Endgame: A Matter of Life and Death at the National. Photograph: Tristram Kenton
The affair of Nick Hytner versus the "dead white men" of the critical establishment has been amusing, up to a point, but I'm surely not the only one to feel baffled that this sideshow has been allowed to overshadow the main event.
The cause of the fuss is Kneehigh's translation, into their own brand of theatrical surrealism, of Powell and Pressburger's A Matter of Life and Death. After previewing the show for the Guardian, I received a scornful letter from a relative of Pressburger (and friend of the film's star, David Niven) who argued that it was nonsense to try to adapt this film - or any other - for the theatre because the medium of any great work of art is part of its very essence.
I have some sympathy with this view. After all, what's wrong with original devised work or even - gasp! - an actual play? It was only when I went along to see the show that I began to see a completely different side. The key was in the ending or - to be more accurate - the endings. (If you're planning to see the play, you might like to stop reading here.)
One feature of the show seems to have escaped notice: Kneehigh have prepared two different climaxes, dependent on the toss of a coin. The night I saw it, the coin came down tails and the young airman died on the operating table - as he had done on 11 of the first 17 performances. My reaction was a dull disappointment quite at odds with the elation I had felt during the previous two hours. It was only as I was leaving the theatre, and thought back to the film, that the penny dropped. By the time I got home, I had decided I would have to go and see it again. But how many times would I have to go before I witnessed the survival of Peter Carter? Might the coin even, like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern's, come down the same side up 85 times in a row?
This departure seems to me to be absolutely in the spirit of the film, while quite brilliantly illustrating what is unique about the best theatre: it is a butterfly that flashes its colours for just a day, but every day there are new ones. That is why, whatever any one person's experience is on any one night, the National Theatre has surely done something wonderful in entrusting its grandest stage to A Matter of Life and Death.
