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Another
Country |
| Stories of life in boarding school tend to fall into one
of two categories. On the one hand is the Tom Brown's Schooldays tradition,
making it all out to be a jolly, character-building time, full of midnight
feasts and heroic victories on the cricket field (Jennings, Billy Bunter,
Harry Potter - for cricket read quidditch).
On the other hand are those stories that take a more cynical, realistic stance, and see the rituals, humiliations and power games of life in the best school as representative of society as a whole. Lindsay Anderson's wonderful film If…, charting the rebellion of three sixth-formers, is the classic example of such an approach. Which brings me, rather ramblingly, to St Peter's Drama's fine production of Julian Mitchell's Another Country. This play is very much in the If… tradition - less secret midnight feasts and more vicious beatings, blackmail, suicide and realpolitik. Another Country tells the story of Guy Bennett (Kieran Pugh), a brilliant student whose deeply disillusioning school experiences make him realise that due to his sexuality and nonconformity he will never be accepted by the establishment. Intriguingly, Bennett can be read as a portrait of the Cambridge spy Guy Burgess - showing how schoolboy betrayals and frustrations may have formed a notorious traitor. Jack Ream as a committed communist, Thomas Richards' stuffed shirt of a prefect, and a brief, hilariously flamboyant turn by Christopher Milsom as a boy's literary uncle were all particularly watchable for my money, but the whole cast do a very good job (some stumbling over lines and a couple of technical difficulties can be put down to first-night nerves). This is an intelligent work which tackles important themes (politics, sexuality, loyalty, to name just three biggies) through the microcosm of school life. True, these boys refer to their parents as mater and pater and call each other cads, but despite the dated slang this is no rose-tinted view of public school life, but a contentious, relevant play. George Tew 4/2/04 |
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