Dennis Kelly - Dennis Kelly: Plays Two

Dennis Kelly

PLAYS TWO

TAKING CARE OF BABY

ORPHANS

DNA

THE GODS WEEP

OUR TEACHERS A TROLL

INTRODUCTION BY ALEKS SIERZ

OBERON BOOKS
LONDON

WWW.OBERONBOOKS.COM

First published in this collection in 2013 by Oberon Books Ltd
521 Caledonian Road, London N7 9RH
Tel: +44 (0) 20 7607 3637 / Fax: +44 (0) 20 7607 3629
e-mail:
www.oberonbooks.com

Collection copyright Dennis Kelly, 2013; Taking Care of Baby Dennis Kelly, 2007, Orphans Dennis Kelly, 2009, DNA Dennis Kelly, 2008, The Gods Weep Dennis Kelly, 2010, Our Teachers a Troll Dennis Kelly, 2013

Introduction copyright Aleks Sierz, 2013

Dennis Kelly is hereby identified as author of these plays in accordance with section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. The author has asserted his moral rights.

All rights whatsoever in these plays are strictly reserved and application for performance etc. should be made before commencement of rehearsal to Casarotto Ramsay & Associates Limited, Waverley House, 7-12 Noel Street, London, W1F 8GQ (info@casarotto.co.uk). No performance may be given unless a licence has been obtained, and no alterations may be made in the title or the text of these plays without the authors prior written consent.

You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or binding or by any means (print, electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

PB ISBN: 978-1-78319-012-6
EPUB ISBN: 978-1-78319-511-4

Printed, bound and converted
by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY.

Visit www.oberonbooks.com to read more about all our books and to buy them. You will also find features, author interviews and news of any author events, and you can sign up for e-newsletters so that youre always first to hear about our new releases.

Introduction

T he noughties was an explosive decade for new writing in British theatre. Over the first ten years of the new millennium something like three thousand new plays were staged in the UK. Everywhere you looked, there was a huge variety of new work by a huge variety of new writers, young, old and all ages in-between. In order to make sense of this festival of talent critics naturally characterise new playwrights on the basis of their first couple of outings: shes the one who writes about ill-matched couples, hes the one who writes about quirky brothers, she is obsessed with storytelling and he is addicted to explicit sex scenes, she loves references to nature, he tells stories of imaginary historical encounters, shes a Beckett for today, hes a Churchill. If the playwright in question dares to write a new play outside of their characterisation they risk incomprehension (at best) and hostility (at worst). Well, Dennis Kelly, who kick-started his career during this decade, has successfully managed to wrongfoot critical expectations by constantly changing the form and content of his plays, while remaining true to his own distinctive individual voice.

The first play in this collection, Taking Care of Baby, is an astonishing genre-bending exercise that gobsmackingly defies categorisation. The blurb on the back cover of the original playscript summarises the story: Taking Care of Baby tackles the complex case of Donna McAuliffe, a young mother convicted of the murder of her two infant children. In a series of probing interviews, the people in this extraordinary story, including Donna herself and her bewildered mother Lynn, reveal how they may have harmed those they sought to protect. Other interviewees include Martin McAuliffe, Donnas estranged husband, Dr Millard, a psychologist, Mrs Millard, his wife, political activists and politicians such as Jim and Brian, a reporter, plus assorted nameless members of the public. But the playtexts claim to be a piece of verbatim theatre, a documentary in which everything is in the subjects own words (p. 5), is and anyone who doesnt want to read a spoiler should turn the page right now untrue. Despite the fact that this looks like an example of verbatim theatre, a highly popular form of playwriting that uses edited versions of real words spoken by real people (and which was extremely common in British theatre during the noughties), it is not everything about the play is a work of complete fiction. Although the work is convincing in its intense focus on detail, and its layout with stage directions printed in bold mimics that of other examples of verbatim drama, a simple google search for the notorious case of Donna McAuliffe will soon convince you that this story is an imaginative fabrication.

Whats so gripping about the play is the immediate force of Kellys imagination. For a story that is partly a satire on verbatim theatre and partly a serious enquiry into the nature of truth, and justice, the writing is audacious in its precision and its psychological reality. Two early examples are instantly striking: in prison, Donna fears attacks from other inmates and finds relief by dreaming that her crimes were themselves actually just a dream (p. 8). This is followed by her mother Lynn watching two chavs, a mother and daughter, on a train and immediately thinking that their relationship is inappropriate. Then it hits her: Suddenly it dawned on me that they loved each other (p. 9). The story has been so powerfully imagined that the drama amply repays re-reading: even when you know that it is something of a hoax it still feels unsettling a feeling symbolised by the declaration at the start of each section that The following has been taken word for word from interviews and correspondence, a piece of writing that is repeated but which gradually collapses into gobbledegook. Similarly disquieting is the sense that we are eavesdropping on real people. It is also a very rich text, typified by the details about the Leeman-Keatley Syndrome, and the suggestion that psychological explanations of horror are themselves fictional constructs. By contrast, the mutual suspicion and emotional tangles of Donna and Lynn root the work in mundane domesticity.

In Kellys hands, the play which was staged at the Birmingham Rep and the Hampstead Theatre in Anthony Clarks compelling production in 2007 is much more than the story of a mother who is arrested for killing her kids. It is also the tale of the quest for truth which, as it crosses society, reveals the tensions between amateurs and professionals: the conflict between the professional psychologist and the judge, an amateur when it comes to science; between journalists and members of the public; and finally the mother who starts off as an amateur and becomes a professional politician. In this network of social tensions, it is clear that when it comes to parenting, to taking care of baby, we are all amateurs.

Orphans, which was staged in Roxana Silberts tense production for Paines Plough in 2009, is the play in this collection that is most similar to those in Plays One in that Kellys early plays Debris, Osama the Hero, After the End and Love and Money feature characters who have a desperate need to believe that there is more to life than the brutal reality they find themselves in. The situation of Orphans, which has three main characters, is simple: Danny and Helen, a young married couple who have one child and are expecting another, are enjoying a quiet dinner when Liam, Helens brother, arrives unexpectedly. The stage direction describes his appearance: