If the 90s were just the 60s turned upside-down, as some wag once suggested, then such a notion confirmed what cultural commentator Michael Bracewell described in his book on the era as an age 'when surface was depth'. What this appeared to mean by the time Stephen Greenhorn's play, Passing Places, appeared in 1997, was a definition of a decade that had already spawned Brit Pop, Girl Power, New Laddism and Cool Britannia. Here, then, was a shallow pool of pop without politics, Barbie Doll feminism in a Union Jack mini dress and sexism with an apparently ironic twist. The Berlin Wall had come down in 1989, and, after a decade of class and civil war by way of the Miners Strike and the Poll Tax, Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had been forced to resign from office after an eleven year reign of terror. Tony Blair's landslide New Labour victory in 1997 suggested that things could only get better, but suddenly, with no pricks to kick against, it
An archive of arts writing by Neil Cooper. Effete No Obstacle.