Word: bennette
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...interesting conundrum, the impracticality of having a character go mad. Bennett went through several drafts of Madness before he developed a subplot compelling enough to take the place of the king's personal tragedy in the second act of his play. A descent into insanity and a recovery from it are both dramatically tenable situations, but the state of madness itself leaves little room for engaging action. Hence the emphasis on affairs of state and the line of succession which fills the later parts of Bennett's playelements which were absent in his early drafts...
...pieces of scenery in the story of Mary's fall from sanity. But this dramatic bracketing of the other characters on stage and the corresponding emphasis on Mary Girard is not a defect; it is most likely the very intent of Robertson's writing. It is her version of Bennett's recourse to Parliamentary politics...
...that playwrights as talented as Bennett and Robertson must resort to such shifts in focus in order to tell the simple and compelling story of a man or woman gone mad? Countless novels, from Notes from Underground to One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, depict the inner lives of deeply troubled individuals, as do untold numbers of movies. But novels and movies share a subjectivity that drama categorically lacks. Both can get inside the heads of their characters in a way that no piece of theater...
...they cannot cross that threshold with you; they can only watch the play develop around you once you have become little more than a set piece, a constant force of irrationality. There is a reason that the conflicts of government play a larger role in the second part of Bennett's play than the first. And, more to the point, there is a reason Robertson's play ends with Mary declaring herself insane. From that point on, there can be no further story to tell...
...Alan Bennett's comedy or royal maladies, The Madness of George III, finishes its run on the Loeb Mainstage this weekend. Se the review on today's page for more information...