Theatre's regrettable new rule: keep it simple, stupid

CULTURE SHOCK: HERE IS A SWEEPING generalisation. Twenty years ago, if you went to a new play by an up-and-coming writer, you expected it to be all voice and no technique. Now if you go to see a new play by an up-and-coming writer you will probably find that it is all technique and no voice.

Any play is made up of a combination of two elements. One is the authorial voice: the vision, the ambition, the emotional or intellectual charge. This element can be summed up in a question: what is at stake here? Is the writer summoning large forces and making you as a member of the audience feel that your fixed attitudes and perceptions are being put at risk? The other element is technique, the handling of the basic resources at the author’s disposal: time, space, language, movement, story. Is the writer able to control these resources? Are they in charge of the stage and of theatre as a form? With an accomplished dramatist, voice and technique are working in harmony.

But accomplished plays are rare, and it generally takes a long period of trial and error before even a good writer can produce one. This is because (a) writing plays is very hard and (b) you don’t really know the strengths and weaknesses of a play until it’s produced. So, although there are dazzling exceptions, most new plays by young writers can be expected to fall short in one area or the other.

The interesting thing, though, is that there has been a general shift in the nature of the imperfection. In the 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s problems were almost invariably in the area of technique. There was a touch of the sorcerer’s apprentice about most young dramatists: they had the power but couldn’t control it. They wanted to deploy big ideas and big emotions but didn’t know how to shape them into a coherent whole, to turn the limitations of the theatrical form into the strengths of simplicity. The moments that made you squirm in the presence of new plays by young writers 20 years ago were almost always moments of emotional overstatement, of heightened drama edging into hysteria. The writers started with voice, and the best of them gradually added the technique.

Now it is the other way around. Young writers are steeped in the techniques of good drama. They get an education just by watching television, where the best American shows offer instant masterclasses in dialogue, economy of action and narrative arcs. And they can also get a formal education: Nancy Harris, whose Abbey debut, No Romance,opened at the Peacock last week, is a graduate of the University of Birmingham's postgraduate playwriting programme. The result is that you seldom see a technically bad play by a young writer any more. It may seem ridiculous to complain about this, but it is not entirely a good thing.

To explain why, consider two shows: Harris's No Romanceand Paul Kennedy's Love in Dublin,at the Focus recently. They have a great deal in common. Both deal with ideas of sexuality and relationships in contemporary Ireland. Both consist essentially of short plays with very small casts. Love in Dublinis made up of two 50-minute monologues. No Romance, though it is presented as a single play, is really three 50-minute pieces stitched together by a clever plot device. The first two are two-handers, the last a three-hander. Both are excellently produced, with very strong performers (Linda Teehan and Michael Bates at the Focus, a fine cast of established actors at the Peacock). Both are confident, well-structured pieces. And both feel terribly small.

What’s happened, I think, is that there is a Kiss rule for the emerging writer: keep it simple, stupid. Don’t try too much. The regrettable rise of the monologue in Irish theatre has created a tacit pact between theatre companies and new writers. If you stick to monologues or two-handers (a) we don’t have to risk a lot of money and (b) you don’t have to undertake the messy, awkward, high-risk business of large-scale dramatic conflict.

The problem with this is simple: theatre. It's a form of exposure, of danger, of high stakes, of soaring triumphs and humiliating pratfalls. It is not accidental that both Love in Dublinand No Romanceseem to be rooted in other forms. Kennedy's monologues could just as easily be short stories. The first two parts of Harris's compendium feel, with the exception of one unconvincing visual device, like radio plays. The overall feel, therefore, is one of self-protection: technical mastery will be assured because the technique will not be put under the pressure of big ideas or high emotions.

Harris is a particularly interesting case, because she is so clearly the real deal. She's both polished and sharp, with a gift for crisp dialogue, a wryly compassionate take on human foibles, a nice economy of effect and an innate sense of how to shape a story. She has the tools of her trade. What does not come across in No Romanceis her own voice, the sense of the unique thing she wants to make with those tools.

There is a trade-off in No Romancebetween polish and control on the one side and passion on the other, and to my taste the balance is far too heavily weighted on the first side. You get a sense in the second part of the show that she has an anarchic, almost grotesque side to her imagination, but it is kept in check. It is not accidental that the evening only really takes fire in the last part, when the action is scaled up a little with the addition of a third actor, and the redoubtable Stella McCusker taps into the underground stream of wildness that bubbles beneath Harris's self-control.

Given a choice between writers who start out untamed and overambitious and then pare things back and those who start small and controlled and then try to expand their horizons, I’d always go for the first option. But for that to happen theatres have to tell young writers that it’s okay to take risks and, inevitably, to fail.