Jo Caird: Are Those Cheap Gags Worth It?
Most new plays will contain at least a couple of local
references, details that ground them in a particular moment, a specific
geographical location and a certain social world. This is so regular an
occurrence that it’s not even really necessary for me to give examples – you’ve
probably already thought of lots of your own – but there are different ways of
dealing with and integrating local nods, some of which are more successful than
others.
Philip Ridley sets all his plays in the East End of London because
that is the world he grew up in and it’s where the characters in his head seem
to live. Even Ridley’s most recent play, Tender Napalm,
which is fantastical and abstract in terms of its context, includes references
to “that old hardware shop down Bethnal Green Road” and “the charity shop down
Columbia Row”. These nods give a little context to the characters that furthers
the audience’s understanding of them and the play, but are subtle enough not to
get in the way of what the piece is trying to do.
Some plays, however, seem to glory in the inclusion of local
references as observational comedy-style gags that serve merely to prompt the
audience to laugh. I don’t want to sound like a scrooge – I’m a big fan of
funny plays and laughing in general – but there’s something that feels a little
cheap about this technique. I felt this way at Theatre503 on Friday night
seeing Many Moons, playwright Alice Birch’s first
full-length play (she only graduated from university in 2009), which is set
very ostentatiously in Stoke Newington, just up the road from where I live.
Many Moons is a promising piece of work
from such a young writer, exploring via some compelling characters the
interaction between love, obsession, despair and self-reliance. It’s also very
funny, picking on the absurdities of middle class life in trendy Stoke
Newington. The characters are instantly recognisable, particularly that of
Juniper, played with disarming sweetness and humour by Esther Smith.
But despite laughing at all these references – and enjoying the show – I couldn’t
help but feel a little annoyed by them. I felt the same way watching two other plays I otherwise liked a great deal,
David Eldridge’s The Knot of the Heart back in March at
the Almeida and Penelope Skinner’s Eigengrau last year at
the Bush. The jokes in these plays rely on the audience’s familiarity with the
world the playwright is referencing: the audience is invited in, made to feel
included and clever for knowing what the playwright is talking about. My problem with this? It all
just feels a bit smug.
By aiming references and gags at a particular group, a
playwright runs the risk of alienating any audience members not in that group.
There’s nothing like seeing lots of people get a joke you don’t understand to
make you feel stupid and left out. The other potentially harmful effect of this
practice is the way it flags up the writing process itself, making the audience
acutely aware of the way the playwright is manipulating them and thereby
distracting from the issues that the work is seeking to explore. A third
danger is that this type of play will almost always date faster than a piece
that relies less heavily on a highly specific set of social, historical or
geographical circumstances for its punch and humour.
I’m not arguing for playwrights to do without local
references altogether – they can be very useful in terms of adding colour and
depth to a piece of work – but the line between contextually grounded and
distractingly obsequious is a fine one and coming down on the wrong side of it
can turn an otherwise satisfying play into an irksome theatre experience.
