ENJOY by Alan Bennett

It is always an event seeing a show in the West End. London is a city with such a buzz: it’s cosmopolitan, busy, beautiful (some say ‘like the Curate’s egg’) and varied. I can’t say that theatre land is particularly beautiful but the sheer choice of shows is amazing.

So it was with pleasure (in spite of mixed reviews) that I joined a group of friends to see Alan Bennett’s play, Enjoy. First produced in 1980, the play didn’t do that well, but of course since then Bennett has become a household name, a national treasure.

Set in the 1970’s, the elderly Connie and her husband, Wilf, live in one of the last remaining houses due for demolition in a northern town. Wilf looks forward to the new maisonette they are due to move to, his wife does not. A young woman from the Council arrives to observe them and assess their quality of life. They have an idealised opinion of their daughter (whom hubby idolises) and a son whom Wilf has disowned (but wife adores) and who has not been seen for years.

The play’s first act could be described as ‘gently’ amusing. Pleasant, Bennett quips and northern truisms, but a little lacking in sparkle. Still, the audience had the expectation that this was a play that was going to evolve into something interesting. Then the second act descended into pure farce, the subject matter thoroughly suited to its middle-aged matinee audience. The fact that it was very funny was due to a great extent to the superb acting and relief from the rather flat first act.

Unfortunately, Linda, the daughter, arrives at this stage (no pun intended) – nothing wrong with her acting but it would have been so much better had the character not been seen in the flesh. The audience were quite aware that she was no shorthand typist but a prostitute: the character added nothing to the play, the slapstick/farcical sex scenes were thoroughly embarrassing in their naff-ness, her hint that her father had abused her incongruous and gratuitous. The play would have been improved if she had simply been imagined – and all the more powerful for it.

But Bennett does show what a fantasy life some people live, and to what lengths they will go to fit into their role. Although, as the play neared the end, the tone of the piece became positively morbid. It was as if Bennett couldn’t quite decide what he wanted the play to be. Not the ’stream of consciousness’ monologue of his we have come to love but part monologue(s), part farce, part heavy message. It seems as if he was bent on ticking all the boxes – homosexual son, doting mother, bullying father, abused daughter, hoodwinked aged parents, violent yoof, etc.

What made it, nevertheless, a memorable event was Alison Steadman’s superb acting as Connie. She managed to carry the whole thing. But (to quote a critic)'the poignancy of her character – one of a woman descending into dementia – was camouflaged by poking fun at her affliction'. The grumpy brutal character of Wilf is well acted – but what a part to have to play. The only time the audience have any sympathy for him is when he says how he would have liked to hold his sons hand when he was a boy.

There are twists and turns in the plot – some thoroughly expected, others not – but what started as a kitchen sink drama, progressed to farce and ended up as tragedy – left the audience feeling a bit, well, uncomfortable. And cheated. It was billed as great comedy. We – the audience – were not quite sure what had happened. As the play took a heavy and macabre turn after the farce it left us feeling as if a freight train has just come thundering out of a toytown tunnel.

But, if nothing else, it made me see Bennett, the writer, in a more realistic light. This play was written at the start of his writing career, and to see his later work (such as Talking Heads, The History Boys etc) makes one realise how much some writers can grow and blossom. So I’m taking an optimistic view of the thing – and hope we can all enjoy such improvement.

Simone de Beauvoir and Rachida Dati : a co-incidental pair.

Co-incidence is a funny old thing: when it happens we think it is magical but I suppose – if you are a mathematician – it is only a matter of odds. For example, here’s my latest little co-incidence. Years after struggling with Simone de Beauvoir’s dense book, The Second Sex, I found a slim volume of hers on my bookshelf that I had never read (put off, no doubt, by the earlier struggle).

Well, I picked up A Very Easy Death – possibly had the subject on my mind as the anniversary of my father’s death is about to be - and a very easy read it turned out to be. Quite unassuming and virtually without incident – if you don’t count the death of her mother– it raised subtle questions about relationships with ones parents that gave me pause for thought.

Then blow me down, only a few pages off finishing it I hear a Radio 4 programme all about Simone de Beauvoir: 2009 is the 60th anniversary of the publication of The Second Sex. The gist of the message enshrined in its pages is that women are not simply adjuncts to men.

Now, this might be assumed as quite obviously the case today, but SdB (somehow it’s inconceivable to call her Simone) was from a bourgeois Catholic background, living in a period – in France – when a woman’s place was definitely in the home and her time fully for the benefit of her husband.


She was against obligatory motherhood, advised women not to live solely as a housewife and, in the book, described women’s sexuality: her views caused, as you might expect, quite a stir. SdB had enrolled herself at the Sorbonne and studied philosophy: here she met Jean-Paul Sartre and their passionate partnership – and intellectual harmony - lasted for decades. SdB, like Sartre, espoused personal freedom and this included their sexual life.

She was at the time - and has been since – labelled a feminist by some, not a true feminist by others. On the one hand she felt strongly that “one is not born a woman, one becomes one” (a winner with the feminist and nurture-not-nature view). On the other, she was a victim of all those emotions (jealousy being one) that women fall prey to whatever their views: she was hurt by Sarte’s sexual affairs. Nevertheless, in spite occasional forays into other men’s beds, she was always ‘his woman’. Not a winner with the full-on feminists.

But SdB’s feminism was always – in its simplest form - towards gender equality. Now, here’s another co-incidence: 60 years on. In the press this week we were treated to the headline news that Rachida Dati, the unmarried French Justice Minister, has returned to work only five days after giving birth to her daughter.

She has since been alternatively praised and pilloried: the feminists argue that she is just acting like any one of her bread-winning, ambitious male colleagues and why not. The opposite camp argue that she has not done any favours for her gender: that her decision is not only an unnatural action but one that puts at risk their hard fought-for maternity leave.

Now, I’ll come clean: from choice I stopped work to have my children and did not consider the role to be second-class. Indeed, I considered myself lucky to be able to make that choice, not least because I had a husband to pay the mortgage. Unlike the unmarried, un-partnered, Ms Dati. Surely, she is just a very modern Simone de Beauvoir: gender equality is her aim and personal freedom her choice.

Lucy
lucyannwrites.blogspot.com

PS Having enjoyed A Very Easy Death I have now dug out (you can see how old the books are by the covers!)the two volumes of Simone de Beauvoir's autobiography. The titles are challenging in themselves.