28 August 2006 Written by Andrew Eglinton Print This Post  Email This Post

Written by Moses Raine and directed by Maria Aberg, Shrieks of Laughter is on at the Soho Theatre until the 3rd of June. The ‘teaser’ given on the Soho Theatre website reads as follows:

“Henry takes a slow breath and closes his eyes as a deep voice guides him into the dark waters of his subconscious. We follow him into a surreal world where a series of strange events bring hidden feelings about himself and those closest to him bubbling to the surface.

Moses’ startling imagery and simple storytelling conjure up a beautiful but unsettling dreamscape. At just 21 years old, he has a distinctive and fresh theatrical voice; as part of Soho’s Writer’s Attachment Programme he is likely to follow in the hugely successful footsteps of recent WAP writers such as Rebecca Lenkiewicz and Laura Wade.”

This was my first visit in quite some time to the Soho Theatre, I was hoping to see Breakfast with Mugabe not so long ago, but never got the chance (though now it has transferred to the Duchess Theatre so there’s still time). Part of the reason behind wanting to see Shrieks of Laughter came from the intrigue of seeing the work of a 21 year-old playwright, probably more so than my initial interest in the themes presented in the teaser. There is a stigma attached to ‘young writers’: a perceived lack of experience, a sense of the author not having ‘lived’ which in many people’s minds reduces the author’s critical and sensory approach of the world to a ‘narrow’ depiction of the emotional turmoil of youth (that’s not to say that adulthood doesn’t have its fair share of emotion and turmoil!)

Watching the play was in many ways the experience of seeing ’seeds’ of great potential being sewn in the ‘right’ places but all too often left un-nurtured. The play opens with a youth at a therapy session. With the youth glued to the proverbial therapy chair, the controlling therapist sends him into a state of hypnosis. As he “spirals” into the territory of dreams and passes through the door to the subconcious, we are presented with the bulk of the play: a long scene on the family yacht, fraught with all the misgivings of the youth’s upbringing. There’s the dominant military father, the passive yet loving mother and the arrogant older brother, all battling it out in a ‘metaphorical’ frenzy at sea. The youth is the scape goat in the affair, the canvas onto which his family peers project their insecurities and he is left to soak up the emotional discharge. The boat scene is interspersed with a parallel story of another boat party in distress. Physical images of suffering are evoked in distress calls, broadcast over a VHF radio on stage. This functions as a graphic evocation of violence that contrasts with the largely verbal agression onboard the family vessel. The sudden wrath of the militant father, drunk from a few too many rounds of Pimm’s feels familiar as does the character of the impotent mother. The character relationships work fairly well in relationship to the youth, but the inter-family relationships remain largely untouched. A copious amount of bad language boxes the father into an expression of rage from which there is no way forward.

The only scenes that take place away from the boat happen in the confines of a bathroom; when the youth urinates in semi-darkness he is haunted by voices in his dream, and in the penultimate scene of the play, it is the ‘ghost’ of his mother that appears in the bath tub. This becomes the exposition of fact behind the boy being in therapy, and as the ghost of his late mother coaxes him into an emotional/melodramatic outburst of fear and pain, we are given the ’satisfaction’ of his self-reconcilliation.

The play attempts to get inside the ’scream’, but unfortunately when the house lights came up, I was still waiting comfortably outside the ‘mouth’. The play is not without its potential components, devices are used to set up a dark foray into the pain of losing a loved one: for example, the opening scene when the therapist and the boy recede into darkness and we spiral into dream territory sets up great potential to launch into something more potent. Another example is the toilet scenes which give space for great tension and upturned expectations. Unfortunately, these scenes are left on the sidelines, and a linear narrative takes over; the main story is ‘well written’ but edges round the thematic territory rather than piercing its heart. No doubt Raine will be back with more stories, lessons learnt, experience had and I very much encourage and look forward to seeing his progress.

The culture of new writing in the UK, which I myself belong to and I’m certainly not without weaknesses in my own work, allows for the production of more diverse ‘new writing’ from the very young to the very old, spanning all minority divisions. ‘New labour’ champions this feat and gleans pride from having injected the “most funding of any UK government into the arts” to date (though I should point out that compared to our European neighbours funding available in performing arts is still relatively poor in the UK). New writing is a double-edged argument, with the ‘less is more’ school battling it out against the ‘more is better’ school. But beyond the merits and pitfalls of our theatre culture, the fact remains that to see one’s weakneeses in action and to see those of others is invaluable in informing future decisions for improvement in writing. Without this process the chances for learning are criticially reduced. I really recommend reading this paper by Munira Mirza on current UK cultural policy for an in-depth analysis of the ’state of the arts’ 2006.