Simon Gray on Dog Days

Written for the programme of a production of the play at the English Theatre, Vienna, which the author also directed.

DOG DAYS was begun before the final draft of another play – BUTLEY – was in production, was continued at odd moments during rehearsals and completed – frequently and variously – during the next two years or so. It was just one of a number of plays I was working on in an increasing state of muddle that was eventually like a madness. There were moments when, nauseated into lucidity by the piles of typescript that filled my drawers, my cupboard, an antique chest and two pinewood coffins. I swore I’d never write again; which I would have to amend, as I crouched a few minutes later at my typewriter, into the more calming proposition that I would merely never finish anything again.

So I went on and on, covering page after page. Characters from one play would slip into another, change name, age, occupation and even sex, before either slipping into yet another play or back into the first. The same passages of dialogue cropped up in different scenes, in different plays, sometimes in different scenes in the same play or plays. At the end of each session I squirrelled the newly-written pages away for tomorrow or next week; for whenever I might be short. I was the Casaubon of show business.

I doubt if I would ever have stopped, if I hadn’t had to go to New York. In the ten days before my departure I wrote an entirely new and above all freshly conceived piece that probably differed only in the odd passage here and there from its first version, dropped it off at my agent’s on the way to the airport, and left him to decide whether to pass it on to a producer or return it to me. Both agent and producer cabled me in New York. I remember settling into an armchair in the lobby of the Algonquin and toasting their adjectives – routinely intoxicating – in champagne, before going on to glare, several stages later and through a brandy fog, at their noun; which was “draft”. As its implications became increasingly distinct, so did my future as a writer. I would never finish anything again. I would never write anything again.

Back in London I was given lunch with my agent by the producer in an expensive Spanish restaurant (a good omen, but not conclusive; an invitation to the Cafe Royal would, in a sense have made the lunch unnecessary). A copy of DOG DAYS, that the producer had re-typed and bound (also a good omen) lay between us as we pursued the preliminary courtesies that always run, in these situations, from the first hand-shake through to coffee. They had both read the play again (“several times”, but that was a metaphor) and were prepared to add a few more adjectives to their cabled lists. It seemed to them too, to be far less of a “draft” than they had first thought it. “It was all there.” So much so, in fact, that we must think about a director, and could certainly talk about casting, dates, venues, etc. But perhaps a director first, with whom I could collaborate – “if I were too close to the script to face it alone” – on whatever needed doing. What needed doing? Oh, a little work, no more – a revision in the second scene of the first act, did I think? the mildest of personality changes to the central character (a dash of motivation, perhaps) – and well, a touch of economy and a modicum of expansion – in different buy xanax usa places, of course. Certainly nothing more than most plays needed in rehearsal anyway, for, after all, it was from 75 to 95 percent all there. Good.

I took the producer’s copy with me when I left – that night I threw it, along with everything I’d written in the two years since BUTLEY, out with the other rubbish. Some day I might begin again. But not in my lifetime, as I saw it. At least, I hoped not.

It was extraordinary to be free. In my study now only the usual bottles, books; empty drawers and chests; a clear desk; a typewriter which could at last be put to proper use (abusive letters to friends, relatives and other strangers, for instance). It was as if I had rid myself of an aged and incontinent alter ego. Halved back to my only self, I could keep things clean.

My agent sent me his copy of DOG DAYS. I tossed it unopened into a chest. The Director of the Palace Theatre, Watford, telephoned to arrange a lunch. Over it he reminded me that I owed him a play. It had been promised years before, but he’d tactfully held back until I had nothing left to give. We went to my house and into my study and opened the chest. We met shortly afterwards to arrange a production.

Within two or three months I’d finished two television plays – PLAINTIFFS AND DEFENDANTS and TWO SUNDAYS – and a stage play, OTHERWISE ENGAGED. It is possible that these three pieces evolved out of the unrelated labour that preceded them, but it is far more likely that I embarrassed myself into them at the prospect of DOG DAYS being performed.

My agent sent the two television plays to the BBC, and I hurried OTHERWISE ENGAGED off to Watford. But the Director of its Palace Theatre was by this time passionately committed to DOG DAYS, and would accept no substitute. So OTHERWISE ENGAGED went to the producer who had talked of doing DOG DAYS, and the Director of the Palace Theatre, Watford, generously agreed to postpone his production until the year after OTHERWISE ENGAGED had opened in London.

POST SCRIPT. It was not, after all, to be so easy. I went on behaving badly towards the Watford Palace Theatre and its director during the year that followed the opening of OTHERWISE ENGAGED, pleading that I wasn’t yet up to discussions about a production of another play, with all the concentration it demanded and all the prospects (of casting, rehearsals, etc.) it opened out, until he became increasingly cynical about my intentions (while remaining admirably a friend) and went off to the States on a year’s visiting scholarship. And that was that. Until some time later a sudden show of interest from the Oxford Playhouse revived my own interest. I agreed to do it there, and to direct it myself. The by now habitual reaction followed. Almost at once I dispatched a groveling message through my agent withdrawing the piece. One of the Playhouse directors came down to London to see me, we talked over lunch, and at its conclusion I agreed to restore the play to him, with the understanding that I shouldn’t direct it myself (after such a display of doubt, how could I?) and that I shouldn’t again change my mind. I shan’t. DOG DAYS will open at the Oxford Playhouse in October, 1976 – God and the other devils willing; and I shall find out for myself at last what it is precisely I’ve been dreading all this time.