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  later called An Enormous 'Yes': The Landscape of Philip Larkin 16.i.86, Cottesloe, National Theatre, London with Patrick Garland, who devised the programme (see below) From The Observer, 19.i.86: Bates reading Larkin ON THURSDAY Alan Bates and Patrick Garland brought their Philip Larkin programme to the Cottesloe. It is the chief mystery of the evening that a celebration devoted to a poet who dreaded endless extinction and has recently died should prove to be, though dark enough, so consoling, but so it is. From the possibly metaphysical to the scrupulously everyday, from the bicycle clips removed in church, the washing sherry and the fire-spilling star to jazz, 'the natural noise of good' and the occasion for Larkin's most passionate attack on modern art, Down Cemetery Road is a model of how these things should be done. Avoiding both false reverence and actorish presumptuousness, Bates lets the poems and conversation through clearly and cleanly, with artifice of only the barest and most necessary kind. More performances at the National, hopefully, in May. [This programme was repeated as "An Enormous Yes, the Landscape of Philip Larkin," in 1989 at the Playhouse Theatre.]   An Enormous 'Yes': the Landscape of Philip Larkin 18.xii.88, Playhouse Theatre, London with Patrick Garland From the "Enormous Yes" programme book: PATRICK Garland [who devised the programme] is a well-known director and producer, and between 1981 and 1985 was Artistic Director of the Festival Theatre, Chichester. His most recent production in London is "The Secret of Sherlock Holmes," and his first novel, "The Wings of the Morning," will be published in February 1989 by Hamish Hamilton. Mr Garland made the only film about Philip Larkn for BBC television's Monitor programme in 1963. From Alan Bennett's personal view
I was also in the middle of some extensive dentistry, which involved the removal of several bridges and, though the dentist had assured me that the effects of the anaesthetic would have worn off long before the evening's performance, I often took the stage feeling as if large sections of my mouth were coned off. The anaesthetic did indeed wear off during the course of the performance so that when I hit a suddenly tender spot there was the occasional agonised yelp uncatered for in Larkin's muted verse. Even at the best of times the poet didn't care for the public performance of his works so it was perhaps fortunate he had died two years previously. What the audience felt I tried not to think though I remember coming off at the interval and en route for my dressing room meeting Judi Dench and her attendants bound for the Olivier stage. "Not many laughs tonight," I said. "None at all with us" she replied but since she was appearing in Antony and Cleopatra this was hardly surprising. ... For Bennett's full 2001 memoir, visit the National Theatre website.  |
The first time I
set foot on the stage at the National was in November 1987 at
the Cottesloe. It was an inauspicious début. Patrick Garland
had put together an evening of Philip Larkin's poetry and prose
entitled Down Cemetery Road , done as a two-hander with
Alan Bates as Larkin. This was then revived at short notice for
some extra performances but Alan wasn't available and I agreed
to substitute. The change of cast hadn't been advertised and
many of the audience, having come along expecting to see Alan
Bates, must just have thought he'd gone downhill a bit since
they last saw him wrestling naked on a rug with Oliver Reed.