Pedigree and provenance, that’s what it’s all about. This ‘subversive promenade performance’ is one of the key commissions for this year’s Brighton Festival, and follows in the Festival’s tradition of commissioning high quality site-responsive work as a key part of its theatre programme.
It takes the form of a tour around Preston Manor, described quite accurately as ‘the epitome of Edwardian glamour’, set in its own luscious grounds on the outskirts of central Brighton. The provenance of the objects within – many of which, we learn, were not originally here at all, but were bussed in by Preston Manor’s enterprising first curator, a Mr Roberts, who saw the place as ‘his very own Wendy House’. The pedigree of the people who lived here – to wit, the formidable Lady Stanford, who could give Oscar Wilde’s Lady Bracknell a run for her money by all accounts; her half-sisters, who were thrown out on their ear somewhere along the way; her as-good-as disinherited son; her beloved grandson who tragically died young; and her various husbands, who were obliged to take her surname. Not to mention the dogs…
The dogs play a crucial part in this story, serving to illustrate the importance of ‘pedigree’. The dog-owners of Brighton and their peculiarities get casually mentioned in Peter’s introductory talk, as we gather in the manor’s dining room. Later, the dogs that have occupied the house get solemnly name-checked, as we stand in the morning room (or is it, asks Peter, a mourning room?). He skilfully segues together a reflection on grandsons lost to mustard gas poisoning in the Great War with tributes to the occupants of Preston Manor’s famous pet cemetery. It’s interesting, says Peter, that we know the names of the dogs that lived here, but we don’t know the names of the servants. And it is noted that Jock and Queenie and the rest of Lady Stanford’s pedigree chums have the expected epitaphs – ‘faithful friend’ and ‘beloved pet’ bar one that reads ‘Here Lies Tatters, Not that it Matters’. And why doesn’t it matter? Because poor Tatters was a mongrel. Towards the end of the show we see film footage of a black dog frisking around the grounds, unencumbered – we presume the ghost of Tatters (ghosts being another thread through the show).
And as for provenance, there are a hundred and one fascinating tales about the things in the manor that are in and out of time and place. We see a library now stripped of books and turned into a dining room, and a maid’s bedroom with furniture that has been subsequently brought in: because, says Peter, when the house first opened to the public, who’d have been interested in seeing a maid’s room? This is one of many points on the tour where the upstairs-downstairs binary divide of Edwardian life is discussed, and Peter makes the interesting point that a girl in service was significantly less free than a girl working in a factory. She would have had almost no private life, may even have been stopped from marrying by her masters, hardly more than a slave.
And so where are the books? In the very public drawing room there’s a few novels that the Stanfords (or perhaps the curators that re-arranged their possessions) wanted their guests to see – including a very nasty 1930s book on eugenics that nowadays, if we were to own such a thing, we would almost certainly hide from view. Yet hidden away in the vaults, Peter came across a copy (in French!) of the Karma Sutra, which no one nowadays would be at all ashamed about owning. In another room, there’s a bookcase devoid of books but stuffed full of white porcelain – we surmise, says Peter, that Lady Stanford was not a big reader. The hideous Foo-dog statues lined up hardly strike us as desirable objects, but apparently they were (quite likely) looted from China, so their provenance no doubt added a frisson of desirability.
Running through The Contents of a House is a constant questioning of what is ‘real’ and what is not. There are numerous references throughout to ways in which reality and fantasy interweave: the house as a real home versus the house as a film set; the real snow in the grounds when Peter started his research in January and the fake snow that caused a mess when the house was hired by Noel Edmonds for a TV Christmas Special; the real life staff who work here and the Edwardian ghosts they may or may not have encountered; the traces on the wrangles and bell-pulls of the nameless cooks and butlers who really lived and worked here versus the fictional cooks and butlers – hammy actors who play out the imagined stories for the parties of school children who come along to dress in pinafores and caps and learn about Edwardian life. We are told again and again that things are not what they seem to be – everything on view has been tampered with or changed in one way or another, often many times over. And it’s not just inside the house that’s been tampered with, changed: the noise of the busy London Road traffic outside would once have been the flow of a small river, now forced underground.
There are stories and musings and things to look at and reflect upon, this augmented by a number of short video pieces interspersed throughout the tour – the best of which is a nicely edited montage of short interviews with Preston Manor employees about ghosts and ghostly encounters. And as in earlier works by Peter Reder that use a similar format (the performance lecture cum guided tour), the artist’s own autobiographical material is weaved into the work – the most poignant example being the placing of a photo of his deceased father on the four-poster in the main bedroom, prompting a monologue on the desire to die in one’s bed and the changed roles that beds play in our lives nowadays. How many of us, like Peter, grow up sleeping in the very bed we were born on? A section that tries to link the Stanford family’s relationship with the SW7 district in London to Peter’s own memories of South Kensington is less successful, feeling a little forced.
The Contents of a House was seen by Total Theatre on the press night, which (bizarrely for a whole-month run) was the very first show. Peter Reder is a seasoned performance artist, and for the most part relaxed and in control, but a little unsure of himself at times, as anyone would be on the first outing of a complex one-man promenade work. And it was a tough audience – a bunch of journalists with crossed arms and frowns and/or notebooks in hand, which hardly helps. There was one scene (the Karma Sutra one) in which a would-be humorous suggestion that the second husband of Lady Stanford was gay falls flat on its face. He also caused a little bit of consternation at one point by asking the audience not to walk around behind him whilst he was talking, whereas at the beginning of the show they had been encouraged by the person introducing the event to feel that they could look (if not touch) quite freely. So a little adjusting in audience management needed – which will surely come throughout the month.
First nerves and early teething troubles aside, an interesting piece, well researched and well delivered. Perhaps a little too bound to its tour guide format – Peter Reder could, potentially, subvert the set-up more forcefully – but a very full and rich experience.