October 25, 2011
Family Business, a new play by Julian Mitchell, opened at the Oxford Playhouse last night. It starts, as so many family dramas tend to do, with the elderly parent awaiting the arrival of grown-up children at a family celebration. In this case the elderly parent is William.
William has suffered a stroke and is temporarily reliant on a wheelchair. Not surprisingly, he’s rather tetchy about it and Solomon, his nurse/cook/carer remains heroically tolerant throughout. The two of them live in a converted farmhouse in the Welsh Borders. It is William’s birthday and he has invited his four children to join him in his celebrations.
William is the founder of a successful travel company that has made him a multi-millionaire. All the children have worked for the company and have benefitted from it. They begin to arrive at the house; each with their own agendas. Tom is feckless, Jane a snob, Hugo an eco-warrior and Kate a princess. So far – so familiar territory.
What make Family Business different is the quality of the writing and the width and breadth of the humour. I did not expect it to be a laugh a minute script, but by and large it was very, very funny as well as being sharp, witty and moving. Unfortunately I cannot include too many examples without giving the story a way but they are all pithy:
SOLOMON: I can’t remember, is Hugo vegan or vegetarian these days?
WILLIAM: Depends how annoying he wants to be.
SOLOMON: Better make it vegan, then.
As a vegetarian with vegan tendencies, particularly when I want to be annoying, I could relate to the sentiment.
William knows his children inside out. He can see what’s coming before they ask and he has his answers ready. Surprisingly, they don’t seem to realise this and they are thwarted at every turn. But, as events go on to prove, they don’t know him, or their late mother, very well at all. There are twists in the tale, but I can’t give them away!
If I have a gripe, and I’m afraid have, it’s that I don’t like the way many contemporary writers tend to leave loose ends. Maybe I’m slightly OCD about these things but I don’t want to have to figure out for myself what choices the characters made, I want the writer to do that for me; after all Shakespeare always managed it.
William has suffered a stroke and is temporarily reliant on a wheelchair. Not surprisingly, he’s rather tetchy about it and Solomon, his nurse/cook/carer remains heroically tolerant throughout. The two of them live in a converted farmhouse in the Welsh Borders. It is William’s birthday and he has invited his four children to join him in his celebrations.
William is the founder of a successful travel company that has made him a multi-millionaire. All the children have worked for the company and have benefitted from it. They begin to arrive at the house; each with their own agendas. Tom is feckless, Jane a snob, Hugo an eco-warrior and Kate a princess. So far – so familiar territory.
What make Family Business different is the quality of the writing and the width and breadth of the humour. I did not expect it to be a laugh a minute script, but by and large it was very, very funny as well as being sharp, witty and moving. Unfortunately I cannot include too many examples without giving the story a way but they are all pithy:
SOLOMON: I can’t remember, is Hugo vegan or vegetarian these days?
WILLIAM: Depends how annoying he wants to be.
SOLOMON: Better make it vegan, then.
As a vegetarian with vegan tendencies, particularly when I want to be annoying, I could relate to the sentiment.
William knows his children inside out. He can see what’s coming before they ask and he has his answers ready. Surprisingly, they don’t seem to realise this and they are thwarted at every turn. But, as events go on to prove, they don’t know him, or their late mother, very well at all. There are twists in the tale, but I can’t give them away!
If I have a gripe, and I’m afraid have, it’s that I don’t like the way many contemporary writers tend to leave loose ends. Maybe I’m slightly OCD about these things but I don’t want to have to figure out for myself what choices the characters made, I want the writer to do that for me; after all Shakespeare always managed it.