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The Gift of the Gorgon
A Play by Peter Shaffer
Opening Night at The Pit -- December 3, 1992
Opening Night at Wyndham's Theatre -- March 23, 1993
as Helen Damson
Best Actress in a Drama Nomination -- Olivier Awards
Last Updated:
March 13, 2010
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Programme Page
To hopefully you give a better idea of what this play is about
and
Dame Judi's feelings about performing in it ...
Read an excerpt from Dame Judi's biography
Read Act I Scene 1 from the Play
Thanks to Mary Lynn T.
Thanks to Cidy from The Netherlands for sending
this
Plays and Players
Article -- February 1993
Famous English
playwright Edward Damson has died violently at his remote Aegean home. His son -
whom he has never acknowledged - is American academic Philip Damson who has had
a lifelong obsession with the father he never knew. He begs permission from his
stepmother Helen to write Edward's biography and she agrees reluctantly on
condition Philip tells the whole story - a story, she warns, he will find
painful. Helen, a pacifist academic, re-enacts her bizarre, turbulent eighteen
years with the wildly passionate, explosive and self-absorbed Edward. Edward's
rise to fame, decline into ridicule and estrangement from Helen is mirrored in
the Greek myth of Athena and Perseus who slays the Gorgon only to become a
gorgon himself. " ... a modern Bacchae ... it's elaborate intellectual
construction contains a vivid and all too topical message that grabs you by the
throat" - Sunday Times
Excerpt
from (Pages 253 - 256 in the Hardcover 1999 Edition):
"Judi Dench ... With a Crack in Her
Voice" by John Miller
When the run ended Judi returned to the Royal Shakespeare
Company in a new play by Peter Shaffer, The Gift of the Gorgon, directed by Peter Hall, in which she gave a performance that was
hugely admired by everyone except her. She ended up hating the part
and the play even more than Portia and The Merchant of Venice.
She played Helen, the widow of playwright Edward Damson, living on a Greek island. She is visited by Edward's illegitimate son
Philip, who wants her permission to write the biography of the father he never met. Over the next two days she tells Philip the story
of their eighteen-year marriage, moving in and out of flashback and the
present day. There is much reference to Greek myth, and Helen is compared to Athena who helped Perseus slay the snake-headed
Gorgon, and then watched him become what he had killed.
Jeremy Northam played the young stepson, and his father was Michael Pennington, who had played Mirabell to her
Millamant. Now his character was named Damson, the joke between them was
that he got all the plum parts. 'So we're Mr. and Mrs. Plum to each other, and I suppose we always will be.'
He loved the play and was
very keen to do it and to this day he is mystified by Judi's antipathy to it.
This showed itself early on and there came a morning when she
ground to a halt, threw the script up in the air and locked herself in the ladies'
loo. When Ella Kenyon, an actress in the company, asked
her, 'Is there anything you want?' Judi wailed, 'Yes, I want to go home to Michael.'
While Peter Shaffer and Michael Pennington sat
and waited in the Clapham rehearsal room, Peter Hall then had a long private talk
with Judi, trying to calm her fears. Her long-standing trust in him had led her to accept the part without reading much of
it, for which she reproaches herself. 'If I'd read it to the end I'd never
have agreed to do it. My admiration for Peter Shaffer was unbounded.
Five-Finger Exercise and Royal Hunt of the Sun had made a huge impression on me, and at the same time as this I was doing a radio
play of his - Whom Do I Have The Pleasure Of Addressing? It was just this play I found so difficult.
However, Peter Hall's persuasive powers kept her on board, as they had similarly conquered Anthony Hopkins' deep reservations about
his ability to play Antony to her Cleopatra.
Judi cannot articulate what it was in her that so resisted it, but her close friend Pinkie Kavanaugh is absolutely convinced that it was the
theme of revenge in the play that Judi found so repugnant, as the very idea is so alien to her nature. Her unhappiness by no means inhibited
her performance, and her co-star soon realised that he was going to have to be as much on his mettle as he had in The Way of the World.
He puts the challenge in the highest league: 'She's very fast, like John
Gielgud is very fast. Their speed is something to do with real quality, you don't miss a word, the mind is moving at the same speed as the
tongue. Anyone can go fast, but it's the speed of both those two actors, mentally and emotionally, that's so impressive to watch.'
When it opened in the Pit at the Barbican it was a knockout with the public and the press. For Michael Billington in the Guardian it
was 'bracingly theatrical, endlessly alive and fiercely ambitious, the best thing Shaffer had done since Amadeus', and he much admired
Peter Hall's production. 'Judi Dench as Helen also reminds us why she is one of our greatest actresses. Michael Pennington as Edward
shrewdly suggests the vanity and cruelty lurking inside the daemonic dramatist, and Jeremy Northam brings to the academic son a nice
touch of filial puzzlement.
He thought it almost burst out of the confines of the tiny Pit and so did Jack Tinker in the Daily Mail, who found it a 'profound and
disturbing play ... Dame Judi, the ringing voice of civilised reason, reconstructs her late husband's history in dramatised and anguished
flashbacks, giving it the sort of intensely moving compassion of which she is the past
mistress.
Judi took some of her personal anguish out on the new Director of the RSC, Adrian Noble, when he came round with his executive
producer, Michael Attenborough, to wish her good luck before the last performance at the Barbican; because she hates the building even
more than she hated that play. She says the dressing-rooms are like cells, with dirty windows looking out into the underground car park.
'I loathe it. I think it's a monstrous building, and I told Adrian and Michael that I would never go back there to do a play, whatever the
circumstances, I'm afraid. I simply cannot believe you can have a company feeling when you're going up and down in lifts all the time,
and you never meet the other actors.
Not that she was all that keen to transfer to the West End with The Gift of the Gorgon. She resisted for a long time and tried to enlist
Michael Pennington on her side. 'She kept urging me to price myself out and ask for too much money, so that the whole project would
collapse. This was jocular stuff, but the day I said, "No, I've made terms", she nearly killed me, mockingly.'
She eventually succumbed, reluctantly, when Peter Hall rang her up and said, 'Look, Judi, are you really prepared to put all these other
people out of work?' When it moved to the much bigger space of Wyndham's Theatre, it was sold out as quickly as it had been at the
Pit. The cast were nervous about adjusting it to this new arena and Michael Pennington found he was not alone in a certain actor's ritual.
'We both have a tendency, like Joe Louis, to have a look at the ring before the other fighter appears; I remember prowling around the
stage at about half-past six, only to find her prowling around the stage
as well, just trying to get our feet attached to the ground.'
It was another part of her anatomy that transfixed Samantha Bond when she went to Wyndham's. 'The curtain went up and Judi was
by a table, leaning on one arm, and this arm was so full of pain and awfulness that my whole heart came into my mouth, and I thought,
"What has happened to that poor woman?" I knew three of the other actors in the
play as well as Judi, and I didn't go backstage afterwards
because I didn't want to break the spell, so I wrote them all cards.
I won't ever forget that arm. I have a moment in Amy's View when
Dominic's been horrible and I come on and lean on the table, and I always think, "I'm going to do my best arm now for her"; but I've
never told her, because if I said, "From the moment I looked at your forearm. .." she'd think I was really barking.'
Judi played out her contract for the West End run but flatly refused to extend it, even though it was still playing to packed houses after
six months.
Buy
the August 2002 Updated Edition at Amazon.co.uk -- New Releases Page
This
Play was purchased at Samuel French, Inc.
ACT
I SCENE l
Before the play begins we see a large closed coffin, resting on top of the
desk.
Darkness. A wind blowing. A light comes up on the coffin. Beside it stand
Helen, veiled in black, Katina and four Greek villagers all in silhouette.
The voice of a BBC Commentator is heard.
Commentator's voice The death was announced last night of the
playwright Edward Damson. He was forty-six. He appears to have died from
an accidental fall near his villa on the Greek island of Thera. His body
was found naked, badly cut from its roll down a steep cliff of lava for which the island is famous.
Damson first achieved prominence in the late seventies with his play Icons, set in Byzantium and employing an enormous cast. Icons was
followed by Prerogative, an even more elaborate piece about Oliver Cromwell, filled with scenes of extreme action.
Damson was an extreme personality, who made many extreme statements. "It is the duty of the playwright," he once declared, "to be
extreme. To astound his audience- and, if necessary, appall it."
The villagers lift the coffin and walk off solemnly with it, followed by
Katina.
Commentator's voice His last play was obsessed with terrorism, especially in Northern Ireland.
Called I.R.E. , it caused a scandal. Immediately afterwards the playwright
retired to the Greek island he never left again in five years, seeing no
visitors and answering no letters.
He leaves behind him a widow.
Helen, standing by the desk, unveils. Katina, Helen's housekeeper
- a scowling, older Greek woman wearing traditional black enters and hands Helen a letter. She opens the
envelope and reads. The Lights come up downstage on Philip, speaking as she does so. He is
a nervous academic of twenty-eight: English but dressed in American professional clothes
- button-down shirt, conservative tie, and moccasins.
Philip (nervously) Dear Stepmother - Helen being regrettably still too
familiar -a month has gone by since you wrote that kind letter. As I said in my reply, I would never have written to you, even in condolence,
if I hadn't first received that assurance you knew I existed. Let me now
be crass. I have a request, which I offer very much in fear and trembling.
I would dearly like to fly from America to visit you. What I need is your
consent for me to write a book. His Life. I realize this may seem appallingly self-promoting. All I ask is a chance to be allowed to explain
myself in person.
She crumples the letter. Philip sits, producing her reply, and reads it as
Helen speaks.
Helen (firmly) Dear Philip, I am not seeing people now. I trust you
understand. Helen Damson.
Katina picks up an armful of new books which she tumbles unceremoniously into the basket. Helen produces another letter and reads it silently.
Philip Please forgive me for writing again. I'm sure I'm just as
importunate as all the other Professors of Drama. I imagine they're besieging you
in droves, pelting you with their books as proof of ability ...Well; I've
only got one to my name -the dissertation I sent over last year -and I'm only an assistant professor. But I know my need to write this has got
to be greater than any of theirs.
Again she crumples the letter.
Helen I'm sorry, but I have to say no. I'm not receiving anyone at this
time.
Philip (insistently) Could I come then in the spring break? I've worked it
all out. There are cheap flights from here -and then there's just the boat
trip from Athens. According to my travel guide I'd have to take a donkey
up the cliff face when I arrive, but there is literally nothing I wouldn't
dare, to present my case! ...Please, Stepmother, won't you relent?
Helen stands rigid.
Helen (sharply) For the last time, I cannot see you! Understand this,
please. No more letters.
She moves away out on to the terrace. A pause. Then impulsively Philip rises, snatches his suitcase and a briefcase, and marches determinedly
across the stage. We hear the sound of a jet plane, loud. Light changes to
evening in the Aegean. Katina stands upstage, barring his way. She speaks
only Greek.
Katina Ohi! Ti thelis etho? [No! What do you want here?]
Philip (nervously consulting the dictionary) Kalispera ... I think that's
right. Good-evening?
He smiles nervously. Katina glares. I am Philip Damson. I would like to see Mrs. Damson.
Katina Then ghinette. [It is not possible.]
Philip I have come a long way. The middle of America! I wrote to her
... I am the son of Edward Damson.
Katina Eh?
Philip Kyrios Damson was my father! ...Pateras!
Katina Then katalaveno. Prepi nafighis! [I don't Understand. You must
go away!]
Philip (producing a letter) Listen, just take this to her. Please! (He finds
some money) I wait here.
She stares at him with suspicion, snatches the money and the letter, and
goes to Helen who re-enters the room, from the terrace, reading it. Katina
closes the shutters
(As Helen reads) Dear Helen, I have arrived for the weekend. My bag is
at the hotel nearby. Sea, wind and saddle have taken their toll. My body
stands exhausted at your door, awaiting sentence. If you really want to punish me for disobedience, in the time-honoured way of stepmothers in
fairy-tales, you have only to send me back to Illinois without seeing me.
But I'm hoping you'll find me a champion blackmailer as well as a top biographer.
Pause.
Helen (suddenly to Katina) Na perasi o kyrios. [Show the gentleman in.]
The housekeeper protests Grigora! [I mean it.]
Katina turns unwillingly to Philip and indicates curtly that he may
proceed. He gives her a nervous smile and edges by the woman, who continues
to watch balefully.
Philip (approaching) Kalispera. That is correct, I hope?
Helen (coolly) You understand the Greek for good-evening but not apparently the English for goodbye.
Philip I had to come.
Helen Just for the weekend? From America?
Philip Faint heart never won fair permission. I took the noon boat from
Piraeus. I even survived the donkey. It was rougher than the sea ...How many steps are there, actually?
Helen Three hundred and six.
Philip I thought I was going to be pitched off at every turn ...I guess
people must have fallen over that cliff from time to time. (Embarrassed)
I'm sorry. That was clumsy.
Helen Katina, tipot' allo. Efgaristo. [That will be all. Thank you.]
Reluctantly, Katina goes. Throughout the ensuing, Helen retains a cold aloofness. Philip is very
much on edge.
Philip (indicating the basket of books) I see I was right about the
professors.
Helen Oh, yes. Every week the boat delivers another little avalanche of
self-recommendation. They're relentless, your countrymen.
Philip I still think of myself as English.
Pause
Helen How little you resemble him.
Philip Really?
Helen You're so neat.
Philip I believe I take after my mother.
Helen Do you see her?
Philip She lives in Sheffield. That's a long way from Illinois.
Helen Her husband has a shop, I believe.
Philip Camping equipment.
Helen Not exactly your world.
Philip I guess that's why I left it. (The wind is heard faintly.
Indicating the terrace) I imagine you can see the famous view from that terrace. The cliffs of lava.
Helen Yes.
Philip Could I go out and look?
Helen I'd rather you didn't. I'll give you a few minutes, only because
you've come so far. I wouldn't waste them on views. Sit, if you like.
(Pause. He stays standing.) Well?
Philip Would you believe me if I said I knew every word Edward Damson
wrote by heart -good, bad and indifferent? If I wasn't related, he'd still
be an obsession. But he's not finally there. He's just a photo accepting
awards in theatre magazines. I thought ...if I could write his life ...
Helen Yes?
Philip He would become real for me.
Pause
Helen (hostile) May I ask how long you have been in America?
Philip Ten years. I went when I was eighteen.
Helen Long enough to catch the disease.
Philip Excuse me?
Helen We all know that it's obligatory over there for children of celebrated
parents to write books abusing them after their death. Setting the record
straight, I believe it's called.
Philip You're not saying that's what I want to do myself?
Helen Well, I doubt very much if you entertain feelings of overwhelming
love for a man who totally abandoned you before you were born.
Philip As a matter of fact, I've always felt relief that I wasn't raised by
him.
Helen Really?
Philip My stepfather was a peaceful man. Edward, I imagine, was hardly
that.
Helen But he was well off. That is the point, isn't it? The royalties from his
plays are considerable.
Philip I don't understand. What point?
Helen You could have inherited a large income. One cannot help
reflecting that a book about him - endorsed by me - would be a perfect way
to redress that injustice. Make some money out of the situation, since he
left you none.
Philip (increasingly upset) That's awful ...I'm sorry but that's really
awful. You think I've come for revenge?.. Forgive me, but I think it may
not be so good to live in Greece too long. I've always imagined people who live here have revenge on the brain.
Helen (startled) What do you mean by that?
Philip Nothing ...
Helen Why do you use that word?
Philip (flustered) I'm sorry ...I just thought that you might believe I
wanted a bit of my own back ...That would be absurd. (Pause) If you knew what your husband meant to me
- what he actually is to me - you couldn't possibly think such a thing. Everything I am
- everything
I do - is because of him. His worship. That's my disease, if you like: worship of Theatre. I got it from him, even though we never met. It was
in me before I left England ... (Pause) ... I never hassled him, you must
know that. I did all my studies as far away from him as possible. Last year, when my dissertation was published, that was the
first time I ever got in touch with him in my whole life! ...Did he ever receive it, by the
way? My book? He never acknowledged it.
Helen Just go on.
Philip Listen, I'm a Mid-West academic who stands every day before
students in a place totally removed from proper theatre. Expounding things to them completely remote from their own concerns: structure in
Ibsen, symbolism in Chekhov, mythology in O'Neill - just because of him. Well, you're right, of course. I need
money - Like every ex-graduate in America. You take out loans to buy education, you spend years paying
them back. OK, I'm poor. I owe thousands of dollars. If I wanted to be cynical I could say he owes me for that. He saw to it I'd be poor for life!
... So, if I ever earned anything out of a book on him, ten dollars or ten
thousand, I'd actually deserve it. Well, at least a little ...(Nervously) That
was a joke. (Pause. She does not react. Stiffly) When you sent me that first letter, after he died, you said you'd
found out about my existence and wanted to establish contact. I thought that meant you wanted to see me.
Helen I indicated quite fim1ly that I did not.
Philip You mean that was to be our only contact? One letter?
Helen Contrary to what is believed in colleges, young man, playwrights
do not exist to provide Professors of Drama with livelihoods.
Philip That's a quotation from him. I recognize it. It's from one of his
published diatribes against academics and commentators.
Helen So it is. The more intelligent opinions of husbands are liable to rub
off on their wives. Now I think your time is up. I've really been quite generous, I think you'll agree.
Pause
Philip (distressed) I used to think it was he who kept me away. I was
wrong, wasn't I?
Helen (in sudden panic) Please! Just go!
In shock and anger Philip walks up to the shutters and deliberately opens
them wide.
Philip His view! His and yours alone. No one else to see it. No
one else to see him, even a little - even after death.
Helen (low) Stop it, please.
Philip (turning on her suddenly) I want my father. I want him. He's here!
(Raising his voice)
I want him! Can't you understand? ...What's the matter with you? (Pause. She stares at him.
Recovering, very embarrassed) I'm sorry. I'm, I'm - I'm really sorry.
I apologize. I've never - I'm not ever like this, ever ...
The siren of a boat is heard. The wind fades. She stares at him.
Helen (suddenly) How long can you stay?
Philip What?
Helen When do you have to return to America?
Philip Two days. I've got classes on Tuesday.
Helen Come back in the morning. We'll speak then.
Philip (bewildered) About what ...? I don't understand.
Helen (simply) I agree, that's all.
Philip Agree?
Helen To your writing the book.
Philip You agree?
Helen On one condition.
Philip What?
Pause
Helen (standing by the great desk) Come here ...Here. (Philip approaches the desk, warily)
This was his.
Philip His desk?
Helen The only one he ever used.
Philip (almost in a whisper) Oh, my God! He wrote all the plays on this?
Helen It's Russian. He bought it in Cambridge before I ever met him. Fifty
pounds, I believe. He told me it once belonged to Rasputin.
Philip Are you kidding?
Helen He said it should only be used therefore by Russian madmen.
Philip Is that what he was? I knew his father was Russian.
Helen I want you to swear.
Philip Swear?
Helen On this desk. To write his life.
Philip That's all I want!
Helen Whatever happens.
Philip What do you mean?
Helen Whatever you hear. No change of mind allowed. (Pause) Well?
Philip (uncomfortably) Well, yeah. All right.
Helen Put your hand on it ...
Philip Like it was an altar? (She glares at him. He obeys.
Laughing nervously) OK!
I swear ...Look, I don't get it. Why?
Helen closes the shutters.
Helen Just remember one thing. I didn't ask you here.
Philip You sure didn't.
Helen You came yourself. You have to take the consequences of that.
Pause
Philip (uncomfortably) Of course ...I understand.
Pause.
Helen (simply) No ... You don't ... (Pause.) I have a title
for your book.
Philip Really?
Helen "The Gift of the Gorgon".
Philip Gorgon ...That's a monster. Some kind of a monster.
Helen (calling out, abruptly) Katina! (To Philip) Come back in the
morning. Early.
Katina appears.
Helen (To Katina) Se parakalo, thikse tin porta. (To him) Katina will show you
out.
Katina (beckoning to him) Ella.
Philip (bewildered) You want me to go now?
Abruptly, Helen leaves the room.
Katina Ella.
Philip (calling after her) Have I done something to upset you?
Katina Ella!
Philip What do you want from me?
Katina (insistently, tugging at him) Ella! Ella!
Philip (irritated) All right!
She hustles him out.
Wind. The Lights fade ...
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