The Habit of Art is a play by British playwright Alan Bennett, first performed in 2009.
Set in a rehearsal room in the UK's National Theatre, it's tightly focused on a play within a play, Caliban's Hour, which portrays a meeting between poet W. H. Auden and Benjamin Britten, late in their lives. Britten is composing an opera based on Death in Venice, but starting to doubt its direction. For his part, Auden is now living in filth and chaos, a slob with a failing memory who's paying young men for sex.
Within Caliban's Hour, Humphrey Carpenter, who later wrote biographies of both men, is caught up in events and acts as onstage exposition, breaking the fourth wall to address the audience. In the play's outer layer, back in the rehearsal room, the cast and crew add their own commentary and perspectives.
Also, there is talking furniture.
The Habit of Art provides examples of the following tropes:
- Animate Inanimate Object: In Caliban's Hour, Auden's mirror, chair, bed, door and clock all speak. In rhyme. Although Neil the author is insistent on the idea, the cast don't seem keen, and it's implied that the director may have cut this element without telling the author.
- Executive Meddling: The version of Show Within a Show Caliban's Hour, the play that the cast are rehearsing, isn't whst Neil, the author, is expecting. His more whimsical touches have been removed, and it's now far more explicit about Auden's sex life.
- The Ghost: Stephen, the director of Caliban's Hour, has double-booked himself and is away in Leeds, not at the rehearsal. He makes a phone call, which the audience doesn't hear, but is otherwise absent. However, his creative decisions still play a significant part in the play, especially when the author becomes aware of them.
- Mr. Exposition: Donald's role as Humphrey Carpenter includes large quantities of exposition, and he remains onstage as a commentator.
- Newhart Phonecall:
- Set Behind the Scenes:
- Show Within a Show: The characters are the cast and crew of Caliban's Hour, a play about W. H. Auden and Benjamin Britten. Both acts are set in the rehearsal room and almost entirely focused on the play.
