13/12/2016
Hello boys and girls! Former theatre critic and shoe shop sales assistant Joe Nawaz here. I'm back for one last very important, very unpaid job!
Nearly a week since I went to see my old Shot Glass mucker John Patrick Higgins' play - The Book of Names - in the Black Box. And it’s still as fresh in my mind as the poo in the protagonist’s tea-pot (more of which later), which is why I’ll be discussing it in the present tense… wait, the mists are lifting.
Tim Rock is the name of said protagonist in this one-off pre-fab lunchtime show. He’s winningly played by an affable but jittery Michael Patrick, in dressing-gown and lop-sided smile. Patrick initially has a kind of middling BBC sit-com charm in this role, though his homely affability is offset by a stage strategically, haphazardly stacked with what our American cousins would call “garbage” and Tracey Emin calls copyright infringement.
It’s clear from the off therefore that something perhaps isn’t quite right behind our Mr Rock’s self-effacing joviality. The play – the clue’s in the title – purports to be about nominative determinism. That is, the theory that one’s given name in some way dictates what they become. The “science” behind it is of the “have you ever noticed how many Nigels work in accounting?” variety, but it serves its purpose here. That is, a device upon which to hang the psychological meltdown of Tim, getting a few gags in in the process, and, of course, the obligatory biblical reference. What self-respecting latter-day psychopath doesn’t have at least a smattering of Old Testament smarts?
Tim, of course, is off his rocker but, in spite of the unnervingly trashy staging, his initial likeability lulls the audience into something of a false sense of security. His self-deprecation is the sort of endearing badinage you’d enjoy on a daytime repeat of Ever Decreasing Circles or the like in the Christmas schedules. In fact, he’s Fowle’s Collector as assayed by Richard Briers. He apologises for the alienating use of the word “thus” early on. It’s charming. He calls himself the “Monarch of the Den” and the audience groans are ones of a shared lunchtime conviviality.
His dissection of his own name (“coupling Timothy with Rock is like driving a Ferrari with a caravan hanging off the back of it”) and those of Tim Henman and Bjorn Borg is very funny. We’re relaxed, it’s lunchtime, Patrick is an affable presence. The lines are light. They’re funny! What could go wrong? All the while, the water in our pot is heating up, increment by increment. We finally realise we’re not in Kansas Avenue anymore with Karen from HR's entrance. But by this stage, it’s too late. We’ve been sucked in, and are compelled and therefore complicit. It becomes jarringly clear very quickly that the initial vague unease was entirely warranted. John, who’s no stranger to the shapely pun, has based the entire show, it’s very title in fact, upon one giant PUN. It’s nominative determinism at dramatically meta levels only Kenneth Tynan’s dogs and the Reverend Christian Guy could detect.
The direction by Rob Crawford is taut, lean and mostly complements the script. The staging, all glutted binliners and stained newspaper cuttings, is unsettlingly addled and cluttered - an ominous analogue to Tim's unraveling psyche.
Amanda Doherty is a perfectly deranged, rearranged Karen from HR. Her dead-eyed subservience is most unsettling of all, and the play just about succeeds in staying on the right side of the line between good old fashioned tension and bad old fashioned gratuitous exploitation.
It’s not perfect by any means: The aforementioned abrupt tone shift midway through is somewhat jarring, especially for an early afternoon audience devoid of jars of any kind. And the slightly clunky conclusory Nietschspiel - all “spitting out the fruit of the tree of knowledge” and “festivals of atonement” - is perhaps a bit too much stodge than one can stomach before lunch.
But as usual with John, when the writing’s funny, it’s very funny indeed. There’s little touches of casual brilliance, like the laid-back exchange about the problems of making a cuppa when the teapot doubles as a toilet.
The final “twist”, when it comes, is actually surprising, and had me momentarily panicking about whether the first aid training badge I earned in scouts was still valid. But I’ve said too much already…
This is John’s (count ‘em) seventh performed piece of writing this year – from London to Edinburgh the air has rang thick with the sound of “author author”, or so he tells me. He’s the hardest working man in no-business. Fortunately, his ludicrously prolific rate is matched with quality. There’s something of worth in everything John does, the bastard.
The Book of Names would benefit from a bit of expansion and a better paced route through its smart, skewed satire on the essential grotesquery of white patriarchal privilege. At least that’s what I took it to be really about. But I could be wrong.
Dammit John, we’re not interchangeable…
