The Theatre as Barnyard
The Messiah by Patrick Barlow
West Yorkshire Playhouse, 1996
Open air medieval Mystery Plays frequently used donkeys, cows, sheep and even birds to make their scenes authentic. It’s a tradition that has continued onto the modern stage. Everyone has heard the saying “never work with children or animals”, but in the pursuit of epic ideas and grandeur some things have to be sacrificed, and normally it’s the actor’s dignity. Whilst children can sometimes be reasoned with, animals definitely have minds and bowels of their own, and as the years have progressed, staging techniques developed, and outdoor theatre declined, it is no wonder that these reluctant performers have been herded off into the wings in favour of theatrical illusion and special effects.
A Bear on the Boards
Not that animals disappeared from the boards altogether. Some believe that Shakespeare’s most famous stage direction (from The Winter’s Tale – ‘Exit [Antigonus] pursued by a bear’) survives because a real animal was always on hand to be bundled into the Globe from the bearpit next door. And when Naturalistic drama was all the rage on the continent, a production of the Bard’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream was distinguished by the presence of several rabbits in the forest scenes. By the end of the run, it is said, they outnumbered the actors by a considerable margin…
Amazingly, towards the end of the last century, there was even a craze for live horses on stage. It was all to do with spectacle for its own sake, a kind of overlap with the circus where effects were introduced not because they needed to be, but because they could be. Hippomania grew to such proportions that there is at least one authenticated case of a Richard III being outshone, if not out-acted, by his co-star and mount, White Surrey.
Horses Two, Actors Nil
In a famous production of The Scarlet Pimpernel, the disguised hero had to be drawn onto the stage in a trap pulled by a pony. One evening the horse was feeling a bit moody and no amount of sugar would induce it to go on. In desperation some stage hands administered a couple of pints of beer. The pony abruptly bolted out of the wings with a startled Sir Percy hanging on for dear life. Horse, trap and passenger shot across the width of the stage and straight off the other side, carrying away with them most of the city gates of Paris. After that a more reliable substitute was found for when the temperamental equine wasn’t feeling up to it, but even that caused professional jealousy between the two.
America fared no better under this welter of horse opera. In New York in 1848 a melodrama called St George and the Dragon gave ample scope for any number of steeds on stage, but unfortunately not all the actors were wholly at ease with them.
One night, at the cry “Up, knights, and away!” most of St George’s followers managed to make their exit in good order. The exceptions were St Denis and St Andrew who had somehow managed to communicate their nervousness to their mounts. As they each hopped about on one leg trying to get on board, their horses kept going round just as slowly in the same direction, “in order,” as one sympathetic witness put it, “to avoid further intimacy.” Eventually St Denis, the tall one, made a supreme effort and ended up in the saddle – his legs dangling on one side of the horse, his torso hanging down the other.
At this point, in order to put both actors and audience out of their misery, the curtain came down – isolating St Andrew on the audience side. The sensible thing would have been for the actor simply to walk off leaving the animal in charge. But he didn’t. Making one last Herculean attempt, he succeeded in placing the wrong foot in the stirrup and ended up facing backwards.
He slipped off again as surreptitiously as he could but the horse, suspecting foul play, turned and reared up on its hind legs sending the hapless and horseless St Andrew fleeing into a private box. Still on two legs, the horse now loomed over the orchestra pit. The musicians, fearing attack (or worse) from above, scattered in all directions, some under the stage, others joining the paying customers in their frantic stampede for the exits.
A groom eventually appeared to lead the animal away. St Andrew completed the performance on foot. The horse didn’t work for six months.
PS
Occasionally one was allowed to assume a jester’s cap and bells and just jump around a bit. This, together with The Curse of Macbeth and maybe a few other pieces, was meant to form the nucleus of a pool of short, humorous articles that could be offered to appropriate productions and slotted into the programme if they so desired. The fact that said pool never expanded much beyond the dimensions of a puddle suggest that the ide was always going to be a bit of a non-starter. But this did get at least one outing, and the proper piece accompanying the play, Patrick Barlow’s The Messiah, is here – though even that was hardly wholly serious, the premise being that The Greatest Story Ever Told was going to be related by The Smallest Cast Ever Assembled.
I don’t know where a lot of this article came from but I’m sure I must have looked up the more comic and egregious moments of bestial farce and done my best to put them across. Like all such stories, they have probably gained some extra ballast over the years – quite apart from anything I made up myself – but like any legend they must all have had their origin in some kind of reality. Certainly the use of rabbits on stage and the presence of horses – often being asked to perform far more spectacular stunts than anything depicted here – are historically attested facts. But in the end it just goes to show why theatrical illusion will always win out over flesh and blood beasts. The imperious actors-as-horses in Peter Shaffer’s Equus, for instance, are always going to leave behind a much more lasting impression than any actual equine. Not to mention a lot less crap on the stage.