The Habit of Art (10/11/10, The Grand)

We booked to see The Habit of Art, knowing nothing at all about it other than it's written by Alan Bennett, and we really enjoyed The History Boys that we saw in Leeds 27/10/07. I liked the new play, and it's not hard to pin point why... It was well acted, the set was amazing and the dialogue believable and often utterly filthy. 

The Habit of Art features a play within a play, as the audience watches a theatre group rehearsing a play about the lives of poet W.H. Auden, composer Benjamin Britten and Auden's biographer Humphrey Carpenter at a point when they all came together in Oxford. All were partial to young boys, although Britten aparently liked them a bit too young, and Auden has an encounter with a rent boy who gets involved in the main meat of the company's play. The 'actors' step in and out of their characters to compare notes, complain to the script-writer and to make suggestions. It could possibly be quite taxing to follow for some of the audience, indeed a row of old ladies in front of us left in the interval, I think because they couldn't hear what was going on.

I'm surprised more people didn't leave as the mostly geriatric audience was treated to long speeches about cock, cock-sucking, and other such things. There was some lovely language used, and it's great to think that Bennett himself is in his 70's when these words were written. I know very little about Auden or Britten, in fact I know nothing about them other than their names, and I don't think I learnt a great deal about them here - I did have a good evening at the theatre though. I was a little unsure what the 'message' of the play was, it may have gone over my head, although the construction of the play within a play helped when the 'actors' asked questions about the real-life artists' motivations and feelings. Not as immediately accessible as The History Boys, The Habit of Art was still well written and not dumbed down in the slightest.