There’s a stench of something unsavoury behind the facade of genteel house in Regent’s Park, in Emlyn Williams’s 1950 play Accolade, currently playing in Richmond.
A best-selling novelist, William Trenting, has received both the Nobel Prize for Literature and a knighthood for his series of books on the bawdy underbelly of society.
While he basks in the reflected glory of his latest Accolade, Sir William’s world, career and marriage is about to be sorely tested. It’s a slow burner, this play, introducing its plot and puzzle piece by piece.
Lady Trenting, her friend Marian, house staff Albert and Gladys, plus William’s publisher, old friends from ‘the catering trade’, and the Trenting’s young son home from school make up the cast of characters in act one.
There’s also a mysterious figure bringing the news of the new knight’s social and more infractions. With Accolade‘s plot highlighting both an open marriage and underage sex it feels very daring for its time.
However, Williams’s play tends to steer our sympathy towards the upper-middle class family and away from the plight of the young girl all but forced into prostitution.
Referring to William as ‘Jekyll & Hyde’ feels like giving him a free pass while shaming a young girl for dressing and acting ‘ten years older’ shows that victim blaming has been alive and well for a long time.
As the stoic and understanding wife, Honeysuckle Weeks is a model of propriety while hiding the hurt of being taken for granted, and often, it is implied, ignored in the bedroom.
Ayden Callaghan portrays William as conflicted, addicted and more than a little unstable. He hides behind position, power, and privilege to excuse occasionally excursions into the dark side of drink, sex and worse.
Albert (Jamie Hogarth), his secretary, has held his secrets all these years. The publisher (David Phelan) seems to quickly accept that the seamy plots of his client’s imagination are all too real, no doubt with one eye on his profits.
It’s only in the recoil of Sara Crowe‘s society wife Marian in act two that we see a sense of how awful William’s actions have been, bringing a child into an adult world of perversion, pornography and profit.
Accolade is a play that drip feeds its secrets. A scene between William and his adversary (a very fine Narinder Samra) crackles with tension. The affable couple Harold and Phyllis (Gavin Fowler and Sarah Twomey) hide a sinister cynicism under comic scenes.
And as for the son, Ian (Louis Holland), a child who loves reading and the movies, his innocence is chipped away before drawing back – literally – the curtain to look on the bleak picture within.
Sometimes, director Sean Mathias makes the symbolism too literal; the very last scene is a case in point. But there are moments of great flair, aided by the design team of Julie Godfrey, Nick Richings (lighting), and David Gregory (sound).
Spotlights, birdsong, the ticking of a clock, the dawn of a new day, all add to the story in a beautifully designed garden room. It’s all very acceptable, but clearly, there is a code on display here about William’s implied deviancy – the love that can not speak its name?
Accolade is a play about class, entitlement, and acceptance. It must have seemed very shocking over 70 years ago and still retains some bite today.
***.5
Accolade is at Richmond Theatre until 13 July, concluding a short tour, with tickets here.
Image credit: Jack Merriman