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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
The play doesn't quite make it, either,
By
This review is from: The Ascent of F6 (Paperback)
Can the abilities of two writers combine into a truly strong work? Some have launched projects with the hope of achieving this, but the results have usually left us with more questions than answers. Whenever artists decide to work together, there are problems caused by their egotistical trade. Two minds with a clear sense of what they're about will almost certainly bang together.Wystan Hugh Auden and Christopher Isherwood are men who overcame some differences to write plays for London's Group Theatre in the 1930s. The plays have been commercially and critically viable since their first productions and overshadow many twentieth century dramas that have come and gone. By the authors' talents alone, 'The Dog Beneath the Skin,' 'The Ascent of F6,' and 'On the Frontier' will probably remain on stage boards for years to come. Billed as a 'tragedy in two acts,' 'The Ascent of F6' was first published in September 1936 and enjoyed its premiere in February 1937. Its original production featured Ashley Dukes as director, Robert Medley as stage designer, and Benjamin Britten as composer of incidental music. Successful with audiences from the beginning, 'F6' has undergone several book printings and revivals by theater groups, including at the Old Vic. 'F6,' the second of three plays co-written by Auden and Isherwood, is one of many works that have succeeded despite major flaws. Audiences, especially those living in the social hardships of 1930s Britain, have related to its subject matter and appreciate the poetic skills that both men owned. The idea that Auden and Isherwood's talents would be visible in 'F6' is a no-brainer. 'F6,' however, lacks a cohesive plot and a clear sense of what type of play it wants to be. Auden and Isherwood tried their darnedest to make the whole better than the sum of its parts, but they seemed unable to escape the issues that have spoiled many a partnership. The so-called F6 is a mountain dividing two regions in Sudoland, a fictional land known for its coffee trade. Great Britain, which has kept a stronghold over the native population for decades, now finds itself threatened by Ostnia, a rival nation that occupies some of the territory. Wanting to make a political statement, both countries aim to scale F6, a rock face thought insurmountable. Local legend has the mountain occupied by a demon that makes it impossible for any person to climb. The Ostnians are using this tale to their advantage, telling natives that the first White man to climb F6 will rule all of Sudoland for a thousand years. British social powers who are desperate to maintain the status quo - royalty, the government, the military, and the upper classes - call upon Michael Forsyth Ransom and his team to reach the summit. Called 'M. F.' by his friends, Ransom is a young mountain climber who parallels real-life men like Sir Edmund Hillary and Auden's own brother John (the dedicatee of the play), who explored and mapped the Himalayas. It is clear from the opening scene that 'F6' was written in a Marxist-Freudian train of thought. Instead of portraying Ransom's climb as an act of valor, Auden and Isherwood put this bravery in relief to social, political, and mental issues that are far more overwhelming. Ransom is a well-travelled and well-educated man who does not readily buy into his country's wishes. He is drawn to eastern philosophies such as Buddhism and repelled by such things as national conquest and the use of heroism for political gain. Ransom is torn between the desire for a quiet life of reflection (as shown by his talk with a monastery abbot) and the feeling of obligation to his homeland, colleagues, and family. Cartoonish figures such as Lady Isabel Welwyn and Lord Stagmantle apply pressure to Michael in upholding the British race. He is also competing for his mother's love against Sir James Ransom, a brother and colonial officer who has suggested Michael for the F6 campaign. This 'mother conflict' is of the Freudian type and dominates Ransom's psychological outlook. 'F6' is divided into two acts with a total of eight scenes. Act I is a tapestry of social and economic forces in the British Empire's waning days, while Act II is centered upon the hopes and anxieties of Michael Ransom and his four colleagues - Shawcross, Gunn, Lamp, and Dr. Williams. Throughout the play, this F6 tour is contrasted with the everyday lives of 'Mr. and Mrs. A.,' an ordinary British couple who live from one paycheck to the next. Their doldrums and half-hearted interest in the F6 climb are seen in a box adjacent to the stage. Taking place in an opposite box are radio broadcasts with characters such as Lady Welwyn, Lord Stagmantle, and an unnamed announcer who serve up their tired clichés. Auden's verses and Isherwood's prose are, for the most part, in top form. The authors have created genuinely moving episodes, including the day-to-day anxieties of Mr. and Mrs. A., the deaths of Ransom's colleagues on the rock face, and Ransom's awareness that he will never make the summit. This inability of Ransom to reach a higher plane is oddly in keeping with the men and women who struggle to make ends meet several thousand feet below. Auden and Isherwood, both in the neighborhood of age 30 when 'F6' was written, made a terrible mistake by including satirical episodes within the tragedy. In these scenes, Auden and Isherwood are reaching out to a general audience, but it totally kills off the play's effectiveness. At the end of Act I, for example, Ransom's mother sings a ditty on the power of mothers over their children. And there is the play's final scene, an allegory that mixes choruses, the play's characters as men in a chess game, the monastery abbot donning a judge's wig, and James Ransom garbed as a dragon. This finale is along the lines of Gilbert & Sullivan's 'Trial by Jury,' which found its way into other dramas. There are so many important issues being dealt with in 'F6' that any comical approach to its themes just doesn't belong. In a 1965 lecture, Isherwood flatly admitted that 'the end of the play was always a terrible mess.' Attempts were made to improve the scene in revivals, but this problem of a farcical ending in an otherwise serious play has never been cleared up. The scene is so out of place and inept that it single-handedly discredits the entire work. The play's better scenes are not free of problems, either. One example is that moment on F6 when a human skull is found, the authors' silly reference to 'Hamlet.' Ransom also surrenders to his colleagues' hopes and begins climbing F6 when he seems on the verge of walking away from it. We are never supplied with a reason for this mind change, other than the suggestion of a Freudian mother-complex: Ransom must climb F6 to please his mother, above all else. There are times when Ransom's motivations are vague and the authors are caught up in their own rhetoric. Would this lousy conclusion and many of the rough edges have disappeared if one person were creating 'F6' instead of two? Collaboration is an issue that authors have long struggled with. In his 1965 lecture, Isherwood notes that he'd 'done a great deal of collaborating during [his] life and with a very wide variety of people' and found that 'under certain circumstances, particularly for the theater, it's stimulating.' There is perhaps no better experience than working on drama with W. H. Auden. But is collaboration a path to artistic achievement or only the byproduct of great conversation? Stephen Spender, a friend to both men, gave his more objective view on Auden and Isherwood's plays in 1938. 'One may suspect,' he wrote, 'that [a] collaboration itself is responsible for some [ ] faults: each writer hopes that the other is going to try harder than himself...neither writer feels as responsible for the criticism which the play may arouse as he would if the work were entirely his own. More important, it must be very difficult in a collaboration to construct the unique, hemmed-in, and claustrophobic atmosphere, which is essential to a play.' Perhaps, then, an argument can be made for having just one person behind the steering wheel. Knowing its stronger points, 'F6' is not a complete loss. The play is an interesting result of two writers who shared common ideals, however briefly they may've held onto them. Both men, particularly Auden, had an on-again, off-again relationship with Marxism before its pivotal failure in the Spanish Civil War. Auden later embraced Anglican Catholicism while Isherwood held ongoing interest in eastern mystics. Politics aside, the conflicts of Ransom can make for exceptional drama and there is much to be said in 'F6' for human friendship and man's strength in the face of adversity. It makes several of these points without heavy-handedness, rare for plays of this type and era. 'F6' has been printed repeatedly by Faber & Faber (who released the original volume in England) and by Random House, Auden's U. S. publisher. It can be found on its own or in combination volumes with Auden and Isherwood's other plays, all of varying years and varying formats. Used copies can be found on the Web, especially through Amazon and antiquarian book dealers.
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