Critical Comment for May 06
Monday, May 1st, 2006“In olden times a glimpse of stocking was faintly shocking, now anything goes.” Well, Cole Porter’s famous line certainly applies to the modern stage. There is virtually no word that can’t be said, no act of sex or violence that can’t be shown, no bodily function that can’t be simulated. But, after a recent spate of physically explicit theatre, I begin to wonder if discretion isn’t sometimes the better part of show-business as well as valour.
Even to raise the question is to be accused of censorship. That, of course, is nonsense. I remember all too clearly the stifling restrictions of the pre-1968 era when all plays had to be submitted to the Lord Chamberlain. What was particularly absurd was the hypocrisy it produced. There was something quite dotty about the idea that because you’d paid a token sum to join a notional club – which was the standard tactic to evade censorship – you were somehow morally equipped to watch Tennessee Williams’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof or John Osborne’s A Patriot for Me. Good riddance to all that. What I’m talking about is the virtue of restraint.