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APRIL 14 AT 8PM THE LIVING THEATRE WILL PRESENT A READING OF WRITING ON THE WALL BY SCOTTIST DRAMATIST ALAN MCMURTRIE, HUSBAND OF IMKE BUCHHOLZ, HISTORIC MEMBER OF THE LIVING THEATRE COMPANY
Writing on the Wall
An absurdist drama? Well, no, because the absurdity is all too laughably familiar. Is it the absurdity of a competitive mindset that invades our most intimate realities & controls & belittles our possible lives?
In five big chairs (dentist's chairs? electric chairs?) sit the five hen-pecking, squabbling principals of our story.
A complacent, self-serving Winner. A troubled, insightful Loser. A ruthlessly ambitious Riser. A confused but honest Youngster. And Mel.
All born into winning & losing.
From time to time, they are whirled about on a massive, monstrous revolve, compelled to enact a terrible, but ultimately meaningless game, the Method. Could this be the scramble of a Stock exchange? The bitching of reality TV?
Or just a wicked fairground? Anyway, it's all they've got.
A tiny society dedicated to winning & losing. 'Compete to eat!' they cry. 'Compete to eat!' But, oh! where's the
bloody food?
It's not of course the evil chairs that hold them captive,
but the web of the Method, its Rules & Procedures & above all its loaded, inescapable Language. For when the Method sleeps, they dance another forbidden, almost forgotten tune.
And who are these strange beings that minister behind the chairs, patient, often silent, but then whispering, whispering?
Tho Pru doubts & Sass queries, only Mel has the guts to defy
& escape the Method. Courageously, painfully she clambers up
& out of the mean deception that captivates their lives
- & finds there is an alternative reality.
So why does she come back to tell the others? Why does she imagine they can listen? That we don't have to live like this, in the web we have spun for ourselves, around ourselves?
Writing on the Wall is a re-working of Plato's Myth of the Cave, in which the Human Race is seen to be chasing the shadows of inadequate knowledge. And like any decent Myth, this new version is open to several interpretations. But whatever way you read it, the Writing on the Wall is all too familiar, & Mel's cry against the starvation of the Spirit will find a contagious & contemporary echo in the thirst
& desperation of lost realities.
Writing on the Wall is by turns witty, satiric, lyrical & painful. Probably too clever for its own good. Definitely different.
Come & make your own interpretation.
Alan McMurtrie is a prize-winning playwright. His work has been performed on BBC Radio 3 & World Service, BBC TV, & on stage at Oxford Playhouse, The Young Vic, The Old Red Lion, Bristol Old Vic, Chelsea Centre Theatre & in the USA. He is perhaps best known for The Prisoner's Pumpkin, which was voted Best Play at the London New Play Competition in 1992. Formerly Senior Lecturer in English Literature & Creative Writing at University of North London, he now lives in Germany with his wife & daughter.
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