Last year I went to see a show at the Royal Court called “How
to Hold Your Breath.” It was crudely simple. It transposed the action desperate
people take in the poor world to make it by any means necessary to the rich
one. It showed a Europe in freefall, and its desperate, broke, unprotected
citizens – that is Dana (Maxine Peake) and her sister - trying to get out. It goes in
a fiercely straight line to oblivion: miscarriage in transit, prostitution,
territorial disputes with other women also forced into prostitution, and
ultimately death by drowning in a horrific sea crossing.
It’s crude because the scenario is crude. There is no arc;
rather a depth charge to oblivion. I found it profoundly moving. Not because of
my identification with a central character whom I was rooting for but, because,
to my shame, I hadn’t considered what that action might be like if it was me. Us.
No doubt you had. But I hadn’t and it shook me up.
I read Susannah Clapp’s review of the show and for the first
time in my life I genuinely understood the meaning of that antiquated phrase “bourgeois.”
Clapp bemoaned that the brilliant Maxine Peake – and she is very very good – needs “a
clear and incisive story. And she does not get it. Is catastrophe inevitable,
is it the result of a chain of events, or is it woo-woo inexplicable?” Quentin Letts kept his rep in check, farting out: “How To Hold Your Breath is so
pessimistic it could have been created by Private Fraser from Dad's Army.” In
answer to the first question: yes, as things stand, that outcome is inevitable.
In response to Letts’ guff – yes it is pessimistic, and in the case of this
particular narrative, are there grounds currently for anything other than
pessimism?
Given we are in the privileged part of the world –
notwithstanding our own indigenous poor – in the cultural sphere we have
nurtured a curious addiction to hope. And indeed, certainty. The biggest
criticism of Harris’ play from Clapp and Letts is that it asks too many questions
without providing clear answers about why this is happening and how it could be
avoided. I can’t for the life of me think why Zinnie Harris should spend one
second answering her own questions. She’s a playwright. Her job is to ask
questions and and tell the truth. A personal story and moment of discovery and
therefore change which many aspiring
playwrights will recognise from dramaturgical processes of varying rigour as
the mantra of “how to write a play” is refreshingly absent here. Because all Dana
(Peake) is trying to do is survive. Flip Letts’ backhanded compliment on its
head that “it is a mark of Miss Peake’s stage skills that we still hold some
interest in Dana’s fate” and perhaps imagine that an urgent, truthful,
unsentimental, fearless and no doubt flawed (what isn’t?) piece of theatre needs an actor of Maxine Peake’s ability
to yank us through this unrelenting descent into hell.
Clapp signs off with the bafflingly rude: “How not to write a
play.” I think it is exactly how to
write a play. It’s not Zinnie Harris’s responsibility to champher the edges of
a crystal clear narrative into something that offers hope, answers and personal
discovery. After this week, such an occupation feels horribly misplaced.
