{"id":1067,"date":"2015-03-10T16:48:03","date_gmt":"2015-03-10T16:48:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/?p=1067"},"modified":"2015-03-10T16:48:03","modified_gmt":"2015-03-10T16:48:03","slug":"he-got-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/2015\/03\/he-got-game.html","title":{"rendered":"He got game"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Game<\/a><\/p>\n

Who is Mike Bartlett? Is the writer of sawn-off theatrical shooters like Cock<\/em> and Bull<\/em> actually the author of the decade-straddling Earthquakes in London<\/em> and Love Love Love<\/em>, let alone the teasing pageant King Charles III<\/em>? Will the real Bartletts stand up?<\/p>\n

Bartlett\u2019s two most recent plays suggest the borders of his territory. Bull<\/em><\/a> (premiered at the Sheffield Crucible Studio and transferred to London\u2019s Young Vic), nominated for an Olivier Award, is a curt piece in brilliant lockdown. As three colleagues compete to keep their jobs, workplace bullying becomes a corporate corrida<\/a>: Claire Lizzimore\u2019s production was breathless, pummelling. As the victim prepared to rise to the bullies\u2019 challenge, the woman behind me muttered, \u2018Don\u2019t do it, don\u2019t do it, don\u2019t do it<\/em>,\u2019 agonised, under her breath. He did it, and we winced.<\/p>\n

Does Bartlett have a distinctive linguistic register? Sometimes\u2026 In coruscating plays like Contractions<\/em> and Cock,<\/em> the dialogue\u2019s jab and weave, jab and jab, has a needling momentum: Bull<\/em> too. The violence implicit in Bull<\/em> is to the fore in Bartlett\u2019s new play, at London\u2019s Almeida Theatre. Yet Game<\/em><\/a> refuses the adrenalin rush, the shock and outrage that makes Bull<\/em> so upsetting. There are guns, proper injuries, an intent to harm \u2013 which is why it\u2019s disturbing that our outrage and guilty excitement are left hanging.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d love to know how Bartlett begins work, because his plays are often organised around a strong, startling idea. Britain\u2019s heritage-hobbled constitution presented as a Shakespearean pageant (blank verse, ghosts) in King Charles III<\/em>. The exclusive romantic ideal stymied by a bisexual hero in Cock.<\/em> Friendship as a faltering double act (An Intervention<\/em>). The ideas are almost always provoking in themselves, and suggest their own form: it\u2019s a singular imagination.<\/p>\n

[If you plan to see Game,<\/em> best look away now. Maybe catch you at the last paragraph?]<\/p>\n

A great idea also animates Game<\/a>.<\/em> Imagine that people-hunting were a sport. Not the bloodlusting ritual of The Hunger Games<\/em> \u2013 but a packaged, diluted entertainment. Done the spa, the paintballing, the balloon ride? It\u2019s the perfect gift for bored couples at their wits\u2019 end, for a gaggle of gal pals, for corporate boys out to impress.<\/p>\n

Small game in the show home<\/strong><\/p>\n

The audience, seated in four isolated \u2018zones\u2019, spy through the one-way-mirrored walls of a spanking new build that is also a firing range. Customers and a quietly uncomfortable warden watch a young couple go about their domestic lives, then fire when they are in range. It\u2019s initially shocking \u2013 but the twist is that the guns stun rather than splatter. After a pause, the couple continue pottering resignedly about their enclosure. The customer feels a tiny spurt of throat-tearing adrenalin; the victims feel a brief alarm. Over the course of a handful of scenes, these responses are deadened. Both hunter and hunted shrug and sigh and trudge on: pleasure as commodity, taboo as banality, exploitation as a chore.<\/p>\n

Bartlett and his steely collaborators \u2013 director Sacha Wares, designer Miriam Buether, a pedigree cast \u2013 create an incendiary theatrical event then immediately douse the flames. Watching through screens and perspex, listening through headphones, everything is removed. We might be monitoring events on distant CCTV. In a final blindsiding move, the cast don\u2019t even take a curtain call. There\u2019s no release, no communal moment: some spectators patter awkward applause, most merely blink and shuffle into the evening.<\/p>\n

Some of the response to Game<\/em> (like this review by Natasha Tripney<\/a>) has been understandably bemused, because a tension-ratcheting set-up is progressively drained of tingle. Performances have the shine rubbed off them \u2013 the economically challenged couple accept their job as small game in a show home, and the strain is evident through the snipers\u2019 sightlines. A snuggle, a shag, a family dinner: all can be curtailed by the unseen customers. It\u2019s a living that becomes a mere existence. But Jodie McNee and Mike Noble (pictured top <\/em>by Keith Pattison) aren\u2019t required to excavate that dilemma, merely to slump into deadened affect.<\/p>\n

Fade to grey<\/strong><\/p>\n

Perhaps that\u2019s what makes Bartlett so oddly compelling \u2013 his ability to empty us out so quickly, to launch a technicolor provocation which quickly fades to grey. His trajectories can be cruelly undeviating \u2013 \u2018the surprising twist,\u2019 as Susannah Clapp <\/a>wrote about Bull,<\/em> \u2018is that there is no twist.\u2019 Cock<\/em><\/a> remains my favourite play of his, not just because of the intensity and my memory of the outrageously charismatic original quartet (Whishaw, Scott, Parkinson, Jesson, oh my), but because its big idea \u2013 the protagonist\u2019s helpless indeterminacy \u2013 lends the characters an ambiguity that Bartlett often denies. Without that twist of personality in process, we\u2019re left without choices, wondering what the game is worth.<\/p>\n

Follow David on Twitter: @mrdavidjays<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Who is Mike Bartlett? Is the writer of sawn-off theatrical shooters like Cock and Bull actually the author of the decade-straddling Earthquakes in London and Love Love Love, let alone the teasing pageant King Charles III? Will the real Bartletts stand up? Bartlett\u2019s two most recent plays suggest the borders of his territory. Bull (premiered […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1068,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[104,34,128],"class_list":{"0":"post-1067","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"tag-almeida","9":"tag-theatre","10":"tag-young-vic","11":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1067","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1067"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1067\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1069,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1067\/revisions\/1069"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1068"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1067"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1067"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1067"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}