Accolade: a well-made, well-made play

By Bea Hope

Emlyn Williams’ Accolade is a not-quite-forgotten classic exploring dual identity and the vice inherent in human nature. Blanche McIntyre’s production manages to capture the human drama in the piece so well that the play’s sometimes fusty moralising never allows it to feel dated.

The central character, Will Trenting, is an acclaimed writer who periodically sates his need for dissolution and debauchery by participating in wild parties among the working class. His liberal wife is aware of his indiscretions and understanding of his needs, but when Will is threatened with blackmail on the morning of his being knighted, his comfortable family life is put in great danger and he learns that he can’t continue to ‘have it both ways’.

Alexander Hanson is likeably louche as Will Trenting, playing a flawed, but honest and sincere family man who draws the line when his own licentiousness begins to impact upon other people. Abigail Cruttenden and Sam Clemmett play his wife and son with great humour and sympathy, and are incredibly touching as they struggle to understand Will in the context of his vice. Bruce Alexander is an absolute joy as the swaying blackmailer down on his luck, who comically attempts to maintain an air of gentility in his mercenary dirty dealing.

Although the drama of the piece as a whole is very engaging, the first half of the play feels a little complacent, the heat turned down low on the bubbling trouble right up until the crisis in the closing seconds before the interval. Inevitably, the impact of the play has been reduced by our loosening attitudes in the years since its conception, but the ideas of public image, class tensions, and fame within the narrative keep it feeling relevant nonetheless.

One interesting feature of the play is the portrayal of the working class characters. It’s not easy to think of a piece of drama written by a member of the middle or upper class in this era that allows the working class so much credibility – allows them to socialise with the middle class, gives them context and complexity, and even allows them ‘unsupervised’ stage time alone together. Daniel Crossley plays Will’s working class secretary with unmannered, blue-collar straightforwardness, symbolising the breakdown of class segregation and the future of social mobility that Emlyn Williams foresaw in this drama, elegantly conveyed in this production.

The play is not the stuff that stirs the soul or leaves an audience reeling, and with a struggle for power between two middle class, middle-aged white men at its centre, it’s certainly far from ground-breaking in a modern context. But this is an extremely well-handled production with an enormous heart and a close eye on the spaces between the lines, giving an interesting view of a bygone time just on the threshold of liberal morality.

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