Book: HOW'S THAT FOR
TELLING 'EM, FAT LADY? by Simon Gray
A Short Life in the American Theatre
Review: Robert Sandall
Drink-sodden diary of an expert in petty revenges
If the fact that Simon
Gray has chosen to put out a second volume of diarised
memoirs mainly concerned with the staging of one of his
less rapturously received plays seems a bit perverse,
well, that is precisely the point. An unusually consistent
success in the eyes of the theatrical world, Gray likes to
entertain a rather different view of himself in prose as a
booze-ridden, chain-smoking wreck. This self-derogatory
theme, first broached in An Unnatural Pursuit, is
vigorously pursued again here in an account of his
involvement with three separate productions in America in
1986: two of The Common
Pursuit, in Los Angeles and New York, and one in
Dallas of Dog Days.
We do actually learn a lot about American theatrical mores, the dramatic crafting of The Common Pursuit, and especially Gray's anxious wrestling with its particular demon, act one scene two. But How's That For Telling 'Em, Fat Lady? is most enjoyably read as a quirky update, in a theatrical setting, of that crusty yarn, The Englishman Abroad.
Abroad is as usual pretty bloody. At Gray’s first stop, the tiny Matrix theatre in Los Angeles there are immediate language difficulties in the form of a director who harangues the cast in impenetrable West Coast gobbledegook: banging on about "the life muscle" and abruptly plunging into incoherent rages.
The actors for their part are an unpunctual bunch of drooling gluttons. "I have never seen so much eating going on in my life before. All the time," Gray rages to his diary. "Some of this food, or non-food, or whatever it is, invariably falls out of their mouths and dribbles down their chins, what they retain in their mouths they eat with almost smacking noises." An expert in the art of petty revenges, Gray has an answer for this. In non-smoking theatreland he brandishes his cigarette like a swordstick. "Whenever they eat I puff smoke into their faces from whatever angle I happen to be at from them.”
Outside and stuck in the vast urban sprawl of LA without a car, Gray, a non-driver, trudges about in search of out-of-date English newspapers. Back at the hotel his video recorder refuses to work. His private phone calls are openly monitored by the staff. The food is terrible. He is forced to resort to ever more liquid lunches, breakfasts and dinners, and describes them all in bilious detail. "The key word in all this," he concludes, "is boring. Though sometimes I quite like it all.”
Of course he does. Abroad is no more chaotic and slovenly than, by his own admission, Gray is himself. His socks and hair go unwashed for weeks. He is hopelessly enslaved by his addiction to nicotine and low-brow movies. Perpetually drunk or hungover, he is far too self-conscious a slob to take much pride or solace in his work. "Dog Days," he declares at the end of an averagely bad day, "is such a boring and repellent little play that I'd rather not he associated with it."
It is more or less the same story, with regional variations, even grimmer hotels and an ever-increasing intake of alcohol, in Dallas and, later that year, in New York. All three productions we learn, almost en passant, are a resounding success. Yet success leaves the author feeling "completely defeated by the circumstances of life. What these circumstances are," he adds, “I don’t know."
Lovers of the work of Amis père and Philip Larkin should have no difficulty spotting the literary game going on amid the ironic candour here. Though his name is most often associated with that of his friend and collaborator Harold Pinter, Gray is obviously a closet devotee of those confessions of boozy, paranoid misanthropy which first became the rage during his youth in the 1950s. In his beguiling readable way Gray is now styling himself as the crotchety and disreputable anti-hero of modern fiction - a Lucky Jim of the theatre.
We do actually learn a lot about American theatrical mores, the dramatic crafting of The Common Pursuit, and especially Gray's anxious wrestling with its particular demon, act one scene two. But How's That For Telling 'Em, Fat Lady? is most enjoyably read as a quirky update, in a theatrical setting, of that crusty yarn, The Englishman Abroad.
Abroad is as usual pretty bloody. At Gray’s first stop, the tiny Matrix theatre in Los Angeles there are immediate language difficulties in the form of a director who harangues the cast in impenetrable West Coast gobbledegook: banging on about "the life muscle" and abruptly plunging into incoherent rages.
The actors for their part are an unpunctual bunch of drooling gluttons. "I have never seen so much eating going on in my life before. All the time," Gray rages to his diary. "Some of this food, or non-food, or whatever it is, invariably falls out of their mouths and dribbles down their chins, what they retain in their mouths they eat with almost smacking noises." An expert in the art of petty revenges, Gray has an answer for this. In non-smoking theatreland he brandishes his cigarette like a swordstick. "Whenever they eat I puff smoke into their faces from whatever angle I happen to be at from them.”
Outside and stuck in the vast urban sprawl of LA without a car, Gray, a non-driver, trudges about in search of out-of-date English newspapers. Back at the hotel his video recorder refuses to work. His private phone calls are openly monitored by the staff. The food is terrible. He is forced to resort to ever more liquid lunches, breakfasts and dinners, and describes them all in bilious detail. "The key word in all this," he concludes, "is boring. Though sometimes I quite like it all.”
Of course he does. Abroad is no more chaotic and slovenly than, by his own admission, Gray is himself. His socks and hair go unwashed for weeks. He is hopelessly enslaved by his addiction to nicotine and low-brow movies. Perpetually drunk or hungover, he is far too self-conscious a slob to take much pride or solace in his work. "Dog Days," he declares at the end of an averagely bad day, "is such a boring and repellent little play that I'd rather not he associated with it."
It is more or less the same story, with regional variations, even grimmer hotels and an ever-increasing intake of alcohol, in Dallas and, later that year, in New York. All three productions we learn, almost en passant, are a resounding success. Yet success leaves the author feeling "completely defeated by the circumstances of life. What these circumstances are," he adds, “I don’t know."
Lovers of the work of Amis père and Philip Larkin should have no difficulty spotting the literary game going on amid the ironic candour here. Though his name is most often associated with that of his friend and collaborator Harold Pinter, Gray is obviously a closet devotee of those confessions of boozy, paranoid misanthropy which first became the rage during his youth in the 1950s. In his beguiling readable way Gray is now styling himself as the crotchety and disreputable anti-hero of modern fiction - a Lucky Jim of the theatre.