THEY
CAME TO A CITY
Phoenix
Theatre Company at Christ Church
12.10.12
Social
Justice is not a fashionable concept these days, but in the darkest
years of the last war, our greatest writers were keen to visualize
what utopia might rise from the ashes.
In
Priestley's intriguing period piece, nine characters from all ranks
of 1940s society, with their jealousies, frustrations and
disappointments, are shown a shining city; they may choose to stay or
return to their earthly lives. The capitalist and the aristocrat are
amongst those who leave, the char and the heiress amongst those who
remain.
In
Angela Gee's production, the nobility were less convincing generally
than the plebs. Fine character work from Syd Smith and Tricia Childs
as a henpecked banker and his domineering wife, and from Helen
Langley as the salt-of-the-earth char.
What
Priestley is advocating, of course, is that we take the vision of the
city where "men don't work for machines and money" back to
our imperfect world, building a new Jerusalem in place of the dark
Satanic mills. And it is left to mechanic Joe [well portrayed by Andy
Millward] and shopgirl Alice [the Googie Withers role excellently
done by Jean Speller] to leave us on that optimistic note.
But
despite the NHS and the Welfare State and Comprehensive Education, I
suspect that, seventy years on, Joe and Alice have still much work to
do to make Whitman's Great City a reality.
The
Great City
by Walt Whitman (1819-1892)
The place
where a great city stands is not the place of stretch'd wharves,
docks, manufactures, deposits of produce merely,
Nor the place of
ceaseless salutes of new-comers or the anchor-lifters of the
departing,
Nor the place of the tallest and costliest buildings or
shops selling goods from the rest of the earth,
Nor the place of
the best libraries and schools, nor the place where money is
plentiest,
Nor the place of the most numerous population.
Where the
city stands with the brawniest breed of orators and bards,
Where
the city stands that is belov'd by these, and loves them in return
and understands them,
Where no monuments exist to heroes but in
the common words and deeds,
Where thrift is in its place, and
prudence is in its place,
Where the men and women think lightly of
the laws,
Where the slave ceases, and the master of slaves
ceases,
Where the populace rise at once against the never-ending
audacity of elected persons,
Where fierce men and women pour forth
as the sea to the whistle of death pours its sweeping and unript
waves,
Where outside
authority enters always after the precedence of inside
authority,
Where the citizen is always the head and ideal, and
President, Mayor, Governor and what not, are agents for pay,
Where
children are taught to be laws to themselves, and to depend on
themselves,
Where equanimity is illustrated in affairs,
Where
speculations on the soul are encouraged,
Where women walk in
public processions in the streets the same as the men,
Where they
enter the public assembly and take places the same as the men;
Where
the city of the faithfulest friends stands,
Where the city of the
cleanliness of the sexes stands,
Where the city of the healthiest
fathers stands,
Where the city of the best-bodied mothers
stands,
There the great city stands.
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