Common

by D.C. Moore

Common is a dark and disturbing journey into the carnivalesque world of early-Industrial Britain, exploring the personal and public traumas in the period of the enclosure.

Written with verve and wit by Olivier Award-nominated and Writers' Guild Award-winning playwright DC Moore, it tells the story of Mary, a woman who has returned to the village of her birth after years of grifting a living on the edge of respectable London society. She is there to confront old enemies and rekindle a former love.

But there's trouble in the air as the local Lord struggles to extend the reach of his power by reclaiming the common-land as his personal fiefdom. Will Mary be able to win over those she lost before? Or will the violence of the time seep over into even the purest of missions?

Common is an epic, funny and uncanny history play which examines the period of the enclosure, asking what does community mean and if there can ever be resolution in the intractable battle between individual desires and the common good.

Common received its world premiere on the Olivier stage of the National Theatre, London, in a coproduction with Headlong, in May 2017.

Genres: Plays

128 pages, Paperback

Published May 30, 2017

Reviews

[Doug]

Heron: "What? Why can nobody just say what they fucking mean, eh?" (p. 89)

That pretty much sums up the weakness of this muddled mess of a play, which got dreadful reviews in its recent premiere at the National Theatre (the show was cut from 3 hours down to 2 1/2 after opening, but alas the script contains the whole bloody thing). Moore invents a faux language (much like Paul Kingsnorth did in 'The Wake') for his 1809 setting, that combines strings of words with a Yoda-speak structure (and higgledy-piggledy punctuation) that is often well-nigh incomprehensible - to wit:

Mary: "I wander yes among sweetbelligerant country: dodoes. Thinking this ground allpermanent theirs, unshifting. But only theirs how any kennel is any dog's & Master has plans for his bitch. Though what a hero of Hers it would make me. To all-end this here Tragedy. Or at least bury it some goodlywhile." (p. 41) Huh?

This is terribly difficult to read, and apparently even worse to decipher when heard, so that I found myself having to reread and reread sections to make any sense of it at all. Whenever imagination fails him, Moore has somebody stabbed and/or their throat slit... by my count this includes a pig, a horse, a dog, and at least four humans. The sheer perversity of putting an audience through this boggles the mind; however, there is enough cleverness involved that I can't see myself giving it the one star rating it probably deserves.

[Phillip]

I'm really rather disappointed that I didn't like this play more. There were elements I really liked, particularly the historical discussion of the enclosure of English common land, which lead to major social upheaval during the Regency period. But I think what I found most disappointing is that the play doesn't seem to have an ethical center. Everyone is tarnished--which is not in and of itself that much of a problem--but no one ever seems to articulate any value system worth emulating or admiring, and even when they do articulate such a value system their actions undermine it. Mary--who is somewhat evocative of figures like Moll Flanders or Moll Cutpurse from Middleton and Dekker's The Roaring Girl--seems to have returned to this village to restore the love that was violently ripped away from her, but she continually schemes, manipulates, and sets up violence (even if she herself rarely commits violence). Laura is her dark opposite, who has stayed in the village and remained tied to the land, but who equally utilizes other for her own purposes, particularly both Mary's and King's incestuous desire for her. King is something of a thug who doesn't seem to have much of a coherent moral philosophy. And most of the minor characters lend themselves to nefarious purposes for one or another major character. To a certain extent, I could see an argument that this play explores the social upheaval (and the moral degradation that many social commentators identified with the mass migration to cities), but the conflict over enclosure seems more peripheral than the personal issues and personalities which seem to drive this play.

One thing to admire here, but that is also challenging (and must be really tough in performance) is Moore's language. He tends to combine words together into expressive ideas, which in part mirrors a kind of country dialect, but also gives the play a kind of odd mysticism. The linguistic blending suggests a poetry background (which I don't know whether Moore has), particularly in Modernist experimental poetry on the order of people like ee cummings. While it is a moderate challenge to read, it must be a major challenge to perform or the make sense of in performance, particularly if the show is, as the opening Notes suggest, "played at a Lick."

[Brenda]

Being a Yank, I was completely unaware of the process of enclosure in 18th century England. Once common lands were enclosed into larger farms, use would be restricted to the owner, i.e. landed gentry/aristocrats, leaving the common people homeless or out of work. I wish this play had delved more deeply into this controversial program, but it's given short shrift.

The love story is a bit more in depth, but with the romance, the above-mentioned enclosures, and a stab at women's rights in the 1700's, the playwright tries to cover too much here. I enjoyed the plot and the characters, especially the lead, a grifter named Mary.

Also hindering full engagement with the piece is the overly contorted language. I love a good archaic speech pattern, but Moore is so obviously stretching for bare coherence, it really undermines any understanding of the text at the too-high expence of gobbledygook.

Still would love to see the original production, with my favourite actress Anne-Marie Duff.

[Cathal Reynolds]

I have no fucking clue what went on but from it I took two of my favourite lines:
"...if my language some offends: fistfuck you and everyone you ever loved."
"Fuck a doormat till it bends."
Everything else was super confusing. Mary seemed fucking insane and I counted 11.5 uses of the word 'cunt' which was fun.
The language was just plain weird too. Very hard to read and I can't imagine much easier to hear either. Punctuation up the whazoo. Staging kind of weird. Very little seemed to actually happen. Felt a bit like a poor man's Light.

[Ethie chintz]

A very underrated script. Rich weirdness.

[Steven Felicelli]

it was like an Elizabethan Deadwood - interesting, uniquely wrought, yet ultimately left me disengaged

[Ana]

Like another reviewer has noted, I think the message gets very lost, not just in the lilting compound language but also in the drama and grit. Shame really.

[Steve Mayer]

The script makes the play a little more understandable, but not totally. Much is lost in the fog of language. Some of it is vivid, and moving, but much of it is historybabble.

[Esmé Jennings]

Final third year show!

Slightly confused. But great. Sure I’ll work it out in rehearsals.

My favourite line: are you pulling my littlepalepissypipe

Eggy Tom: a legend.