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Articles
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Articles |
Walking OutDateline: 9th August, 2002It's quite a quiet week for theatre news. Because all eyes are focused on Edinburgh, not a lot happens in the first full week of August - except, of course, in Edinburgh. Even there we expect a little time to elapse before the news stories emerge. Not this year, however. This year we were treated to the sight of people walking out of the first performance of a play - and not at one of the smaller venues by a company eager to grasp at any press mention. This time the Traverse was at the centre of the row and the playwight an established figure, not a young turk eager for notoriety (Anthony Neilson's Stitching). As Philip Fisher says in his review, "In Yer Face theatre is designed to be shocking. If you don't like bad language and uncompromising characters who investigate sex and love from most angles, then don't go to see Anthony Neilson's latest play." But some did - and walked out. Why? The subject matter is shocking: those who know Neilson's work would expect no less and, though they may not enjoy being shocked, they would realise that it is not gratuitous, that he has a serious point to make. Like Sarah Kane - whose Blasted is perhaps the archetypal In Yer Face piece - Neilson does not glorify the horrors he describes, does not attempt to give them some justification, but uses them to explore the darkness in our souls. If you know Neilson's work and you're easily shocked, you simply don't go. So perhaps those who walked out expected something different, a love story, perhaps? After all, the programme does call it a "darkly humorous love story", but it does add "intimate sexual dialogue" and "taboo-breaking theatre". No one who has read the programme can go along expecting Barbara Cartland - or even Jilly Cooper! I can understand walkng out of a show because of bad writing or bad performances - and even then I would tend to leave quietly at the interval - although I have sat and suffered at Fringe shows because (a) there's normally no interval, and (b) I don't want to disturb anyone who may be enjoying the show. For, of course, it is very possible for one man's poison to be another's meat. After all, there are those who like Barbara Cartland.... I also have every sympathy with the relatives of those children killed by the Moors Murderers - God knows they have suffered for so long and will, no doubt, suffer all their lives - but for them to call for the banning of the play is just plain wrong. The thought that there is a play which deals with the subject with what they will no doubt consider less than reverence is clearly upsetting to them and no doubt some will feel that their personal tragedy is being treated as a source of entertainment. It isn't: their personal tragedy is being used as part of a serious exploration of the human psyche, not by a scientist who is attempting to understand the workings of a sick mind but by an artist who is trying to find some meaning in the blacker side of everyone's minds. It's hard, but the best theatre is. It asks hard questions and makes often terrifying (in the proper sense of the word) demands on our emotions. One can only hope, while feeling every sympathy for those whose lives have been so profoundly disturbed by the Moors Murders and other such horrific events, that theatres will not stop producing plays like Stitching, and that compassion for those who have suffered will not prevent us from examining them, for if we fail to learn from them, then they could happen again. Articles Indices:
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