{"id":1151,"date":"2016-03-24T16:35:25","date_gmt":"2016-03-24T16:35:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/?p=1151"},"modified":"2016-03-24T16:35:26","modified_gmt":"2016-03-24T16:35:26","slug":"despite-aa-dont-avoid-people-places-things","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/2016\/03\/despite-aa-dont-avoid-people-places-things.html","title":{"rendered":"Despite AA \u2013 Don\u2019t Avoid People, Places & Things"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Denise<\/a>

Denise Gough<\/strong>
photo by Johan Persson<\/strong><\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

The National Theatre and Headlong\u2019s production of Duncan Macmillan\u2019s new play, People, Places & Things,<\/em> has got a well-merited transfer to the West End at Wyndham\u2019s Theatre, with a stunning central performance by Denise Gough that has got the never superlative-shy London critics over-excited. It is a gruelling role, with Ms Gough scarcely off stage for two and a half hours and even, at one point, transformed into eight magically choreographed clones.<\/p>\n

We first see her going to pieces as Nina in a production of The Seagull<\/em>, and are immediately aware that what we\u2019re witnessing is a self-medication meltdown. When she asks her mother to clear the drugs and booze from her flat, and says to her, \u201cI\u2019ll stop calling you a c*** when you stop being<\/em> a c***,\u201d we know we\u2019re dealing with a strong personality, who is probably capable of being abusive to others as well as to herself.<\/p>\n

Perhaps we\u2019re not so aware of the theatre as subject as well as setting of what we are seeing \u2013 but there are clues in the fact that some of the audience is seated on the stage enclosed in the clinical white frame of Bunny Christie\u2019s ingenious set. In a flash Nina (who gives her own name as Emma) isn\u2019t an actress on stage, but a wretch in the reception area of an actual clinic, begging for help for her addiction as desperately as her Irish wit and irony will allow.<\/p>\n

She may be so disturbed as to be deranged, but she is a hard nut, with an upper lip that curls with a faint, but definite, hint of disdain.<\/p>\n

At first the doctor\/therapist, wonderfully doubled by Barbara Marten (who also plays \u201cEmma\u2019s\u201d mother) is unsure she\u2019s a suitable case for treatment. The reason: this institution uses a 12-point programme, such as that of Alcoholics Anonymous, which insists on belief in a \u201chigher power,\u201d has a Big Book (in which Emma writes critical marginalia), and maintains that addiction is life-long \u2013 once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic. Most important, such programmes assert that the individual is fundamentally powerless without the reinforcement of the group and, of course, the higher power.<\/p>\n

The great thing about Mr Macmillan\u2019s play is that it is not an argument, but a drama, but it is a drama with<\/em> an argument. Ms Gough\u2019s character, who later says her name is Sarah, isn\u2019t philosophising, and isn\u2019t logic-chopping when she disputes aspects of the programme. She is suffering \u2013 physically as well as psychologically \u2013 and embodies the premises, steps and conclusions of the clash over the God bits, the surrender, and the obsessiveness of 12-step platforms.<\/p>\n

This is where the superb direction by Jeremy Herrin comes in, with plenty of help from the movement person, Polly Bennett; for Ms Gough has to tell us what\u2019s happening in her psyche by her body language at least as much as by the lines she speaks. There was some dissent about this among my companions, who felt that, as we all know what it\u2019s like to be off our heads with drink and drugs, an actor has to give us something we don\u2019t already know in order to convince us. By this strict criterion there\u2019s perhaps a little too much tic and twitch and Gough\u2019s performance, but I have to say I was won over by what her body language conveyed in the last scenes when she was clean.\u00a0 And the supporting ensemble is so sympathetic and disciplined that you could almost believe they were an AA group, whose chief therapeutic practice is role-playing.<\/p>\n

One thing wrong about AA is that it encourages one kind of role-playing, at the expense of several others (e.g., the Sinclair Method using an opiate blocker, and Cognitive Behaviour Therapy) as is made clear in the excellent programme essay by Jon Stewart. The most difficult part for most people to play in the 21st<\/sup> century is that of religious believer (\u201cStep 6: We\u2019re entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character\u201d). There are other problems, such as the requirement of total abstinence. (AA has its roots in evangelical Christianity, and so is big on the concept of \u201cbacksliding\u201d.) \u00a0When Gough\u2019s character tries to join the group in prayer, and wants to know why she is obliged to say \u201camen,\u201d another character has the best line in the play: \u201cSaying \u2018amen\u2019 is like pressing \u2018send\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

The play \u2013 and Stewart\u2019s text, raise the question of whether AA ought nowadays to be the default solution for addiction. But the play does this in an immensely clever way, with great theatricality, even a teasing meta-theatricality, and a curtain line of the very best kind \u2013 one that leaves you a little puzzled about just what you have been watching for the last couple of hours.<\/p>\n

[contextly_auto_sidebar]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  The National Theatre and Headlong\u2019s production of Duncan Macmillan\u2019s new play, People, Places & Things, has got a well-merited transfer to the West End at Wyndham\u2019s Theatre, with a stunning central performance by Denise Gough that has got the never superlative-shy London critics over-excited. It is a gruelling role, with Ms Gough scarcely off […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"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":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,36,1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1151","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-blogroll-2","7":"category-elsewhere","8":"category-uncategorized","9":"entry","10":"has-post-thumbnail"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbv6zV-iz","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1151","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1151"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1151\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1154,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1151\/revisions\/1154"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}