Tuesday, 17 October 2006

'Is it a dark comedy?'

by Tim Massey

By the time I'd hauled myself up to the Coopers' Loft this morning, Sam and the cast were a couple of scenes into a read-through of the script, marking the dialogue for subject changes as they went. This was an interesting process because it revealed how successfully I'd managed the changes without a crunching and grinding of gears. If the characters introduce new subjects simply because the plot needs them to do so, or they come out with lines apropos of nothing that the other characters say or do, the dialogue is clumsy and inept, so it's second nature to aim for seamless subject changes.

Interestingly, the read-through showed that the transitions often marked dramatic beats within the scenes and came out of what was going on in the subtext. In the penultimate scene, for example, Emily, who John fancies, tracks down John and Paul enjoying an early afternoon pint. She's wearing a T-shirt advertising Crispin, John's archrival's show, and it's an It's My Party ('Oh what a birthday surprise/Judy's wearing his ring') moment for John. He confronts Emily with the fact that she's promoting a rival production, and she fobs him off with an excuse about her T-shirt for John's show being in the wash – the It's My Party aspect stays in subtext. Emily has come to ask if one of the actors from John's play can take over from one in Crispin's. In reality, she's telling John and Paul that this is going to happen and it's a fait accompli, but she needs to put it to them as if it's their choice so that they're disposed to let her use their hired car to take the actor from show to show. Paul isn't fooled by her guile and spots immediately that the deal with the actor has already been done. He points out her betrayal (symbolised for John by her wearing of Crispin's T-shirt), and tells her to run along, at which point she asks about borrowing the car. Emily and Paul squabble over whether or not she can use it until John, realising that Crispin's domination is complete, tells Paul to give Emily the car keys. When Paul hands them over, John again mentions Emily's T-shirt and she tells him to get over it.

The subject changes in this scene are at the points of its dramatic beats and the action turns on them. The subject matter of the dialogue goes from the T-shirt, to Crispin's show, to the actor's partial defection, to the car and back to the T-shirt. The progression centres largely on Emily revealing the news about the actor and getting around to asking for the car. I've made the final subject change (back to the T-shirt) very abrupt deliberately because it shows that, even with his show in crisis, John is still weighing his chances with Emily. The line's incongruity with the general thrust of the dialogue makes it a laugh line, but it also feeds into the dramatic movement in the scene as a whole – that is, John's realisation that his show is not finally going to be a hit and he's got no chance with Emily.

In Story, Hollywood screenwriting guru, Robert McKee (1998:258), suggests breaking scenes down into dramatic beats as a way of analysing scripts while writing. I prefer a more intuitive approach – as I said, trying to achieve seamless transitions in dialogue and dramatic beats becomes second nature – but doing this in rehearsal was useful, revealing and interesting. While I feel the progressions in the scene described above work well, there are other parts of the script where they're not so fluid. The less competent subject changes demand more from the actors in getting from place to place and will take more work in rehearsal to make them credible. As I've found in previous productions, much depends on the cast's interpretation of the lines, and this often differs sharply in both meaning and expression from the way I'd imagined when writing. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, as often actors put the lines over in a way that's an improvement on first thoughts.

As well as pencilling-in the subject changes, Sam and the cast gave the scenes titles to make it easier to identify them than just referring to them by their numbers. Sometimes these titles were a bit literal – the night-time scene in the car on Arthur's Seat is to be known as 'Arthur's Seat' (I've always thought of it as the Paradise by the Dashboard Light scene after the Meat Loaf song) – but Simon came up with the more creative 'Poppadoms all Round' for the final scene.

The cast had some questions for me that came out of Monday's rehearsals. Several of these were factual – clarification on the location of the Arthur's Seat scene; how the Fringe Firsts work; if the references in the script to Edinburgh landmarks were clear enough for the audience – and there were a couple of quibbles over some of the play's content. One niggle was that if seeing Clive, the stage hand, dressed in a chicken suit made Paul think of soup for dinner, why did he buy carrot and coriander? 'Oh, come on,' I said, 'It's not a giant leap from "chicken" to soup of any flavour!' I told them that they had carte blanche to improvise on the soup issue, though.

There were some requests for very minor changes in the dialogue to make it flow better – I'd tended to be a bit cumbersome in referring to the 'Edinburgh Festival Fringe' where 'Edinburgh' or 'the Fringe' would do, for example. I said that I probably wouldn't even notice if they made changes of this kind, but asked that they don't alter the laugh lines. I've found that raising a laugh has a lot to do with the rhythm of the dialogue and I take care to shape the lines to make them as funny as possible. When actors have (often without realising that they're doing it) put in extra words here and there in my plays in the past, they've blown the laughs.

Sam called an early lunch at 11.30am, which meant that I could head off in good time for the bus to work.

I was expecting a call from Steve Wright from Venue magazine to get some details for a preview of the show in next week's edition. He called just as the bus was pulling up to my stop and I buffeted a couple of students with my backpack in my hurry to get off. I paced up and down a grassy verge and answered Steve's questions in the spitting rain. He asked for an outline of the play and I told him that it's based on my experience of staging a show on the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, stressing that it's not a documentary account of this experience. I added that the idea fits with the 'Inside Out' theme for Theatre West's autumn season because it's a play about putting on a play, a drama about a drama. 'The script's sort of a commentary on itself, although it's not too self-consciously postmodern, as we academics say,' I concluded pompously.

I regretted the 'postmodern' thing immediately – I don't want Venue readers to go thinking Salt'n'Sauce is a big eggheaded number – and started back-pedalling frantically. 'It's sort of like Steve Merchant and Ricky Gervais's Extras,' I gabbled, but then, not wanting people to think it's a direct crib, asked myself, 'So how does it differ? Well, I'm not as big on the comedy of embarrassment as they are. My play's more about rivalry and jealousy.'

Steve wanted to know if I thought that people in the theatre were particularly competitive and envious. I said I didn't feel it was especially true in the performing arts, but that people are competitive in all walks of life, and this was something I wanted to explore.

To sum up, Steve reached for a label – 'Is it a dark comedy?' he asked. This is tag that I'd have leapt on gratefully in the past because it sounds good, but now I'm not really sure. 'Well, nobody dies. Nobody kills anybody,' I said. I suppose I don't really know what a 'dark comedy' is. I wouldn't say that Salt'n'Sauce is a 'light comedy' – that is, frivolous or without serious intent – but does that mean that any comedy that aims to make frank observations on life is necessarily 'dark'? Maybe comedy of any value or impact is inherently dark because it confronts human failings and weaknesses? It points to the skull beneath the skin? Discuss.

Steve said he though he had enough for the preview and I gave him the web address for further information. I just hope he comes up with something from my ramblings that encourages Venue readers to see the show!