Seminar tells one major truth – ‘the only way to learn anything about writing [is] to have a decent editor go through it word by word with you. Help you see what it is, what you mean. What you didn’t even know you meant.’ The play reaches this point on the last page.
In Terry Johnson’s production at the Hampstead Theatre, London, the set – modular seating arranged symmetrically either side of a large rectangular chimney breast – emphasised the distinct segments of the first half of the play. In the first five scenes we see three in which Leonard, rock-star editor and fiction tutor, abuses one of four creative writing students. Each time, the students offer muted responses to his fierce criticism and all four are left in angry silence. Each scene feels like a blow of the same heavy hammer on the nuts of writing that are offered up for Leonard to crack. Izzy’s writing is approved because she is clearly available to him. The other students’ work is destroyed by energetic, flamboyant, arrogant, abusive, sexually poisonous, loud contempt. In the other two scenes, the students move towards and back from each other but there is little interplay apart from some sexual jostling and behind-the-back critical remarks. By the interval the play felt laboured and shallow.
In the second half, the pace changes. The work of Martin comes as a revelation to Leonard, who roars his approval. The sex becomes hotter and Izzy turns her vigorous attentions from Martin to Leonard, causing Martin to reject Leonard’s approval of his work. Douglas, the pretentious butt of much of the earlier criticism, fades from the play. Martin’s fights with Izzy, who has betrayed him, Kate, whom he probably loves, and Leonard, whom he hated but who loves his work, propel the final scenes to a satisfactory finale in which Martin and Leonard find the first glimmers of an understanding.
Roger Allam, as Leonard, delivered the slabby, abusive speeches with gusto and revealed more facets of character as soon as the text allowed, late in the play. The actors playing the students did well when the text released them, particularly Charity Wakefield as Kate.
Theresa Rebeck‘s Seminar is a sardonic comedy, playing to broad-brush popular conceptions about fiction, publishing and the teaching of creative writing. It’s a moderate play and this production did it justice. The text arrived at its goal late and just scored in stoppage time.