Afore Night Come

by David Rudkin

Sure there's no end to the disasters that could choose to unfurl themselves on the world. The harvest is ripe in a Black Country pear orchard. Seasoned hands settle to familiar tasks and the ritual education of newcomers. But corrupted lands yields a bitter crop. The weather turns, friction mounts and pesticide begins to fall...

Genres: Plays, Drama, British Literature

112 pages, Paperback

First published September 17, 2001

About the author

British playwright for theatre, film, television, and radio.

Reviews

[Tim Pendry · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was David Rudkin's first staged play (Royal Shakespeare Company) and contains themes that would appear later in his work, notably paganism in the English countryside and repressed homsexuality. It had Freddy Jones and Timothy West in junior roles.

It was ground breaking in 1962 because it challenged censorship on three counts - the coarse language, the homosexual sub-text and the final act of violence on stage which Rudkin himself referred to as the most climactic since the 'Jacobeans'.

It was introduced to the public essentially by stealth through technical legal legerdemain that resulted in media acclaim. It was an invitation only performance that the critics loved.

It is intriguing today because it is an early example of the folk horror tradition in British culture but perhaps, while it stands up as drama (although like all such texts, it really has to be performed and not read to be appreciated), it is more historically important than inspiring.

Rudkin is an outsider to the working class and it shows. He is on the edge of classing them as 'deplorables' in a way that should be as offensive today as it should have been then. There is class fear at work that may originate, for him, in working class attitudes to homosexuality at the time.

At the same time there is also resentment of the upper class in the stereotypical portrayal of the landowner and his daughter (a walk on part) and of the dynamics of the foreman's control of the work force.

Basically Rudkin wanted his cake and to eat it like so many young radicals (he was 26) then and today ... middle class ressentiment of capitalism and a distancing from the hoi polloi exploited by it (at least in their analytical view).

The literary transition from a loathing of the working class sublimated as disorderly threat in the 1940s and 1950s to the no better middle class decision to patronise them as ignorant and exploited, waiting for middle class liberalism to save them, is exemplified in this drama.

Still, as drama, a sense of menace as the sensitive bourgeois (who is actually a cypher in the drama) is displaced as the victim of weak-minded pagan deplorables by the marginal migrant is well done, showing that the devil often can have some of the best tunes.

Perhaps Rudkin (urban, brought up in the West Midlands, grammar school, Oxbridge, Signals, school teacher) had a bad experience of the working class people he had met in the military or in private life because his picture of them is close to caricature and even cruel.

Given the attitude of liberals today to a working class that refuses to be saved by their political evangelicals (Rudkin perhaps brought with him his Christian evangelical past into his rebellion), I am surprised someone has not tried to revive it to cathartise the frightened London bourgeoisie.

[Doug · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a play that has more of an historical importance than any viability as a play that could be produced now, 64 years after its premiere. As it contained (rather oblique) homosexuality and onstage violence, it couldn't be performed publicly and had to be attended at a 'members only' club.

It was Rudkin's first work and got him noticed and an award as most promising playwright - which he's justified by a long and illustrious career. I had a bit of trouble with the regional accents as written on the page, and some of the motivations of the characters escaped me - it also seemed quite repetitious with interminable dialogues about the pears the characters are picking. But am glad to finally see what all the fuss was about.

[🐴 🍖]

not sure i get this one either. cool folk-horror-esque atmosphere but idk what's being articulated beyond "xenophobia is bad" and "picking pears sucks," at least one of which i knew going in.

[Mad Medico · Rating 2 out of 5]

With its oblique themes of pagan sacrifice and repressed homosexuality, Afore Night Come resembles an early treatment of Rudkin’s vastly superior Penda’s Fen. While it was clearly a daring work for 1962 I found it much too unfocussed and dull, although the climax is well done and disturbing. Trying to do all the regional accents in my head have me a headache.

[Dan · Rating 2 out of 5]

I suppose I don't get it. Hopefully someone else can convince me otherwise.

[Patrick · Rating 5 out of 5]

I first read this in high school and was mesmerized. A landmark in folk horror.