'PATRIOT'
LINKS

BBC interview

BATES
ARCHIVE

News
In Memoriam

SPOTLIGHTS

Knighthood
American
Film Theatre
Fifties TV
Al Hirschfeld

FEATURES

Biography
Timeline
Photo Gallery
Actors Centre
Piffle
Ephemera

ARCHIVE

Theatre
Film
Television
Audio
Interviews
Writing

 t h e a t r e

A Patriot For Me, by John Osborne
(Alfred Redl) 11.v.83, Chichester Festival Theatre
and the Theatre Royal, Haymarket, London
directed by Ronald Eyre
Variety Club Award

AMONG the more puzzling omissions from the repertoires of our national theatres in the last twenty years has been John Osborne's ambitious study of undercover life in an imperial elite, "A Patriot For Me." Its Chichester production, whose signal success has made this persistent neglect even more perplexing, is, I believe, only the second in Britain since the play was staged at the Royal Court in 1964 under restrictive 'club' conditions, because of the Lord Chamberlain's refusal to license the key scene of the drag ball (presented as an annual coming out spree for the closet homosexuals of the ruling classes in Habsburg Vienna 80 years ago).
Why has this major Osborne work, originally denied a proper hearing, been ignored (except by Watford!) for 20 years, long after the disappearance of the absurd official censorship, whose end was accelerated by its jejune attitude to the play? Up til now people may have believed, I suppose, that "A Patriot For Me" was of no more than ephemeral interest, because of the time expired novelty of Osborne's audacity (borrowing from history) in presenting the homosexual life both as a source of private joy, anguish, hate and fear and as an inescapable seam of establishment experience not only in Franz Josef's Vienna but also by implication in, say, London and Washington in the 1960s.

By now, sceptics might expect that shock effect, in spite of the Blunt story and similar disclosures, to have worn off. Some of those few who saw the 1964 production might believe that this apparently transitional work was a disposable one, because it displayed such recurrent Osborne weaknesses as structural wobble and sketchy characterisation while it lacked the characteristic Osborne strengths of an outsize central figure with phenomenally eloquent powers of self revelation and social criticism. Alfred Redl, the staff officer blackmailed into spying for Czarist Russia, who conceals his lower-class origins and his Jewishness, does take a whole act to reach self-awareness of his secret homosexuality, (though in this production, unlike the original one, that process may be followed with absorbing interest). More conclusively, many people have no doubt that the play's exceptionally large cast of characters and walk-ons (with period clothes and fancy dress) and its need for a score of interior and exterior scenes has made its revival too expensive even for the RSC or the National (which held option on it for some years).
The point of this preamble is that the Chichester production of "A Patriot For Me" has disproved such notions. It shows that the play's non-topical value depends not upon the exploitation of sexual vagaries but upon the exploration of emotional ambivalence, social role playing and existential identity. In no sense is it a period piece: it seems like a new play. It contains at its core a masterly performance by Alan Bates as Redl which transforms the impact not only of the character -- acted one-dimensionally by Maximilian Schell in 1964 -- but also of the work as a whole. Although the play -- whose structure has been described as epic or cinematic -- is still too long (Dr Schoeper, for one, seems expendable if the text has to be reduced to a transferrable compass), the production solves nearly all the problems of scene changing and character-doubling with brilliantly orchestrated fluency. And all this has been achieved without a penny of public subsidy -- from the Arts Council or from any local authority or regional arts association. The point needs to be laboured, because it has been ignored by the press. The sponsors of the season are Martini and Rossi Ltd, who share the honours due to the Chichester Festival Theatre under Patrick Garland and to all concerned with choosing "A Patriot For Me" and staging it so very well.
Credit is due first, of course, to the author -- a truism of successful productions which seems, in Osborne's case, to need reiteration. He has been done proud by Ronald Eyre, whose handling of the text, the company, the stage and (indirectly) the audience seems remarkably close to infallibility, all problems considered. Note his deft and (at times) ironic use of the small revolve: though it may well be indispensible, if the playis to stay inside the 3-1/2 hours without too much visual austerity or manual fussiness in scene changing, it is kept in its place with no tinge of obeisance to stage machinery. An essential ingredient in the success of Mr Eyre's production is the work of Carl Toms, his spare and subtle en grisaille designs for 23 scenes over 23 years -- projected onto screens -- are evocatively supplemented by the sweet-and-sour, laugh-and-lemon sound score of Ilona Sekacz, whose work I have praised in recent issues of "Plays & Players."

Distinctive performances include David Yelland's Siczynski, who helps, decisively, to start the play on the right ambiguous level; Jo Webster's febrile and self-lacerating Ferdy, one of the most intensely convincing figures at the drag ball; Nigel Stock as the ball's genial but ruthless host, Baron Von Epp, and David King as Colonel von Mohl, Redl's proudly paternal honey-bear protector. Harry Andrews usefully lends his veteran authority as an actor in uniform to the top Habsburg general on view. Sheila Gish does her decorative best to make us believe in the Countess Sophia, who is also working for the Russians, whose love for Redl is unrequited, and who betrays him by marrying the beautiful young officer he dotes on. I also enjoyed the occasional appearances of Nicholas Gecks as von Kupferand and Neil Stacy as Kunz.
It is on Alan Bates's performance of Redl, however, that everything depends. How skillfully, in the earlier scenes, he indicates the self-evasive unease behind the conventional facade of the careerist soldier. tiny vocal inflections, quick facial tics, faint finger-twitches, lightning eye-changes are giveaway signals of a secret life inside the military armature of stiff-backed, blank faced obedience. How subtly Mr Bates shows the growth of Redl's self realisation, authority, daring and callousness: initially assuming youthful ardour, aging convincingly over three hours, swift scene after scene, towards self destruction. As with all front-rank actors, his silences speak volumes. On peak demand his voice bites, cuts, burns, grips the audience in an instant vise. As Redl he can make whatever he does, and becomes, seem inevitable: asking for an obviously fanciful young water with an arrogant glee that needs no textual elucidation; kicking a boy-lover who has fallen out of bed with savage cruelty, then melting into a remorseful cuddle; exploding suddenly into painful, noisy, retching tears when Redl loses the lovely Stefan to the vengeful Countess. John Osborne has given some superb opportunities in the text, and they are taken superbly by Alan Bates.

Reviewer: Richard Findlater

by Dan Sullivan

AH, SAID the Emperor Franz II, on being told that a certain gentleman was a patriot-- is he a patriot for me? In like manner, the question about British shows that come to the States with large reputations is -- is it a show for us?
John Osborne's "A Patriot for Me" works nicely at the Ahmanson -- until intermission. Clearly it is a play with ice water in its veins. But Alan Bates is making us feel the agony of Alfred Redl, an idealistic young career officer irresistibly drawn to other men (the time is the early 1900s, the place Austro-Hungary), and director Ronald Eyre has mounted the piece superbly -- as if it were a long-suppressed costume opera by some troubled compatriot of Dr. Freud.
We get the darkness, the hypocrisy and the glamour of the period. Above all, there's a growing sense that something dire is in the air, some awful storm gathering to flush away all this decadence. This is exciting to one who remembers how flat "A Patriot for Me" was on Broadway in 1969. Eyre and Bates seem to have found what it wants to say, beyond the obvious things about repression, and one is about to decide that there is more to this play than once met the eye.
After intermission, alas, it is all up for "A Patriot for Me." Once our hero submits to his nature (for which he is instantly beaten up by some thugs), the tension of the play evaporates. The rest of the story chronicles Redl's decline, starting with a gloomy drag ball and ending with a gunshot.
One thinks of Dorian Gray, except that he enjoyed being decadent. Redl does not -- the one thing about him that Osborne sems to admire. Bates has an almost insuperable problem here: to make vivid a morose man who becomes more and more a stranger to himself with every fall from grace. He falls into two fine rages (at his first woman and his latest young man) and that is the limit of his expressive range.
Within that range, Bates does some lovely, subtle things; but an unhappy stoic does not give an actor very many notes to play, especially in a house so unconducive to subtlety as the Ahmanson, which has never seemed darker and colder. As his Redl dims out, so does our interest in the play.
By this time, too, some of Eyre's and designer Carl Toms' visual devices are becoming familiar (the revolving stage, bringing on yet another sidewalk cafe; the ghostly gray-and-white background screens; the ominous whistling theme by Ilona Sekacz). Worse, the speeches are sounding more and more like speeches, read with the proper British starch (especially by Harry Andrews as a gruff general and George Rose as a swish baron) but not necessarily adding to our understanding of the characters.
Osborne himself, seems to want to dismiss them as a tainted and pompous lot, living under a code that would shrivel anybody's soul. At the same time, he doesn't come out and attack them -- which might have given the play some energy. Rather, he plays the objective Brechtian clinician, letting the data speak for itself. We read ahead, we agree that there is probably a connection between a workshiop of the iron-man ethic and the world of the drag ball, and we wish that the speaker would conclude.
"A Patriot for Me" will never get a better production on these shores. Indeed, it may not have had a better one in England. The cast, partly drawn from the Chichester Festival production, is enormous and convincing. We're drawn into the world of the play, from its spies (George Murcell, June Ritchie -- who has some honest feelings for the frozen Redl) to its nursemaids and newsboys.
We meet some particularly affecting victims of that world, starting with David Yelland, waiting at dawn to begin a duel that he knows will kill him -- not at all a cliche as he and Bates (and later Nicolas Gecks) play the scene.
But as Eyre's cast takes its final frozen bow on the revolving stage, the image of figures in a waxworks exhibit is all too appropriate. "A Patriot for Me" will be at the Ahmanson through Nov. 25.