Tynan
RSC Swan, Stratford-upon-Avon
Kenneth Tynan's theatre criticism was a performance. There was a dazzle to his reviews as though he were standing in the footlights himself, almost competing with the work he described, aware of the likelihood that the best lines would turn out to be his own. His diaries are different. He is his own audience and although he entertains himself whenever possible, he is off duty and stylistically off the boil. He left the diaries to his daughter Tracy - it took her decades to nerve herself to read them. But it was she who persuaded Richard Nelson to turn them into a play (part of the RSC's New Work Festival). The diaries record Tynan's sadomasochistic affair with Nicole, 'a spanking addict'. (He unrealistically attempted to calm his wife, Kathleen, by saying Nicole was his 'curry', she his 'French cooking'). But the diaries are more morbid than erotic. He reflects on suicide, the death of friends, his health (dreadful - he was dying of emphysema) and his penis. One entry includes the line: 'We go to plays to learn about others.' And his diaries are best when describing others, too. I particularly relished his oddball anecdotes about actors. Sir Ralph Richardson told Tynan he had visions of the place he came from before birth, saying it looked rather like Mexico. And Sir John Gielgud confessed to a childhood habit of eating rubber.
Corin Redgrave, in grey suit, psychedelic shirt and horribly lively striped socks, is compelling in the part. He holds the attention absolutely for an hour-and- a-half. And Richard Nelson directs his well-grafted piece with aplomb. But for anyone wandering in knowing nothing of Tynan, this is a poor show. Not a celebration of a flamboyant talent, just a portrait of the critic as a sad, sick, stuck, middle-aged man.
