NELLIE. We are not on earth to have spiritual crises. We’re here to do God’s will. And make the best of ourselves.

YOUNG MAC. I never said, but I was hurt too.

He has not finished dressing, but NELLIE turns on him.

NELLIE. I thought Ronald Knox’s relationship with you was… unhealthy.

YOUNG MAC laughs.

YOUNG MAC. You mean you thought we were buggers?

SMITHSON looks away.

NELLIE. That’s not a proper word to use afront of me.

YOUNG MAC. Dreadfully sorry, Mummy, I didn’t mean to…

NELLIE. He nearly got you, Harold. Be honest. He nearly had you kissing the Pope’s ass.

SMITHSON looks away again.

YOUNG MAC. Mother, proper word…?

She smiles, then persists.

NELLIE. But a Roman Catholic in England will never be able to have high office under the Crown. Never… be a Government minister.

YOUNG MAC finds this ludicrous and laughs.

YOUNG MAC. That’s ridiculous. Who ever said I want to be a Government minister! After the war I’ll… be a publisher, like Father. Or a traveller, or an explorer. I don’t know what I’ll be.

NELLIE. Just don’t see Ronald. Don’t be dependent on anyone.

YOUNG MAC. Not even on you?

NELLIE. That’s different, I’m your mother.

They smile.

Then she is serious.

You will always win through in the end. That’s why you had to go to Eton and go on to Oxford. That’s why you must do this. Because you will win through.

She kisses him, sweeps away and exits.

MACMILLAN finishes changing into the Guards uniform.

SMITHSON. What shall I pack, sir?

YOUNG MAC. Oh, I think… just the Bible. And a Greek Testament.

MACMILLAN. And The Imitation of Christ. St Augustine. Boethius’s Consolation.

YOUNG MAC. Homer’s Iliad – in the Greek. And Aeschylus.

MACMILLAN. Theocritus. Horace.

YOUNG MAC. Shakespeare’s Henry IV. Twelfth Night. The Winter’s Tale. Meredith.

MACMILLAN. Browning’s The Ring and the Book. Ruskin’s Sesame and Lilies and Crown of Wild Olive.

YOUNG MAC. And anything by Trollope.

SMITHSON. Yes, sir.

Distant bugles call.

St James’s Park.

YOUNG MAC is waiting for someone.

MACMILLAN (aside). None of us knew what we were doing, of course. To us at the beginning of the Great War, the world was a ripening peach, and we were eating it. And looking back, how lovely we were, and so earnest, and innocent.

Enter RONALD KNOX. He is dressed in High Anglican priest’s garb. He is taken aback for a moment by YOUNG MAC’s uniform.

YOUNG MAC. Ronnie.

KNOX. Harold, dearest.

They embrace.

St James’s Park. The place for assignations of high state.

YOUNG MAC. Hardly what this is.

KNOX. Could be an assignation of the high Spirit?

YOUNG MAC. You can’t mean alcohol.

KNOX. Could mean both. Anglicanism has many inhibitions but at least it’s not against drink. (Re: the uniform.) Grenadier Guards?

YOUNG MAC. Yes. The 4th Battalion.

KNOX. 4th?

YOUNG MAC. They’re a newly formed unit. Active.

KNOX. You’re going to fight.

YOUNG MAC. Absolutely.

KNOX. And I thought you were safe with a bucket and spade, in a regiment no one had heard of.

YOUNG MAC. No longer. I’m a bomb officer. I’ve been training my men. Not that we’ve actually got any bombs.

KNOX. You will have. Harold…

YOUNG MAC. We’ve been stationed at Marlow. It’s been like a perpetual garden party. Can’t wait for the reality.

KNOX. And when do you leave the ‘unreal’ for the ‘real’?

YOUNG MAC. On Thursday.

KNOX is shocked.

KNOX. And that’s what you wanted to tell me?

YOUNG MAC. In a way.

KNOX. ‘In a way.’ I’ve decided to go over.

A beat.

I’m going to convert.

A beat.

Harold, at last, I’m going to Pope!

YOUNG MAC. Ah.

This is a Macmillan ‘Ah’. It signals a massive betrayal. He uses it only at crucial moments in his life.

KNOX. God is leading me home.

YOUNG MAC. But you took orders as an Anglican priest! Balliol College have made you their chaplain. What are they going to say?

KNOX. Oh, there’ll be a lot of shouting over the port about Papist plots. But none of that matters. I’ve done what we dreamed of.

YOUNG MAC. I’m not coming with you. I can’t Pope.

A beat.

KNOX. I knew it. When I saw you just now, coming towards me, looking around you.

YOUNG MAC. What, you mean in a shifty Protestant manner?

KNOX. Yes, actually. You are shifty.

YOUNG MAC. Ronnie, I owe you so much. My whole brain is in a whirl. God’s going to have not to mind. I know I’m lagging and timid, but I can’t do the Roman Catholic performance now…

KNOX. You’re gushing. Do me the courtesy of not gushing.

YOUNG MAC. I am horribly sorry.

A beat.

KNOX. I’m not going to let you get away with this. At Oxford you were so hot for conversion. Your passion, your religious fervour, I thought: ‘Dear God, one day this man may be a cardinal.’

YOUNG MAC. Yes, the Roman fever.

This is an insulting phrase used by Anglicans about Roman Catholicism. It angers KNOX.

KNOX. Why, Harold?

YOUNG MAC. I’ve been thinking of my people.

KNOX. You mean your mother.