Vicky Angelaki - Martin Crimps Power Plays: Intertextuality, Sexuality, Desire

This book covers playwright Martin Crimps recent work showing how it captures the nuances in our interpersonal contemporary experience.

Examining the bold and exciting body of writing by Crimp, the book delves into his depiction of intersections between narratives, as well as between private and public, through an honest look at power structures and shifts, marriages and relationships, sexuality, and desire.

This book will be of great interest to students and scholars in Drama, Theatre and Performance, English Literature, and Opera Studies.

Vicky Angelaki is Professor in English Literature at Mid Sweden University.

This series is our home for cutting-edge, upper-level scholarly studies and edited collections. Considering theatre and performance alongside topics such as religion, politics, gender, race, ecology, and the avant-garde, titles are characterized by dynamic interventions into established subjects and innovative studies on emerging topics.

Rapa Nui Theatre

Staging Indigenous Identities in Easter Island

Moira S. Fortin Cornejo

Appropriations of Irish Drama in Modern Korean Nationalist Theatre

Hunam Yun

Martin Crimps Power Plays

Intertextuality, Sexuality, Desire

Vicky Angelaki

Playwriting in Europe

Mapping Ecosystems and Practices with Fabulamundi

Margherita Laera

Dont Forget The Pierrots!

The Complete History of British Pierrot Troupes & Concert Parties

Tony Lidington

For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.com/Routledge-Advances-in-TheatrePerformance-Studies/book-series/RATPS

First published 2023

by Routledge

4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

and by Routledge

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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

2023 Vicky Angelaki

The right of Vicky Angelaki to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

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

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Angelaki, Vicky, 1980- author.

Title: Martin Crimps power plays : intertextuality, sexuality, desire / authored by Vicky Angelaki.

Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2023. | Includes bibliographical references and index. |

Identifiers: LCCN 2022014922 (print) | LCCN 2022014923 (ebook) | ISBN 9780367471026 (hardback) | ISBN 9781032344331 (paperback) | ISBN 9781003033400 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Crimp, Martin, 1956---Criticism and interpretation. | English drama--21st century--History and criticism. | Interpersonal relations in literature. | Marriage in literature. | Sex in literature. | LCGFT: Literary criticism.

Classification: LCC PR6053.R495 Z549 2023 (print) | LCC PR6053.R495 (ebook) | DDC 822/.914--dc23/eng/20220520

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022014922

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022014923

ISBN: 9780367471026 (hbk)

ISBN: 9781032344331 (pbk)

ISBN: 9781003033400 (ebk)

DOI: 10.4324/9781003033400

Typeset in Bembo

by KnowledgeWorks Global Ltd.

For my dear parents, Niko and Vaso, and their wonderful partners, Deirdre and George all my love, all my gratitude.

I first started researching Martin Crimps theatre a dizzying twenty years ago here we are, still, because Martins work is always electric, never predictable; for that, I am as excited as I am grateful. My gratitude very much extends to Martin for kindly answering questions, facilitating resources and being supportive in a most meaningful way.

My thanks, always, to my dear colleagues and mentors: lisabeth Angel-Perez, Chris Megson, Dan Rebellato, Elizabeth Sakellaridou, Liz Tomlin for all our conversations and their boundless ability to motivate and inspire through the years. My warm thanks, also, to all colleagues who have offered feedback on my work on Martin Crimp through the decades, in one form or another, and who have invited me to contribute to their own volumes, events, and initiatives.

I would very much like to thank the exemplary team at Routledge, Laura Hussey and Swati Hindwan, for always being utterly available, supportive and generous a delight to work with. My warmest thanks, also, to the anonymous peer reviewer of the proposal that became this book, for their insightful understanding. Regarding this volume, every effort has been made to ensure that quotations fall within fair dealing principles for academic publications.

On the personal front, my sincere thanks to Gull-Britt and Roberto, for their warmth and kindness. My greatest thanks, and all my love, as always, to my wonderful family: Niko, Vaso, George, Deirdre, Akis, and Pavlina. And to Stefano, my thanks, and my heart.

Vicky Angelaki, 2022

DOI: 10.4324/9781003033400-1

In one of its most shattering moments, after her recent marriage has perhaps irreparably disintegrated, Katrina, one half of the couple in Martin Crimps two-hander Play House (2012), confronts her husband Simon with this speech:

Because you dont love me. Because you have never loved me. Ive given you my whole body and all of my attention for months and months and months and its still not enough for you. Ive given you my hopefulness and all of my wit and charm, my tolerance and a large part of my pitiful income and its still not enough. [] And all of that time while I was giving you everything youve been chipping and chipping away at my soul [].

(

The very title of the play carries a meta-element: marriage as performance, spousal co-habitation as a form of play in and of itself. A construct, of sorts, consisting of two willing players and a certain artificiality built on a tacit, implicit, and complicit understanding of what the marriage mechanism requires to keep on running. Until, that is, events transpire that are so catastrophic and beyond redemption that the couple come to the point of confronting the profound lack, or unplayability, at the heart of their union. For Katrina and Simon, though in distinctive Crimp style this is never specified, it is likely that the event is Simons suggestion to have a drug-fuelled sexual encounter with a neighbour. That the person in question works in financial services is a helpful nod to the fact that the economy, as corrosive force, can be held responsible for the disintegration of dignity and the domestic alike. As Katrina remarks, accepting the proposition as response to Simons passive/aggressive strategy for eliciting consent, it feel[s] like swallowing acid (2012a: 28).

For a play as short as this one is, developing in thirteen brief episodic scenes that depict a marriage between two young people from the beginning through to what we might quite plausibly imagine to be its ending,