In Extremis by Howard Brenton
New Work Invited Back to Shakespeare's Globe
This season's first New Work at London's Globe is actually a revisit by a 2006 hit, and it continues to intrigue the audience.
Playwright Howard Brenton is no stranger to controversy. His work is generally politically-charged, unafraid of having actors voice weighty arguments, and darkly comical. His play 'The Romans in Britain', a large-scale work produced at the National Theatre back in 1980, incurred the wrath of the National's then-important funders, the Greater London Council, and was the subject of an unsuccessful private prosecution by the self-appointed guardian of public morality, Mrs Mary Whitehouse. The play gained massive tabloid press coverage as a result. The 'Romans' was about "culture shock", Brenton asserted, and the violence that ensues when people fight over ideas and ideals. His current play at Shakespeare's Globe, 'In Extremis', also deals with a clash of world-changing ideas, but in this case, is hung on the hook of the world-famous love story of Abelard and Heloise.
These two were no ordinary lovers. Both had exceptional intelligence and radical ideas that challenged the authority of the church in 12th century France. Following their physical affair and the birth of a son, they led cloistered religious lives, separated by extreme personal violence - Abelard having been castrated by Heloise's vengeful guardian. Their nemesis is personified in the play not by Heloise's guardian, however, but by the powerful Abbot Bernard of Clairvaux, who was canonised as a saint only 20 years after his death. Medieval Catholic theology is no simple subject, but, to put it briefly, the clash in 'In Extremis' is between Bernard's self-harming mysticism, where knowledge supposedly comes through Divine revelation, and the lovers' belief in an early form of individualism and rationalism, combined with plenty of fleshly self-indulgence.
'In Extremis' was written for what Brenton terms a "conventional" theatre, and then staged at the Globe in 2006. It did extremely well for a new, non-Shakespeare work. Artistic Director Dominic Dromgoole was delighted when the (largely) same company was available to reprise the play for a fortnight's run in his second season.
Brenton uses modern, vernacular English, and his director, John Dove, makes the most of the Globe's strengths as a story-telling space. Brenton admits to some surprise at how well the Globe suits his work. "One of the biggest surprises," he told the press before the recent run "was how strong 'word painting' can be. Tell the audience you are beside Notre Dame in Paris and the cathedral miraculously seems to appear. Why this should be - in a theatre with such an overwhelming, colourful presence - I don't know, but the effect is very marked.... Actors can go round a pillar and begin the next scene 10 hours or even two years later."
Rapport with the audience
Indeed, John Dove's production begins with the actors exchanging inconsequential banter with the 'groundlings' who surround the Globe's uncurtained thrust stage, and this uniquely easy interaction continues throughout, for example with an actor happily walking downstage to announce the interval.
The performances are strong throughout, actors interlacing broad comedy with esoteric debates, which effectively holds the audience's attention, whether they be schoolchild or professor. The three principal players, Oliver Boot, Sally Bretton and Jack Laskey, all have the verve and energy required to be convincing. The characterisation of Heloise is strikingly modern. She is presented, through Abelard's besotted eyes, as his intellectual equal from the outset, which is why he loves her. But we see little explicit proof of her brilliance until her final scene with Bernard, in her maturity. What is clearer is that as a young woman she defended her independence fiercely - refusing, at first, to marry Abelard, the father of her illegitimate son. It is to her that Brenton leaves the last word, in a conclusive "great contest" of ideas with Bernard.The historical reality is a little different, in that Peter Abelard, who was the elder and tutor of Heloise, has been immortalised as a great philosopher, while historians don't even know Heloise's own surname. Perhaps Brenton's dramatisation will help to reclaim her as a scholar in her own right.Certainly it has inspired me to explore the lovers' story further.
The season continues
The short revival of Brenton's 'In Extremis' ended this week, but the Globe's 2007 season continues with two more new works: Jack Shepherd's 'Holding Fire!' and 'We The People' by Eric Schlosser, in repertory with Shakespeare's 'Othello', 'Merchant of Venice', and 'Love's Labours Lost'.
