Where does it all begin? Is there a moment that marks a radical shift in style and tone in postwar drama? The textbooks tell us that the London premieres of Waiting for Godot (1955) and Look Back in Anger (1956) are pivotal landmarks. I would argue, however, that John Whiting’s Saint’s Day (1951) erected a decisive signpost to the future. Critically trashed in its day and rarely seen since, it contains themes and ideas that were to become staples of modern drama.
The play’s history is extraordinary. It won a new play competition, organised by Alec Clunes at London’s prestigious Arts theatre, to celebrate the Festival of Britain. Staged at the Arts in September 1951, it was greeted with the howls of execration that theatre critics traditionally reserve for anything truly innovative. “Of a badness that must be called indescribable,” thundered the Times. That same paper published a letter from leading theatrical lights – including Peter Brook, Tyrone Guthrie, Peggy Ashcroft and John Gielgud – that passionately defended the play. But the damage was done and although Whiting went on to write other plays, including Marching Song and The Devils, he never acquired a secure foothold in British theatre.
What so got up people’s noses about Saint’s Day? It certainly takes us into strange, imaginative territory. Set in a dilapidated rural mansion where a truculent 83-year-old poet, Paul Southman, lives with his granddaughter and her artist husband, it shows the outside world intruding on their seclusion. Southman is due to be taken, by a dandified admirer, Robert Procathren, to London where the old man will be honoured at a dinner celebrating his reconciliation with the literary establishment. But Procathren’s arrival coincides with a break-out from a detention centre by three soldiers who begin terrorising the village, with whose inhabitants Southman himself is at war. What follows is an eruption of violence in which Southman and Procathren fatally find themselves on opposing sides.
No one would claim Saint’s Day is easy. Much as I love it, I admit that the final act verges on incoherence. But what is staggering is how much Whiting anticipates the drama that is to come. The idea of the artist forced to confront society foreshadows Pinter’s The Birthday Party (1958), the anarchy unleashed by military deserters is developed in Arden’s Serjeant Musgrave’s Dance (1958) and the notion of the violence lurking beneath society’s surface permeates countless plays from Bond’s Saved (1965) to Kane’s Blasted (1995). Whiting’s play, which shows the palpable influence of Euripides and TS Eliot, looks back as well as forwards. But it was a genuinely pioneering game-changer that indicated the direction modern drama was to take.
