You can divine pretty much everything of
significance about Tom Holloway’s two-hander before the play itself
begins. Look at the descriptions of the characters: “Angela – young
enough to be in school” and “Mark – old enough to be her father”, and
let the title resonate. There: you already know that it will be about
the territory of fatherhood, of father/daughter relationships,
especially with a teenage daughter verging on womanhood; that it is a
battlefield, a series of power games, most with a sexual undercurrent,
mostly about fatherly control, concern and attention, though some about
the daughter as exploiter and manipulatrix. Look at Max Jones’s set of
a half-built downstairs room, and you know that, like it, matters will
never take finished shape. (Mind you, I have to admit that the pizza
delivery bike smashing through the back wall came as something of a
surprise.)
The only remaining questions
are whether this is an actual father and daughter or merely a pretended
one (has Mark abducted Angela? Is that barred window of literal or only
symbolic portent?), and whether there will be any real sexual abuse
involved or whether it will simply hang over proceedings
in potentia.
In the event, the answers (the apparent answers; I wouldn’t swear to
their absolute accuracy) are yes, real father/daughter, and no, no real
abuse… not that either really matters, because it’s the impressionism
that’s important. Or would be, if it had anything original to say.
After
seeing plays “about” child abuse on two successive evenings, I begin to
think that artists should take more responsibility for not stoking
exaggerated social or moral hysterias. Yes, of course art should ask
awkward questions, but what if their awkwardness and the frequency of
their asking is out of all proportion to their true heft? Holloway’s
play tells us nothing, nor does it uncover any new areas in its
dramatic investigations. The most it might achieve is to make a number
of parents needlessly uneasy and guilty about their dealings with their
offspring, and so mess two generations up even more, leading to more
plays about messed-up relationships and… Well, it’s a way of keeping
writers in material, I suppose. Caroline Steibeis directs Jonathan
McGuinness and Angela Terence. At the end of the 70 minutes the writer,
sitting behind me, had to begin the applause.
Written for the Financial
Times.