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My Edinburgh Festival wound up (very tightly) this weekend with two shows on Friday, an outdoor gig in Glasgow on Saturday, a performance of Lanark on Sunday and the fireworks last night.
I’ll try and catch up on “The Elephant in the Room” (excellent, scary) “Live and Late” (chaotic, late) Paolo Nutini (wired to the moon, in great voice) and the fireworks (away off in the distance, beautiful) later, but what really occupied my thoughts was Lanark, and the post-performance conversations about it.
Here are some things I think it’s important to know about Lanark going in:
1. It’s an adaption of a novel by Alistair Grey.
2. Alistair Grey is a towering figure in 20th Century Scottish Fiction
3. Lanark is widely acknowledged as one of, if not the, most important Scottish novels of the 20th Century
4. The book is split between thinly disguised auto-biography, set in an other-dimensional analogue of Glasgow called Unthank, and even less thinly disguised auto-biography set in Glasgow itself
5. The book deals extensively with the author’s delusion that he is in some way special, by way of his genius as an artist, but ultimately he is forced to concede that he’s more or less ordinary, and will live an ordinary life and die an ordinary death
6. Most of the book reflects the author’s obsession with himself (a common trait in autobiography): his inadequacy as a father, his sexual failings, his illnesses, real and imagined, his success and lack of success with women and work and education.
Frankly, I loved the play. It was long, and rich, and dealt with the meat of the novel to my satisfaction. I think Alistair would like it and hate it, that it works as SF and as a biography, and that I’ll probably go and see it again, when it gets to Glasgow, because I thought the Edinburgh audience was a little… flat.
The fun and games started afterwards, with a conversation on the way through the Meadows, continued in a car trip back to where I was staying, and continued further (long after midnight) with the people I went to see it with.
Two of them, an old, old friend and the other a mid-twenties film student, stayed mostly quiet. One, a mid-twenties playwright, had a lot to say.
What she knew about Lanark going in:
1. It’s an adaption of a novel
And nothing else. So she went in on the back of four or five years of theatre studies (she picked up her masters this year) having spent half her life in or around theatre productions, and with absolutely no idea who Alistair Grey is, or what Lanark was about.
Her reaction?
A disapointing adaption, and a disapointing play. Three hours of self-indulgent whining, with no sympathetic characters. Practically no female presence except as mobile set-dressing. A second act which was too long, too repetitive, and sucked the life out of the chorus technique. No pay off for the journey. Didn’t focus on the interesting stuff – capitalism eating the poor, politics as celebrity, the relationship between place and self, in favour of a man proving that he was ordinary and would die ordinary.
I was shocked. Loudly and at length. I brought in Hamlet (“What do you want, more sword fights?”) the importance of the novel, the fact that an adaption of Lanark which doesn’t deal fully with Lanark would not be a fair adaption, and I argued that you didn’t need a pay off, or that understanding that we are all ordinary is a fair pay off in itself.
And She Would Not Budge.
Didn’t care that the book was… well, didn’t care that the book was anything. The book wasn’t on stage. What was on stage was an adaption, and it was a bad adaption, that made a bad play. Oh, some things worked, theatrically, but its spine, the sad life and undistinguished death of a middle aged white man, who imagines himself special, who wants to be a writer, or an artist, or a husband or a father, and who fails in a fairly dull way at all of these does not make a good play.
What doesn't worry me is that she’s wrong. By my lights. Plays about self-obsessed middle-aged men can obviously be successful. Obviously. Look at “Death Of A Salesman”. Look at the career of Woody Allen
.
What worries me is that my lights may be wrong. Maybe the days when the self-obsession of a middle aged man made for good story-telling are over. Maybe they should be. Hard thoughts, when you’re a middle-aged man…
(Also, being ranted at by a young, well informed writer who is passionate about her work and who can fight her corner as well as I can was great, thought provoking fun. I’m lucky to know her).
Anyway, I think that all makes Lanark the highlight of what has been my best festival to date.
I’ll try and catch up on “The Elephant in the Room” (excellent, scary) “Live and Late” (chaotic, late) Paolo Nutini (wired to the moon, in great voice) and the fireworks (away off in the distance, beautiful) later, but what really occupied my thoughts was Lanark, and the post-performance conversations about it.
Here are some things I think it’s important to know about Lanark going in:
1. It’s an adaption of a novel by Alistair Grey.
2. Alistair Grey is a towering figure in 20th Century Scottish Fiction
3. Lanark is widely acknowledged as one of, if not the, most important Scottish novels of the 20th Century
4. The book is split between thinly disguised auto-biography, set in an other-dimensional analogue of Glasgow called Unthank, and even less thinly disguised auto-biography set in Glasgow itself
5. The book deals extensively with the author’s delusion that he is in some way special, by way of his genius as an artist, but ultimately he is forced to concede that he’s more or less ordinary, and will live an ordinary life and die an ordinary death
6. Most of the book reflects the author’s obsession with himself (a common trait in autobiography): his inadequacy as a father, his sexual failings, his illnesses, real and imagined, his success and lack of success with women and work and education.
Frankly, I loved the play. It was long, and rich, and dealt with the meat of the novel to my satisfaction. I think Alistair would like it and hate it, that it works as SF and as a biography, and that I’ll probably go and see it again, when it gets to Glasgow, because I thought the Edinburgh audience was a little… flat.
The fun and games started afterwards, with a conversation on the way through the Meadows, continued in a car trip back to where I was staying, and continued further (long after midnight) with the people I went to see it with.
Two of them, an old, old friend and the other a mid-twenties film student, stayed mostly quiet. One, a mid-twenties playwright, had a lot to say.
What she knew about Lanark going in:
1. It’s an adaption of a novel
And nothing else. So she went in on the back of four or five years of theatre studies (she picked up her masters this year) having spent half her life in or around theatre productions, and with absolutely no idea who Alistair Grey is, or what Lanark was about.
Her reaction?
A disapointing adaption, and a disapointing play. Three hours of self-indulgent whining, with no sympathetic characters. Practically no female presence except as mobile set-dressing. A second act which was too long, too repetitive, and sucked the life out of the chorus technique. No pay off for the journey. Didn’t focus on the interesting stuff – capitalism eating the poor, politics as celebrity, the relationship between place and self, in favour of a man proving that he was ordinary and would die ordinary.
I was shocked. Loudly and at length. I brought in Hamlet (“What do you want, more sword fights?”) the importance of the novel, the fact that an adaption of Lanark which doesn’t deal fully with Lanark would not be a fair adaption, and I argued that you didn’t need a pay off, or that understanding that we are all ordinary is a fair pay off in itself.
And She Would Not Budge.
Didn’t care that the book was… well, didn’t care that the book was anything. The book wasn’t on stage. What was on stage was an adaption, and it was a bad adaption, that made a bad play. Oh, some things worked, theatrically, but its spine, the sad life and undistinguished death of a middle aged white man, who imagines himself special, who wants to be a writer, or an artist, or a husband or a father, and who fails in a fairly dull way at all of these does not make a good play.
What doesn't worry me is that she’s wrong. By my lights. Plays about self-obsessed middle-aged men can obviously be successful. Obviously. Look at “Death Of A Salesman”. Look at the career of Woody Allen
.
What worries me is that my lights may be wrong. Maybe the days when the self-obsession of a middle aged man made for good story-telling are over. Maybe they should be. Hard thoughts, when you’re a middle-aged man…
(Also, being ranted at by a young, well informed writer who is passionate about her work and who can fight her corner as well as I can was great, thought provoking fun. I’m lucky to know her).
Anyway, I think that all makes Lanark the highlight of what has been my best festival to date.
