The Habit Of Art

Theatre Royal, Brighton, Tuesday, September 11

A FICTIONAL meeting between two artists is the centrepoint of Alan Bennett’s play The Habit Of Art and yet it is so much more.

There is the complexity of this meeting as it takes place in a play about a play.

Actors play actors in the drama.

They walk off stage and yet stay on stage.

It covers such themes as ageing as artists, legacy and what makes an artist in a way which is accessible, funny and enthralling.

The play focuses on the poet W H Auden and the composer Benjamin Britten who worked together at the beginning of their careers.

Bennett imagines their meeting many years later as they both struggle with old age and how their life’s work will be remembered.

Matthew Kelly brilliantly plays Auden, shambolic, smelly and endlessly talking, questioning, inquisitive and showing great kindness and empathy.

And yet, as the actor who plays him, he is forgetful, irritable and driving the rest of the cast up the wall with his inability to remember his lines.

Britten is played by David Yelland, a neat, diffident man who cannot face his darkest desires and is running away from how he is perceived away from his cosy world of Aldeburgh.

Bennett plays with the structure of theatre throughout. The actor playing the biographer of both men, Humphrey Carpenter played by John Wark throws a hissy fit at his fury of being simple a theatrical device, merely the narrator. It is knowing and trusting of the audience to get the joke.

The author of the fictional play Neil, played by Robert Mountford, gets to whine about why actors do not just say the words instead of questioning the playwright all the time.

This is a complex, challenging piece with literary references throughout and yet manages a light touch, making it so satisfying and rewarding to watch.

Caroline Sutton