Everyman Palace Theatre, Cork
"A gloomy old sod, aren't I?" asks Tom Courtenay in Pretending to be Me, his one-man play on the life of Philip Larkin. The question is phrased more in wonderment, as if waiting without expectation for a hint of contradiction.
Built from the stream of memoir, biography, letters and critical assessments (varied and wavering though these have been) Courtenay’s work is infused with the poet’s wry, robust and often delightful sense of humour. Despite its biographical integrity, it is in fact a very funny piece, pierced with self-abnegation and blistering asides, as with his description of his rival Ted Hughes looking like a Christmas present from Easter Island, or defending his misogyny by his fear of women’s “emotional haberdashery”.
First performed in 2002 and revised for this quarter-century anniversary of Larkin's death (in Hull in 1985) the play is formally compiled, with Courtenay in a compelling identification with the poet's character. That's a good trick as it happens because it allows for the omission of potent material from, or even references to, Larkin's complicated love life, recently further illuminated by the publication of Letters to Monicaselected by Anthony Thwaite. What we get is a kind of under-current, if that could be an adequate description of the tidal wave of verse to which Courtenay seems to surrender, as if drowning were easy. But this is method; the actor's manner is relaxed – drooping sweater and a glass, no, a bottle, of whiskey, chair, table, tea-chest and cardboard box the only setting – letting the marvellous infiltrations of American jazz indicate the further shores of the complex Larkin personality.
That tidal wave is not just memorable lines beautifully performed. It is something much more courageous and, for the audience, more rewarding: Courtenay’s subtle engagement with the structure as much as with the subject, his ability to swim, sometimes more amiably than the writer might have done, from chat to creativity, landing on internal rhymes with a delicate accuracy that reminds us of his own intense sensitivity as a performer.
It's two for the price of one in this production. Or perhaps it's three. Something else happens when Courtenay, having remarked on Larkin's belief that deprivation was to him what daffodils were to Wordsworth, brings his baggage to rest on the shore of An Arundal Tomband sends his listeners home newly warmed by the resonance of The Whitsun Weddings.
