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Saturday 2 April 2011

Rules. Where Would We Be Without Them?

In Al Murray's rhetorical rant, the answer to this question is - France. I am slightly concerned that my play may be straying into France.

Premise - 'Every sensible invention must have a purpose, every planned sprint a destination ... Yet, fantastic as it seems, this simple necessity has not made itself felt to any extent in the theater (sic). Reams of paper bear miles of writing - all of it with no point at all. There is much feverish activity, a great deal of get-up-and-go but no one seems to know where he is going.' (Egri, p1) All well and good although it is tempting to ask what exactly the premise of Waiting for Godot might be. For Vile Bodies I might borrow one of the stock premises listed by Egri (p8), dissipation leads to self-destruction.

Egri (p92 et seq) contends that Character is the most interesting phenomenon and that it shapes Plot rather than vice versa. This is particularly so in VB, wherein the events spin around the cast rather than those events shaping the characters. If anything had shaped the BYT's it was the preceding Great War, never referred to in the novel, although there is a heavy and unspoken presentiment of a war to come. An interesting question - is there a single laudable character in VB? Not Adam, not Nina, not Rothschild. So the novel lacks a moral centre, in fact has a distinctly amoral core. Arguably this must unbalance my adaptation but, a point I made in my presentation, the bleakness is all and the temptation to insinuate a happy ending (such as Fry's in the film version) has to be resisted. On balance I have to concede the plot of VB is weak, but the characters, albeit they are unvaryingly dissipated, give the text its compensating substance.

Egri (p110 et seq) posits a need for a Pivotal Character. Adam answers the basic need but does not answer Egri's prescriptions for a successful pivot: 'A pivotal character must not merely desire something. He must want it so badly that he will destroy or be destroyed in the effort to attain his goal.' This puts me squarely back in France. The BYT's do not in truth know what they want. That is the whole point. And this leads me onto an important liberty I will take with the text. Waugh's ironically titled 'Happy Ending' is the aspect of the book which most motivated  me when I made my proposal of this project a year ago and I am now going to mould it a little to suit my own prejudices. My reasoning is that war acts as a bizarre redemption for the BYT generation rather in the manner later encapsulated in the early pages of Men at War. My liberty is to give Vanburgh some dignity in his final role as war correspondent in contrast to the book's conclusion where he is, by Nina'a account in her letter, a fabricating propagandist. This can be a legitimate function of adaptation, 'Sometimes, like biological adaptation, cultural adaptation involves migration to favorable conditions: stories travel to different cultures and different media. In short, stories adapt just as they are adapted.' (Hutcheon, p31) 

Mamet nails down the intended effect, 'Myth, religion and tragedy approach our insecurity somewhat differently. They awaken awe. They do not deny our powerlessness, but through its avowal they free us of the burden of its repression.' (Mamet, p14)

On reflection, Vive La France ... Peut Etre.  

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