For three years, #ReadaPlayaWeek
was a, well, weekly feature of our blog. Starting out as a way to familiarise
myself more with the canon, long-established and establishment writers were a
regular feature. Later, we (now a co-authored blog) decided to challenge
ourselves to read more and more widely, and to give equal focus between male
and female writers. By the time we decided to pause it at the end of 2016, it
was by no means an all-male, white, British, showcase. Indeed, playwrights so
well known that their first names aren’t necessary were still featured but
there were also plays by Stephen Karam, Annie Baker, Tanika Gupta, Winsome
Pinnock, Roy Williams, and Rachel De-lahay. Finding plays to write about wasn’t
always easy. Outside of London and Amazon, bookshops and libraries are heaving
with Shakespeare, Bennett and Churchill (not a complaint), but it’s rare to see
something new or not on the syllabus.
After a two year hiatus, it’s back
with a monthly blog post (or at least that’s the aim). Last year, in the midst
of a new house and job and perhaps in a Fluoxetine-fuelled inertia, it took me
6 months to read one play! The play wasn’t particularly long or dense and was
actually very good, as reflected in the sweeping five star reviews in its
recent London transfer. But I read a scene, forgot it and then re-read until I
was stuck in a cycle of American rustbelt procrastination. I’ll try to re-read
it and include it later in the year.
So here we go:
In Arabia, We’d All Be Kings (1999) by Stephen Adly Guirgis
“Whaddya want? A yacht? ‘Cuz I’ll buy you a
yacht. You know why? ‘Cuz I love you”
From Our Lady of 121st Street to The Motherfucker with the Hat and Between Riverside and Crazy, Adly Guirgis is interested in how
people sink or swim in a changing New York City. Here, in the Hell’s Kitchen of
the nineties, a neighbourhood bar is at the centre of reformed criminals, junkies
and prostitutes. Is there a list of 100 best opening scenes? If not, then
there’s a strong argument that this play should rank highly. A recently
released Lenny is attempting to hold his own in his old roosting ground. But
for all of his bluster and aggression, it’s all futile. He argues with his
girlfriend who later walks out on him, and squaring up to another man results
in a pathetic attempt of power at a jukebox. The most power he has is to make
the younger man sit outside. And when some old friends walk in, he is left to
find that most of his old acquaintances are dead and his old haunts have been
gentrified, before being completely demoralised by a 17 year old girl. He can’t
even get a drink.
The dialogue always zips forward
with vim; and any issues or themes are driven by story and characters, who are always well-rounded with a sense
of decency, or at least humanity, whatever their flaws. It’s a cracking play
and makes me even more excited to see Jesus
Hopped the ‘A’ Train next month.
Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
The Guys (2001) by Anne Nelson
“We have no idea what wonders lie hidden in
the people around us”
I hadn’t heard much about this
play. Staged 12 weeks to the day after 9/11 at the Flea Theatre, just a couple
of blocks away from the site of the World Trade Centre, Anne Nelson’s play is a
fascinating blend of theatre and journalism which put theatre’s claim of
immediacy to the test. We hear that “After September eleventh, all over the
city, people were jumping tracks”. A writer living in New York, sharing in the
city’s sense of uselessness, was asked to help a fire chief to write a number
of eulogies for the men he’d lost. In this fascinating two hander, originally
staged as a workshop with Sigourney Weaver and Bill Murray, we hear the details
from the day and its aftermath and the machinations of a NYC firehouse. And
most memorably, we hear about the lives of those men lost: as firefighters, as
friends and as family members. This play is – at least mostly –
autobiographical. Like Nelson, Oklahoma-born Joan has made New York her home.
Like Joan, Nelson witnessed 9/11 via the TV and through a phone call from her
husband who saw it from his office. Like Nelson, Joan went out to vote later
that same day. It brings to mind that this is one person’s perspective, only
one experience of how their life was touched and changed by such horrors. It’s
a difficult play but opens a window to the idea that behind the shadow of every
person lives a wealth of talent, friendship, love and opportunity.
Published by Random House.
The Nest by Franz Xaver Kroetz (new version by Conor
McPherson)
“Look around at everything you’ve made possible…”
Billed as a modern morality tale,
McPherson’s take on Kroetz’s play is a scant two-hander about the anxieties of
parenthood and consumerism. Soon-to-be-parents, Kurt and Martha, live on the
breadline in an unnamed European city where material wealth represents
happiness and well-being. Kurt earns a living driving trucks for up to fifty hours
a week. He feels the pressure to provide for his wife and provide the best that
money can buy for their unborn child. Yet, this consumerist philosophy has devastating
consequences when Martha finds out just how far Kurt will go to earn and extra an
Euro or two.
Xaver and McPherson target debates
concerning what makes a ‘good’ parent and the immorality of capitalism. In
Kurt’s striving to be a good parent he is increasingly a physical absence from
his son’s life. The insistence that Martha stays home to look after the baby highlights
the enduring imbalance of the sexes when it comes to the work/life balance. In
an age where the typical nuclear family is fast becoming a defunct notion, the
outdated man/woman and father/mother binaries are here brought into sharp
focus. Thematically, these issues are portrayed strongly by McPherson, whereas
other socio-political subjects seem tagged on as a means of pandering to the zeitgeist.
An eleventh hour eco-message is somewhat lost amidst the human drama, and
Kurt’s casual racism, although topical, seems too flippant to create any
lasting impact.
The Nest is a brief
but thoughtful insight into modern parenthood and ethical responsibility.
Published by Nick Hern Books.
born bad (2003) by debbie tucker green
“the bits don’t make the bulk and the bulk
don’t mek the whole and the all a your bits together don’t make your versions
true”
debbie tucker green’s first two
plays were staged within months of each other. At such an early stage of her
career, born bad (originally directed
by Kathy Burke at the Hampstead) has the distinct linguistic style
characteristic of her later work. In an early scene, we see Dawta call Mum a
bitch. More than just a throwaway remark, Dawta is resolute and purposefully
harsh in her tirade: ‘if yu actin like a bitch/ I’m a call yu it’. As the play
unfolds in a series of conversations between Dawta, Mum, Brothers and Sisters 1
and 2, we start to piece together the jigsaw of a family in the immediate
aftermath of the revelation of abuse.
Characters may be named after their
familial roles (more specifically their roles in relation to Dawta), but they
are fleshed out. It does draw attention to their roles they play and how they
cope when this can of worms opens. This trauma upturns their world: the play
delves into a plexus of fraught relationships as they examine everything
they’ve believed to be true. One of the sisters and Mum swing from refusing to
believe Dawta to blaming her, covering a huge amount of self-doubt. And as in
tucker green’s random, language
(spoken and unspoken) holds power. What may be mistaken as stylistic tautology,
characters repeat, pick others’ phrasing apart, hold others to account, and ensure
that words are not put into the mouths of others. But the play also relishes
silence particularly that of Dad. But, in an ending which perhaps speaks of how
the family will move forward, Dad still gets the last word.
Published by Nick Hern Books.
The Strange Death of John Doe (2018) by Fiona Doyle
“Falling through space. And time. Into space
and time. Falling”
A body falls out of the wheel well
of a British Airways plane about to land at Heathrow. Where did he come from?
What’s his story? What put him in this position? As a team of morticians try to
piece together the anatomical material of what’s happened, DC Kavura becomes
obsessed with trying to get to the centre of Ximo’s life and find the soul
behind the body. Doyle’s incredible play is an unnerving exploration into
someone’s inner universe, searching for meaning of what a life is composed of beyond
the physical and interrogating the boundaries between body and soul. I was
fascinated by the way the text pushed to use space in ever more fluid and
innovative ways: rib cracking shears in London become hedge clippers in Africa,
continents merge and bodies become omnipresent. Doyle’s sense of drilling down
to the reasoning behind an all too common tragedy leads her to tapping into an intriguing
and topical subject.
Published by Nick Hern Books.
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