Production of Alan Bennett's The Habit of Art to play at Wesley Memorial Church

When Alan Bennett’s The Habit of Art first opened at the National Theatre in 2009, one reviewer commented: “This play has enough layers to make Pirandello blanch”.

But, nothing daunted, Oxford Theatre Guild has taken it on, and is giving this Oxford-set play its Oxford premiere.

The Habit of Art is set in 1972, and famed poet W H Auden has taken up residence in college rooms at Christ Church. Only a year away from his death, he is living there in squalor when his former collaborator Benjamin Britten seeks a meeting: Britten is worried about his opera Death in Venice. So far so straightforward. But in addition Bennett uses the framing device of a play within a play: the audience sees the rehearsal of a play, with the parts of Auden and Britten being played by actors called Fitz and Henry.

“The play is quite difficult to read,” says OTG’s director, Kevin Elliott. “My job is to make things as easy for the audience to follow as possible. So I’ve introduced what’s called ‘a flick’.

“We have characters called Fitz, Henry, and Donald. They are all actors. When these actors play their roles, they do the flick – through changes in mannerisms, body posture, and speech patterns – to illustrate that they are now playing Auden, Britten, and Oxford broadcaster and biographer Humphrey Carpenter respectively.

“I’ve told our actors playing Fitz and Henry that their characters were very healthy. That’s because I know – from studying Humphrey Carpenter’s biographies of the two men — that both Auden and Britten were quite unwell towards the end of their lives. So I hope that the differences in body language will make it entirely obvious to the audience whether the actors are currently Fitz and Henry, or Auden and Britten.”

In the first half of the play, Auden mistakes Humphrey Carpenter for a rent boy — Carpenter will one day be his biographer but in 1972 has come to interview him for Radio Oxford. So Bennett is implying that Auden was a dirty old man in every sense of the expression, I suggest to the actor playing him, Paul Clifford.

“That’s right,” Paul replies. “I think Auden probably thought about sex rather a lot. Also, towards the end of the play the rent boy reprimands Auden slightly, and says: ‘There’s no need to stink, not nowadays’. And Auden urinates in his washbasin.

‘There’s a hilarious scene very early on, when the dons are sitting around in the Senior Common Room just after High Table. Auden turns to the Waynflete Professor of Moral Philosophy, and asks him if he pees in his basin. When the Waynflete Professor assures him that he does not, Auden says: ‘I don’t believe you.’ “But what struck me most in the play was that Auden is a deeply sad figure. I think that Fitz, the actor who plays him, shares a lot of his feelings: they’re both grand old men who are past their best, and are very conscious of the fact.”

The fastidious Britten is presented as a complete opposite to Auden in many ways. He is played by Andrew Driver.

“Before I started on this play my view was that Britten was a 20th- century composer and I wasn’t very interested in him!” Andrew laughs. “But of course that view has now changed. I’ve learnt something about him, and heard some of his music, which I find quite interesting. But veering away from Britten to Henry, the actor playing him, my approach has been: ‘How is Henry, a professionally trained actor, going to interpret the part of Britten?’ That’s been the challenge for me: working towards Britten through Henry – as well as having three names: I’m Henry, Britten, and also a Christ Church scout complaining about the state of Auden’s rooms!”

Meanwhile, Richard Readshaw takes on the role of Humphrey Carpenter.

“It’s a little bit daunting,” he says. “There may well be people in the audience who knew him. So I’m definitely not going to try an imitation!

“I think that the important thing about him is the wide range of abilities and talents that he possessed.”

The Habit of Art
Wesley Memorial Church
Wednesday, November 5, until Saturday, November 8
Call 01865 305305 or visit ticketsoxford.com