A Sense of Detachment, by John Osborne, Reviewed.

First performed at the Royal Court Theatre on 4^thDecember 1972, this play was published a year later. The copy I have was issued by the publishers as a review copy (the publisher’s slip is still loose within the pages), but not to me. No, I picked it up in a second hand book shop some years later.

That the play’s first performance took place in such an august location says a great deal about the theatrical world’s respect for the playwright at the time. Of course, his ‘Look Back in Anger’ had deservedly set him up as a ‘name’ in the literary world way back at the end of the 1950s. But, whether this play would have received such respect had it come from the pen of a lesser known writer is open to doubt.

The piece is partially ‘improvised’. Much of the intended dialogue is specified but there are passages where the cast is intended to react to the audience, especially where public participation might be encouraged by the antics and words of a couple of cast members placed within that audience. I expect that such risky participation was what drew many into theatre. Certainly, the early dialogue given the cast would be insufficient to garner much in the way of admiration. It’s banal and uninspiring on the page. Performance may well have brought it more life but the text is decidedly flat and lacks the humour that’s clearly intended.

But, as time passes on the uncluttered stage, we’re bombarded with significant comment on social issues of the time. In particular, the Older Woman is given the task of demonstrating the then growing tolerance of pornography and its detrimental effects on women. At the time there was increasing awareness of the way in which pornography objectifies women and portrays rape as not only acceptable but actually desirable, even by the women thus abused. Osborne’s clever use of a mature but attractive woman to apparently enjoy her readings of graphic female abuse is very effective on the page and, I suspect, even more so in performance. The playwright was, of course, very concerned about social issues and he uses the play to highlight many aspects of life that he wants people to think about. I suspect that audiences would leave the performance with a deeper understanding of the destructive tendencies of pornography.

There are aspects of this play that definitely don’t come across in the text. I can imagine that performance would enliven, invigorate and excite the written words to make the whole experience more meaningful and enjoyable. But there are elements of the piece that defy explanation. Many of the passages are drawn from other sources, often obscure, without reference to those sources, so that it’s difficult to know whether a specific point was being made in any given circumstance. Sometimes, the juxtaposition of dialogue and action appears almost absurd; whether this was deliberate and whether it was a theatrical device employed to unsettle what Osborne probably viewed as a complacent middle class audience is uncertain at this distance. The effect on the page is simply confusing, but, again, in performance, it would probably be more effective.

On balance, this is definitely a play to be seen rather than read. But I don’t think I’d be tempted to attend such a performance now. I think the piece is of its time and unlikely to transfer to the modern day in a form that would render it entertaining or thought-provoking. The debates opened here are now well established and no longer bear the rawness and immediacy they would have had at the time of its writing.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2006/apr/29/theatre.biography       for a piece on the biography of John Osborne.

Shrivings, by Peter Shaffer, Reviewed.

An unusual piece, this: a published play that appears never to have been performed in the form presented ( I think it’s available only as part of a 3 play anthology including, Equus and Five Finger Exercise). But the author wanted this piece out there, even if it wasn’t performed. And I can see why.

This is a device to project certain philosophical views and beliefs rather than a piece of true drama, though it does contain the usual elements of the stage play. As is commonly the case with Shaffer, the setting and the stage directions are precise, leaving no doubt about the intended platform or the actors’ movements and disposition. In this sense, the writer acts much like a director in determining the staging of his work.

The characters, three men and a young woman, are all exquisitely penned and their interactions jump from the page with credible drama. Set around the end of the 1960s and much associated with the peace movements of the time, the play explores what it means to be a pacifist in a real sense. Using the conflicts and relationships that spring from family, friendship, sex, love and hero-worship, Shaffer puts his players through emotional hell in a way that illuminates the variety and depth of the human spirit. Several of the scenes are so powerful they will stay with me for a long time

.

What could so easily have descended into banal bickering, is elevated to considered and emotionally charged discussion that resounds with truth and insight. This is not a play to enjoy; in fact, I have my doubts about whether it would be possible to perform it successfully before a theatre audience because of the detail and depth of meaning that dwells within many of the passages. But, as a reading of the text, it works very well and serves to educate in an entertaining manner, whilst throwing some light on the motives of some of those involved in the early peace movements.

It’s a very human play. There is real love behind the depiction of the characters, allowing the reader to empathise with all four, whilst seeing their weaknesses. Something to give cause for thought to both pacifists and warmongers, I recommend this deeply affecting piece of writing to all readers who enjoy challenges to their belief systems, philosophy and lifestyle. Try it; I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.

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The Great God Brown, by Eugene O’Neill, Reviewed

What to say about this piece of classic American literature? The play is presented in six stages; a prologue, four acts, and an epilogue. 

First impressions are that this should have been devised as a film, not a stage play, had that medium been capable at the time. Many of the stage directions (and these are multitude and detailed) would produce results invisible to all but the first few rows in the audience. And some are so specific and precise as to defy execution. It’s as if O’Neill has forgotten that theatre is a collaborative medium relying as much on director and actors as on the text from which the action is driven. I recall, in my early days of writing for radio, being advised that stage directions should be kept to a minimum, the nature of the delivery being evident from the words used in the dialogue.

Parts of the play come over like the tortured polemic of the inebriate, which the drunk generally mistakes for truth. Given that large portions deal with a drunken Dion, this struck me as ironic.

But, the play has a great deal to say and, in spite of its overambitious and sometimes pretentious presentation, it manages to say much of it very well. Written during the great depression, and strongly affected by the religious hypocrisy that remains a pervasive influence over huge swathes of the USA, it deals with the conflict between creativity and money-making. That it is also a love story is what mostly redeems it for me.

The use of masks to illustrate the difference between what is said and what is meant by the various characters is probably very effective on stage, for those at the front of the audience at any rate. I suspect that the subtle changes would be invisible to those paying less for their seats, which is again ironic, given that the play has a good deal to say about the uneven spread of wealth.

I can’t say that I enjoyed reading this text. But I was compelled to read it to the end. I cared about the outcome and was interested in the characters. Ultimately, however, it was a play that left me unsatisfied and, to some extent, confused. I don’t expect it to live in my mind for long and I doubt I’d bother to go to a performance at a theatre. I might be tempted to watch it as a television production, hoping, in that medium, to experience the minutiae that might otherwise be missed on stage.

As a piece of American culture, it exposed, to me, the national obsessions with money, ambition and religious guilt, as well as the inability of some men to separate lust from love. Dion, as the tortured artist came across as more selfish than passionate and Billy, as the face of business, portrayed the greed and self-interest that many find distasteful about the culture of the country. But the players are complex and very human, displaying the characteristics of a society still searching for its identity under the weight of imposed dogmatic religion and the worship of money.

As ever, this is my personal response to a piece of writing. I’ve made no excursions into the multitude of critiques and literary analyses that must have been written on this play. This review is the result of my own experience of reading the text, and probably says as much about me as it does about the work itself. 

The Father, by August Strindberg, Reviewed

This Swedish tragedy in three acts from the end of the nineteenth century is, of course, a literary classic. All three acts take place within the same, confined, setting, adding an element of claustrophobia to the narrow society depicted.

In its original Swedish, I suspect the language contains elements of poetic presentation that are lost in translation. Nevertheless, the dialogue is rich and complex, expressing a great range of emotions. The battle of the sexes that appears as the superficial theme of the play, is, of course, simply a literary device to carry the more contemporaneously dangerous theme of religious hypocrisy.

In the days before genetics was properly understood, the Father’s obsession with the question of paternity is understandable, vaguely pathetic but, at the same time, laudable. He wants what he perceives as the best for his child, but his motives are basically selfish, in that his reason for wanting her to be brought up with his beliefs is so that his own ‘spirit’ will have continued existence after his death. His concern, therefore, is not for his daughter, but for himself. Of course, this is the typical obsession of most religions: the safety of the supplicant’s soul being the driving force that’s supposed to make such followers into ‘good’ people.

A man of science, he’s plagued by doubts, and these uncertainties inevitably bleed into his faith. As more knowledge becomes available through scientific discovery, so the position of certainty that was previously held by the various churches rapidly becomes undermined. It’s within this world of change and its accompanying questioning of fundamental creeds that the play is set.

None of the characters in this play come out well. They are all driven by selfish motives and although love is recruited by the main players, it’s a false love, driven by selfish concerns rather than by care for those for whom it’s expressed.

Of its time in the way that women are considered less important than men, its employment of the Omphale myth demonstrates the Father’s ultimate feelings of emasculation by what he sees as his wife’s tricks.

This is tragedy in the true sense of the word; the flawed hero brought down by his inability to understand and modify his own character to deal with realities. Although not an entertainment, this is a play I would gladly see performed, were it ever produced at a theatre accessible to me.

The Circle, by Somerset Maugham, Reviewed

A play very much of its time, The Circle, nevertheless touches lightly on themes which continue to have relevance today. Superficially dealing with infidelity and its consequences, there are deeper threads that weave around the war of the sexes, real love, class and sex.

It’s set in the home of a man of independent wealth, a man who is also a Member of Parliament with a ‘position’ in society. His wife is, of course, beautiful and much younger. She is also, predictably, bored by her life of privilege and ease. The plot revolves around the fact that the MP’s father was deserted by his equally beautiful and superficial wife in the name of love, and he is quickly revealed to be in the same boat as his father shortly after the play opens. Just in case you’ve either never heard of the play, or might have the chance to see it, I won’t spoil the ending by revealing the outcome.

As a seed bed for comedy, the situation ought to be bursting with potential life. Unfortunately, the comedy of manners here doesn’t travel through time as well as the famous Pride and Prejudice. I think the reason for that is that it’s very difficult for a modern reader to have any true empathy with any of the characters. The only ‘common’ man in the cast is as difficult to like as are the spoilt brats of the upper classes that take most of the roles.

There’s some amusement to be had by laughing at rather than with the players at times. But I found it sparse for a play that’s described as ‘comedy in three acts’. I was mostly either appalled at the utter hypocrisy and shallowness of the people portrayed or indifferent to their perceived problems or their fate. It wasn’t that their problems were unreal, merely that they, as individuals, failed to convince me that I should give a damn.

I’ve no doubt that gifted actors and a bright director could bring more to this play than I gleaned from the page. But I wouldn’t be tempted to make a trip to the theatre to watch it. Just possibly, were it to appear on the goggle box on a wet afternoon when I had nothing else to do, I might start watching it. For me, it lacked the wit that lifts Wilde’s plays above such considerations and it left a taste of self-satisfaction and smugness in the mouth.

Blood Wedding, by Federico Garcia Lorca, Reviewed

Described as tragedy in three acts and seven scenes, Blood Wedding is, of course, a theatrical classic. Now; plays are intended to be seen as they’re performed on stage. But, having had some small experience of playwriting and being a novelist and short story writer by nature, I enjoy the challenge of setting such works within the landscape of my own imagination.

This is a work from a culture that’s alien to me and that makes it all the more challenging. It also tests its credentials as a renowned classic. If I can glean the essence of the piece simply by reading it from the page, then it clearly deserves its literary reputation.

So, a tragedy: of that there can be no doubt. A sad and sorry tale of love distorted by tribal and cultural considerations that defy comprehension in a modern mind, this story reveals the ultimate stupidity that supports certain primitive codes of honour. Religion is rarely mentioned in the text, but it sweeps through the work like a mudslide invading a village. Passion drives much of the play, directing the characters and forcing them to make decisions that a moment’s quiet contemplation would quickly countermand.

Various devices are employed to illuminate the tale. The ubiquitous horse clearly has a significance that largely escaped me during the reading. Though, I suppose, it might be a metaphor for a certain type of power, or it may have the sexual connotations of the dream. I don’t have the advantage of the study notes that would undoubtedly explain the play through the eyes of some scholars, and I prefer my ignorance to the pretentions of such critics.

There are large passages of poetry expressed as song and these are relatively repetitious and often obscure. Such references carry more meaning for the intended local audience, no doubt. The simmering sexual tension swells through these passages, evoking those stirrings of passion often experienced by most of us in our youth. That it is here applied to more mature individuals increases the feeling that we are witnessing a primitive society.

Whilst there were elements of the text that bypassed my conscious understanding, the play as a whole found its way into my heart and soul so that I felt the emotions and discovered I had empathy with the protagonists. The inevitability of the denouement did nothing to decrease its utterly senseless tragedy.

I can only hope that the people for whom this was, presumably, written would leave the theatre in a state that would encourage them to examine the traditions and customs by which they lived. Otherwise, the tragedy is destined to be repeated ad infinitum.

Would I attend a stage performance if it were to come my way? Yes.

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Bedroom Farce, by Alan Ayckbourn, Reviewed.

Alan Ayckbourn, in Bedroom Farce, has written another in his series of very funny and insightful farces. A play, of course, is intended to be seen in order to be fully appreciated, but, as a playwright myself, I have an interest in reading the scripts.

This one is staged using three sets that appear together: three bedrooms, which allow the action of the interrelated couples to indulge in the farce of the title. However, what could so easily have descended into smut and exploitation of sexual mores, is instead a complex and well-observed comedy about English suburban life. Ayckbourn is a superb recorder of the idiosyncrasies of his family of English characters. He portrays them with love but doesn’t hold back in showing them for what they are. Often silly, sometimes selfish, frequently lacking in understanding, but never stereotypical, boring or trite.

He uses his sets to make points, giving the locations roles that place them as mute characters on stage to comment silently on the peculiarities, peccadillos, personalities and preferences of his flesh and blood characters. Imagination permits the reader to experience the text in much the same way as the theatre-goer might experience the performance. Though this is not to say that talented actors fail to raise more and greater laughs from the audience than the reader can develop from imagination alone.

Should this play be produced on a stage near me, I shall certainly attend and watch as the text is brought to life by performers who will undoubtedly enjoy the experience as much as the audience. And I’d recommend you to do the same. It’s a play full of laughter for the audience and brimming with under-stated and sometimes subtle asides at the characters. Well worth the reader’s and the viewer’s attention.

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Alphabetical Order, a Play by Michael Frayn, Reviewed

Michael Frayn - Cambridge - 2011 (Photo credit: Chris Boland http://www.distantcloud.co.uk/ )

Plays are, of course, intended to be seen, experienced, rather than read. However, as a writer who has had a radio play broadcast by the redoubtable BBC, I have an interest in play scripts, and enjoy reading them as well.

Michael Frayn has a reputation as a playwright who understands comedy. And Alphabetical Order is a great example of his strength in creating humour. The stage setting remains unchanged throughout the 2 acts, except for some 'tidying' essential to the story. So, the whole action takes place within the library of a local newspaper and involves the librarians and some of the reporting and editorial staff.

Having worked on a local paper, as a photographer, I have some empathy with the characters portrayed and some understanding of their peculiar pressures and priorities. The characters are well drawn, using the playwright's only real tool; that of dialogue. It's possible to picture them on the stage from the script, because they are so well described by their chosen words and what they have to say or what is said about them by other characters; the essence of a stage play.

The action is minimal, as is the plot, but the play covers a great deal of ground in terms of character building and relationship development. There are plenty of jokes and many occasions given to laughter, both with and at the characters. But there is pathos too. The aura of gentle decay and the overriding sense of futility combine with the overall frivolity of the dialogue, which hides those secrets that lurk beneath the surface of the spoken text. So, there are some surprises but the drama plays out more or less as expected.

The denouement is slightly surprising in the way it happens, but the reader realises that the outcome was, in fact, inevitable, given the natures of the characters and their employment. Typical of the very English setting and characterisation, there is a lot more beneath the surface, unstated but alluded to, making the play a multi-layered experience.

I enjoyed this, and recommend it to those who enjoy their drama in thoughtful but gentle comedy form.

Stuart's Daily Word Spot: Tableau

Tableau: noun - a picture; used figuratively - a presentation or description in picturesque form; a table, schedule or official list; group of people and things grouped to form a picturesque scene; used theatrically – a static representation of the action at a critical stage in a play; also, the stage direction for this; sudden striking of a dramatic situation; in cards - the arrangement of the cards when laid out for a game of patience.

'The players stopped their action and abruptly struck a tableau in which their individual postures and expressions interacted with their group positions to express the shock, horror and disbelief at the sudden, and apparently inexplicable, killing of the lead character.'

Pic: Valerie at the foot of the steps leading to the northern beach at Bridlington, East Yorkshire.