‘Turning the Screw’, Kevin Kelly’s new play now being performed at the King’s Head Theatre, invites obvious comparisons with Alan Bennett’s ‘The Habit of Art’. Both plays investigate the character of Benjamin Britten against the background of his creative process, writing ‘Death in Venice’ in ‘The Habit of Art’ and ‘The Turn of the Screw’ in ‘Turning the Screw’. Both plays also examine a crucial relationship in Britten’s life: with W.H. Auden in ‘The Habit of Art’ and with David Hemmings in ‘Turning the Screw’, the vital difference being that, although Britten knew Auden well and his influence was important, the meeting Bennett uses is fictional, while Kelly’s presentation of Britten’s relationship with Hemmings is based on widely acknowledged and very well researched fact.
The background to ‘Turning the Screw’ is that Britten is looking for a boy treble to play Miles in his new opera based on Henry James’ novella, ‘The Turn of the Screw’. He hears the young David Hemmings and immediately identifies him as ‘the one’; for Britten, Hemmings is the perfect embodiment of Miles, and he insists on casting him, despite some misgivings on the part of the director, Basil Coleman. As rehearsals progress, Britten becomes increasingly fixated on Hemmings and this becomes close to infatuation, which rings alarm bells for those around him, not least his life-partner, the tenor Peter Pears.
Kelly’s play is an impressive realisation of the tensions and complexities of this moment in Britten’s career, and is an admirably honest account of the power play between the main characters. David Hemmings has spoken at some length about this period of his life and was very clear that Britten always behaved with perfect propriety towards him and that he (Hemmings) was already relatively precocious and street-wise, well able to look after himself, and that he felt Peter Pears was afraid of him. Hemmings certainly appears not to have been overawed by the company he was keeping.
Pears disquiet regarding Hemmings might well have been caused, in part, by his anxiety that Britten would overstep the mark with the boy and cause a scandal that would prove disastrous, and Kelly is particularly good at presenting a relationship which is superficially innocent but has the potential to be anything but.
Kelly, with his cast and creative team approach this potentially fraught subject with honesty, seriousness and impeccable taste. As Britten, Gary Tushaw captures the composer’s disconcerting mix of steely, ego-driven ambition, and the perpetual prep school boy, with a penchant for skinny dipping and general high jinks. Like the rest of the cast, he does not attempt an impersonation of his character but to my mind he bore more than a passing resemblance to Alex Jennings, who played Britten in ‘The Habit of Art’. Tushaw’s exceptionally well- rounded performance even included a convincing conducting technique – no mean feat. As David Hemmings, Liam Watson differentiated nicely between the cocky, rough-edged boy from Tolworth, and the older sophisticated film star. The decision to cast an adult as Hemmings was surely the right one, as was the case with Sam McHale as The Boy. The Boy is based on Harry Morris, a young adolescent whom Britten tried to kiss while on a holiday in Cornwall. This overture was violently rejected as Britten confessed to Pears at their very first meeting while they were clearing the flat of a mutual friend, Peter Burra who had been killed in a plane crash. McHale gave him a suitably sombre, weighty presence. As Peter Pears, Simon Willmont movingly suggested hurt at Britten’s emotional betrayal and panic at the thought that this might lead to a greater betrayal of a physical kind. His singing of the folksong ‘The Foggy Foggy Dew’, a familiar calling card for Pears and Britten in recital, added poignancy to the moment when Britten climbs into bed with Hemmings to comfort him when the boy is afraid of a storm: ‘So I hauled her into bed, and I covered up her head, just to keep her from the foggy, foggy dew.’ As was the case throughout the play, a potentially prurient moment was handled with sensitivity and tact. Jo Wickham quietly and economically suggested Imogen Holst’s willingness to dedicate her life to Britten’s music at the expense of her own composing career. I had not previously known that Britten suggested she marry Pears in order to deflect suspicion as to the nature of the relationship between the two men, but the rest of Kelly’s research seems to me to be beyond reproach so it seems it must have happened – an example of Britten’s selfishness and his preparedness to use others to further his career, with little thought for their happiness. I was particularly impressed by Jonathan Clarkson as Basil Coleman, director of ‘The Turn of the Screw’. He made very clear the dilemma Coleman had keeping Britten happy, while recognizing the threat imposed by Hemmings and holding the increasingly sexually aware young adolescent in check. He also movingly rejected Pears suggestion of moral cowardice, asking him to remember what courage it took to remain in Britain as a conscientious objector during the war (his unspoken rebuke being that Pears and Britten, though also ‘conchies’, spent much of the war in the USA). He also took the roles as Policemen and Judge, chillingly delineating the sadistic pleasure the latter took in sentencing Britten for buggery during what was literally a nightmare of a trial. Dickon Farmer completed the cast as the BBC Newsreader announcing Britten’s death.
Tim McArthur’s direction was sure footed, and, as I have indicated, never in any sense vulgar. The cast sang well, but it was a telling notion to have the voices of Peter Pears (Peter Quint): ‘It is a curious story’ and Jennifer Vyvyan (The Governess); ‘Malo malo’, beginning and ending the play with the beginning and ending of the opera.
A final musical thought: both boys audition for Britten and Coleman with the aria ‘Where e’re you walk’ from Handel’s ‘Semele’. Semele is destroyed when she insists she is allowed to see Jupiter’s godhead in all its magnificence and deadly splendour. Many who came into Britten’s orbit became non-persons if they displeased him or ceased to be useful, and this was Hemmings fate – like Semele he came too close to a god and was ultimately consigned to metaphorical fire and ashes. His subsequent phoenix like rise to film star eminence is particularly pleasing against this background
On the night I attended the audience was rather sparse, and this play deserves a wide audience; I hope positive reviews and enthusiastic word of mouth will swell numbers as the run proceeds. Were I any god of power I’d schedule it at this year’s Aldeburgh Festival – it would suit Snape’s Jubilee Hall very well…