Somewhere In Malta...

allez-argeiphontes replied to your post “OMG! ;-D”

^^ :-)

Maurice at Above The Stag: Sets and Stagehands

Having just seen the stage production of Maurice at Above the Stag in Vauxhall, I naturally many FEELINGS. Anyone who has had the (mis)fortune to nerd out with me will know that I scribble a lot of notes and never shut up. I am, however unrepentant in subjecting you nerds to my thoughts. I suspect there will be a few rambling posts, so if you follow me for unrelated things like The Expanse, I apologise. But, onwards to the rambling! One of the things this production excelled at was the staging, making imaginative use of stagehands and moveable pieces to reinforce the play’s themes.

This production uses eight actors and all but one - Tom Joyner as Maurice - act as stagehands. During stagehand duties, the actors remain in costume and to a certain extent, in character. This was most noticeable with Tom Elliot Reade as Risley.* Risley’s role is rather brief but he makes an impression. Reade is delightful in the role, but his masterstroke is how reacts to Maurice while employed as stagehand. He looks at Maurice with undisguised longing and gazes directly at him instead of at the set pieces he is charged with moving. There is a lovely moment where he brings Maurice a book for use in the next scene. Rather than place the book down, Reade holds the book out and fixes Maurice with an unmistakably Risley-esque look. When Maurice reaches for the book, it is jerked out of reach. When Reade does relinquish the book is with an arch, knowing expression at seems full of judgement at the way Clive and Maurice will continue to dance around each other in the following scene.

Overall, Reade’s continued performance adds to the sense of unrequited longing suffusing the entire play. This in turn adds poignancy to the soft but acquisitive way that Maurice behaves towards Clive. Maurice is constantly trying to touch Clive, but always brushed off. He continues to reach out, daring to ask for contact and continually chastened for it. This highlights Maurice’s need and capacity for love, how much he yearns for more than Clive is willing to give. Using Reade’s lingering performance to highlight this is both highly effective and efficient use of actors.

The second stagehand especially well utilised is Leo Turner as Alec Scudder.  As an overly nerdy person going to see this play (of whom I refuse to believe I am the only one!), one is naturally aware of Maurice as a novel and film. And before going to see a play like this (niche interest production at a small LGBT theatre) I think it’s a fair assumption that a good portion of your audience will have pored over the program, well aware of the tall bearded actor in the flat cap. By having Turner pass through various strategic light sources, the eye is drawn to him among the other stagehands. By the time Alec actually appears as a character, he is already part of our awareness. Part of the fabric of the world. As Forster wrote in his Terminal Note to Maurice,** Alec must be inserted gradually into the narrative until he becomes an overwhelming focus. The producers are similarly able to slip him into the consciousness of the audience before we face him as a character.*** This mirrors Maurice’s growing awareness of him. It gives him a gradually increasing magnetism until, as for Maurice, Alec Scudder becomes impossible to ignore.

The use of costumed stagehands adds depth to the world through which Maurice walks, to the texture of the performance. Many scenes end with Maurice lost in thought, alone in the centre of the stage. In these moments he was surrounded by shadows, by people striding past without acknowledging his presence. It gave a wonderful sense of his isolation, confusion and doubt as to his place in the world. Just as Maurice’s homosexuality cuts him off from the humanity around him, his emotional isolation is made physical through use of the stagehands. Maurice is alone and what’s worse, he is alone among the very humanity with whom he wishes to form those essential connections.

*Reade was also one of the only actors not to feature in a double role, perhaps this was the producers’ way of making full use of his talent. 

**included in most editions of the novel.

***more on Alec’s onstage introduction in another post - as yet unwritten! I told you, I never shut up.

NEVER apologise for nerding out copiously, OMG no! ESPECIALLY not about this glorious production and its astonishing cast. <3333 And ESPECIALLY not when your notes and observations are SO GOOD. Looking forward to more.

Please ramble about like there's no tomorrow! All of us, poor souls, who never got a chance to see the real thing need it badly!

So, it was perfect in every possible way, right?

@allez-argeiphontes your last paragraph is enough to break my heart into tiny, tiny bits... Maurice's loneliness throughout a good part of the story is - at least I believe it is - one of the most important things in the novel, and it is beautifully shown in the film as well. So, it was absurdly perfect, I can see...

Thanks for sharing this. I'm going to get up and go to work now, my soul bawling it's eyes out like a baby.

Some more immediate exciting news, just announced today by Tom Joyner, new!Maurice himself: Above the Stag theatre has confirmed ONE EXTRA PERFORMANCE of their sell-out run of Maurice directed by James Wilby: a 3pm matinee on Sat 20 October.

DIRECT BOOKING LINK HERE

Currently, tickets are still available, but they’ll go fast (indeed, the front two rows are already half-sold!) – so if you want to go (or go again, because frankly this beautiful production is agonisingly addictive) please don’t delay.

All production photography by PBG Studios.

#including the chaise we do not speak of

The chaise which by now has inspired headcanon we absolutely definitely do not speak of

Also, can we just add that Tom Joyner’s Instagram captions are gold:

- Maurice, E.M. Forster. Ch. 28, p. 126 (Penguin Classics 2005 ed.). Written 1913-14, first pub. 1971.

There are many passages in Maurice that speak to me but this one, this one does without fail. This unassuming paragraph concludes a description of all the ways Maurice continues on with his life in the face of loneliness, despair and suicidal thoughts. Of how he continues to get up each day and functions, going to work, volunteering with disadvantaged youth, playing his part in the family and maintaining physical health. Of how he does not give up.

Additionally, Forster notes that that this “work” offers no immediate reward but develops psychological muscles that will serve Maurice well in the future. By refusing to give up, a person can develop the strength and kindness to be happy and deserving of happiness someday.

As a gay man in 1913, living in full awareness of his own nature and the fact that said nature goes against British law. At this point he is without allies, community or any hope of living openly. Forster paints a bleak image of a person who would kill themselves but for the realisation “that he really was dead.”

The way that Forster ascribes beauty and nobility to this time in Maurice’s life is… it is beautiful and very tender to read. As a queer person who has walked soul-less beneath a veil of despair, I cannot read it and be unaffected. Affected because it is validating and painful to see your experience described. Affected because it is so very close to the bone. Affected because it finds beauty in the most desperate times. And affected because it is true - that the supreme achievement of one’s days can be simply refusing to bend to the call of the void. But it is one thing to tell yourself that resisting that call is something to be proud of, it is quite another to read that same sentiment from a wordsmith like Forster.

To paraphrase Ray Holt: good books are like oatmeal, they sustain you.

#in which i have a lot of feelings#goddamn books#queer lit#beautiful words

Wonderful commentary on such an important, beautifully expressed, passage.

I always think of the metaphor of ‘the muscles it had developed remained for another use’ as political, as well as establishing Maurice’s persistence and a core of self-care. Muscles developed for resistance, a political fight, as well as for the robust, uncompromising, physical joy Maurice will eventually win with Alec.

In the end, what Maurice actually says to Clive when he answers, cutting Clive's question, "No, you may not ask...", is "We will live among YOU, we will live on OUR terms and you'll NEVER stop us." By then he is strong enough to do it. So, yes to both wonderful comments above.

“Ah to get out to them! Ah for darkness - not the darkness of a house which coops up a man among furniture, but the darkness where he can be free! Vain wish!”

- Maurice, E.M. Forster, ch. 37.

#in the dark there is discovery

YES YES YES YES YES

Remember that little boy Maurice was afraid of the dark... It makes this twice as beautiful.