Plays: One

by John Arden

Will Self has established himself as one of the most brilliant, daring, and inventive writers of his generation. My Idea of Fun is Will Self’s highly acclaimed first novel. The story of a devilishly clever international financier/marketing wizard and his young apprentice, My Idea of Fun is both a frighteningly dark subterranean exploration of capitalism run rampant and a wickedly sharp, technically acute display of linguistic pyrotechnics that glows with pure white-hot brilliance. Ian Wharton is a very ordinary young man until he is taken under the wing of a gentleman known variously as Mr. Broadhurst, Samuel Northcliff, and finally and simply the Fat Controller. Loudmouthed, impeccably tailored, and a fount of bombastic erudition, the Fat Controller initiates Ian into the dark secrets of his arts -- of marketing, money, and the human psyche -- and takes Ian, and the reader, on a wild voyage around the edges of reality. As we careen into the twenty-first century, Self perfectly captures the zeitgeist of our times: money is the only common language; consumerism, violence, and psychosis (drug-induced and otherwise) prevail; and the human soul has become the ultimate product.

350 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1977

About the author

One of the most important of the British playwrights to emerge in the mid-20th century. His plays mix poetry and songs with colloquial speech in a boldly theatrical manner and involve strong conflicts purposely left unresolved.

Arden grew up in the industrial town of Barnsley, the character of which he captured in his play The Workhouse Donkey (1963). He studied architecture at the University of Cambridge and at Edinburgh College of Art, where fellow students performed his comedy All Fall Down (1955), about the construction of a railway. He continued to write plays while working as an architectural assistant from 1955 to 1957. His first play to be produced professionally was a radio drama, The Life of Man (1956). Waters of Babylon (1957), a play with a roguish but unjudged central character, revealed a moral ambiguity that troubled critics and audiences. His next play, Live Like Pigs (1958), was set on a housing estate. This was followed by his best-known work, Serjeant Musgrave’s Dance (1959), set in a colliery town in 1860–80. Both plays caused controversy.

In 1957 Arden married Margaretta D’Arcy, an actress and playwright, with whom he wrote a number of stage pieces and improvisational works for amateur and student players. The Happy Haven, produced in 1960 in London, is a sardonic farce about an old people’s home. The Workhouse Donkey is a crowded, exuberant, and comic drama of municipal politics. Armstrong’s Last Goodnight (1964) is a drama set in the Borders region of Scotland in the 1530s and written in Lowland Scottish vernacular. Left-Handed Liberty (1965), written to mark the 750th anniversary of the signing of Magna Carta, characteristically dwells on the failure of the document to achieve liberty. His writing became more politically committed, as evidenced in the two radio plays The Bagman (1972) and Pearl (1978). Later plays—The Non-Stop Connolly Cycle (1975), a six-part drama based on the life of the Irish patriot James Connolly, as well as the Arthurian drama The Island of the Mighty (1972), Vandaleur’s Folly (1978), and The Little Gray Home in the West (1982), among others—were written with D’Arcy. Arden’s fiction includes the novel Silence Among the Weapons (1982; also published as Vox Pop) and the story collection The Stealing Steps (2003).

At his death, he was lauded as "one of the most significant British playwrights of the late 1950s and early 60s".

Reviews

[Keith · Rating 2 out of 5]

Serjeant Musgrave’s Dance – ** Within this play there is a kernel of great drama. There is a theme that is inventive and a conflict that is engrossing. However, this kernel is buried beneath many layers of stilted dialogue and uneven characters.

Perhaps it’s just me, or perhaps in performance the play is much better, but I never felt that the character really mean what they say. They say what needs to be said to advance the play. And they say it in an odd way, interrupted continually by snippets from songs that ended up seeming more of an annoyance than a contribution to the theme and characters of the play.

Interesting, but there are better things to spend your time reading.


The Workhouse Donkey - ** Like Arden’s most famous play above, there is an interesting drama in this meandering play. I thought the characters were more coherently formed in this work, but again they break into song at odd places, and the songs don’t really add that much.

This is described on the back cover as being “the most successful play in the Brechtian style since Brecht wrote The Caucasian Chalk Circle.” High praise, but it falls short of its mark. Arden’s play lack the light humor and deft characterization of Brecht.

If you haven’t read The Caucasian Chalk Circle, skip this play and go right to Brecht’s. You won’t be sorry.

[Abhinav · Rating 1 out of 5]

i swear to god this book is interminable. i never saw anything that insisted upon itself more in my life. the whole thing reeks of being meant to be read instead of played, which i didnt know was possible for plays. I guess theres a reason i never heard of this arden guy. Not to mention its impossible to read anyway, the characters are so much more obsessed with being clever than with being comprehensible and theres random non sequitur songs thrown in at the most unnecessary places. plus the fake-scottish of armstrong is just unreadable, essentially gave up halfway through that one.

Bought in Antiquariat Mayrhans on 13.12.25.