From early August until now, I have been lucky enough to be involved with a community theatre’s production of The Lady’s Not For Burning. I am, at least in name, the director of the production, despite having very little experience in acting. I rose through the distaff side of theatre productions, having started out as a fairly excellent audience member, then graduating to backstage functions such as handling props and set changes, and finally taking the plunge and directing a play myself.
The best thing about directing a play is that you can, for once in your life, make people experience a piece of literature that you think is worthwhile. As an English professor, I spent most of my professional life begging my students to read things like Keats, Eliot (George, not T.S.!), and Dickens–and being soundly ignored most of the time. But now, I can be satisfied that some 100 or so people, perhaps more if audiences pick up during this, our last week of performances, will be introduced to this play. (I am, of course, counting the actors, set crew, sound crew, and producers in that 100 people.) I have to admit I feel pretty good about making people aware of this play, even if they aren’t as enthusiastic about it as I am.
I picked The Lady’s Not For Burning for several reasons, which I will explain below. But like most everything else in my retired life, I encountered it in the first place through random serendipity. When Margaret Thatcher died several years ago, the news media played and re-played a snippet of what was perhaps her most famous speech, in which she declared, referring to her stance on the Falklands War, “The lady’s not for turning.” This made me curious about the dramatic work she was referring to in her clever word-play, and so I checked it out from the library and read it, surprising myself by actually liking it…a lot. I told myself at that time that if I ever got the chance to make a new generation of readers aware of it, I would take that chance.
The Lady’s Not For Burning was written in 1948 by English poet and playwright Christopher Fry. Delightfully absurd, it deals with the theme of existential despair, ultimately defeating it through a blend of physical and conversational humor, but most of all, through the power of love. Set in the middle ages, from the opening moments of the play we watch Thomas Mendip, a recently discharged soldier who has seen too much of battlefields and human misery, as he tries to get himself hanged in an effort to end a life he can no longer bear to live. Yet it is his misfortune to have arrived in Cool Clary, a dysfunctional village that is in the midst of a witch-hunt. Within a short time of his arrival, a young woman (Jennet Jourdemayne) appears, trying with all her might to convince the town elders that she is not guilty of witchcraft. Unlike Thomas, she has gotten into the habit of living, and she is not inclined to give it up so easily. The rest of the play follows the fortunes of these two people, one who wants to end his life and the other who desperately wants to live, two individuals caught up in a world whose vicissitudes they cannot fully understand, all against a backdrop of hilariously ineffective and hare-brained villagers.
As I mentioned above, I found The Lady’s Not For Burning delightfully funny when I first read it, but I have come to know the play a great deal better over the last few months, as I watched the cast of hard-working amateur actors spend hour after hour memorizing lines, getting thrown about on stage, and strutting about in strange clothing. I have learned a great deal along the way, but two things stand out. First, I know now that the play is even funnier than I first thought it was. But the second thing I learned is that it also exhibits a deep sadness that seems to fit the times we live in. After all, the world is all too often not a pretty place, as Thomas readily tells us. In fact, it’s frequently a downright ugly place. However, it is possible to find beauty, and humor, and love, upon this imperfect planet we inhabit, and I believe that if we have a duty in this life, it is to find and celebrate such things in the midst of suffering and death. In the end, it is the relatively minor character Nicholas Hebble who utters the words that embody the crucial message of the play: “The best thing we can do is to make wherever we’re lost in / Look as much like home as we can.” These lines are echoed by Thomas Mendip at the very end of the play, when he offers to help Jennet Jourdemayne find her way home, though neither one of them has any idea where on earth that home could be.
In a way, I feel that the actors, stage crew, producers, and I have also been trying to find our way home, to a definitive view of the play that is several months in the making. We may have gotten lost, but we have kept each other company, and we can be satisfied that we have done our best, I think. I will be glad when the play is over and I have my life back again, as I’m sure all members of the cast and crew will be, but I will also always be grateful for an opportunity to work closely, not only with a great group of people, but also with this overlooked piece of literature–to be able to study it, understand it, and appreciate it in a way that I could never have done without getting involved in an actual stage production.
The Tabard Inn 