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The Making of
Theatrical Reputations
 The Making of

studies in theatre history & culture

Edited by Thomas Postlewait

Theatrical Reputations
Studies from the Modern London Theatre

yael zarhy-levo
university of iowa press Iowa City
University of Iowa Press, Iowa City 52242
Copyright © 2008 by the University of Iowa Press
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
Design by Richard Hendel
www.uiowapress.org

No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any form

or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher.
All reasonable steps have been taken to contact copyright holders of
material used in this book. The publisher would be pleased to make
suitable arrangements with any whom it has not been possible to
reach.

The University of Iowa Press is a member of Green Press Initiative

and is committed to preserving natural resources.

Printed on acid-free paper

lccn: 2007940204
isbn-13: 978-1-58729-626-0
isbn-10: 1-58729-626-8

08 09 10 11 12 c 5 4 3 2 1
For Yeshayahu, a partner throughout
Contents
Acknowledgments ix

Introduction 1

1 convergent forces

The English Stage Company and

Look Back in Anger 15

2 divergent forces

Theatre Workshop 63

3 john arden

The Playwright Who Wouldn’t Play Ball 119

4 harold pinter

Who Controls the Playwright’s Image? 161

Conclusion 209

Notes 221

Bibliography 257

Index 279
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Acknowledgments
Through the long process entailed in working on this project, in which
I have aspired to study an era, locale, and culture somewhat distant and
different from my own, I have relied on the help and friendship of many
people, to all of whom I am indebted.
First and foremost, my deepest gratitude to Tom Postlewait, the series
editor, for his invaluable advice and enriching intellectual guidance, as
well as for his attentive support and encouragement at crucial moments
in the course of writing this book. I am grateful, too, to Holly Carver,
director of the University of Iowa Press, for her assistance and kindness,
and to Charlotte Wright, managing editor, for her invaluable work. I am
indebted to Rosemarie Bank for her insights, support, and care through-
out. I wish to thank the members of the Theatre Historiography Working
Group, International Federation for Theatre Research, who accompanied
me through the process of working on this project, in particular Claire
Cochrane and Bruce McConachie, for their helpful advice and stimulat-
ing commentaries.
My gratitude to my friends in London for their invaluable help and
concern: to Frances Rifkin for opening many doors, for stimulating con-
versations, as well as for her hospitality and companionship; to Irit Rogoff
for her immense generosity, enlightening perspectives, and attentive care;
to Susanne Greenhalgh for her inspiring commentaries and hospitality;
to Susie Gilbert for her information updates and kindness; and to Adrian
Rifkin and Denis Echard for their advice and hospitality.
I wish to thank all those who helped with the search for and gathering
of information for this book, enabling me to look into the past decades,
especially the staff of the Study Room at the Theatre Museum, while still
in its former, lovely Covent Garden location, who responded patiently
and helpfully to my many inquiries and desperate e-mails. Special thanks
are also due to the staff of the British Film Institute, National Library,
London, in particular to Sarah Currant and Christophe Dupin, for their
kind assistance. I am most grateful to John Arden and Margaretta D’Arcy
for their hospitality, kindness, and collaboration during a highly memo-
rable visit.
The Porter Institute, Tel Aviv University, provided fi nancial assistance
for this project. For this, as well as for the many other ways she provided
crucial support, I am highly indebted to the Institute’s director, Ziva Ben-
Porat. I owe much to my colleagues and friends from Tel Aviv University:
Orly Lubin for inspiring new ways of thinking and for keeping me going;
Louise Bethlehem and Sonja Narunsky-Laden for their assistance and
encouragement; Eyal Segal for his help; Freddie Rokem, Jeanette Malkin,
Shimon Levy, Michael Gluzman, and Anat Zanger for their advice and
support. Special thanks to my students at Tel-Aviv University for sharing
my passion for the London theatre and for their insightful observations.
I am most grateful to Naomi Paz for her invaluable editorial help and
Pnina Zeitz for her indispensable assistance. I heartily thank Miri Gold-
wasser for sustaining me through difficult moments, Channa Taub for
her long-distance support and Brian McHale, who even when far away
was (and is) always an inspiration.
Finally, I am highly indebted to my family for bearing with me through
these intensive years, forgiving my frequent absences when I disappeared
into the 1960s: to Rivi, Dany, Dudi, Anat, Daniel, and Ruti; to Vera, my
London eye, who enabled me to be in two places at once; and to my father,
Moshe, who taught me “long-distance running.” Last but certainly not
least, I am grateful to my son, Guy (himself consumed by questions of
evolution), for his intelligent advice and forgiveness of his too often pre-
occupied mother, and to my daughter, Michal (although busy working to
change evil policies), for being both a highly resourceful problem solver
and an insightful companion.

x ac k now l e d g m e n t s
The Making of
Theatrical Reputations
Introduction
in the wings: mediation in the theatre
Who is the true producer of the value of the work—the painter or the dealer, the
writer or the publisher, the playwright or the theatre manager?
—Pierre Bourdieu, 1980

When I began thinking about the puzzling oscillations in the theatri-

cal reputations of specific events, theatre companies, and individual play-
wrights reflected in various studies of the modern London theatre, Pierre
Bourdieu’s intriguing question served as my cue. Who are the figures—
individuals or organizations—that authorize theatre companies or play-
wrights and influence their position on the cultural map? What are the
strategies employed by these figures to endow the theatrical work with
value and to make it more accessible to audiences? What are the channels
they employ to introduce, promote, or evaluate the work? What sorts of
patterns of interaction are established among these authorizing figures,
and how do they affect the perceived value of the work? What role do
the playwrights themselves play in the reception and perception of their
works? In sum, how do these authorizing figures and these configura-
tions of interrelated parties, modes, or mechanisms that help organize
what I call the processes of mediation operate in the theatre and how does
mediation influence the status of an event or the position of a company
or playwright in the cultural or historical memory?
In setting out to answer these questions, I offer four case studies from
the modern London theatre concentrating on the 1950s and 1960s. The
first centers on a specific event—the English Stage Company’s production
of John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger; the second deals with the trajectory
of a specific theatre company—the Theatre Workshop—and in particular
with the company’s first decade at the Theatre Royal, Stratford East, Lon-
don; the third and fourth focus on the careers of individual playwrights—
John Arden and Harold Pinter, respectively. These four case studies pri-
marily serve to illustrate the various processes of mediation.
Accordingly, in all four cases I present the workings of various individ-
uals or organizations that act as mediators. Mediation in the theatre
encompasses theatre reviewers, journalists, interviewers (in the press or
on radio or television), funding bodies, censors, publishers, critics and
academics—those who describe, comment, judge, assist, reward, restrict,
support, promote, evaluate, or assess (or reassess) theatrical works (plays or
productions) and theatre creators. Mediation is also practiced by the par-
ticipants in theatre production, such as producers, managers, and artistic
directors of a given theatre company, as well as directors, playwrights, ac-
tors, stage designers, and members of a theatre company’s council or com-
mittees. Among those who partake in one way or another in theatrical pro-
duction, the role of mediation is ascribed here to those who enhance the
value of a work as a result of one or more of the following: their function
as decision makers (e.g., artistic directors, producers), their involvement
as theatre practitioners (e.g., directors, actors), their prominent standing,
or their active promotion of the theatrical enterprise. Promotional media-
tion is also often carried out directly through participation in theatre fes-
tivals, advertisement, press releases, and other media interventions.
Let me clarify at the outset that I do not view the practice of mediation
as resulting from arbitrary decisions by powerful individuals or organi-
zations; nor do I perceive it as motivated by a conspiracy of forces oper-
ating solely in the name of power or profit. Rather, I perceive those who
act as mediators to be driven, more often than not, by their own current
conceptions of artistic quality and merit, in addition to their ideological
or political orientations, and sometimes possibly also by revised percep-
tions of the relevant sociocultural issues.
The subject of this book is the making of artistic reputations. In con-
sidering the contributing roles of the various participants in theatre pro-
duction I examine how artistic events, companies, works, and writers are
constructed by critics, academics, media, institutions, funding agencies,
and governmental decisions. I investigate the methods, aims, assump-
tions, and modes of description and analysis, as well as the objectives and
policies of those who partake in theatre production, and the promotional
means employed by them. Drawing upon previous scholarship, I examine
how the theatrical works were received; the ways that theatre reviewers,
critics, academics, newspapers, journals, and other media, as well as or-
ganizations, contributed both separately and collectively to the percep-
tion of the theatrical creators and their work. I investigate the role of the
theatre creators themselves in shaping the reception and perception of
their work and I explore the effect of different configurations of mediat-
ing parties on the theatrical standing of the artists (whether an individual

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