Forty years on ; Getting on ; Habeas Corpus ; and, Enjoy

by Alan Bennett

A collection of four Alan Bennett plays, with an introduction by the author which describes the background to their writing and performance.

Genres: Plays, Theatre, Drama, Fiction, British Literature

336 pages, Paperback

First published January 15, 1996

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name.

Alan Bennett is an English author and Tony Award-winning playwright. Bennett's first stage play, Forty Years On, was produced in 1968. Many television, stage and radio plays followed, along with screenplays, short stories, novellas, a large body of non-fictional prose and broadcasting, and many appearances as an actor. Bennett's lugubrious yet expressive voice (which still bears a slight Leeds accent) and the sharp humour and evident humanity of his writing have made his readings of his own work (especially his autobiographical writing) very popular. His readings of the Winnie the Pooh stories are also widely enjoyed.

Reviews

[Dane Cobain · Rating 4 out of 5]

As this is a collection of four different plays, it seems as though the best way for me to review this one is to share my thoughts on each of the individual plays that it contains, so here goes.

Forty Years On: I’m a little bit of a history nerd and so there was a lot here for me to like. I also liked the way that it used a play within a play, although that’s probably because I like meta stuff in general. It’s probably one of my favourite Bennett plays so far, so yeah!

Getting On: My favourite thing about this play was all of the great stuff in there about socialism and the difference between socialists and conservatives. Given Bennett’s upbringing, he’s in pretty much the perfect place to make comments on both of them, and it was refreshing to read an older play with political undertones that still holds up well today. And some of the lines made me laugh out loud.

Habeas Corpus: This was probably the weakest of the plays in the collection that I read it in, at least in my opinion. It just didn’t feel as though much was happening, although there were some cracking bits of dialogue scattered throughout it. I wouldn’t say that it’s worth going out of your way for it.

Enjoy: Another cracking little Alan Bennett play, this one focusing very much on private life and what goes on inside the walls of a family house. There’s some super interesting stuff here and a lot of humour, including a memorable scene where the family isn’t sure if the patriarch is dead or not. Even with an erection.

All in all, it was a cracking little collection of plays and I’m glad I picked it up. I’m looking forward to getting to some more Alan Bennett sometime soon, especially if these are representative of him.

[Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Anybody who stands up and says total freedom may not be a good thing is immediately swamped with appreciative letters from old ladies whose twin hobbies are prize cucumbers and the castration of sex offenders.

Getting On

[Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Never liked Forty Years On. Getting On is the funniest, Habeas Corpus the oddest.

[Joan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reading plays was a new experience for me and those by Alan Bennett are always rather amusing.

[Amrita Sarkar · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a weird collection, and by the time I was reading the last play, I was glad about the way the plays were sequenced - an observation I never thought I'd make for anything. I'd only watched the films of The History Boys and The Lady in the Van before. Most people say the former film pales in comparison to the stage play, but it was enough of an introduction for me to a voice I could have as a lifelong friend. Forty Years On was familiar territory - a school setting, the jokes solid. Getting On was especially well-written, I particularly loved George's "prayer". I find myself reaching for the word "barmy" for Habeas Corpus - it was just mad, mad, mad, though the sudden rhyming in places did feel - if I might be Bennettesque - out of place. Enjoy was 'Alan Bennett does Pinter' - elderly couple, nobody is what they claim to be, someone's watching all the time, something menacing is going on, but thankfully, there was the warmth that I've grown to love so much in Alan Bennett back by the end of the first act. I love his wit, he often had me in stitches, but it's his warmth I love. I would love to watch a production of Getting On, and I don't know what I would make of Habeas Corpus even if I watched it. Alec Guiness was cast in the role of the doctor in the first production, and I'm having a very hard time picturing him in it. John Gielgud comes to mind more often, and would have been genius casting.

[Paul Cornelius · Rating 3 out of 5]

It has been several decades since I read this volume of Bennett's plays. Even then, in the mid 1980s, they appeared as if from a different time and place. Flipping through the pages today, the work appears even more alien. Its subject matter in Forty Years On belongs to a generation now so much in the past that its theme of lost innocence itself seems to belong to some scheme of diminished innocence. It's a world whose sepia tinted photos vie with dust motes in eliciting a sense of nostalgia in the dim afternoon sun. The fault, however, is mine, not Bennett's. Vulgarity and brutality conquers all, I suppose. Still, it seems such a distraction, now.

[Samuel · Rating 3 out of 5]

His later plays are miles better, but regardless these are fairly entertaining. A lot of it is much the same message though - i.e. "Oh, what has happened to England? Where has our England gone?", etc. Not one I'll be returning to.

[foundfoundfound · Rating 5 out of 5]

"forty years on" is the best reward for being excessively well-read.