SURFACING/DOWN THE HATCH (1984)

 

SURFACING/DOWN THE HATCH The Lyric Studio, Hammersmith dir: Harold Pinter Helen Grosvenor’s first step into the world of theatre after a successful 30-year career in film and television is anything but tentative. In the one-act play ‘Surfacing’, she takes on the challenging role of Diana, a woman stuck down by a mysterious sleeping sickness in her teens, only to be awoken 30 years later still believing herself to be sixteen. It would be difficult enough for any actress to capture this engrossing and emotional dilemma – how to present convincingly an untrammelled adolescent mind trapped inside the body of a late-middle aged woman, forced to confront the terror of so much lost time. But to then concede the stage to the mighty Alan Bates for the second half of the show, another punchy one-act short, ‘Down The Hatch’, in which Bates plays a booze-fuelled torturer interrogating a subdued and terrified family group – that is to risk being overshadowed to the point of oblivion. Grosvenor, though, is unforgettable. Certainly it is her girlish ghoulishness that haunted the minds of the audience as they left the theatre, much more than Bates’s taciturn cruelty and violence, shocking as that was. Both plays pack a punch, but it is the fate of Diana in ‘Surfacing’ that lingers in the memory.     Watching a woman of Grosvenor’s age present all the silliness, exuberance and thwarted desire of youth is both astounding and deeply moving. And then there’s the sorrow of all that’s been lost, thirty years of life. Incomprehension, panic, yearning all play across Grosvenor’s piteous, time-worn face. It is an acting masterclass, and  a play and a performance that will sear into your psyche, reminding anyone who sees it how quickly time passes and how little of life’s experience one manages to store up against the darkness. If this is a sign of what Grosvenor is capable of as a live performer, we should all be very excited about what is to come. Alan Bates’s agent, meanwhile, might wish to rethink who he’s matched up against next time around.

There was no plan about it. I was at a dinner party at Antonia’s, wine had been taken, and I happened to mention an interest in taking to the stage. Things just snowballed from there.

It’s true Peter has always thought of it as a direct invasion of his territory, as if I had put my tanks on his lawn. Absolument non.

It’s not as if Peter was at all interested in theatre. By 1984 he wasn’t doing any live work of any note, certainly no more gallery performances that anyone can remember. As I recall, he was mucking about with that dreadful McClory man on a Bond vehicle again - can you believe it, after all these years? Then he made a complete fool of himself at Truffaut’s funeral. Thank the Lord I turned that one down. No more funerals! Please!

Meanwhile I was hearing his agent was keeping him afloat on a diet of music videos and advertising.  So it wasn’t really a competition, was it?

I suppose the subject matter was bound to force a comparison. I had sans idea that the play was about a woman in a coma when I said yes to it. Frankly I would have taken anything Harold was prepared to throw my way. I just wanted to get back to work in a decently designed performance space interacting with proper actors of proven calibre. I’d had enough of the phoneyness of film. And I supposed the film business had had enough of me, you might say.

People were bound to make comparisons, given that I start and end the play flat out on a hospital bed. But if you read the reviews, I don’t recall there being any mention of Peter anywhere. Critics were far more worried about me having to play the warm up act for Alan Bates every night, as it were. On that score I’m happy to relate I came out of it perfectly well.

Besides, I was unconscious in that play for a total of a more two minutes at most. And I hardly think that was the most testing or important aspect of my performance. I had pages and pages to memorise, and some very complicated blocking to master at times. Name me a part in the last 20 years of his life where Peter had had more than a half-dozen lines to say or had to do little more than lie on the ground.

If I had truly wanted to cash in on Peter’s reputation in some way, I certainly wouldn’t have done it with a very short new play presented in a relatively obscure arthouse theatre well away from the West End, now would I? I would have made a big song and dance about it. A pantomime, perhaps. ‘Sleeping Beauty’! Or ‘Snow White’ with Judie Dench and I swapping the roles of Snow White and the Wicked Queen each performance. I’m being silly now. But now you see how silly it all is, this false comparison with Peter. He has his career and I have mine. I had a dream not so long ago of me being on stage in a production of ‘Mother Courage’. So if nothing else, I have that to look forward to. It will happen, let me promise you. Everything I dream about comes true in the end!