REVIEW: THE FALL OF ROBESPIERRE
Olive
Peto
(The Coleridge Bulletin New Series No 4 (Autumn 1994), pp 60-64)
The splendid octagonal hall of Cannington College made a
convincing and enhancing theatre for the World Première of "The Fall of
Robespierre", performed there on July 25th, 1994, 3 days before the 200th
anniversary of Robespierre's death on July 28th, 1794. Duncan Noel-Paton,
Director of Drama at Christ's Hospital, and his young actors and actresses made
excellent use of the small stage with its elegant flight of steps and curved
balustrades, the gallery at the back of the hall, and floor of the hall itself,
to draw the audience into the action and mood of the play. A tree festooned
with a banner inscribed with the one word, LIBERTÉ, stood centre back stage:
this and the vigour of the introductory scene left no doubt about the play's
main theme and the vehemence with which it was to be conveyed.
The opening scene was lively and original, as one would
expect from Duncan Noel-Paton, a director known for his skill in handling large
numbers of actors and for creating strong dramatic effects. The arrival of a
jostling group of actors dressed in their present-day (yet timeless) uniform of
long dark—blue coat, white shirt and bands, stockings and breeches, did much to
bridge the gap between then and now and gave a contemporaneous impact to the
events of 1794. The discarding of the long coat to reveal garments symbolic of
the French revolution pointed to the easy transition from senior schoolboy to
youthful idealist fired with excitement over social upheaval. Boys at Christ's
Hospital in 1794 must have taken an avid interest in the chaotic events in
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21 when he and Southey wrote the play.
Lively and arresting as this opening scene was with its
clever use of tableaux and mime to illustrate some of the more gruesome
incidents of the Revolution, a cardinal difficulty was soon apparent. "The
Fall of Robespierre" is not a play. It is easy but unfair to accuse it of
failing to be something which its authors never claimed it to be. Coleridge
called it a Dramatic Poem in which it was his "sole aim to imitate the
impassioned and highly figurative language of the French orators and to develop
the characters of the chief actors on a vast stage of horrors." It was
written with prodigious speed - within 48 hours! - as a money-raising venture
in aid of Pantisocracy - the unfulfilled dream which Coleridge and Southey
shared of an idyllic society to be established in
This then is the problem: how to act a Dramatic Poem. Duncan
Noel-Paton and his actors went for the drama rather than the poetry, but it had
to be a drama of the debating chamber rather than the battle-field. Each main
speaker took centre stage in turn for his share in the debate and there was
plenty of movement among the rest of the cast to give the impression of an
eager, bustling crowd. Occasional use of
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tableaux and mimes at crucial
moments, as in the opening scene, relieved the " impassioned and highly figurative
language". The protagonists were impressive in their variety, whether tall
and arrogant in the long dark-blue coat like St Just, or slight and neatly
dressed like Robespierre. These were good dramatic ingredients. The trouble was
with the voices. Coleridge and Southey had struck a vein of rhetoric which
encouraged the actors to give full volume to their voice from the very
beginning. When voices are strained to produce crescendo after crescendo, the
words tend to be lost in the effort. Critics have called the quality of the
verse in "The Fall of Robespierre" poor - or even bad - but there are
some moments of colourful description which could be made to sound quite poetic
with the use of varied pace and volume. Coleridge at this stage loved highly figurative
language - "Similes forever! Hurra!" he wrote in a letter to Southey
- and there is plenty of it in this poem, but it does need to be heard clearly.
One poetic moment did come across very well and provided a
welcome relief from the relentless oratory. It was the scene between Tallien
and
Tell me on what holy ground
May domestic peace be found?
This is in a different vein from the rest of the poetry and
it was sung in a steady, clear voice by a striking
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were many vigorous performances. Robespierre himself was convincingly ambitious, ascetic and self-righteous, the focal point of the hatred and frustrations of his opponents. "There is in him that which makes me tremble", says Barrère early in the text: Robespierre's performance made this statement credible, but it was a pity that the volume of his voice often obscured the words. His brother, Robespierre Junior, was a good foil - a quieter,more stolid man; St Just was appropriately aristocratic and haughty; and Couthon looked and sounded horribly villainous.
The drama was full of hatred - what St Just calls "The
thick black sediment of all the factions". All the actors produced hatred,
passion and fierce determination and many of them assumed a ferocity of facial
expression which remained throughout the performance. Barrère, Legendre,
Bourdon L'Oise and Collot d'Herbois struck defiant poses and declaimed their
lines with grim sincerity. Other named revolutionaries - Billaud Varennes,
Merlin of Douay, Lecointre, Dubois Crance - were played with great zest by
girls and provided an interesting contrast to the rest of the cast: their
higher voices and clearer diction made for a welcome variation in the quality
of the sound.
Throughout the performance, the quality of sound was much
enriched by Tim Benjamin's original music which he, resplendent in Grecian's
uniform, played on a keyboard at the side of the hall. It was cleverly composed
in keys appropriate to the moods of the incidents being emphasised and was
never intrusive or extraneous. From time to time he played subtle and
restrained variations on the theme of the Marseillaise, refusing to burst into
the full-bodied tune but using the melody in a threatening minor key. This
music of not-quitethe-Marseillaise, combined with a final tableau of all the
cast on the steps of the octagon, brought this speech-packed hour to an end.
Robespierre,St Just, Couthon and Robespierre
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Junior were dead and Tallien had the
last word, proclaiming that "
Every Coleridge enthusiast should thank Duncan Noel-Paton
and his actors, who spent the first weeks of their summer holiday rehearsing
this production and grappling with fairly intractable material. There is no
recorded previous performance of this Dramatic Poem and those who saw it at
We may assume that Coleridge would have been gratified to see his Christ's Hospital descendants taking his Dramatic Poem so seriously: as a keen speaker, he might well have wanted to join in.