Lawrence of Arabia: New play tackles man behind movie image (original) (raw)

The picture most people have of the writer TE Lawrence is the version of him in David Lean's film Lawrence of Arabia. But that was more than half a century ago and playwright Howard Brenton thinks there are things to say about Lawrence which make him relevant today.

Lawrence was part artist, part man of action, hungry for public acclaim yet uneasy about his own inner self, he says.

Brenton, who built his reputation as one of Britain's most political playwrights, insists his new play at the Hampstead Theatre, Lawrence after Arabia, didn't start out as a political statement.

"I'm in my mid-70s and I've been writing for 50 years. As a writer at my age you begin to think of first and last things. I was fascinated by Lawrence's character and the divided loyalties he felt as a British army intelligence officer who was also a supporter of Arab independence. It broke him apart.

"In 1916 he played a role in the Arab Revolt against the Turks. And if you look at that now you have to think about how the way the great powers - basically Britain and the French - divided up Arabia shapes the world even today."

So audiences may be surprised to discover that much of the new play takes place not under desert skies but inside the solid Hertfordshire home of Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw and his wife Charlotte Payne-Townshend.

For some time Lawrence was a regular visitor to the house. Though most commentators assume he was gay, a complex relationship arose between him and Payne-Townshend (played by Geraldine James) which is in many ways the heart of the play.

"But he was a fighter too - there were times when he'd had to kill and had not hesitated. Writing about damaged things and damaged people can be rewarding.

"Though I don't know the Rattigan play I have seen the Lean film, which people sometimes now mock. In fact the screenplay is good on this strange mixture of strength and vulnerability.

"I think TE Lawrence had an unexpectedly naive or innocent side which allowed him to do extraordinary things. Napoleon Bonaparte had the same trait."

Brenton says it would be foolish to assume Lawrence's hopes for the Arab world would, if they'd become reality, have brought permanent peace to the region.

"Who can say how history would have changed? But his main point was pretty simple: that if after the war the big European powers imposed new boundaries which crossed lines of tribe and loyalty it was asking for trouble."

Lawrence's life ended in middle age far from Arabia. He died in 1935 in Dorset following a motorbike accident. Since then, some have thought him a major writer; others think him at most a footnote to the latter days of Empire.

Brenton says, writing his play, he came to like Lawrence more. "There are people who dislike him intensely and are totally iconoclastic about his reputation, which they consider inflated.

"But I think he was an extraordinarily interesting man who was torn apart by Britain's imperial dilemma. For me that made him worth writing about."

Lawrence after Arabia is at the Hampstead Theatre in London until 4 June.