If Camelot was a fiction, there’s a greater likelihood that the real King Arthur was based in Carlisle. Tennyson fancied that Excalibur was collected from the northern lake of Bassenthwaite, while some suggest that the legendary king slumbers beneath Blencathra.
Benjamin Askew’s play is the latest attempt to claim King Arthur as a son of Cumbria, though you suspect that if the knights of the round table were still awaiting their final battle somewhere under the Northern Fells, this oblique and alarmingly misogynistic five-act verse drama would be sufficient to send them straight back to Cornwall.
Askew seems to be in accordance with Malory in supposing that there were at least three ladies associated with the lake – the sorceress Morgan, her deadly friend-turned-enemy Nimue and a mysterious older figure, whom Askew names Argante, and seems to be the one who originated the sale-or-return deal on Excalibur. But he goes out on a limb by introducing a bad apple named Owain, who may be Arthur’s nemesis, Arthur’s nephew, or Arthur himself, depending which legend you choose to believe.
Askew states in the programme: “Verse can tickle you under the chin, it can beat you over the head.” It can also bore you senseless, with a stream of tin-eared couplets such as “I’ll tear the world to pieces for his sake / And I’ll be the lady of the lake.” In the end, even Askew has to admit that he’s lost the plot in terms that come close to self-parody: “This climax is too complex! Who the fuck are you?” (Maybe it’s the Anglo-Saxon influence, but there’s an awful lot of swearing.)
But at least he retains the self-awareness to deliver his own review: “The gods are harsh critics in their seats who have seen too many turgid tragedies to be arrested by one more.”
- In repertoire at the Theatre by the Lake, Keswick, until 6 November. Box office: 01768 774411
