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The Theatre of Martin Crimp
By Alex Sierz
Methuen Drama £14.99
275 pages
Dateline: 28th January, 2007
Martin Crimp is a playwright whose work is performed far more regularly
on the Continent than in his home country and whose influences include
Harold Pinter and Caryl Churchill, who are British although they don't
seem like it, but also Beckett, Brecht and Ionesco,
Anyone hoping to learn anything beyond the biographical basics about
the life of Martin Crimp from this book will be disappointed. Even the
author acknowledges the difficulty of finding out much about his subject,
providing a final mini-chapter entitled "Attempts on His Life"
in which Crimp proves as elusive as Anna, the woman with seventeen identities
and none, who was the subject of his greatest work.
Alex Sierz' strength is in analysing plays and setting them in context.
He already has a cult following from his first book, In-Yer-Face
Theatre, which not only caught the mood of a period but gave it
an unforgettable name.
The Theatre of Martin Crimp is divided into a number of distinct
sections, each of which serves a purpose and together they build to
a thorough analysis of the considerable body of work that Crimp has
created since his early days at the Orange Tree in the 1980s.
The first third of the book is devoted to commentaries on each of Crimp's
plays. These immediately demonstrate his unique style, in which form
is at least as important as text and one senses a desire to shock but
far more subtly than his In-Yer-Face contemporaries. These short
reviews include an overview of the text, a look at the original performances
and brief quotes from newspaper critics.
Whatever anybody says about the other work, Attempts on Her Life
is always likely to be seen as this writer's defining work and Sierz
practically says as much, describing it as "a brilliantly original
and a distinctly European play" and "the culmination of Crimp's
quest to marry form and content".
It broke a mould and is still proving popular a decade after its conception
at the Royal Court. Indeed, Katie Mitchell, who has already directed
the play in Milan, will be bringing her vision of it to the National
Theatre in 2007.
This section finishes with a chapter on his translations and adaptations
of works from the French. In addition to writing his own plays, the
playwright has offered an eclectic mix of work drawn from French writers
that goes from the classical, Molière and Marivaux, through Genet
and Ionesco to the contemporary dystopia of Koltes.
This affinity with the foreign might be seen as appropriate, since
Crimp is a prophet who is appreciated far more outside his own country
than within it. Quite why somebody born and brought up on the suburban
borders of south-east London and then Yorkshire should have developed
such a European sensibility is something that Sierz addresses but could
never expect to fathom, particularly with someone as secretive as this
writer.
Following the run-through of his work, Crimp did at least give Aleks
Sierz a trio of interviews about his work. These build on the first
section and throw a little more light particularly on the influences
that have helped to form the plays.
While Alex Sierz is perfectly capable of writing entertainingly for
the general reader, his visit to Crimpland, that "dystopic suburbia"
inside the brain of a playwright, feels far more like the work of an
academic. Even so, for those who are willing to work at it a little
bit, this proves enlightening as they help one to get at least a little
way into the mind of this very private writer. This section will also
be of great use to any directors wishing to revive Crimp plays in future.
Still a long way from the end of the book, Sierz provides us with a
conclusion in which he tells us that "Crimpland is British suburbia
seen through the eyes of a satirist and a sceptical modernist".
On a visit there, our guide will attack his prime targets of "social
conformity and the culture of contentment, those twin angels that hover
over the suburbs".
It is in the final paragraph of this chapter that we get a summary
of why Martin Crimp is such an important playwright. "Crimp's sheer
craftsmanship, his originality in language, his innovative attitude
to theatrical form, the emotional intensity of his vision, his unblinking
accounts of the dark void beneath the veneer of the humdrum, and his
refusal to compromise his standards or his individuality, are reasons
enough for his greatness".
That would be enough for most authors but Alex Sierz still has a few
aces up his sleeve, providing a series of interviews with the most of
Crimp's directors from Sam Walters to Katie Mitchell, as well as other
key figures in his theatrical life.
The Theatre of Martin Crimp is a book that will be snapped up
by fans of the playwright but will also have a ready market amongst
academics, who are interested in the theatre and general readers who
want to know more about one of our most singular theatrical practitioners.
Philip Fisher
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