neo 'su'r'i'
Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, Wed 17-Sat 20 Sep
The most self-absorbed person you know is liable to call you self-absorbed when they're feeling negative about you. So too, that lusty friend who always has an eye out for anything in a skirt, or trousers, or sometimes both, will
accuse you of chatting someone up with an eye
to getting into their pants, when all you were doing was discussing something on telly.
Projection is a pretty common phenomenon -
you'll be doing it yourself this evening when you
see your friends. Partially it's a way in which we
assuage unconscious guilt about lust. self-
absorption, or whatever we feel; we simply make
someone else just as guilty. or guiltier, of the crime we guard against knowing inside ourselves. It‘s not necessarily positive. but we
need it.
David Rudkin seems profoundly aware of this
phenomenon. There‘s been an ongoing exploration of unconscious drives in his work
since he made his name with the brilliant Afore
Night Come in 1962. This play, about dark and ritualised businesses, and ultimately pagan
elements of sacrifice and primal desire among a group of Black Country fruit pickers. is
comparable to the work of David Harrower more
than a generation on.
Since then, Rudkin‘s work has traced this line. on and off, for 40 years. His new play, performed by AJTC, goes into this territory. ‘lt’s what a
Jon Pope’s Jazz, and earlier adaptation of Jean Rhys
lax'mv \
WIDE SARGASSO SEA Citizens' Theatre. Glasgow. Wed 17 Sep—Sat 11 Oct
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Theatre
dramatist does,‘ he says. ‘You create a character and sometimes that character can sit up 40 years later and hit you. You say: “My God, I didn't know how much like me that character is."'
Rudkin has been writing for a long time, but there's something of a contemporary flavour to this play, locating the desire of the recent generation of clubbers to reach a shamanistic insight into selfhood and the world. as well as some darker allusions to our current political world, which he refers to, but is reluctant to discuss.
This much, he'll tell us: ‘It was for two male characters. but I didn‘t want to write a play about a gay couple, a father and son, a master and servant or two brothers, they‘d all been done too much. So I went for this magician or shaman figure who makes a man out of clay and gives him life. It's a very old archetype, going back to Frankenstein or the Golem, maybe as far back as the creation myth.‘
What fascinates, though. is the insights into the notion of projection that this gives us. since the myth teaches us that in creating and teaching another being, we only recreate ourselves. ‘At one point in the play, the shaman says: “I thought you were a stranger, and I've discovered you're the greatest stranger of them all. myself."‘ Rudkin says. So next time that friend calls you self-absorbed. remember that they’re talking to someone they don't really know. Not you, but the person inside themselves. (Steve Cramer)
1w“. '. THE GRADUATE King's Theatre. Glasgow. Mon 15—Sat 20 Sep. then touring
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