The Writer - Almeida

Yes, you're right. The Arcola. Downstairs.

Review from US production.

Too much to write about! It's been a week since I saw it and I'm still trying to get my thoughts into something manageable.

One thing, though, in response to a particular point. The third section isn't satirical at all, it's absolutely straight (no pun intended). What it is, however, is deliberately provocative, daring people to ridicule it and so on. The style is no different than you might have got in a symbolist drama a century ago but, even now, playing with form is liable to get a similar sneery response as those plays did then. "We need new forms" says Treplev in 'The Seagull' and you can easily see that section as Hickson's homage to him and his own attempts at new forms in his own play.

Our twenty first century theatre is stuck in old forms just as much as that of Chekhov's nineteenth century. Following that, the repeated orgasms in the play become deliberate because what else is a linear plot reaching a climax than a theatrical orgasm? Traditional play structure emerged from a male dominated culture and the forms that people find comforting tend to be those that replicate that masculine view through their repetition and familiarity. Linear and pointed not curves and circles (symbolised in the lighting design intervention in that section, I thought). 

To be clear, I don't think it's as simple as male/female though. To return to Chekhov he is more circular and curved in his writing. He, Hickson and others, are points on a continuum.

So the third section is an attempt that is heartfelt but destined to be dismissed and misunderstood. The final section, then, is the one that deliberately takes the shape of the above but subverts expectations of what is expected to be a climatic scene of realism. My personal preference may have been to burn the whole structure down and end in something fragmented but, hey, I'm male and I can get away with that sort of thing where a female playwright may not. What Hickson has done is to go the Annie Baker route (and no better person to use), so we have a scene with that deliberate lack of a rush towards a climax and a use of realism that creates a reality often denied, that of a wholly female denouement, calmly travelling to an 'end' or 'not end'.

Existing within a hyper-realistic context, the final section becomes just as much a provocation through its denial of closure/climax (and that's before you even get to the content, which is similarly, and deliberately, provocative).

Oddly, though you're disagreeing with my use of "satirical", I agree with much of what you've said. When I use the word "satirical", I'm suggesting that Hickson is satirising our (the audience) expectations by presenting that scene and challenging us in how we react to it, and knowing that many will find it somewhat ridiculous and out of place.  

I’d love to discuss this play, but after the discussion about West Side Story, I am reasonably convinced it will be derailed and I am just not interested in/lack the energy to handle misogynists in a place where I come in my downtime.

It’s more than a hunch, less than a sure thing, but this doesn’t feel like a particularly safe space to discuss things that are really dear to my heart/wrong with society.

Sounds really intriguing but no interval puts me off.

I understand. Normally I would have bought a ticket but due to backpain I need a short break.

"Of course, given the reviews, there’s an alternative suggestion that they didn’t want people leaving at the interval"

The reviews were nearly all excellent. Personally, I think it's essential viewing.

Having seen the play I think their fears were justified. I would have left after the first half but am very pleased that I didn’t. You have to see the whole play in order to have an informed discussion about it. That said I find it a tricky play to talk about. If there are tickets available I would recommend people go. The play didn’t really say anything new to me, but I admired the writer’s boldness and confidence in writing as though she were saying things that had never been done or said before (ah youth!). And you know, perhaps these things have to be stated over and over again until a change occurs.

Everyone seems to think the first scene is the best, but I must be missing something because I thought it was terrible to the point that I was actually thinking about leaving. It just seemed to be a bunch of cliches and half-baked Guardian op-eds thrown in a blender. As a minority I'm not even sure why I can't stand this kind of discussion but I guess it makes me feel conspicuous and awkward. But the thing that bothered me most about it is that I didn't even recognise what they were discussing - admittedly I've only been going to the theatre regularly for the past 2 years or so (obviously I'm no expert but I try!)but it seemed more like they were talking about new wave French cinema than contemporary London theatre.

It got a lot better after that thankfully, loved the playing with form and structure and the meta-theatrical aspects. The 2nd act was clever and unsettling, the 3rd I think was subversive and surreal and the finale about the inevitability of power and artistic tunnel vision was an interesting way to close and mirrored the 2nd.


I didn't actually find the gender politics or even the commentary on creativity and the artist's place in the world that profound of provocative - deep down I'm not even sure I even found it that experimental after just seeing 4.48 psychosis but it holds your attention and parts of it work brilliantly.  

I saw this yesterday afternoon and found it exasperating, fascinating, challenging and sometimes downright stupid. I thought the first scene was as infuriating as Oleanna but then I liked the "meta" aspect of the talkback and the cassuolet scene I thought was terrific but then the forest scene I thought was over the top pretentious but then... well as you can tell I went back ands forth throughout the play. She raises some valid points about the needless exploitation of women's bodies in scene one but by the end of the play she was undercutting them by her own exploitation of women's bodies and sex . If that last scene had been written by a man it would be condemned as wildly sexist. But maybe that's part of her point. Ultimately though I found myself asking if a playwright's internal and creative struggle is of interest to anyone but another playwright?

Really good piece by Dan Rebellato on this (warning - spoilery, obviously)

www.danrebellato.co.uk/spilledink/2018/5/14/the-writer

"Ella Hickson's new play is a beautiful savage mess of a thing."