March 3, 2008
The spark of an idea for Spies, Michael Frayn’s 2002 novel set in the Second World War, was a recollection of a friend suggesting that his mother was a German spy and their subsequent attempt to put her under surveillance. While in the real world the game was over fairly quickly - as the result of the mother failing to make contact with German Intelligence within a couple of hours - in the world of the book, the game develops to lead to a tragic denouement. While writing the book it occurred to Frayn that the childhood friend, the real-life Keith of the novel, was probably still alive and he began to wonder what he’d make of his work. His thoughts were soon answered when after a gap of over fifty years a letter from his old friend dropped through the letter box. Frayn puts this down to the fact that as people get older they start looking back on their lives in order to make sense of it. The sense they make out of it though may not be the same as they made when the original events took place. It was these themes of perception, the need to make sense of what is in front of us, memory and their interplay with real life that dominated the themes of Michael Frayn’s conversation at the Oxford Playhouse yesterday.
Frayn highlighted his point about the way perception and historical events interplay with memory with an example related to his 1998 play Copenhagen, about the physicists Werner Heisenberg and Nils Bohr. At the time of the first production there was considerable controversy about the historical accuracy of the play. However, as Frayn points out, letters written by Bohr and Heisenberg suggest the two men themselves had different perceptions about their meeting in Copenhagen. Heisenberg’s letter written to his wife in the week of their contentious meeting suggests that they subsequently met and had a pleasant evening together. The one written by Bohr some twenty years later tells another story; one which Frayn suggests, was the result of the Bohr’s war time experience and how this influenced his memory. Frayn makes the point that we don’t always know what we think and certainly not what we thought. Furthermore, he suggests that all arts play with potential, and given the uncertainty of reality, artists of any genre can say ‘let’s suppose’ and offer up the possibilities they’ve invented to an audience.
Frayn learnt his craft as a playwright from translating Chekhov and, although he has become one of Britain’s best-known playwrights, he revealed he wouldn’t have known how to dramatise Spies for the theatre. For him the need to be in the internal world of the main protagonist, young Stephen, meant the novel was his chosen medium to tell the story.
As a playwright, he said, you are aware that your ideas of characters may not be he same as the actors’ and that their ideas may not be the same as the audience’s. It is the interplay of all those perceptions that create each performance. In the case of Spies, he saw the Alibi Theatre’s dramatisation for the first time last night after his talk. In their case, he was obviously happy to let them interpret the work without interference. It would have been fascinating to know what he thought.
Frayn highlighted his point about the way perception and historical events interplay with memory with an example related to his 1998 play Copenhagen, about the physicists Werner Heisenberg and Nils Bohr. At the time of the first production there was considerable controversy about the historical accuracy of the play. However, as Frayn points out, letters written by Bohr and Heisenberg suggest the two men themselves had different perceptions about their meeting in Copenhagen. Heisenberg’s letter written to his wife in the week of their contentious meeting suggests that they subsequently met and had a pleasant evening together. The one written by Bohr some twenty years later tells another story; one which Frayn suggests, was the result of the Bohr’s war time experience and how this influenced his memory. Frayn makes the point that we don’t always know what we think and certainly not what we thought. Furthermore, he suggests that all arts play with potential, and given the uncertainty of reality, artists of any genre can say ‘let’s suppose’ and offer up the possibilities they’ve invented to an audience.
Frayn learnt his craft as a playwright from translating Chekhov and, although he has become one of Britain’s best-known playwrights, he revealed he wouldn’t have known how to dramatise Spies for the theatre. For him the need to be in the internal world of the main protagonist, young Stephen, meant the novel was his chosen medium to tell the story.
As a playwright, he said, you are aware that your ideas of characters may not be he same as the actors’ and that their ideas may not be the same as the audience’s. It is the interplay of all those perceptions that create each performance. In the case of Spies, he saw the Alibi Theatre’s dramatisation for the first time last night after his talk. In their case, he was obviously happy to let them interpret the work without interference. It would have been fascinating to know what he thought.