All plays are too long. Yes, all of them - dare I suggest. And theatre-goers really, really can’t stand it. There, my startling opinion’s out! A conviction I’ve only dared whisper before – and to none but my most understanding of theatre allies. But life is too short – and your audience too precious – so I really do feel the need to speak more broadly (and loudly) now. Outraged? Bewildered? Resistant to this idea? Then I’m guessing you’re an actor. Roaming freely, “treading the boards” – rather than a punter who’s forced to sit, bum-numbingly, watching the play.
The directors amongst you however, I hope, will more readily take my point. How often have you pleaded with a seemingly sluggish cast to “pick-up the pace!”, “keep things moving!” and “speed the action through!” – when in your secret, script-aware heart, you know that the problem lies, in fact, not with your struggling players but with the play? Over-writing is a deadly ailment which afflicts all manner of dramatists; whether their work be old or new; comical, pastoral or tragic. So lets lay-out and examine the patient – and apply ourselves to the only cure I know; radical, ruthless surgery.
Yes – cut that script, I beg of you!
Oh, come on. Do you really need to dutifully honour all of those gaping, wind-swept Pinter pauses? Or ring-fence every clause of drawling Bernard? (Shaw). And as for Brecht and Chekhov and Beckett – well, honestly, need I say more? But perhaps the greatest offender (and this one might keep you awake at night) is that sacred “untouchable”; old Bill himself. Yes, the venerable Shakespeare. Argh! O, for a fuse and pyre that would boil-down the dullest hell of his invention!
Not that I don’t approve of William in many, many ways. On the contrary. His intellect and perception are surely beyond reproach? And his understanding of the human condition unparalleled in the history of the global stage-craft. But really, he does go on a bit… Judicious excisions (together with a little “up-dating”) improve his ancient verses like nothing I know.
Take The Scottish Play as a case in point. Dramatic, I grant you – but not what you’d ever call “now” or “nippy”. So let’s keep, by all means, the delightfully bouncy trio of hags that open-up proceedings (and certainly that jolly cookery demo that kicks things off so swimmingly). But do we really need the subsequent longueurs of dreary
Well, at least one thing in actual fact; the determined abridgement of that other prime time-gobbler – “King Lear”. A pruning of this endless dirge is surely an attractive notion? – and one that could be so easily achieved. Lights-up, as the script stands at present, has the tragically short-sighted, doddery monarch shuffling moodily about his crumbling empire. He then totters from daughter to daughter to daughter - moaning on for hours and hours on end (“Know that we have divided in three our kingdom”, ~ blah, blah, boring-blah…) How much more arresting and efficient to equip the old-buffer with a fully-motorised golf-buggy? He could then zip smoothly (and swiftly) around his court and, aided by properly-fitting bi-focals, immediately and quite clearly see that Goneril and Regan (a pair of transparently odious strumpets) are up to no-end of shenanigans. A raspberry, then, in their direction - and an approving peck on the cheek for Cordelia - and, hey presto, all trouble (and the rest of the play) averted! A sherbet in the bar, and we can all go home!
But will not the Bard, I hear you ask, be turning in his grave? Nay, whirling like a turbo-charged propeller? Perhaps so; but rather, surely, the sound of Shakespearean spinning, than the whoosh of your punters making for the exit? So directors, please, get out your knives and cut, cut, cut that script! You might lose some sleep, and your actors some lines, but at least you’ll keep your audience…
