After In-Yer-Face Theatre

Remnants of a Theatrical Revolution

William C. Boles, William C. Boles

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9783030394271
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Theatre

This book revisits In-Yer-Face theatre, an explosive, energetic theatrical movement from the 1990s that introduced the world to playwrights Sarah Kane, Martin McDonagh, Mark Ravenhill, Jez Butterworth, and many others. Split into three sections the book re-examines the era, considers the movement's influence on international theatre, and considers its lasting effects on contemporary British theatre. The first section offers new readings on works from that time period (Antony Neilson and Mark Ravenhill) as well as challenges myths created by the Royal Court Theatre about the its involvement with In-Yer-Face theatre. The second section discusses the influence of In-Yer-Face on Portuguese, Russian and Australian theater, while the final section discusses the legacy of In-Yer-Face writers as well as their influences on more recent playwrights, including chapters on Philip Ridley, Sarah Kane, Joe Penhall, Martin Crimp, Dennis Kelly, and Verbatim Drama.

© The Author(s) 2020

W. C. Boles (ed.)After In-Yer-Face Theatrehttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39427-1_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction: Reflections on In-Yer-Face from the Other Side of the Atlantic

William C. Boles¹

(1)

Rollins College, Winter Park, FL, USA

William C. Boles

Email: [email protected]

Keywords

In-Yer-Face TheatreJez ButterworthJoe PenhallMark RavenhillMartin McDonagh

End Abstract

In the mid-to-late 1990s as a recently hired, tenure track professor at a small private liberal arts college just one town north of Orlando, Florida, my personal interactions with London theater were limited to the occasional research trips and annual study abroad field studies with students to see plays and visit museums. My first trip with students was in January 1997. A quick glance over the list of productions we attended that year reflects the stereotypical choices that a dramatic literature professor would select. Not surprisingly, some of the most important dramatic figures, plays, and theaters were represented: Harold Pinter’s The Homecoming at the National Theatre, Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire featuring Jessica Lange on the West End, William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Almeida Theatre, Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard on the West End, and the Albert Finney-led cast of Yasmina Reza’s West End hit Art. However, two works by two new playwrights provided a theatrical experience far different than those canonical pieces listed above, and, in turn, Shopping and Fucking by Mark Ravenhill and The Beauty Queen of Leenane by Martin McDonagh (both Royal Court on the West End productions) were to be instrumental touchstones for the trip and would set me on the eventual path to the creation of this book twenty years later.¹

Ravenhill’s play, at the Royal Court Upstairs, generated the most pre-performance eagerness for the students, driven, obviously, by the title and the warning on my syllabus that audience members had to be eighteen years old because of explicit material. The prurient nature of what might happen onstage only fomented the excitement for my students, especially considering that they attended a school surrounded by a conservative, well-heeled Central Florida community that had attempted to ban our college’s production of Peter Shaffer’s Equus only a decade earlier due to its graphic nudity. Our arrival at the theater revealed an energy more apt for a rock concert than a West End play by a previously unknown writer. Many of my students successfully pressed forward through the crowded lobby in order to be first into the theater, since it was a general seating arrangement. Techno music played as we entered and giddy excitement abounded as they set about trying to find the best place to enjoy what would be the most non-traditional show we would view. It did not disappoint. In the first few minutes a character vomited, releasing the floodgates that followed: male and female nudity, a hand job, a blow job, rimming, numerous explicit sex stories, drugs, and one of the funniest retellings of The Lion King committed to the stage. All leading to the penultimate scene, where Gary, a rent boy, was bent over a table and roughly, anally penetrated by first Robbie and then Mark. Sitting in the front row, mere feet from this violent gang rape was a group of five of my female students.

In-Yer-Face indeed.

The next play was McDonagh’s The Beauty Queen of Leenane, a far different theatrical experience than Ravenhill’s play. There was no pent-up excitement on the part of my students, and the first scenes seemed to fit more comfortably within the type of plays we saw by Pinter, Chekhov, and Williams. Relying on only one set, the action built slowly, following a traditional dramatic structure. However, in the midst of this familiar form were little moments that announced that while the play may share similar DNA with canonical writers, it also was not that far removed from Ravenhill’s play. A full chamber pot was casually emptied over dirty dishes in a kitchen sink, generating loud groans of disgusted laughter from the audience. Madness and brutality were casually hinted at with a dash of overhanging menace. A comedic character was fascinated with the heft of a poker and whether it would be heavy enough to attack police officers. Characters could not agree on the correct pronunciation of the local priest’s last name. And then it happened. In the penultimate scene the elderly, nagging Mag sat rocking in her chair, as she had done throughout the play, but this time as the chair slowed in its rocking, Mag silently collapsed onto the floor, as part of her skull came away. The earlier groans of disgust were replaced by screams from the audience.² Needless to say, screams do not happen in Ibsen or Chekhov or Williams. McDonagh’s play, like Ravenhill’s, was something different. These experiences for my students were like taking a theatrical version of Ecstasy, as they enthusiastically embraced Ravenhill and McDonagh’s plays and, in turn, fashioned an artistic standard against which all other plays and performances during our trip would be measured.

At the end of those two performances I realized that I had unknowingly exposed myself and my students to a new theatrical movement that would not only prove to be one of the most controversial periods of British drama, but also introduce playwrights who would be incredibly influential over the ensuing decades in not only the theater but other media as well. It was only when I returned to Florida and began to do research did I learn about the scope of this batch of young playwrights who were causing trouble across the London theater with their plays. In my reading I also noticed that there was a rush by London theater reviewers to name these upstart writers, trying to connect them all under a thematic umbrella. Attempts were made, including the bulky “The Theatre of Urban Ennui,” the Frank Sinatra-referenced “BritPack,” the German “Blood and Sperm Generation,” and the not far off “New Brutalists,”³ but it did not take long before Aleks Sierz, like John Russell Taylor before him with the Angry Young Writers, found the perfect moniker, “In-Yer-Face Theatre.”

As a young scholar, I found these plays invigorating, exciting, and palpably so different from what I had studied throughout graduate school. I immediately shifted gears from post-World War II material and began devouring play texts, reading articles online, and tracking what was happening in London, and on return visits to London, I was able to see productions that were part of the movement, like Ben Elton’s Popcorn, Patrick Marber’s Closer, and Simon Bent’s Goldhawk Road. I also inserted these new writers into my dramatic literature and playwriting courses, where the youth culture oriented content and explicitness provoked discussions about the boundaries of theater as well as testified to the exuberant power of new perspectives when it came to writing about the world.⁴ Students from those classes would go onto London for semester abroad programs and seek out productions by the playwrights we studied. (One student happened to be in London during the Sarah Kane revival at the Royal Court Theatre in 2001 and attended many of the productions.)

Outside of the classroom I began doing my own scholarship, attended conferences, and published a few articles on these playwrights, introducing them to other American scholars along the way. However, what really excited me was presenting at a conference dedicated to In-Yer-Face Theatre to be held at the University of the West of England in Bristol in 2002, and co-sponsored by the Sarah Kane scholar Graham Saunders and Rebecca D’Monté, with numerous other luminaries present, including Sierz, Dan Rebellato, Elaine Aston, David Greig, Steve Waters, Ken Urban, and Kate Ashfield, who was in the original cast of Shopping and Fucking. Unfortunately, what I learned in Bristol from Sierz’s plenary was that the In-Yer-Face movement was officially over. In looking back, if I am honest, his pronouncement was incredibly deflating. I felt as if I had finally been allowed into this incredible party only to find myself in a cavernous space, featuring half-eaten Kimberley biscuits as appetizers and a DJ playing Simply Red’s B-sides. What especially stung was that I had only had a few opportunities to experience a movement that was essentially kaput. I had missed it. I had missed one of the British theaters most invigorating, energetic, and surprising eras since the Angry Young Writers.

Or had I?

While the era may have ended, a few of the writers associated with the movement, like Anthony Neilson and Philip Ridley, have kept the faith by continuing to be the headline-generating, theatrical provocateurs they were during In-Yer-Face’s heyday. Neilson especially has retained the moniker associated with the movement, having had his 2002 play Stitching banned in Malta in 2009, and his 2011 version of Marat/Sade for the Royal Shakespeare Company provoked, on average, thirty audience members to walk out per night. On one especially busy night the tally climbed to eighty.⁵ These protests were covered gleefully by the press, much to Neilson’s consternation: “What galls me about this storm in a boudoir is that the media have devoted much more time and space to regurgitating the original, sensationalist local report … and commenting on the resultant scandal than to the play and production itself, which was discussed in depressingly simplistic terms.”⁶ Similarly , Katie Mitchell’s revival of Kane’s Cleansed for the National Theatre in 2016 prompted the same heavy breathing from the London newspapers, as they too reported on the number of walkouts during previews in addition to the numerous incidences of audience members fainting. Citing the scene where Tinker cuts out Carl’s tongue after professing his love for Rod, Laura Barton of The Guardian wrote: “It was not long after this scene that an audience member attending a preview performance of Katie Mitchell’s production at the National Theatre this week collapsed. The house lights went up. Ushers hurried in to escort him out. But he was not alone: by the end of the first week’s run, the production had accumulated a grand total of five faints and 40 walk-outs.”⁷ These examples show that even though the days of In-Yer-Face are long gone, the press still longs for the same provocative headlines that were generated during its heyday, and revivals and the occasional new production are still provoking the same type of responses from theater-going audiences and the media.

I was lucky enough to see Mitchell’s production of Cleansed (no one walked out of the performance I attended), and afterward, I started thinking about productions by In-Yer-Face writers since Sierz’s nail-in-the-coffin pronouncement in Bristol. I quickly came to realize that while I may have missed the main event, I (and other theater goers) have had great seats in seeing the continuingly impressive theatrical output of writers that came to the dramatic forefront during that era. While I was lucky enough to see The Beauty Queen of Leenane, I did not see the rest of the Leenane Trilogy or The Cripple of Inishmaan. And yet, I did find myself in the audience for the original productions of McDonagh’s The Pillowman, Hangmen, and A Very Very Very Dark Matter. I may have missed Some Voices and Love and Understanding, both by Joe Penhall, but I did see Blue/Orange on the West End, Haunted Child at the Royal Court, and the original West End cast of Sunny Afternoon. I did not attend Jez Butterworth’s Mojo as well as a more recent revival, but I saw the Royal Court production of The Winterling as well as the West End productions of Jerusalem and The Ferryman. While I did see Shopping and Fucking, I missed Ravenhill’s follow-ups Some Explicit Polaroids and Handbag. However, I did see the controversial Mother Clapp’s Molly House and his adaptation of Terry Pratchett’s Nation (both at the National Theatre) as well as The Cane, Ravenhill’s return to the Royal Court.⁸

In looking over these productions I have attended since Sierz’s announceme...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Introduction: Reflections on In-Yer-Face from the Other Side of the Atlantic
• Part I. Re-assessing the Movement
• Part II. A Movement’s International Influences
• Part III. A Movement’s Aftermath
• Back Matter