The guilty pleasures of schadenfreude ~ theatre notes

Sunday, July 26, 2009

The guilty pleasures of schadenfreude

I've long thought that plays about writers ought to be banned. With rare exceptions (none of which, admittedly, I can think of at this particular moment) they tend to trade on the romantic aura of writerly genius, blithely forgetting that being a writer is one of the dullest jobs there is, at least to an outside eye. Let's face it, a writer on stage pounding away at his typewriter/laptop is hardly the most compelling of dramatic images.

And a musical that has just opened in London seems to take the genre into newly awful territory, on the way providing some of the best schadenfreude now available on the internets. A musical about Ernest Hemingway blowing his brains out? Pull the other one... But no, somebody did it, and called it Too Close to the Sun. The previews caused a cyberstorm, with bloggers claiming that it was a classic: "Go and see this horrific gem of a show," says Theatrical Leanings. "You'll want to say you did in years to come, trust me. But make sure you load up on booze before you even start, or you won't make it as far as the interval." The print critics agree, with the show garnering one star each in the Independent, the Times and the Guardian. Well, I guess it adds up to three. As the Telegraph reported, this musical had everything for the theatrical masochist, including collapsing furniture.

Naturally, the West End Whingers had a field day. As they report: "the lines which provoked the greatest responses from the audience were Rex’s revelation that he’d been spending his time “looking for a decent script” and the sudden Act 2 exclamation: “Enough of this bullshit” at which point Phil (until now on his best behaviour with his fist crammed in his mouth) let out an involuntary shriek of laughter which proved as infectious as swine flu as it swept around the auditorium." Sort of, almost, wish I had been there...

17 comments:

Troubador said...

"I've long thought that plays about writers ought to be banned."

The best I can think of in defence of plays about writers is The Real Thing. (The only other one that comes to mind is Hotel Sorrento but let's not go there.)

Alison Croggon said...

Travesties too, come to think of it. Yes, it can be done... but with tongs and a great deal of caution, I reckon...

Troubador said...

And of course The Seagull shows you can discuss the craft of writing (and acting) in a way that makes for compelling drama.

Alison Croggon said...

I guess I'm thinking more of the bio-play about the Famous Writer. Admittedly, now I come to think of it, I've written one of those myself... mea culpa mea maximus culpa...

Kafka said...

LOL!

Jana said...

But then, were any as bad as Californication? Or, for that matter, any film about Bukowski?

On the other hand, plenty have loved Synecdoche, New York...

Matthew said...

"On the other hand, plenty have loved Synecdoche, New York..."

Let alone Adaptation.

I don't buy the argument against plays about writers (or films about filmmaking, for that matter). For every Too Close to the Sun, which indeed sounds awful, there is a Quills, which isn't bad at all; for every Hollywoodland there is a Sunset Blvd. or Barton Fink.

Alison Croggon said...

And we've all forgotten Mueller's Construction of the Human Heart. Oh, there's nothing more fun than unsustainable polemic... I won't ban them all, then. Only those which aggrandise writers and which unsuccessfully externalise an internal process.

Films a little different, I think - they are much less embarrassing. The Shining is probably the truest of all films about writers....

Troubador said...

Going back to the issue of bio-plays about the famous writer (aside from your estimable libretto for The Burrow), I'm hard pressed to think of any good ones. I saw Judas Kiss when it was on at The MTC and frankly can't remember much about it. Christopher Hampton's Tales from Hollywood - an imaginary biography of Odon Horvath - probably doesn't quite fit the bill. I read it many years ago and I thought it was utterly charming.

Troubador said...

P.S. My last comment was posted before I read your last comment Alison.

Alison Croggon said...

That Hampton play sounds interesting, Troubador - I haven't heard of it. I guess that such plays can be interesting if they're actually about something else...

Matthew said...

Quills is pretty close to a bio-play, and I was talking as much about Philip Kaufman's film.

But you're right, Alison: film is a whole new ball game. I can think of literally dozens of films about filmmaking (and screenwriting) that are outright masterpieces, starting, obviously, with Fellini's , and moving on to Godard's Le Mépris, Truffaut's La nuit américaine, Assayas's Irma Vep, Ferrara's Dangerous Game (a.k.a. Snake Eyes), Winterbottom's Tristam Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story...

I could list the dozens and dozens, but I'll spare you...

Matthew said...

Sorry, I meant to write that I was talking as much about Doug Wright's play as I was about Philip Kaufman's film.

Clearly, I was too eager to get to the list and prove myself a know-it-all wanker.

Alison Croggon said...

You, a know-it-all wanker? Perish the thort...

Matthew said...

Yeah, I know. Believe it or not, some consider me immodest.

TimT said...

I work as a transcriber - ie, I type up the spoken parts from interviews/press conferences/news snippets in the media - and sometime ago hit upon the idea of a playlet called 'Inside the mind of a transcriber', basically involving a three-way kind of conversation between a) the digital audio being worked on b) the transcriber's subconscious and c) the narrator, who is able to dip inside the mind of the transcriber at will.

Never finished it though, partly because I couldn't think of anywhere to have it performed - not at the pub where I'm reading poetry/stories on the weekend, not at the work Christmas Party, where everyone will be too busy getting smashed, and not on my blog (for reasons both to do with work and space.)

Better late than never said...

Capote.

The best film about a famous writer I know.