Howard Brenton’s The Romans in Britain
(By Sean Bartley)
The Romans in Britain holds an infamous place in English theatre history, immortalized for its initial reception rather than its dramaturgy. Like Bond’s Saved before it and Kane’s Blasted after it, The Romans in Britain was lambasted by politicians and newspaper critics alike as an inappropriate use of Arts Council subsidies. In a development even more absurd that the hearings held against the National Endowment for the Arts and Hallie Flannigan and the Federal Theatre Project, conservative crusader Mary Whitehouse actually initiated a private prosecution against director Michael Bogdanov. In the Sam Waterston twist of the trial, Whitehouse was forced to withdraw her case when it was revealed that her star witness, who claimed to have seen a penis on stage, could not possibly have known what he saw from the rear of the auditorium. Given my immense affinity for Saved, Blasted, and The Romans in Britain, I think I just get giddy about anything that pisses enough of the world’s Mary Whitehouses off. Robert Mapplethorpe and Karen Findley don’t do a ton for me, but Cradle Will Rock and The Revolt of the Beavers? Come on.
While the entire play is interspersed with violent incidents, one scene particularly galled Whitehouse, who, of course, never saw the production (see also: Beckett’s complaints against Joanne Akalatis’ Endgame at A.R.T. in 1984.) In the scene, a Druid priest is brutally assaulted, maimed, and raped by three Roman soldiers. What makes the forced sodomy particularly challenging to analyze is the porous temporality of the piece, what Shakespearian scholar Michele Marrapodi would call the play’s “intertextuality.” While Part One, which contains the rape, is said to take place in 54 BCE and Part Two is set in 515 BCE and 1980 BCE, these periods bleed into one another constantly. Julius Caesar’s retinue brandishes pistols, and modern-day British soldiers and secret operatives mingle with Irish peasants of centuries past. It can be tricky to tease out exactly which versions of Britain, Ireland, and Rome Brenton seeks to question.
Ultimately, Brenton’s Irish and English characters manage to transcend their centuries of strife and form a temporary sense of coalition against a common enemy: Rome. Two orphaned young women and two servant cooks who have escaped the pestilence that claimed their Roman matron agree to “stay together for a bit” and form “a kind of army,” “an army of cooks.” The Saxon soldiers who killed the young women’s father are conceptually linked with the Roman marauders who invaded the Thames riverbanks and sodomized the priest in Part One. To keep up my trend of closing in the author’s own words, here is a passage announcing the arrival of the Roman hordes:
FIRST ENVOY: The Roman Army moves through this island. A ship of horror. Smashing the woods and the farms. Animals run before it. The ship of horror in the water, pushing before it the animals, men, women, and children of the farms. Even in this backwater can’t you feel it?
They have come from the other side of the World. And they are one. One whole.
Thirty thousand men. Can you, now, see yourself on a beach, the shingle, the tide coming in, and upon it ships with thirty thousand men, eight hundred ships, all one whole? ‘Eh? Eh? Eh?’ ‘Yes? Yes? Yes?’
(A silence.)
Understand. The Romans are different. They are – (He gestures, trying to find the word. He fails. He tries again.) A nation. Nation. What? A great family? No. A people? No. They are one, huge thing.
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