Gwilym Lee and Tamla Kari in Versailles
Reviewed by James Karas
There is a small genre of plays
about significant current events or historical happenings that are important today.
Plays about Richard Nixon, Enron, the banking crisis, the war in Afghanistan
and the American invasion of Iraq come to mind. The playwright uses actual
persons, fictitious or semi-fictitious characters, invents subplots and
comments on the events or crisis at hand.
Peter Gill’s Versailles, now playing at
the Donmar Warehouse in London, is very much in that category of drama. This year
is the 100th anniversary of the start of World War I but rather than
dealing with the summer of 1914, Gill has chosen to dramatize the Paris Peace
Conference of 1919.
He has created two upper crust
families in Kent for the first and third acts and takes us to Paris for the
second act. Mrs. Rawlinson (Francesca Annis) and her children Mabel (Tamila
Kari) and Leonard (Gwilym Lee) live in a fine house in the country with
servants and all the amenities of class and culture. Their friends Arthur
(Christopher Godwin) and Marjorie Chater (Barbara Flynn) belong to the same
world but they suffered the tragedy of losing a son in the war.
The Rawlinsons have several
visitors such as Constance (Helen Bradbury), Hugh (Josh O’Connor) and Geoffrey
(Adrian Lukis) who are necessary for the development of the plot. The play has
thirteen characters, all of them gentry except for the servant Ethel (Eleanor
Yates).
The play moves on two levels: the
interpersonal relations of the characters and the commentary on the peace negotiations
in Paris. The tragedy of the Chaters, the homosexual relations of Leonard and
Hugh, the romantic attraction of Geoffrey to Constance and Mabel’s lack of
interest in romance and matrimony are among the personal entanglements that are
intermingled with the political arguments.
The problem with the personal
stories is that Gill allows an emotional range that goes all the way from A to
B as someone once said. These are Victorian English men and women and we expect
reserve but in this play they are practically dead. Mabel does shriek at her mother
and Arthur Chater does display momentary emotion at his son’s death but the
scene is closed with lightning speed. When the gay men confront each other they
are practically standing at attention. There is almost no physical contact.
Perhaps the real point of the
play is a critique of the peace negotiations especially the onerous terms
imposed on Germany. The protagonist here is Leonard who attends the peace
conference and tries desperately to find a compromise position where Germany is
allowed to survive economically instead of being plunged into economic crises
by the reparations it may be forced to pay.
Gill had to steer between
meaningless generalities and hard facts as to the terms imposed on the Germans.
Leonard gives us hard facts about the effects of reducing Germany’s coal
producing capabilities and foresees social upheaval in the offing. Hard facts
require hard numbers and statistics and parts of the play look like a debate
among opposing views of the war and its aftermath.
Gill takes some easy shots at the
British class system with its sense of entitlement, blindness, snobbery and
even stupidity. They learned nothing from the war and all they want is to go
back to the good old days as if the devastation did not occur.
Gill directs the play and the
cast seems to have no difficulty in handling the roles. Lee as Leonard is eloquent and fervent in his
criticism of the peace terms. Lukis is convincing as a cultured businessman who
with some of the others, represents prewar attitudes. Annis and Flynn are good
as women who wear long gowns, expect servants to do the work and find
discussions of class just boring.
Kari and Bradbury as Mabel and
Constance are attractive, educated and independent, more or less, and represent
the new woman.
Gill does present some cogent
arguments in relation to the Treaty of Versailles and Leonard is prescient in
his comments but it is easy to be prophetic one hundred years after the fact.
The Paris Peace Conference was an
utterly fascinating gathering of hundreds of politicians, diplomats and
experts. Perhaps no play can do justice to the almost six months of complex
negotiations. But a first-rate historian can. Pick up a copy of Margaret
MacMillan’s Paris 1919 and you will read about fascinating people,
extraordinary situations and learn a great deal about the subject.
__________
Versailles by Peter Gill opened on February 27, 2014
and continues until April 5, 2014 at the Donmar Warehouse, 41 Earlham Street, London, England. http://www.donmarwarehouse.com/
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