A dull house ... Paul Hilton and Helen McCrory in Ibsen's Rosmersholm at the Almeida Theatre. Photograph: Tristram Kenton
The day after the press night for the Almeida's gorgeous production of Ibsen's Rosmersholm, The National's deputy literary manager Chris Campbell emailed me: "Here's a discussion question inspired by last night: Is Rosmersholm the greatest play ever written which has an absolutely crashing bore as its central character?"
It's a fascinating question. In the hands of Paul Hilton, Johannes Rosmer is a hugely likeable, charismatic presence on stage. The earnestness of the character becomes so engaging that one is quite swept along, seduced even, by the persuasive nature of his personality. But he is protected by over a century of social change, not to mention national differences, so it's possible we make allowances for some of his beliefs. Rosmer's priggish determination to stick to a moral code, destroying himself and the woman he evidently loves in the process, might not be so appealingly romantic in a modern context. As I recently suggested, idealism is indeed romantic, but it also depends on the ideals.
In many ways Rosmer is quite the Malvolio: unsmiling, puritanical and moral even without his religion. And no one ever tries to make Malvolio the hero. And yet, because of his situation, and the way in which he deals with it, we feel for Rosmer and his doomed love Rebecca West, and the play is indeed a fine, sublime thing of great beauty.
Drama is more than happy with total monsters as seductive central characters. It has made problematic self-sabotagers a stock-in-trade, while perennial losers and hopeless failures are ten a penny. Even genuine, bona-fide, honest-to-God, un-ironic heroes can form the centre of great dramas. But an actual bore? Someone who really grates?
Part of the problem is that actors tend to make their characters interesting. Broadly speaking the tendency is for an actor to throw pretty much everything they've got into making the person they're playing, especially if it's a lead, as dazzling, charismatic and, crucially, watchable as they can. The other problem is the writers. They seem to be interested in trying to excite audiences by presenting them with charismatic, funny, personable leads in their plays; or if not personable then edgy, dangerous and brooding. Dry wit and low cunning are also frequently deployed, but a star role purpose-built to bore? Why would anyone do that to an audience? Apart from Beckett, of course, but his characters aren't bores, per se, it is simply that their situations are boring.
I asked an unscientific sample of writers, critics and actors on Facebook to see if they could come up with any examples of great plays with bores as central characters, and got some interesting answers. David Eldridge noted Richard Bean's play The Mentalists "a quite brilliant comedy about two fifty-something bores making a film in a low-rent Finsbury Park B&B to promote their utopian vision inspired by behaviorist B F Skinner". This raises an important point: some of British comedy's best loved characters from Basil Fawlty to David Brent have been terrible bores. Unlimited Theatre's Chris Thorpe noted: "Copenhagen has a fantastic Bohr as a central character. Does this count?"
The most interesting answer was Richard Hurst's suggestion that Hamlet is the greatest play ever written which has an absolutely crashing bore as its central character. I was reminded of this by the National's opening last week of The Revenger's Tragedy. Taking a number of cues from Hamlet, the central character Vindice could also count as something of a bore - moralising and dishing up countless misogynist slurs - but at the same time he is at least dynamic.
For my money, two of the greatest bores in theatre history are King Lear and Prospero. Seriously. Take them out of their situations and imagine being stuck in a corner of a party with either of them.
Can anyone think of a greater play with a deadly bore as its central character?
