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A magnificent war of words
Picture worth a thousand words: Raymond Coulthard (King George VI) and Jason Donovan (Lionel Logue). Pictures: Hugo Glendinning The King’s Speech
Birmingham Rep
***** IF you missed the film then don’t miss
the play, and if you saw the film still don’t miss the play, and if you
have no idea which film we are talking about, then you are in for a
treat - this is simply glorious, wonderful theatre. Every so often a production comes along where acting, lighting, sound and set combine to magically transport you to a different time in a different world and this Rep co-production manages it in seconds. After the first stuttering, hesitant disaster of a speech by Prince Albert, Duke of York, to close the British Empire Exhibition, you are carried back to the 1920s and 30s. It is a time when Hitler is rising to power and a time when the heir to the thrown became enamoured with a certain Mrs Wallis Simpson, a Baltimore socialite, a divorcee who was still married to a second husband. Most damning of all she was a woman with a certain reputation for a life more tittle than title. Such was the fear of scandal that when the King
Edward VII was dying, but not quickly enough, he was euthanized to
ensure his death would make The Times the following morning and
not be left to the mercy of the more vulgar evening Pres The new King was friendly to Hitler, anti-semitic
and with an open disdain for convention and the social mores of Court so
when he proposed to the newly divorced, again, Mrs Simpson, his
abdication was inevitable which brought his younger brother, Bertie, to
the throne as George VI, a terrified king with a speech impediment.
Which is where the tale of Lionel Logue comes in.
Logue was a failed Australian actor who had set himself up as a speech
therapist and by chance, reputation and desperation had been asked to
help her struggling, stuttering, stammering husband after the Wembley
debacle by Princess Elizabeth. And that is the crux of the play the growing
relationship between future King, painfully aware of tradition, status
and protocol – commoner Logue was at first expected to keep five paces
away - and an irreverent Australian whose only qualifications were his
successes and who didn’t give a tinker’s cuss about status or protocol. Jason Donovan is a delight as the call a spade a
spade Aussie. He is at times brusque, seemingly cruel, but with a
purpose, sympathetic and often funny. It is easy to forget that Donovan
was an actor before a pop star and has been an actor for many years
since, most recently in the Midlands in Annie Get Your Gun and
notably Tick in Priscilla, Queen of the Desert and here he gives
an outstanding performance. It is matched by Raymond Coulthard as Bertie,
invested with a majestic air and looking every inch a king in royal
regalia, so aware of his regal station and rules of royalty, that it
weighs him down and stifles his entire life. To watch the two men slowly lose inhibitions and
become friends, eventually even laughing and joking is a delight. The two are very similar, both damaged goods.
Logue is a failed actor and we even see his auditions, first as a sort
of Antipodean Richard III, then as a deformed and rather hammed up
Caliban. Both unsuccessful. Like Bertie he found it hard to ever please
his father, while B . . .B . . .Bertie had grown up amid j . . j . .
jokes at his stammerng expense.
The two have an on-off relationship with Bertie
unhappy at first at both Logue’s lack of court etiquette and bizarr With the Simpson crisis growing a mix of fear and
panic sees an angry outburst from Bertie who storms out, marking the end
of the affair . . . until abdication forces the now King George to seek
out Lionel again offering a diet of humble pie. Fear and panic have
given way to despair.
It is leading the the climax, The King’s Speech, George VI’s radio address to the nation and the Empire upon the declaration of war on Germany in 1939. Despite the fact we have probably heard
recordings of the speech in documentaries, and know the outcome, Donovan
and Coulthard have succeeded in immersing the audience so deeply in
their characters we are willing the King on. You can almost feel a
silent audience plea of “Come on my son!” as the King makes a
hesitant start then settles into a stammer-free a confident broadcast.
You almost expect cheers at the end. While Donovan and Coulthard are superb they are
not alone. Claire Lams is suitably superior, outwardly at any rate, as
Queen Elizabeth, while Katy Stephens is just the opposite as the down to
earth wife, Myrtle Logue, who just wants to return home to Perth. William Hoyland manages to bring Crown and State
together single handedly as both the gruff George V and later as Stanley
Baldwin. To his credit only the programme would tell you it was the same
man. Martin Turner gives us a rather arrogant pillar
of the Establishment in the Archbishop of Canterbury Cosmo Lang, who
sees not only his role as an unofficial branch of Government but as the
would-be leader of the nation in the coming war. Nicholas Blane, thankfully not attempting a
karaoke version, is somewhat more reassuring as the man who eventually
did became leader, Winston Churchill, full of asides and a mix of
amusement and derision for the Archbishop. And, the cause of the crisis? Felicity Houlbrooke
had a small role in the play as Wallis Simpson yet her character had a
huge role in our history. Director Roxana Silbert, artistic director of
Birmingham Rep, keeps everything moving well, concentrating on the main
characters, and she builds a nice rhythm around Tom Piper’s flexible
set, a sort of Art Deco arena of giant marquetry, which in style alone
echoes the era. Into that arena furniture appears through
multiple doorways to create everything from Westminster Abbey to Logue’s
shabby rooms, with the BBC studios a slit appearing halfway up a wall. Piper, incidentally, was the designer of Blood
Swept Lands and Seas of Red at the Tower of London. Clever lighting from Oliver Fenwick emphasises
dramatic scenes and, as war looms, there is clever use of side lighting
to throw shadows of Logue’s model war planes on the walls, a subtle
touch, while Nick Powell’s additional music and sound design, including
the tinny BBC sound of the 1930s, all adds to the building climax of
that final speech. Standing ovations are not handed out lightly at the
Rep but you would hardly know it as the audience rose for Donovan and
Coulthard, and they deserved it. To 07-02-15 Roger Clarke
26-02-15 Speech writer in chief WRITER David Seidler had developed a
stammer before he was three so understood some of the problems faced by
Bertie, who was a boyhood hero for overcoming his disability so it was
no surprise when he started researching George VI in the 1970s. There was little information about Logue – the
Court and Establishment did not advertise the King’s problem – but
Seidler found Logue’s son, Dr Valentine Logue, a retired brain surgeon,
who agreed to talk about his father and make his notebooks available –
if Queen Elizabeth, by then the Queen Mother, agreed. She did, but asked that he only did so after her
death. So the project was shelved only surfacing again in 2005. Starting life as a screenplay it was rewritten as
a play but it was the film which was made first, winning numerous Oscars
and awards. The play, the same story but confined to the stage,
concentrates more upon the relationship of the two men who were to
become firm friends for 23 years until the King died in 1952, a year
before Logue. Incidentally, during the writing of the script
Seidler discovered that his Uncle David had also been a stutterer and
had been sent to see Logue by his father, Seidler’s grandfather.
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who were less amenable to the establishment wishes and could well spill
the beans on the now King Edward VIII’s right royal affair with a
married divorcee.
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methods, such as reading Shakespeare aloud while listening to opera on
headphones.