Why do writers end up parodying themselves? The late Harold Pinter was a case in point: in the 1950s and 1960s, his voice was fresh, his pauses enigmatic and his style delivered the shock of the new. In the 1970s, he played imaginative games with theatre form; in the 1980s, he discovered politics. By the 1990s, his new plays seemed to be parodies of his own style. The dialogues were too Pinteresque, the pauses risible, the form contrived.
The latest victim of the same affliction is Mark Ravenhill, who leapt onto the scene in 1996 with his shock-fest debut, Shopping and F***ing, and immediately struck us all as a distinctive voice, and a writer to watch. Since then, his plays have more and more become parodies of himself or, and this is scarcely better, overt homages to the work of more fertile spirits such as Martin Crimp.
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Ravenhill's Over There, the latest offering in the Court's German Season, is based on a brilliant idea: to tell the story of the tension between East and West before and after the Fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 by personalizing both halves of the country as a pair of twins. So, after a quick prologue set in America today, we watch as Wessie Franz and Ossie Karl bicker over their changing lives.
In a play stuffed full of metaphors, some of these symbolic exchanges are really quite good. I liked the differing attitudes of the boys to their parents, the Western Mama and the Eastern Papa, and the gibberish that makes up Franz's spoken English and Karl's spoken Russian. The competition between the twins for the attentions of Franz's little son, the country's future, was also rich in ideas.
There were some good satirical passages about capitalist management jargon, but too much of the play was written with a plodding explicitness in which every ideological position is overtly spelt out and every historical turn is signaled with a dogmatic and unimaginative literal-mindedness. The result is like being beaten over the head with the already known, while interesting glimpses of the unknown remain tantalisingly out of reach.
Directed by Ramin Gray and Ravenhill, the 70-minute piece lacks a compelling rhythm and feels long, long, long. Although things pick up a bit towards the end, and the use of common domestic objects - such as a yellow sponge for the son - are mildly amusing, even the best efforts of twins Luke and Harry Treadaway fail to animate the acting beyond some good-natured clowning. If this play didn't have Ravenhill's name on it, would the any theatre have bothered to stage it?
So much of this play is déjà vu that the effect is unintentionally comical. Remember the cannibalism that featured so strongly in 1990s culture? Well, here it is again! Remember the bad language which once shocked audiences out of their torpor? Here it is again. Remember the 1990s in-yer-face sexual sensationalism? Yes, here again. So if you've never seen on-stage wanking, this is your chance. Missed the performance art of the 1970s, with smearing of food on nude bodies? Well, hurry along to the Court. Otherwise, lie down and cry: why, why, why do good writers end up parodying themselves?
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