Saint's Day

SAINTS DAY by JOHN WHITING
Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond, November 2002

First staged in 1951 as part of the Festival of Britain where it won a
prize, John Whiting's Saint's Day is now a largely forgotten work by a
largely forgotten writer. Bleak, perplexing and utterly lacking in any
optimism, Saint's Day wears it's post war pessimism like a glowing
badge of honour. A quick search on Google shows that it hasn't really
had many public outings since that first run in 1951 - a programme
cover from a 1962 production in Birmingham being the only other one
listed.

The Orange Tree Theatre used to be based above a pub, now they are in a
pleasant little venue opposite it. On the night we were there it was
strangely in contrast to the crowd of drunken rugby goers littering the
pavement with empty plastics to be inside what seems, at first glance,
to be a pleasant social club that just happens to have a permanent
100-seater 'in the round' theatre attached. But those impressions are
misleading and the Orange Tree seems to have made it its business to
show difficult or forgotten works. A late-18th century comedy was the
previous show and a long unseen work by W S Gilbert is next up. They
seem to like their plays obscure in this part of leafy London.

Some plays are obviously obscure for a reason however and for all the
talk by the artistic director that Saint's Day should be seen as the
first blast of a generation that would feature Pinter et al it should
also be able to stand on its own two feet. The story seems at first to
be revolving around the birthday celebrations of an 83-year-old
agit-poet Paul Southman who has been in voluntary exile from literary
circles for twenty-five years and has spent the intervening years
annoying the local villagers. In his house live the odd husband and
wife combo of Stella and Charles Hebberden and the house servant John
Winter. But then having built up this house with its strange dynamics
in the first half in comes the young man Robert Procathren to take Paul
to London for a birthday dinner in his honour. Add to the mix a group
of troublesome soldiers recently escaped from a conveniently near
detention centre, a loaded gun and a shout from the next room and the
play tumbles at speed through a second half that seems to bear little
relation to the first.

Unifying these two disparate parts are a few set piece speeches: Paul
Southman's amusing 'trial' in which he talks about defiling the lady
society, Robert Procathren's long extended tracts justifying his
descent into nihilism and Stella talking about how violence will beget
violence. But there is no plot thread that runs through all three acts,
except for the painting on which Charles Hebberden is working.
Ultimately it's hard to describe what the whole thing is actually
about. Except that maybe life is shit and then you die, either on your
own terms or not.

That said, the acting is largely good. Leonard Fenton as Paul Southman
is excellent as the man with intelligence, fine talk and the brains of
a fish and Ben Warwick shouts his way nicely through his role as Robert
Procathren. There are no duds that I noticed.

An interesting failure then, which held the attention because of the
performances. On the strength of this production it's hard to see
Saint's Day being raised from its obscurity but as an oddity of its
time it was certainly well worth seeing and for that we should be
thankful for Orange Tree and its wilfully difficult programme.