In the last month I have seen two wonderful
films, with two remarkable central performances by actresses who could hardly
be more different; Saoirse Ronan and
Maggie Smith. Both films were drawn from
original material by two great writers, Colm Toibin and Alan Bennett. How luck am I?
I have already written about Brooklyn, and Saoirse Ronan’s pellucid
portrayal of a young Irish woman. In The Lady in the Van we have Dame Maggie
Smith acting with so much skill, honed over the last six decades, that we do
not notice it, as she simply ‘becomes’ Miss Shepherd, the woman who lived on
Allan Bennett’s front drive for fifteen years in a series of camper vans.
Bennett resisted writing about his rent-free lodger
while she was alive.
When she eventually departed this world he wrote the play from which he adapted this script. On stage it was directed by
Nicolas Hytner (who also directed
Bennett’s The History Boys and The
Madness of King George III) and starred Maggie Smith. That
was fifteen years ago, and Dame Maggie was then nearer the age of Miss
Shepherd. How she managed the
physicality of this role is amazing, climbing into and out of her Coomber van
time after time, negotiating an interior crammed with the necessities and
detritus of years of occupancy.
At first the van was parked directly
outside Alan Bennett’s house in Camden Town, in London, an area of Victorian
villas slowly being ‘gentrified’ by
middle class owners. Most of them
tolerated Miss Shepherd, despite her almost tangible body odour and
eccentricity. Some of them treated her kindly, but they
were never rewarded with thanks.
Anything and everything that was given to her she regarded as her due
right. She was sure that people only
did such things to feel better about themselves. She may have been right. Allan Bennett is clear that when he invited
her to move her van from the road and onto his property it benefited him, getting it out of his
line of sight, out of the way of pedestrians and stopping the noisy altercations that sometimes erupted around
her. He thought both of them would have a quieter
life. He said she could stay for three
months, until she got herself sorted out.
She stayed for fifteen years. Never,
in all this time, did she thank him. Bennett
writes that “I am sure (she) didn’t think
it was kindness if she ever gave it a thought. …to her parking on my drive was
a favour she was doing me, not the other ways round. To have allowed herself to be grateful would
have been a chink in her armour, braced as she always was against the world.”
Miss Shepherd (though that prove not to be
her real name) was an intelligent and educated woman. Slowly, over the years before and after her
death, Alan Bennett pieced together a few scattered fragments of her life. She had trained as a concert pianist, spoke
good French, had been a nun, twice. She
had been 'sectioned' early in in her adult life and committed to a mental
institution. She was sure that she was
regularly visited by the Blessed Virgin Mary, and that world leaders, both
spiritual and secular, sought her advice.
She also carried a huge burden of guilt, and would serially confess her
sin. She wrote pamphlets (some of
which are now in the Bodleian Library in Oxford).
Bennett has slightly fictionalized his experience
of living next to her. On stage, and
now screen, we see two Bennett’s, one of
them living the life, the other observing it and writing – or not writing –
about it. One struggling with Miss
Shepherd’s demands, the other witnessing the internal and external
tussles. Bennett has written the
testy interior dialogue and Jennings plays out both sides wonderfully.
Bennett has replaced his real neighbours
with fresh ones, apart from the very real Ursula Vaughn Williams, the widow of
the composer, played on screen by Frances de la Tour. Frances previously appeared in Bennett’s
film The History Boys, along with
Dominic Cooper, James Corden and Russell Tovie, who all make tiny appearances
here. He also invented unctuous blackmailing retired policeman, played here by another great British Treasure, Jim Broadbent. Great casting throughout.
Maggie Smith recently said that when she
arrived on set for the first time and
passed by Alan Bennett she muttered to him ‘Thanks a million.’ Amen to
that, and the same to you Dame Maggie.
