The boss of the Royal Court, Vicky Featherstone, will soon step down and she’s using her final spell in charge to try an unusual experiment. Can she entertain the punters and make them feel happy rather than forcing them to confront various forms of gloom, misery and despair? The answer is yes. Featherstone can tickle our funny bone if she wishes.
Why haven’t trans activists denounced this show and demanded the performer’s cancellation?
Cuckoo, by Michael Wynne, is a hilarious kitchen-sink comedy set in Merseyside with an all-female cast. Some critics have likened it to a Carla Lane sitcom and the domestic set-up owes an obvious debt to the Royle Family by Caroline Aherne. Instead of watching TV, the characters are obsessed with their mobile phones and they struggle to converse in real life rather than online. All are likeable, recognisable types. Doreen, a widow in her sixties, has rediscovered her sexuality and found a lover but she’s too bashful to share this secret with her two daughters. Carmel, the mother of teenage Megyn, has a zero-hours contract at Boots and she angrily berates any relative who patronises her rivals, Superdrug. Dreamy Sarah has fallen for a rich, handsome dentist but their affair doesn’t seem quite right. She owns no photographs of her boyfriend and although she plans to settle down with him she has yet to visit his brand-new practice in Liverpool. Does it even exist?
The only character without a fully realised personality is Megyn, the shy teenager, who lives permanently in Doreen’s bedroom and sends down for orders of toast, tea and snacks. Megyn is a symbol obviously. Perhaps she represents the newfangled mental disorders, which force families to adopt comforting and easy power structures. Megyn becomes an eternal baby whom Doreen gladly coddles because it makes her important and gives her a purpose in life. The play has an element of sociological commentary and the key lesson is that our mobile phones have supplanted our flesh-and-blood friendships. Which is hardly news.
And there’s an obligatory propaganda section for the benefit of firebrands who fret about injustice and oppression. In this case, it’s misogyny. Doreen has few regrets about the death of her husband whom she describes as a manipulative control freak. But her charge sheet is embarrassingly limited. Here are his two worst abuses: he banned fish and chips from the house because he detested the smell and he prevented Doreen from taking low-paid work because he wanted her to enjoy a life of secure and prosperous indolence at his expense. What a swine.
Soho Theatre’s new show arrives from America laden with plaudits. Peter Smith’s DIANA claims to draw inspiration from ‘that time she bared her soul on TV’, and it opens with the performer making an announcement. The BBC has withheld the tapes of Diana’s interview with Martin Bashir so the subject of the play will have to be dropped. Peter then assumes the persona of an actress, Mrs Smith, who is about to go on stage in an unnamed production, and he sometimes morphs back into Peter who indulges in lengthy musings about clothes, penology, trans surgery and other issues. ‘No one should go to prison,’ Peter tells us. Holding up a garment, he wonders if the lining of a jacket is really the jacket’s soul. Turning to the subject of festive cakes, he asks why birthday candles glow with a uniquely attractive luminescence. His internal thoughts lack any theme or dramatic direction and he correctly describes them as ‘word vomit’. To vary the mood he sings a few rock songs (extremely well: his voice is excellent) and he poses in a selection of ultra-feminine outfits. Inadvertently, perhaps, he embodies several attitudes that the trans community are keen to distance themselves from. He admits that men like him ‘may seem misogynistic, but we’re working on it’.
His interest in women’s apparel is matched by a fixation with female biology. In the guise of Mrs Smith, he tells us that he gave birth to children from a ‘possessed womb’. Reverting to the Peter character, he describes having a full body scan as part of his trans journey. The scan, he says, revealed that his abdomen contains the vestiges of a cervix but it’s unclear if this is a mere fantasy or a misreading of an actual medical examination. Either way, it’s obvious that he longs to acquire the reproductive organs that nature has denied him. He recounts a visit to a Barbra Streisand concert where he physically obstructed her spotlight. ‘Barbra Streisand was literally in my shadow.’ In other words, he wants to eclipse women and to draw attention away from them and towards himself.
Peter’s views are very harmful to those who claim that trans women bear women no ill will and seek nothing but equality and acceptance. Why haven’t trans activists denounced this show and demanded the performer’s cancellation? Peter is wrecking their crusade.
Comments