Peter Gill's 'Versailles' at the Donmar Warehouse

'Versailles' - Photo by Johan Persson

Before going to see Peter Gill’s ‘Versailles’at the Donmar Warehouse, I read an interview with him by Richard Eyre (‘Talking Theatre - Interviews with Theatre People’, 2011) in which he speaks about his response to DH Lawrence’s plays, which he produced at the Royal Court in 1968.  He says that there were stage directions that Lawrence probably imagined would take place off stage, but Peter Gill brought them out into full view of the audience so that meals were cooked on stage.  He says, “The thing about theatre is that when somebody’s stabbed you don’t get shocked, but when somebody makes a cup of tea and drinks it, there’s something very shockingly real about it.” (Eyre, p.222)

It is this part of the interview that I delighted in the most.  Indeed, we talk about immersing the audience in a world that feels real, with characters we believe in, and what is more believable than a character who needs to eat, drink, or use the bathroom?  Thankfully, in seeing ‘Versailles’, I was able to experience this first hand.  Partway through the first scene, the maid brings forth a steaming pot of tea, a jug of milk and an array of cakes.  For the rest of the scene, dialogue takes place in between mouthfuls of cake and sips of tea, served to the character/actor’s taste.  Apart from making the audience hungry for a slice of what the actors are having, to see Geoffrey Ainsworth (Adrian Lukis) take a sip of his tea really is shocking.  It is like seeing a puppet breathe, as if Joey from ‘War Horse’ were able to gallop on stage himself and whinny and neigh.  

What I mean is, the characters become a real human being beyond the text.  In having the characters’ desires served in one aspect of their lives, the degree of belief in what they want, need, desire through the play is increased tenfold.  But it doesn’t end there - and this is the beauty of Peter Gill - because he makes sipping tea far more interesting than that alone.  The thing is, you would think that to drink tea and eat cake does not actually contribute explicitly to the play, it is just the playwright and director doing something quirky and outlandish.  However, through the empty dishes an interesting point is made of the will to eradicate the class system, poignantly realised in the maid entering to clear the dishes away and Constance Fitch (Helen Bradbury), a woman of upper class standing, offering to help her.  But what it does most of all is highlight that these are people – human beings with normal whims, fancies, tastes and needs – beyond the class system as well as beyond the play.

The only point of contention I have with the play is that it is ‘intellectual theatre’ for which you really ought to do some background research before sitting down to this three hour dialogue on the First World War.  The interactions that are loaded with an ulterior motive, or that are cleverly relevant to society 100 years later, are rather wonderful. But I don’t think it was Gill’s intention to astound us all with a political point on a level in which the audience are alienated from the society of the play.  By the second interval, I felt it necessary to kick myself awake with a coffee, as if raising a “cheers” to the actors on stage, all of us sipping in unison.  

Oh.  What a lovely parallel.  But again, I don’t think incorporating the audience into a classless society through the need for caffeine is quite what Gill intended...