Everyone has cultural experiences that they take a dislike to all the time. We seem to be poised and ready to home in on the negatives, naturally inclined to find fault with TV series, films, books, songs, and itching to tell other people precisely what it was that annoyed us so much. Social media just makes it easier than ever for people to have an immediate and largely accountability-free platform for venting to the world.
When someone asks me what the last good piece of theatre I saw was, I often struggle to come up with an answer. But more than that, I often catch myself quite unnecessarily jumping in to say what I’ve seen that I didn’t like. When I get started on that, I often find it difficult to shut myself up again.
There’s a really valuable corrective for me (and all of us) to this default downbeat approach in an interview with the actor Vanessa Redgrave, contained in Richard Eyre’s book Talking Theatre, where she recalls seeing Joan Littlewood’s 1954 production of Richard II at Stratford East:
“…I came back and, of course, my father [Michael Redgrave, himself an actor, who had played Richard II two years before in Stratford-upon-Avon] was waiting up to hear me. And he said: ‘Well, what did you think?’
And I spieled off how much I’d hated it, and he got more and more solemn and began to look deadly, deadly disappointed. And then finally I had to stop because I realised something was terribly wrong.
He said: ‘I never want to hear you talk like that again. You are never, never to talk like that again.’
I said: ‘Why?’
And he said: ‘Because when you go and see anything, you must first of all try and understand what are they trying to do and why are they trying to do it. And when you’ve understood that, then you can say to yourself: have they succeeded in doing what they’re trying to do? If you just ram out your own prejudices and preferences, you will understand nothing in the theatre, nothing in life.’
And that I think is my lesson for life. Unfortunately I had to learn it a lot of times.”
It’s a lesson I’m still having to re-learn regularly. So, the next time you ask me what the last good piece of theatre I saw was, and I quite unnecessarily jump in to say what I’ve seen that I didn’t like, don’t wait for me to shut myself up.
Remind me to be a little bit more Vanessa.
