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The
Fine Art of Falling to Pieces |
| One could be forgiven for thinking that one is sitting eavesdropping
in the Wadham bar in the first scenes of Lizzie Nunnery's first play "The
Fine Art of Falling to Pieces". Beer is drunk, nothing much seems to
happen or be said, and the play chunters aimiably on, with the characters
sitting joking and chatting over their drinks, collapsing into bursts of
wild laughter. The audience joins in the laughing - perhaps in sympathy
- and it is as if there is only a faint demarcation between the actors on
stage and their chums in the auditorium. "The Fine Art of Falling to
Pieces" is larded with references to Oxford, to acting, to the putting
on of plays, and to students worrying about the quality of the plays and
their own acting. We see the characters meeting friends and sitting in their
rooms, where they drink, indulge in spliffs, and philosophise accordingly.
There are occasional comic moments, as different generations and types clash
and misunderstand one another, and the play is enthusiastically acted. Set
in the Bear and in a variety of Oxford student rooms, the playwright invites
the audience to watch an enacted 48 hours of increasingly hectic emoting
in the main character Bella's life. Beneath the crazy banter of the early
part of the play, a sense of hollowness becomes more and more evident, as
Bella's laughter begins to grate, as her behaviour spirals out of control,
and as she describes her anxiety about her writing and herself. Surrounded
by noise, and making a fair bit of it herself, this is a main character
preoccupied with self- dislike, daring only in the end explicitly to wonder
if she might perhaps one day be happy if it turns out that she is not a
writer of genius.
Bella concludes "You can't be sublime without being at least a little bit ridiculous". This is an odd play, never sublime, sometimes right on the edge of boring, but skating between comedy and seriousness, attempting perhaps like an on-stage "Royle Family" to put into a dramatic frame the angst, the camaraderie, and the banalities of student life. E.T., 25.02.03 |
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