Benefactors

by Michael Frayn

This long-running hit starred Sam Waterston on Broadway as an urban architect whose attempts to improve humanity by the environments he creates, only leads to chaos when the high-rise boom goes bust and two close friends are caught in the cross-hairs.2 women, 2 men

Genres: Plays, Theatre

Paperback

First published January 1, 1984

About the author

Michael Frayn is an English playwright and novelist. He is best known as the author of the farce Noises Off and the dramas Copenhagen and Democracy. His novels, such as Towards the End of the Morning, Headlong and Spies, have also been critical and commercial successes, making him one of the handful of writers in the English language to succeed in both drama and prose fiction. His works often raise philosophical questions in a humorous context. Frayn's wife is Claire Tomalin, the biographer and literary journalist.

Reviews

[Cary · Rating 3 out of 5]

I haven't *read* a play since high school, but I've always loved the film and stage versions of Noises Off, so I decided it was time to explore more of Michael Frayn's work. The first ten pages or so were a bit hard to get into, but then it really picked up for me. I definitely think this would work better on stage instead of on the page.

[David]

Read. Directed, even.

[Nick Jones · Rating 3 out of 5]

I vaguely knew of Michael Frayn, but hadn’t seen or read any of his plays or novels. But I know what he looks like so I have probably seen him talking on the TV. His breakthrough came in the early 1980s with Noises Off and Benefactors: Benefactors had successful runs in London and on Broadway and won some prizes as best play of its year. (Although the American production had the same director and set designer as the British original, its cast was American: I don’t know if the play was Americanized, placed in New York rather than London, or whether the American actors played it as English.) Reading Benefactors I quite liked it, thought it was quite interesting, quite amusing and that it seemed to want to say something serious about social housing but doesn’t quite manage it. David is an architect in charge of a rehousing project: the only way he can think to overcome a series of practical problems is to build two tower blocks. But this isn’t really what the play is about. It is more than one of Alfred Hitchcock’s McGuffins, it’s more than a plot device that enables the interesting stuff, in that it holds important symbolic values, but it’s not at the heart of the drama. The heart of the drama is the relationships between the four characters: David and Jane, his wife and assistant; David’s old university friend Colin and his wife Sheila. David and Jane are successful, Colin and Sheila are comparative failures. Colin and Sheila live nearby and are constantly dropping in. While David is an optimistic, positive character, Colin is always contrary. And it is here that the building project is important: for David it is a positive act, an act of improvement, but Colin is cynical – there is no sense that he has any deep objection to the project, he is just in opposition because David is enthusiastic. Jane is highly competent, a problem solver, but has doubts about the project. Sheila lacks self confidence, but, on Jane’s suggestion, David gives her a job as his assistant and she gains in confidence and takes an idealistic view of the project. Tensions arise within the couples and between the friends. The form of the play is interesting: characters talk to the audience, filling us in on events off stage – this allows a spritely pace, the character narrations acting as bridges between the many short scenes. But after a while it just became a device – nothing wrong with that, but not that interesting. And that was the problem with the play, it was diverting enough, seemed to be asking serious questions, but didn’t really do that much – and while its questions seemed to be serious their seriousness ducked away when I tried to pin them down. If the term wasn’t now unfashionable and frowned on as snobby, I would call Benefactors ‘middle brow’.

[Ray · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn't particularly warm to this play initially ... the first act read sort of slowly for me, but things did pick up in the second act, earning it a 'third star' on the rating chart. The play
deals with two married couples ... an architect and his independent wife, and a journalist and his very 'dependent' wife ... this would probably work a lot better if watching it performed, but on paper, it is difficult to imagine easily. There's a lot of 'breaking the fourth wall' dialogue, which is confusing on paper. It takes time to figure out if a character is talking to other characters or the audience. Anyway, Frayn has a great ear for dialogue, but I'd recommend the reading of this play AFTER seeing it performed.

[Howard Mansfield · Rating 4 out of 5]

I saw Benefactors on stage in London about 25 years ago. I hadn't read a review; I just bought a ticket shortly before the curtain rose. Benefactor's is an eloquent play about how the good intentions of two 1960s' reformers melt away. An architect's plans for good lower-income housing becomes, by turns, the dreadful,ugly failure that still pockmark England's cities. Frayn has caught the high hopes and the long hangover of that decade of protest and reform.