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| Dueling Queens: Sarah Miles and Eileen Atkins in Vivat! Vivat Regina! (Source) |
Robert Bolt's later works show the playwright sublimated to the screenwriter. The first, The Thwarting of Baron Bolligrew, incorporates Bolt's thematic preoccupations into a children's play. Vivat! Vivat Regina grafts Brechtian stylization onto the tragedy of Mary Queen of Scots. Last is State of Revolution, a wordy, overstuffed but fascinating chronicle of the Russian Revolution.
Bolt's penchant for the grandiose remains undiminished. Each of the plays features dozens of characters, elaborate staging and sweeping events that must have been nightmarish to perform. On page the plays (mostly) read well-enough; on stage they might be excessive. Arguably, Bolt's ambition exceeds the medium.
The Thwarting of Baron Bolligrew (1964)
“A very good way is to do what you should… But a bit of what you fancy, does yer good!”
After completing Doctor Zhivago Bolt penned The Thwarting of Baron Bolligrew, a delightful children’s play. Commissioned by the Royal Shakespeare Company for their 1964 Christmas season, its original production starred heavyweights John Normington, Michael Jayston, Terence Rigby, and Leo McKern. The play proved a huge success, with yearly revivals in Britain, a television adaptation by Germany’s Augsburger Puppetkiste, and a novelization published in 1995.
In a medieval Kingdom, assorted nobles celebrate their triumph over dragons with endless leisure. Do-gooder Oblong Fitz Oblong gets assigned to Baron Bolligrew, an oppressive landlord taxing his charges to death. Oblong befriends Michael, an amoral magpie who resembles a more benign Gentle Jack, and his square idealism initially proves fruitless against Boligrew and evil warlock Moloch. Things come to a head when Moloch summons an evil dragon to vanquish Oblong. Oblong must break his moral code to triumph.
Bolligrew incorporates Bolt's pet themes and stylization amidst a children's setting. His Storyteller functions like the Common Man from A Man for All Seasons: a narrator and character in the story, breaking the fourth wall with a wink and nod. Bolt's script stresses the artificiality with tinny music, cardboard animals and self-aware dialogue. It's a pleasing mix of the intellectual and playful: kids can appreciate the silliness, adults can enjoy Bolt's craftsmanship.
All this analytical hooey overwhelms the fact that Bolligrew is a kid’s play – and an excellent one at that. Sir Oblong's upright heroism takes a beating from assorted villains, but virtue comes out on top. Wonderfully crafted and with a droll sense of humor, it treats its young audience with respect. No wonder Bolt called it “the [play] that’s given me the most pleasure.”
Vivat! Vivat Regina! (1970)
"She will have what she desires, and it will fetch her off her throne.”
Bolt returned to Tudor England in 1970, writing Vivat! Vivat Regina! as a vehicle for his wife Sarah Miles. Performed at the Chichester Theatre Festival with Miles as Mary Stuart and Eileen Atkins as Elizabeth I, it received considerable success. An equally successful Broadway version with Atkins and Claire Bloom ran in New York the following year, earning several Tony nominations. Vivat has experienced several revivals, including a 1985 off-Broadway version with Geraldine Page as Elizabeth, and Barbara Flynn as Mary in a 1995 Mermaid Theatre production.
Despite its reception, Vivat is Bolt’s weakest history play. The saga of Mary Queen of Scots has been told many times, from Maxwell Anderson to Maria Schiller. Bolt’s depiction of the dynastic duo as “figures on a seesaw, so similar and opposite” is interesting but not especially novel: Elizabeth sacrifices love for her throne, while Mary’s carnal fulfillment destroys her grip on power. We get a recitation of familiar history, well-written but unsurprising.
Vivat’s primary interest is Bolt’s very cinematic imagery. Most effective is a form of theatrical “cross cutting” which allows the Queens to interact without actually meeting. Thus he avoids the pitfall of a fictitious Mary-Elizabeth confrontation. The stylized stage work, with an elevated pyramid standing in for the respective throne, stands halfway between Absurd sparseness and traditional pageantry. More familiar Brechtian tropes (characters addressing the audience, use of a nursery rhyme during Darnley’s assassination) are employed to mixed effect. With its trappings of Epic Theatre, Vivat is probably more effective on stage than page.
As always, Bolt provides reams of crisp dialogue and eloquent speeches. But he clutters the narrative with an excess of characters and the story frequently drags. The personal focus which worked so well in A Man for All Seasons here trivializes history into a royal cat fight; we don’t get a proper grasp of the momentous political and religious issues at stake. Vivat is ultimately readable but underwhelming.
State of Revolution (1977)
“We cannot assume that the times in which we live are not catastrophic, merely because it is we who live in them. After all, someone has to live in catastrophic times.”
Robert Bolt spent two years researching this epic treatment of the Russian Revolution, staged by Peter Hall's National Theatre with a prestigious cast: Michael Bryant, Michael Kitchen, Terence Rigby and Brian Blessed. The production proved arduous, due in part to a labor strike by stage hands. Critics savaged the play for being pro-Communist, anti-Communist or (in Irving Wardle's words) having "nothing definite to say."
State of Revolution was another personal project. Bolt held a New Left view of Communism, dismayed by Soviet tyranny but hopeful for true revolution elsewhere. Besides CND, he joined Hugh Trevor-Roper and Ernie Roberts in visiting Maoist China in 1965. His radio play The Window depicted the '56 Hungarian Revolution, while Doctor Zhivago provided a worm's-eye view of Revolutionary Russia. Bolt's time as president of ACTT (the Association of Cinematographic and Television Technicians) disillusioned him: in the mid-'70s he moderated a bitter dispute between Trotskyist unions, bankrupt studios and Harold Wilson's Labour government.
Like Vivat and Gentle Jack, State of Revolution is just too big: 25 speaking parts, large crowd scenes and spectacle covering 15 years of Russian history. The narrative lurches from prewar Capri through World War I, both revolutions, Red Terror, the Kronstadt Rebellion and Trotsky and Stalin's rivalry. With so much going on, State bogs down in spectacle. Producing it must have been nightmarish. Without Brechtian sparseness it's a panorama, meticulously accurate but dramatically stiff.
State lacks Bolt's usual themes. Zhelnik, leader of the Kronstadt Soviet, represents the pure extremist embodied by Louis Flax in Tiger and the Horse or Strelnikov in Doctor Zhivago, a revolutionary too pure for the Revolution. Felix Dzerzhinsky's evolution from idealist to pitiless executioner depicts humanity sublimated by ideology. Captain Draganoff has shades of the Common Man, cheerily switching from the Tsarist police to the Cheka. These characters are marginal however, Bolt instead focusing on the Bolshevik inner circle.
State crosses a "Great Men" historical pageant with Marxist dialectic: "Big events aren't formed by people, people are formed by big events." Education Minister Lunacharsky lectures about "the historically determined movement of the masses" while celebrating Lenin and Stalin's individual brilliance. Bolt also explores the contradictions between the Revolution's idealism and its brutal methods. But he ultimately reflects a naive sympathy towards the Bolsheviks: if only Stalin hadn't usurped Trotsky, Russia would be a Workers' Paradise! Yeah, right.
Bolt's portrait of Lenin and Co. drives home the irony. Lenin starts a relentless fanatic but the realities of government force moderation. Trotsky threatens German ministers with the mutiny of their men; "We do seem to have won," comes the retort. The New Economic Policy, liquidation of the Kulaks and revanchist imperialism transforms the Revolution into a repressive state. Trotsky, a theoretician whose arrogance alienates everyone, feuds with Stalin, an "administrator" like A Man for All Seasons' Cromwell waiting to be useful. Bolt shows how personalities and practicality shaped the Soviet Union more than theory.
State of Revolution finally proves more challenging than entertaining. Nonetheless, its shrewd deconstruction of Marxist dogma makes it worth reading.
* * *
State of Revolution was Bolt's final stage play. He spent the next three years working torturously on David Lean's The Bounty, the stress of which triggered a crippling stroke. After a long, painful recovery Bolt penned a few more screenplays (The Mission, Without Warning: The James Brady story) but never again returned to the stage. Perhaps the negative reaction towards State dissuaded him. Or perhaps he realized his true talents lie in cinema.
Back to movies soon!
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