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Tom and Viv
One of the great plays of the eighties, Tom and Viv uncovers life of T.S. Eliot and his wife Vivienne Haigh Wood. For years Vivienne's extraordinary influence was "Stalinized" out of literary history. Throughout their 17-year marriage she suffered a hormonal imbalance, and was eventually certified for a mental asylum. She died stripped of her rights and property, never visited by Eliot.
82 pages, Paperback
First published February 28, 1985
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
April 25, 2025
I'm reviewing the BBC Audio version with Benedict Cumberbatch as TS Eliot and Lia Williams as Viv Haigh-Wood/Eliot.
First performed in 1984, this play is intense and powerfully performed on audio with an excellent cast.
However, it's striking to see that the original reviews were controversial, apparently, because of the way that Eliot is portrayed as cold and cruel. Listening to this in 2025, with feminist scholarship having recuperated more of the lives of literary wives like Vivienne, as well as there being more general understandings of the ways in which the term 'mad' is both culturally constructed and historicised, as well as how it has been used to mediate patriarchal constraints and containment of women, it's hard not to want to have a questioning and corrective dialogue with the play.
I understand that Hastings read the correspondence and did extensive interviews with the family and friends of both parties but it's inevitable that for a taut and emotive play, complexity has to be sacrificed for artistic intent. That's fine - I would just say that we should be wary of accepting this as more than a single reading of a complicated relationship.
So these are not so much criticisms of a play which I think works emotively as a play, as a note on how it might be mediated for a 2025 audience. One thing that immediately jumps to mind is that we know far more about Eliot's life-long relationship with Emily Hale, given that their letters which had been sealed in the archive until 2020 have now been opened - see The Hyacinth Girl: T.S. Eliot's Hidden Muse. Another - and not the only - woman in a fraught and vexed relationship with Eliot who was also written into his poems like The Wasteland. As the 'madonna' to Viv's 'whore', in Eliot's mythology, Hale offers another perspective through which to view this marriage.
There has also been more scholarly work done on Vivienne's contributions to the poetry - and if words in The Wasteland, for example, were originally hers rather than his, then there's an immediate contestation and undermining within the poem itself of the dominant voice.
The play already asks questions about the extent to which Viv was ever 'mad' - whatever that was supposed to mean - with a young doctor explicitly querying the diagnosis towards the end. But the ending that really didn't work for me was the sudden Heathcliff/Wuthering Height-alike scene where Eliot is described as digging up the earth following Viv's burial - this is so contrived, so out of character and so melodramatic that it sort of covers up some of the more pressing issues raised, allowing a kind of sentimental 'ah! how tragic love is!' weepiness to bring the play to a close.
A gripping, passionate piece of dramatic writing, then - but one which, inevitably, simplifies the representations of the two protagonists as well as their troubled marriage.
UPDATE 25 April 2025:
When Vivienne died in 1947 she bequeathed her diaries, fictional sketches, poetry and letters to the Bodleian where they were accessible to researchers. After this play was performed in 1984, Mrs Valerie Eliot, the widow and literary executor of TS Eliot, claimed the copyright of Vivienne's papers and, thus, controlled who had access to Vivienne's voice - eerily reminiscent of the way Ted and then Olwyn Hughes controlled Plath's papers?
First performed in 1984, this play is intense and powerfully performed on audio with an excellent cast.
However, it's striking to see that the original reviews were controversial, apparently, because of the way that Eliot is portrayed as cold and cruel. Listening to this in 2025, with feminist scholarship having recuperated more of the lives of literary wives like Vivienne, as well as there being more general understandings of the ways in which the term 'mad' is both culturally constructed and historicised, as well as how it has been used to mediate patriarchal constraints and containment of women, it's hard not to want to have a questioning and corrective dialogue with the play.
I understand that Hastings read the correspondence and did extensive interviews with the family and friends of both parties but it's inevitable that for a taut and emotive play, complexity has to be sacrificed for artistic intent. That's fine - I would just say that we should be wary of accepting this as more than a single reading of a complicated relationship.
So these are not so much criticisms of a play which I think works emotively as a play, as a note on how it might be mediated for a 2025 audience. One thing that immediately jumps to mind is that we know far more about Eliot's life-long relationship with Emily Hale, given that their letters which had been sealed in the archive until 2020 have now been opened - see The Hyacinth Girl: T.S. Eliot's Hidden Muse. Another - and not the only - woman in a fraught and vexed relationship with Eliot who was also written into his poems like The Wasteland. As the 'madonna' to Viv's 'whore', in Eliot's mythology, Hale offers another perspective through which to view this marriage.
There has also been more scholarly work done on Vivienne's contributions to the poetry - and if words in The Wasteland, for example, were originally hers rather than his, then there's an immediate contestation and undermining within the poem itself of the dominant voice.
The play already asks questions about the extent to which Viv was ever 'mad' - whatever that was supposed to mean - with a young doctor explicitly querying the diagnosis towards the end. But the ending that really didn't work for me was the sudden Heathcliff/Wuthering Height-alike scene where Eliot is described as digging up the earth following Viv's burial - this is so contrived, so out of character and so melodramatic that it sort of covers up some of the more pressing issues raised, allowing a kind of sentimental 'ah! how tragic love is!' weepiness to bring the play to a close.
A gripping, passionate piece of dramatic writing, then - but one which, inevitably, simplifies the representations of the two protagonists as well as their troubled marriage.
UPDATE 25 April 2025:
When Vivienne died in 1947 she bequeathed her diaries, fictional sketches, poetry and letters to the Bodleian where they were accessible to researchers. After this play was performed in 1984, Mrs Valerie Eliot, the widow and literary executor of TS Eliot, claimed the copyright of Vivienne's papers and, thus, controlled who had access to Vivienne's voice - eerily reminiscent of the way Ted and then Olwyn Hughes controlled Plath's papers?
October 22, 2018
A scorching dramatization of what madness can do to a family and a husband. Hard to love this play, but I guess that I do.
March 6, 2014
HUZZAH - M has secured the film (1994)
Willem Dafoe ... Tom Eliot
Miranda Richardson ... Vivienne Haigh-Wood
Rosemary Harris ... Rose Haigh-Wood
Tim Dutton ... Maurice Haigh-Wood
Nickolas Grace ... Bertrand Russel
Geoffrey Bayldon ... Harwent
Clare Holman ... Louise Purdon
Philip Locke ... Charles Haigh-Wood
Joanna McCallum ... Virginia Woolf
Joseph O'Conor ... Bishop of Oxford
John Savident ... Sir Frederick Lamb
Michael Attwell ... W.I. Janes
Sharon Bower ... Secretary
Linda Spurrier ... Edith Sitwell
Roberta Taylor ... Ottoline Morrell
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/...
Blurb - The story of Vivienne Haigh-Wood's marriage to T.S.Eliot is at once tragic yet illustrative of the class-ridden prejudices dominating British society in the middle of the last century. The two married in haste in 1915, much to the chagrin of Vivienne's family, who believed that weddings were for financial and status purposes rather than for love. Although they made token efforts to accommodate Eliot, it was clear that they were uncomfortable with the presence of an American poet in their midst. For his part Eliot (Benedict Cumberbatch) despised the family - particularly Vivienne's brother Maurice (David Haig), whose obsession with attending the 'right' (i.e. socially most acceptable) public school drove Eliot to distraction.
From the outset the marriage was doomed to fail. As performed by Lia Williams, Vivienne was a hyperactive neurotic making every effort to resist the overpowering influence of family tradition. This drove her to behavioural extremes - such as shouting in the street or telling implausible lies - which her husband felt powerless to curtail. Meanwhile the family pretended that nothing was wrong. Matters became so bad that Eliot ultimately resolved to have his wife committed to a sanatorium on the grounds of insanity. The official reason given was that he had to spend eight months at Harvard as Professor of Poetry, and Vivienne needed professional care. In reality Eliot had had enough of looking after Vivienne and her family - particularly her mother Rose (Judy Parfitt), who accused him of callousness and insensitivity to his wife's social position.
The play's dénouement was unbearably poignant: having been officially committed in 1935, Vivienne spent twelve years in an institution. Eliot never visited her, while Rose disowned her until her death in 1941 in the belief that to acknowledge her daughter's confinement represented a slur on the family reputation. Maurice spent most of that time abroad; when he returned, he was shocked to discover that Vivienne lived a reclusive existence. Nonetheless she maintained an almost tigerish love for her husband and his achievements - after all, it was she who had suggested the title of his greatest work The Waste Land. Williams portrayed her as not insane at all; rather she had been a social embarrassment both for her husband and her mother, and they responded by putting her away in the believe that she should be "out of sight, out of mind." If this was the intention, then writer Hastings showed that it dismally failed, as Eliot tried to tear up the ground covering her coffin at her funeral in a vain attempt to be near her once again.
This revival of Tom and Viv proved riveting - dominated by two central performances. Cumberbatch's Eliot proved physically unable to relate to other people, while Williams' Vivienne was a free spirit destroyed by convention. The director was Peter Kavanagh.
Willem Dafoe ... Tom Eliot
Miranda Richardson ... Vivienne Haigh-Wood
Rosemary Harris ... Rose Haigh-Wood
Tim Dutton ... Maurice Haigh-Wood
Nickolas Grace ... Bertrand Russel
Geoffrey Bayldon ... Harwent
Clare Holman ... Louise Purdon
Philip Locke ... Charles Haigh-Wood
Joanna McCallum ... Virginia Woolf
Joseph O'Conor ... Bishop of Oxford
John Savident ... Sir Frederick Lamb
Michael Attwell ... W.I. Janes
Sharon Bower ... Secretary
Linda Spurrier ... Edith Sitwell
Roberta Taylor ... Ottoline Morrell
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/...
Blurb - The story of Vivienne Haigh-Wood's marriage to T.S.Eliot is at once tragic yet illustrative of the class-ridden prejudices dominating British society in the middle of the last century. The two married in haste in 1915, much to the chagrin of Vivienne's family, who believed that weddings were for financial and status purposes rather than for love. Although they made token efforts to accommodate Eliot, it was clear that they were uncomfortable with the presence of an American poet in their midst. For his part Eliot (Benedict Cumberbatch) despised the family - particularly Vivienne's brother Maurice (David Haig), whose obsession with attending the 'right' (i.e. socially most acceptable) public school drove Eliot to distraction.
From the outset the marriage was doomed to fail. As performed by Lia Williams, Vivienne was a hyperactive neurotic making every effort to resist the overpowering influence of family tradition. This drove her to behavioural extremes - such as shouting in the street or telling implausible lies - which her husband felt powerless to curtail. Meanwhile the family pretended that nothing was wrong. Matters became so bad that Eliot ultimately resolved to have his wife committed to a sanatorium on the grounds of insanity. The official reason given was that he had to spend eight months at Harvard as Professor of Poetry, and Vivienne needed professional care. In reality Eliot had had enough of looking after Vivienne and her family - particularly her mother Rose (Judy Parfitt), who accused him of callousness and insensitivity to his wife's social position.
The play's dénouement was unbearably poignant: having been officially committed in 1935, Vivienne spent twelve years in an institution. Eliot never visited her, while Rose disowned her until her death in 1941 in the belief that to acknowledge her daughter's confinement represented a slur on the family reputation. Maurice spent most of that time abroad; when he returned, he was shocked to discover that Vivienne lived a reclusive existence. Nonetheless she maintained an almost tigerish love for her husband and his achievements - after all, it was she who had suggested the title of his greatest work The Waste Land. Williams portrayed her as not insane at all; rather she had been a social embarrassment both for her husband and her mother, and they responded by putting her away in the believe that she should be "out of sight, out of mind." If this was the intention, then writer Hastings showed that it dismally failed, as Eliot tried to tear up the ground covering her coffin at her funeral in a vain attempt to be near her once again.
This revival of Tom and Viv proved riveting - dominated by two central performances. Cumberbatch's Eliot proved physically unable to relate to other people, while Williams' Vivienne was a free spirit destroyed by convention. The director was Peter Kavanagh.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 30, 2011
The nightmare, turbulent marriage of young poet TS Eliot and the charismatic Vivienne Haigh-Wood. Stars Benedict Cumberbatch.
September 9, 2025
Tom and Viv by Michael Hastings
Another version of this note and thoughts on other books are available at:
- https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list...
Wondrous play.
The subject is exciting, intriguing and complex.
I will refer to a Guardian article on the subject:
- “Tom Eliot cut an impressive figure when he arrived in England. To Vivienne Haigh-Wood, meeting him for the first time in March 1915, he seemed an old-fashioned American 'prince' and his 'deep and thrilling voice' with its slow drawl added a dash of glamour. Vivienne was a young woman who, as she wrote years later, found 'the shout of the baseball team... deep, stirring, madly exciting'. She read Henry James, and her favorite entertainment, apart from dancing, was the 'kinema'. In short, she was susceptible to all things American.”
T.S. Eliot comes across as a complex, interesting, intelligent, talented, likeable, creative, if at times repugnant character.
It is difficult for the lay man to distinguish between artistic license and the historical truth that is evidently the inspiration for this drama.
- Was Thomas Eliot so cruel at one stage?
- What was the real, connection with or impact on famous literati as Virginia Wolf, Aldous Huxley, Bertrand- or Bertie as he is called in the play- Russell, Ezra Pound and others of Tom and Viv?
Tom is at first fascinated with Vivien, even if it seems that “Bertie” Russell considered her vulgar, seeing as he was a “confirmed” aristocrat.
Aldous Huxley appears to have been more favorable:
- 'I rather like her; she is such a genuine person, vulgar, but with no attempt to conceal her vulgarity'
T.S. Eliot could have returned to Harvard, but he did not.
- 'I came to persuade myself that I was in love with her simply because I wanted to burn my boats and commit myself to staying in England.’…but:
- “He had told his old Harvard friend Conrad Aiken that he wanted to marry and lose his virginity;”
“Ménage à trois
Before he came to England, Eliot was a student of Bertrand Russell's at Harvard. A fortnight after his marriage to Vivienne, the poet invited the philosopher to dinner to meet his new wife. The evening was the beginning of an extraordinary, ultimately devastating triangular relationship.”
Evelyn Waugh recorded in his diary on 21 July 1955 that-
“Mrs. T. S. Eliot's insanity sprang from her seduction and desertion by Bertrand Russell'.
Vivienne's brother Maurice said later, the Eliots' honeymoon was 'rotten', a euphemism for the sexual failure that had undoubtedly occurred…
'He was a virgin when he married,' remembered Maurice (as Eliot himself confessed).
These facts, known from journals, statements and other sources, have been included in the drama, to great effect.
Tom is increasingly annoyed with his wife.
He accuses her of threatening the life of people he knows and depends upon, including Virginia Wolf, who only goes out in a taxi.
Viv is carrying around a knife in her purse.
This all ads to the drama and excitement of a story that only gains from the veracity that is allowed a story known to be based on a real life saga.
The aspect that I missed in the play, but found doing some research on the internet, was the intimacy between Vivien and Bertrand Russell.
Indeed, this “infidelity” offered the poet an easy escape, allowing him to think of his wife as “no more than a harlot”.
But as this excellent Guardian article puts it:
- “…if Vivienne had been 'whore', who had been the pimp?”
You can find the thrilling, real story at:
- https://www.theguardian.com/books/200...
Albeit an acclaimed poet, T.S. Eliot behaved heinously towards his wife….
Another version of this note and thoughts on other books are available at:
- https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list...
Wondrous play.
The subject is exciting, intriguing and complex.
I will refer to a Guardian article on the subject:
- “Tom Eliot cut an impressive figure when he arrived in England. To Vivienne Haigh-Wood, meeting him for the first time in March 1915, he seemed an old-fashioned American 'prince' and his 'deep and thrilling voice' with its slow drawl added a dash of glamour. Vivienne was a young woman who, as she wrote years later, found 'the shout of the baseball team... deep, stirring, madly exciting'. She read Henry James, and her favorite entertainment, apart from dancing, was the 'kinema'. In short, she was susceptible to all things American.”
T.S. Eliot comes across as a complex, interesting, intelligent, talented, likeable, creative, if at times repugnant character.
It is difficult for the lay man to distinguish between artistic license and the historical truth that is evidently the inspiration for this drama.
- Was Thomas Eliot so cruel at one stage?
- What was the real, connection with or impact on famous literati as Virginia Wolf, Aldous Huxley, Bertrand- or Bertie as he is called in the play- Russell, Ezra Pound and others of Tom and Viv?
Tom is at first fascinated with Vivien, even if it seems that “Bertie” Russell considered her vulgar, seeing as he was a “confirmed” aristocrat.
Aldous Huxley appears to have been more favorable:
- 'I rather like her; she is such a genuine person, vulgar, but with no attempt to conceal her vulgarity'
T.S. Eliot could have returned to Harvard, but he did not.
- 'I came to persuade myself that I was in love with her simply because I wanted to burn my boats and commit myself to staying in England.’…but:
- “He had told his old Harvard friend Conrad Aiken that he wanted to marry and lose his virginity;”
“Ménage à trois
Before he came to England, Eliot was a student of Bertrand Russell's at Harvard. A fortnight after his marriage to Vivienne, the poet invited the philosopher to dinner to meet his new wife. The evening was the beginning of an extraordinary, ultimately devastating triangular relationship.”
Evelyn Waugh recorded in his diary on 21 July 1955 that-
“Mrs. T. S. Eliot's insanity sprang from her seduction and desertion by Bertrand Russell'.
Vivienne's brother Maurice said later, the Eliots' honeymoon was 'rotten', a euphemism for the sexual failure that had undoubtedly occurred…
'He was a virgin when he married,' remembered Maurice (as Eliot himself confessed).
These facts, known from journals, statements and other sources, have been included in the drama, to great effect.
Tom is increasingly annoyed with his wife.
He accuses her of threatening the life of people he knows and depends upon, including Virginia Wolf, who only goes out in a taxi.
Viv is carrying around a knife in her purse.
This all ads to the drama and excitement of a story that only gains from the veracity that is allowed a story known to be based on a real life saga.
The aspect that I missed in the play, but found doing some research on the internet, was the intimacy between Vivien and Bertrand Russell.
Indeed, this “infidelity” offered the poet an easy escape, allowing him to think of his wife as “no more than a harlot”.
But as this excellent Guardian article puts it:
- “…if Vivienne had been 'whore', who had been the pimp?”
You can find the thrilling, real story at:
- https://www.theguardian.com/books/200...
Albeit an acclaimed poet, T.S. Eliot behaved heinously towards his wife….
July 30, 2020
The story of T.S. Eliot touches me. Unfortunately, lovers suffer throughout the world have suffered, no matter how deep their love is, still, circumstances never make matters easy for anyone. Even after 12 years of separation, Viv's devotion was remarkable and brought tears to my eyes.
Must Read is my verdict!
Must Read is my verdict!
January 11, 2021
Excellent!
watched-film-only
April 20, 2012Added 4/20/12.
I posted the following at my group:
==========================================
I recently steamed "Tom & Viv" (1994) from Netflix. Interesting film about T.S. Eliot and his first wife who ended up in a mental institution. I gave it 3 Netflix stars out of 5. Willem Dafoe was too expressionless as T.S. Eliot. Was Eliot really like that?
http://movies.netflix.com/Search?v1=T...
"Director Brian Gilbert beautifully renders the life of poet T.S. Eliot (Willem Dafoe) and his short-lived marriage to muse Vivienne Haigh-Wood (Miranda Richardson). A gifted writer who encouraged Eliot's success, Vivienne was plagued with a hormonal imbalance that wreaked havoc on her moods, her talents and her marriage."
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0111454/
"In 1915, T.S. (Tom) Eliot and Vivienne Haigh-Wood elope, but her longstanding gynecological and emotional problems disrupt their planned honeymoon."
I see that it's been adapted from the play: Tom and VIV (first published in 1985) ) by Michael Hastings.
=====================================
I posted the following at my group:
==========================================
I recently steamed "Tom & Viv" (1994) from Netflix. Interesting film about T.S. Eliot and his first wife who ended up in a mental institution. I gave it 3 Netflix stars out of 5. Willem Dafoe was too expressionless as T.S. Eliot. Was Eliot really like that?
http://movies.netflix.com/Search?v1=T...
"Director Brian Gilbert beautifully renders the life of poet T.S. Eliot (Willem Dafoe) and his short-lived marriage to muse Vivienne Haigh-Wood (Miranda Richardson). A gifted writer who encouraged Eliot's success, Vivienne was plagued with a hormonal imbalance that wreaked havoc on her moods, her talents and her marriage."
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0111454/
"In 1915, T.S. (Tom) Eliot and Vivienne Haigh-Wood elope, but her longstanding gynecological and emotional problems disrupt their planned honeymoon."
I see that it's been adapted from the play: Tom and VIV (first published in 1985) ) by Michael Hastings.
=====================================
September 11, 2014
listened to the 2008 BBC 4 radio production.
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