Word: claggart
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Dates: during 1951-1951
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There were plenty of technical problems, including the theoretically fatal one of an all-male cast. Billy Budd, the innocent young sailor who represents good in the allegorical struggle with evil, stands in sharp contrast with the wicked Master-at-Arms, Claggart. But Captain Vere had to be "tidied up," made into a more central symbol of conflict: he knows that Billy was framed, but he also knows that under the Articles of War Billy must hang for striking Claggart...
First-nighters sat through the first act in a ho-hum mood, but the second brought them to life with Billy's fight with one of Claggart's henchmen and Claggart's bitter monologue rejoicing in his own depravity -sung by Basso Frederick Dalberg. Britten's triumph was the third act, in which Captain Vere (Tenor Peter Pears) walks to Billy's door, accompanied by long-measured chords, to deliver the death verdict. When the curtain fell for the act, there were seconds of silence, and then shouts of "Bravo, Benjy." Billy's fourth...
...plot itself is simple. It concerns a clash between Billy Budd, an impressed sailor in the frigate days of the British navy who represents extreme good, and evil John Claggart, master at arms. Billy seeks the friendship of the master of arms, and Claggart seeks Billy's destruction. Between them stands Captain Edward Vere, who, alone of the three can recognize both good and evil. When Billy hits and accidentally kills Claggart, it is Vere who must judge him. Billy has broken "the compromise between good and evil," and order must be restored. Law triumphs over justice and the Captain...
...from the trial scene. They have contrived a very quiet scene where the Captain tells Billy of his fate. Moreover, they are well served by Norris Houghton's direction, Paul Morrison's fine stage sets, the acting of Dennis King, Torin Thatcher, Charles Nolte as the Captain, Claggart, Billy...
...neither on its own terms nor on Melville's is Bitty Budd completely satisfying. It suffers from a need for merely life-sized motivations and actions: the rattan-raising, crew-terrorizing Claggart is too conventional a villain; the Captain is too ordinary a disciplinarian.The play also suffers from that iron law of stages, the 11 o'clock curtain. For two acts it stirs in a good deal of miscellaneous material, from a comically brief sea fight to a farcical midshipman out of Mister Roberts...