‘It’s definitely not Shakespeare’. That was how one audience member summed up Nick Payne’s new play during the interval on Wednesday night. But what did they mean? Perhaps they felt the dialogue was lacking in poesy, or deficient in dramatic substance; perhaps they felt the characters didn’t have the individuality of the bard’s personae?
On every count they would be correct. The writing is saturated with expletives, the narrative is not compelling, and the characters seem observed stereotypes rather than organic individuals.
Yet on one issue the commentator was wrong. Payne’s play is, like Shakespeare, entertaining. It abounds with one-liners, and the actors revel in their stereotypes, delivering uproarious send-ups of characters we are all familiar with, from the Greater London Wide-Boy to the Upper-Middle Class Barrister. Notably, on Wednesday night, the audience was rolling in the aisles.
Still, theatre has two objectives. Its first is of course to entertain, but its second is to enlighten, and I fear that for all the entertainment that The Same Deep Water as Me offers, it does not fulfil this second objective.
The main reason for this is that the deceptive, seedy world of ‘no-win-no-fee’ legal firms around which the play is based is not a contemporary concern. Recent legislation directed against such firms means that the play’s subject is passé. The equivalent, modern concern would surely be payday loans. Thus, the current insignificance of the play’s subject matter renders any immediate criticism it attempts to make on the world of ‘no-win-no-fee’ law suits invalid. We simply don’t care.
Nevertheless, Payne does claim that the play is fundamentally concerned with the ‘thrill of lying’, and in this context the text is admittedly more engaging. For example, the dialogue’s unremitting expletives in the first half suggest an inability to communicate any truth, for if we can only express ourselves through four-letter words, then we cannot begin to explain the world around us. Similarly, the semantic snares created by the legal jargon of the second half suggests a comparable inability to understand the truth. For if words can disguise reality then reality, or at least an understanding of reality, is an unattainable goal.
This rumination on the unreliability of truth is also reinforced by a series of unknowns within the text. For instance, we never fully understand the stories behind Payne’s characters, they are left as observed stereotypes, and it is only fleetingly that we catch a glimpse of the frailty behind their stereotypical facades. Further, the subplots which he introduces in the play are left unfinished, leaving the audience expectant and unfulfilled.
But, the problem is that these devices, which on one level illustrate a post-modern anxiety about the notion of objective truth, are also symptoms of a badly crafted play. In this way, whether you enjoy Nick Payne’s new play, ultimately, comes back to the audience member’s comment.
If you will only accept a conventionally well-crafted play as worthy of theatrical merit, then you will not enjoy Nick Payne’s production. But, if you can accept The Same Deep Water as Me as a piece of new writing which challenges pre-conceived notions of how a play works, then it is a thought-provoking piece of entertaining drama.
The Same Deep Water as Me runs at the Donmar Warehouse until 28th September 2013. For more information and tickets, visit the website.
