Sex,
power and money are at the heart of this year’s Mayfesto. Various notions of
escape may be the official theme of the month-long mini season of politically
driven theatre in its broadest sense, but more visceral everyday concerns are the
drive behind two of its flagship shows. The Mistress Contract is Abi Morgan’s
play based on a real life story of a woman who agreed to provide ‘mistress
services’ for a man in return for paid income and a home. Johnny McKnight,
meanwhile, offers up Low Pay? Don’t Pay!, his brand new Glasgow-set
contemporary take on Italian maestro Dario Fo’s anti-capitalist classic about a
group of women who liberate their messages from a supermarket’s aisles.
In
different ways, both shows acknowledge the ongoing complexities of subjects
which might initially appear to be black and white affairs. The Mistress Contract
was adapted by Morgan from a memoir by the couple known only as She and He for
a production in 2014 by former National Theatre of Scotland founding artistic
director Vicky Featherstone at the Royal Court, where she is currently in
charge.
Nicol’s
revival, the play’s Scottish premiere, forms part of her tenure as Mayfesto
resident artist, an initiative for early career artists she shares with writer
Andy Edwards. His play, Arketype, will be seen as a work in progress directed
by Nicol later in the month. Nicol’s brief was to present a Scottish premiere
of a work that was intimate enough to work in the Tron’s bijou Changing House
space. The Mistress Contract fitted the bill perfectly, as well as fitting in
with Nicol’s other aims.
“I set
myself a task to find a play in which a woman has a positive experience of sex
rather than as a victim, so it was really good to discover The Mistress
Contract,” Nicol explains. “Doing it now is really interesting in light of what’s
happened with Harvey Weinstein and #MeToo, as the conversations that we’re having
now about sex and power have totally reframed the play from what they were in
2014.”
With
just two actors onstage playing the couple known only as She and He, talk and
everything else that goes with it is never cheap I what follows.
“It’s
about how we engage with talking about sex,” says Nicol. “We’re still
discovering the language to do that, and the play doesn’t provide any easy
answers. It’s a real life story, and it’s full of contradictions because of
that. I really hope people will go away and have their own conversations about
it, and try and find ways to talk about sex and intimacy themselves.”
Whether
consenting adults find it any easier to do so after seeing the play will
probably remain as much of a private matter as it did when She and He began
their arrangement.
“The
play is set between 1981 and 2010,” says Nicol, “and lots of things people were
talking about in 1981 are still happening now, so it’s become much more about
the current state of affairs, and how little has changed. They were talking
about easy access to porn in 1983 in much the same we are with the internet
now, and she’s lamenting the fact that he’s got a new lease of life aged forty,
yet she feels like her life is over. This is still happening today.”
This is
also the case with Low Pay? Don’t Pay! Originally presented in Italy in 1974 as
Non Si Paga! Non Si Paga!, Fo’s play was translated into English as Can’t Pay?
Won’t Pay! a year later, and became a staple of left wing radical theatre. The
play’s power to tap into a wider public consciousness could be seen several
years later when the play’s title was adopted by the anti-poll tax movement in
1990, the same year the play was produced in Scotland by Borderline Theatre
Company. It was a later production, however, that is the roots of this current
rendering of the play.
“It was
one of the first plays I saw when I moved to Glasgow,” says McKnight of a 2003
production for 7:84 directed by the Tron’s current artistic director, Andy
Arnold, “and it had a really big effect on me. It’s a farce, and it’s funny,
but not dumb funny, and it’s got something to say about the world. When it was
first done politics were a bit more black and white than they are now, with
everything much more splintered, but I really liked the idea of setting it in
Glasgow, and the idea of going to a supermarket and robbing it doesn’t seem too
far away just now.”
For his
new take on things, McKnight has written a version drawn from a translation by
Joseph Farrell, the Glasgow-based writer who was arguably Fo’s greatest
champion prior to the Italian maestro’s death in 2016 aged ninety. Following
it’s Mayfesto run, Rosalind Sydney’s production for Glasgow Life will tour
community centres around Scotland in a wat that aims to capture the spirit of
the play, taking it to audiences at a grassroots level in a way that can’t help
but evoke memories of what now looks like a golden age of political touring
theatre during the 1970s and 1980s.
“It’s
such a big political play,” says McKnight, “but I don’t think politics is
speaking to people today in the same way as it did when the play first came
out. Unlike then, when the unions were really strong, it feels like nobody’s
really speaking up for anyone anymore, so people become disengaged.
“We’ve
all got this rage about politics, but we’re also exhausted with the fight and
are starting to disengage again. So I suppose one of the things the play is
about is looking at what it would take for people to get off the couch and get
politically active gain.”
In The
Mistress Contract as well, Nicol is looking at a more ambiguous dramatic
critique that favours nuance over polemic.
“Most of
the response to Time’s Up and #MeToo has been how this is good or this is bad,
and there’s a very clear line that’s been drawn between the two,” she says. “I
think The Mistress Contract is saying things aren’t quite so clear. There’s an
openness and an honesty about things in the play. There are reasons why we’ve
got to where we are now, and we have to try and find different ways of talking
about how we connect with each other.”
Again,
Low Pay? Don’t Pay! is similarly tapping into the mixed-up, muddled-up state
the world is in at the moment. As history has shown us, it is times like these
when the most radical forms of art burst through the barricades.
“There’s
a real thirst for political theatre just now,” McKnight observes, “but with
everything going on in the world, there’s a fatigue as well. For us, it’s about
keeping it funny, and rather than just preaching to the choir, making sure
there’s a congregation there as well.”
The
Mistress Contract runs from May 1-11, and Low Pay? Don’t Pay! from May 2-11,
both at the Tron Theatre, Glasgow as part of Mayfesto. Low Pay? Don’t Pay!
tours to Barlanark Community Centre, May 15; Govanhill Neighbourhood Centre,
May 16; Cumbernauld Theatre, May 17; Pollockshields Community Centre, May 18;
Platform, Glasgow, May 19; Lodging House Mission, Glasgow, May 22; Penilee
Community Centre, May 24; Brunton Theatre, Musselburgh, May 25; Possilpoint
Community Centre, May 28; Ruchill Community Centre, May 29; Barrowfield
Community Centre, May 30; Barmulloch Community Centre, May 31; Paisley Arts
Centre, June 1.
What Else is On
This
year’s Mayfesto season describes itself as ‘a season of escapology’. As well as
The Mistress Contract and Low Pay? Don’t Pay!, it features nine other shows.
Turn the
Night (May 10-11) is musician Gav Prentice’s first play.
Woke
(May 15-16) sees Apphia Campbell look at the twentieth century African American
struggle through several generations of civil rights activists.
Electrolyte
(May 15-18) is a piece of gig theatre which explores mental health through
spoken word poetry and song.
This
Girl Laughs, This Girl Cries, This Girl Does Nothing (May 17-18) is a
contemporary fairytale for children and families co-produced by Imaginate and
Stellar Quines.
Status
(May 24-25) is a collaboration between Chris Thorpe and Rachel Chavkin of
American theatre company The T.E.A.M. about running away from the national
story you’re given.
Arketype
(May 24-25) is a work in progress by Andy Edwards and directed by Eve Nicol
which reimagines the story of Noah’s Ark for a contemporary seascape.
Pyromania:
Tomorrow, Under Snow – Pyromania is a programme initiated by the Fire Exit company,
and here features a rehearsed reading of another new play by Andy Edwards.
Alice in
Wonderland (May 29-June 1) sees Ireland’s Blue Raincoat Theatre Company return
to the Tron with a visually sumptuous take on Lewis Carroll’s topsy-turvy tale.
AWOL
(May 30-31) is a Scratch performance of a new show about escape by the
ThickSkin company.
The Herald, April 27th 2019
ends
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