Spike Magazine

Spike | 15 YEARS OF BOOKS, MUSIC, ART, IDEAS | www.spikemagazine.com
and a unique opportunity to engage with an audience
in real time. With film, reality is screened, the
inevitable happy ending undercutting any edge.
While bodies like the British Board of Film Censors
maintain standards of hygiene, theatre is completely
uncensored, blissfully free from the editorialising
and moralising of the powers that ban. Theatre has
survived repeated attempts to stifle it and has in the
process emerged as a resilient and versatile space
where nothing is unspeakable, where you can in
principle say anything, a platform for free speech,
a place of absolute freedom and a place of no
mercy. The only cultural form to have been banned
wholesale, prosecuted and hounded by censors for
400 years, theatre has built up immunity to attack
from the guardians of decency. Thirty years after the
scrapping of the office of the Lord Chamberlain, the
stage remains resistant to most strains of censorship,
even the most virulent.
Scotland has not always been at the forefront, but it
is adapting to change. The move from page to stage is
all the rage for angry young writers north of the border.
The accent is on voice. Duncan McLean insists
on “a commitment to the voice as the basis of literary
art, rather than some supposed canonical ‘Officially
approved’ language”. The soul of Scottish theatre no
longer frets in the shadow of the English language. In
the interval between the curtains closing on didactic
BUY Irvine Welsh books online from and
political theatre and a slow drawing down of blinds
for drawing-room drama a new hybrid form entered
stage left – absurd, enraged and intense, a theatre of
cruelty and hate that is at once tender and torn, cool
and comical, with a pen dipped in rebel ink, stylish
but possessed of a certain substance.
The social realist tradition was not merely on the side
of the working class, but stood in their way, portraying
them, representing them, speaking for them. The social
surrealism or hyper realism of Welsh’s writing aches
with authenticity, touching sore points with a persistent
probing that leaves you trembling. When working with
Boilerhouse on Headstate Welsh spoke of ram-raiding
the set. He meant this literally, no doubt, but it is in the
area of metaphor and speech that Welsh excels, rather
than in any accepted notion of stagecraft. Welsh is not
tongue-tied by authority or ham-strung by convention
or classical training. If his plays, angry and experimental,
are like movies, then they are less drive-in than
drive-by, marked by a casual violence and a language
that fairly crackles with cruelty. He has taken the pulse
of Scottish theatre, and given it a much-needed smack
in the face. Much has been said of Welsh’s articulation
of drug culture, but under the influence of film – Mamet
and Tarantino spring to mind – Welsh is pushing theatre,
a Class A drug if ever there was one, and giving
audiences a welcome shot in the arm.
Not that pride or patriotism are called for. Welsh’s
543
More
Spike
email
RSS
Facebook
Twitter
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
Q
R
S
T
U
V
W
X
Y
Z