August 2014
Holes: a letter to The Independent
I am writing in response to David Lister’s assertion that we should have censored our production of Tom Basden’s play Holes by pulling it in response to the shooting down of MH17 [“How the news turned a comedy into plane-crash theatre”] . I would like to object in the strongest possible terms to the statement that we have been ‘downright disrespectful’.
Firstly, Holes is not about plane crashes in the same way that One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest is not about asylums. It is merely the setting. A jumping off point for an exploration of how we are living now. It is not a ‘plane crash comedy’ any more than The Tempest is a ‘boat-crash comedy’. We began work on Holes in 2010. MH17 happened the day after the first preview. David Lister on the other hand wrote his article this week. I assume the Independent will be donating the advertising revenue from that page to the victims of the crash.
Lister cited the critic of this paper who referred to the play as ‘ill-timed’. As opposed to all of those exquisitely timed plane crash comedies? That wonderful ‘plane crash comedy’ in the early ’90s timed just at the point where people had stopped caring about Lockerbie? Since the play’s beginning there have always been 450 charred corpses just offstage – it’s always been uncomfortable – that’s its point. I can’t conceive of a point in history where that scenario is as David Lister says ‘innocuous’. It has never appeared so to us.
I’m willing to wager that between here and the crash site of MH17 more children have been killed by their mothers than died in that plane crash in the last two weeks. Is Lister suggesting the National Theatre close Medea? The RSC comedies season of 2005 opened with Twelfth Night followed by The Comedy Of Errors in the light of the Boxing day tsunami the RSC did not postpone. Neither were those plays labelled ‘tsunami comedies’ by anyone.
The play is an metaphorical exploration of how we’re living in the same vein as Godot or Huis Clos or The Tempest (that famous and beautifully timed ‘boat crash comedy’). It’s a poetic and absurd response to these dark, dark times. How are we supposed to act in the shadow of such a welter of information about so many enormous acts of violence. On a planet that is dying. What are we actually supposed to do? It seems to me we don’t know HOW to make the world better. I don’t know either. I’d love someone to come up with a plan. Like so much great comedy at root is a cry of despair. Like Chaplin responding to the great depression, Beckett to the A-Bomb and and the absurdists to communism.
Absurdity juxtaposed against unimaginable horror seem to me deeply appropriate responses to the zeitgeist. Just because the play makes people laugh, it doesn’t mean that it is not saying something profound. Ask Chris Morris, Armando Ianucci, Beckett, Swift, Shakespeare, Euripides and so on. The mantra of Basden’s suited and booted demographics experts throughout this play is ‘It'll be fine’... ‘It's going to be OK’ despite the fact that their situation is patently hopeless. This is what made the play speak to me as a director.
The one thing we do agree on is that some lines take on a certain electricity in light of recent events. There are many. ‘Planes just don't go missing’ is one. One character making a rejoinder to someone who’s just complained about a crass joke they made about a dead air steward says ‘it’s not funny, yet...the chatrooms’ll be full of this stuff...and good luck to ’em I say otherwise it’s all a bit depressing, isn’t it?’ – to which the other character responds ‘there's an argument for saying it should be depressing’. And yes there is speculation that the plane has been shot down by ‘terrorists’. But the lines that ring most true to me in light of recent tragedies is this exchange about our fictional plane crash
IAN: What do you want me say then?
GUS: Nothing. Don’t say anything.
Respectfully, perhaps Mr. Lister might like to consider these lines afresh.
I don’t know how to make the lives of the families of the crash victims of MH17 better. It seems he does. It’s to take to the opinion pages to erroneously label a play ‘a plane crash comedy’, opine that its creative team have been ‘downright disrespectful’ to them, and that the play ought to be censored as a result. I’m sure that these unfortunate people have got far weightier matters to concern themselves with at the moment. As for anyone else, I don’t think it’s any of their business.
The idea that it is the place of the Arts Editor (the Arts Editor!) of the Independent to take offence on their behalf is precisely what Tom’s difficult, knotty and yes, funny, play is satirising.
His view that the play is uncomfortable is shared by many critics. But his view that the play be closed is not.
Dark days indeed.
Yours sincerely
Phillip Breen