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At the Sharp End
By Peter Billingham
Methuen Drama £16 99
264 pages
Dateline: 22nd December, 2007
The subtitle of this paperback is "Uncovering the work of five
contemporary dramatists". At times, it has to be confessed that
for the lay reader much of the work remains heavily covered. To be fair,
they might have to accept that it was never the author's intention to
appeal to those outside academic circles.
Mr Billingham is Reader in Drama and Performance at the University
of Portsmouth's School of Creative Arts Films and Media. His approach
to modern playwrights is heavily political and textual with an emphasis
on expressing his own views and drawing out left-wing messages wherever
the opportunity arises.
At the Sharp End considers selected works by David Edgar, David
Greig, Mark Ravenhill, Tim Etchells (and Forced Entertainment) and Tanika
Gupta. Each section includes an interview between Mr Billingham and
the respective playwright together with a detailed analysis of a handful
of selected works.
In principle, this should be a good way for readers to get to know
the writings and personalities of some of the most influential individuals
writing for the stage today. However, Mr Billingham uses language that
is often almost completely alien to the average theatregoer, exemplified
by the heading for his analysis of David Greig's work "Inhabitants
of the Tide Mark -- Towards a New Political Poetics in the Plays of
David Greig".
The interviews are generally directed towards political issues and,
at times, the questions are longer than the answers, especially for
poor Mark Ravenhill who spends a fair amount of time merely nodding
and agreeing with propositions about his work.
Mr Billingham is at his best when writing and talking about plays that
he has actually seen. He is also considerably stronger on Tim Etchells
and Forced Entertainment, a company that rarely makes it to London but
which the writer obviously knows well from his years in Sheffield, where
they are based.
It is apparent, that in many cases, his main thrust is based on incredibly
detailed readings of texts. He does not, howeve, always demonstrate
a wide knowledge of contemporary drama or of the writers' canons.
It would be nice to think that there is more to contemporary drama
than words on a page and often the point of a play can be missed unless
an expert director has been given the opportunity to interpret the work
of a similarly experienced writer; all the more so if the writer is
relatively new.
When Mr Billingham forgets to use overly technical language and concentrates
on plays that he has apparently enjoyed as spectacles rather than merely
studied, he can be both informative and insightful. For example, the
analysis of the play that loudly announced Mark Ravenhill's arrival
on the theatrical scene, Shopping and Fucking, is well worth
consideration.
Another issue that grates is that of repetition. It does not appear
that the writer anticipated that his book would be read from cover to
cover. The theories that he expounds in discussions with writers are
frequently repeated in analyses of their plays; and this reviewer was
practically screaming only halfway through the book when what had started
as a meaningful phrase put into the mouth of one of his characters by
Mark Ravenhill "Money Is Civilisation -- Civilisation Is Money"
was used for the umpteenth time.
Drama students might well find sections of At the Sharp End
of use to them when writing theses or essays but the more general reader
is likely to struggle both with the language and style. Purchasers will
also need to take care, since there are far too many errors about theatre
facts such as Dominic Cooke's position with the RSC and Sue Higginson,
Wallace Shawn, Lin Coghlan (one suspects) and Kwame Kwei-Armah's names
than either writer or editor would desire.
Philip Fisher
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