Leeds politics blogger @LeedsCitizen went with us to see My Generation at the West Yorkshire Playhouse, and here’s his thoughts (or lack of them) …
I’ve no idea what I think of ‘My Generation’ – Alice Nutter’s play set in Leeds that’s running at the West Yorkshire Playhouse till 26th October.
I didn’t know when I was watching it. I didn’t know afterwards in the bar, and I still don’t know now four days later.
I can tell you what happens, though:
The play traces the lives of one family from the late 70s to the present day, focusing on one member in each of the play’s four acts.
They’re not your typical bourgeois family.
Here they are in Act One’s late 70s squat: mum’s the protagonist, at the sink and cleaning the toilet while dad is out Roneoing the latest class war leaflet, when a posh radical feminist turns up and turns upside down their lives with her consciousness-raising motorbike and message of ‘men, who needs ‘em?’
Here they are in Act Two during the miners’ strike: dad’s the protagonist – tricked by a treacherous ‘hairy’ from darn sarf and badly beaten by the uniformed branch on the picket line – while his wimpier, lifelong pal reads crap poetry at a benefit gig. Mum bridles as she’s called ‘love’ by a miner speaking from the stage.
And here they are in a field somewhere in the early 90s (it’s Act Three): their son takes centre stage –a free festival raver till his truck-living girlfriend’s pregnancy brings him to abandon the trolly he’s being getting off in the cause of freedom and fun.
Finally we come to the present day: everything’s fucked, especially the daughter who has come a predictable cropper after living the capitalist dream. Tears are shed in the auditorium as family and friends find reconciliation and wait for the inevitable implosion of the system.
“At least we fucking tried,” they sing defiantly.
The end.
Now don’t go thinking that what you’re going to get is some black and white slice of agit prop, a dour rebel’s rant spread over 40 years of political action and three hours of drama. You don’t. It isn’t.
As she looks back, Nutter’s looking at the human side of ‘the struggle’. She’s more affectionate and wistful and nuanced than I expected. And there are plenty of laughs early on, many at the expense of the cartoon side of radical politics (kids! we really were like that, some of us still are).
Did I enjoy it?
Well, some of the writing is good, particularly in the tauter first two acts.
And it’s a nice touch – a sort of art imitating life – to make the play look like a proper collective production, with the actors mucking in to shift the scenes and play with the on-stage band, and the band feeling like a part of the action.
And there’s a neat bit of choreography as the coppers lay about the dad with their truncheons in a macabre, Thriller-style dance sequence.
And the actors were all good, as far as I could tell, with Craig Conway standing out as Mick, the dad. He’s the character I cared most about, the best written.
And it was nice to see Craig Baizey as Ben the son, doing the long-play version of that comic, vulnerable, scatter-brained lad we knew and loved when he was Graeme, up a ladder cleaning windows and breaking Tina’s heart in Corrie.
And … and … and …
Another real positive. My Generation is a sort of musical. Which means not only can you suspend your disbelief at what’s going on … there’s also lots of music …
Which gets played brilliantly by a great three piece band (featuring BD9’s favourite son, Harris) who are on stage much of the time, nailing one groove after another as they feed the plot with old faves of the day and new songs.
I’m glad I went.
It doesn’t matter if I didn’t really get it.
I was with some nice people and I’m a sucker for musical romps, especially one with a closing message that echoes the Bill and Ted political philosophy of being excellent to one another.
Apart from which the play got me remembering about how lots of us were in those days, how we talked and thought and behaved, how the world moved on, how people changed, did different stuff, led different lives as they got older.
Like Alice Nutter leaving Chumbawamba and becoming a successful writer with a well-received stage version of her Radio 4 play about a family in Leeds and its struggle. Like me being in the audience watching. In the audience at the Playhouse!