Matthew Perry's play and the need for critical compassion, actor-writer Joe Eyre, and three shows to see...
The harsh reviews of the late stars' playwriting debut reveal a lot about the importance of kindness in criticism. Plus: a chat with the playwright behind new play Tiger, and three shows to see.
Hello, and welcome to The Crush Bar, a weekly newsletter about theatre written by me, Fergus Morgan.
Below, you will find a bit about the reviews of the late Matthew Perry’s 2016 West End play The End Of Longing and the need for compassion in criticism, followed by a chat with actor and writer Joe Eyre, whose second play Tiger opens at Clapham’s Omnibus Theatre on Tuesday, and three recommendations for shows to see next week.
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Like most of my generation, I grew up loving Friends and loving Matthew Perry’s Chandler.
I remember the day my mum bought the entire Friends boxset on DVD, unveiling it in the boot of our car like Indiana Jones pulling a canvas off the ark of the covenant: ten seasons of laughter on thirty-odd discs, packed into a big, black cabinet-like box. We watched them together – my mum, my brother, my sister and me – on the sofa after school. When my sister left for university, we bought another boxset for her to take with her. Like many, then, I was pretty upset by Perry’s death at 54 earlier this week.
Perry appeared twice on stage in Britain. In 2003, at the height of his Friends fame, he starred – alongside Hank Azaria, Kelly Reilly and Minnie Driver – in a revival of David Mamet’s Sexual Peversity In Chicago. Then, in 2016, he returned in his own debut play, The End Of Longing, which later transferred to Broadway. The former was fairly well-reviewed. The latter was decidedly not.
I never saw The End Of Longing, although I was writing about theatre in London at the time. It was never published, so I cannot even read it now. From the reviews, though, I understood it to be a thinly veiled portrait of Perry and his own, well-publicised struggle with addiction. Perry played Jack, an alcoholic photographer, and the play followed the ups and downs of Jack’s relationships with his friends and girlfriend. The whole thing was stuffed full of slight, cynical sitcom laughs.
After the news of Perry’s death, I found myself looking up those reviews of The End Of Longing. Most of them are scathing, two-star write-ups that poke fun at the play’s old-fashioned, Neil LaBute-ish sexual politics, its weak characterisation, its generic humour, and the very fact that Perry thought he might forge a second career as a playwright.
Knowing what we know now about Perry’s subsequent relapses, loneliness, depression and death, they make for deeply uncomfortable reading. And it is not Perry that comes across like an arsehole in these reviews, but the critics that wrote them. I won’t point fingers because I know and respect most of these writers, but it is difficult to read a line calling Perry’s writing as “stale as a drunk’s morning breath” and not wince.
“I worry that being a decent critic and being a decent human being are becoming incompatible…”
Of course, I appreciate that The End Of Longing was probably a bit crap, and that West End tickets are expensive, and that potential punters deserved to warned before they fork out their hard-earned cash. There is a difference, though, between being honest and being mean; between a harsh-but-fair critic and an unnecessarily cruel one; between a reviewer that respects all artists and is sympathetic to the fact that they are also people, and a reviewer that takes pleasure in panning something. There is a line between criticising something and critiquing something. And I think, in the case of Perry and his play, most critics fell the wrong side of that line.
It is a difficult tightrope to walk, and it is getting harder. I have written about this before in the contexts of the Edinburgh Fringe and the Covid-19 pandemic: as the arts industry becomes increasingly impossible to build a sustainable career in, I am acutely aware of how financially and emotionally vulnerable most people working within it are, and I am increasingly uncomfortable about writing negative things about their work as a result. I frequently do, of course, because that is the job. I am never less than honest – but I worry that being a decent critic and being a decent human being are becoming incompatible.
Is there an answer? Yes: a better funded, more supportive industry would not only make artists lives easier, but the job of criticism easier, too. As I wrote in August: “When you know that the people involved in a show are properly paid and properly supported and that writing something less-than-enthusiastic won’t risk tipping them into an existential abyss, you feel freer to be more frank.”
I also think it behoves critics to hold themselves to a higher standard in general, though: to exercise compassion alongside candour, to be constructive not cruel, to be both honest and humane. I think critics should remember that everyone – from the world-famous star of a beloved sitcom, to a student putting on a play at the Edinburgh Fringe – might be dealing with something difficult.
Big cats often work well as metaphors in magical-realist works: think of Judith Kerr’s children’s book The Tiger Who Came To Tea, or Yann Martel’s novel-turned-film-turned-play Life Of Pi, or even Mandi Chivasa’s Edinburgh Fringe hit Beasts.
Writer and actor Joe Eyre is following in those feline footsteps with his second play Tiger, which premieres at the Omnibus Theatre, Clapham, on Tuesday, and runs until early December. Directed by Myles O’Gorman and produced by Jessie Anand, Tiger features Poppy Allen-Quarmby as Alice, a stand-up comedian struggling with depression after the death of her mother. Luke Nunn plays her partner Oli, and Meg Lewis the tiger that magically moves into their flat on New Year’s Eve.
“The character of the Tiger looks like a person dressed as a tiger, but it is really a product of the grief that Alice and Oli are going through,” explains Eyre. “It is this very joyful presence that lifts them out of their troubles, but then causes all sorts of other problems. I wanted a metaphor for something you don’t understand taking up a lot of space in your life. I thought a tiger worked. Of course, I then realised that is an idea lots of people have had. There is something about tigers, I guess.”
Tiger, continues Eyre, was originally born out personal experience, but he prefers not to discuss it directly. “I am a little bit cautious, because I don’t want people to think this is a mirror image of what happened to me,” he explains. “It is more inspired by things that people very close to me have gone through, and I don’t want to tell their story for them, if that makes sense.” Nonetheless, he adds, the impact of Covid-19 – on both lives and livelihoods – has hopefully made Tiger’s exploration of grief universal. “Loss and grief are things that connect everyone,” he says.
“I’ve performed a lot of different styles of writing. I’ve learned how plays work. I hope that has fed into my writing…”
Born in 1989, Eyre moved around a lot as a child, but fell in love with theatre through a weekend youth drama group in High Wycombe – “I wasn’t very good at sports as a kid, but I liked being in a team, so drama offered that instead,” he laughs – then started taking it more seriously while studying English at the University of Oxford. A three-year degree in acting at Guildhall followed.
Since then, Eyre has balanced acting and writing. He has performed in Mike Bartlett’s King Charles III in the West End, Terrence Rattigan’s French Without Tears at the Orange Tree Theatre, Harold Pinter’s The Homecoming at the Theatre Royal Bath, and, earlier this year, triple-bill Makeshifts And Realities at the Finborough Theatre. As a writer, his debut play Crocodile, which featured a reptilian magical-realist twist, ran at VAULT Festival in 2017, in a staging produced by Joyous Gard, a company Eyre set up with his older sister, the actor and audiobook narrator Beth Eyre. His adaptation of Shakespeare’s Henry IV, co-written with Kaffe Keating, was at the Old Red Lion earlier this year, too.
“I’ve acted in plays that have been good and plays that have been less good,” says Eyre. “I’ve performed a lot of different styles of writing. I’ve learned how plays work. I hope that has fed into my writing. Being in Terrence Rattigan’s French Without Tears, for example, you realise how well-crafted it is and how incredible the dialogue is. Hopefully I have picked some of that up on the way.”
Tiger is at the Omnibus Theatre from November 7 until December 2. For more information and tickets, click here.
Three shows to see next week
A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings - various, until November 25
Irish theatremaker Dan Colley was interviewed in this newsletter last year, after I saw two shows of his in quick succession - A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings at the Edinburgh Fringe and Lost Lear at Dublin Theatre Festival - and loved both. Now, A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings is on tour, visiting venues around South-East England throughout November. It is a weird and wonderful adaptation of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s 1968 magic-realist story of the same name, about a Colombian couple and the ancient angel they discover in their garden one day, told with a compelling combination of narration, mime, puppetry, foley and micro-cinema. It is a delight for kids and adults alike. You can read my four-star review of it for The Scotsman here, and get tickets for its tour via the button below.
Scratches - Arcola Theatre, until November 11
Theatre company Plain Heroines have featured in this newsletter a few times: first when co-founder Kate Reid’s play The 4th Country ran at Finsbury Park’s Park Theatre in January 2022, then again earlier this year when Reid’s fellow co-founders Aoife Kennan and Gabriella Bird staged Scratches at VAULT Festival. That show is now transferring to the Arcola Theatre for a five-night run next week. Written and performed by Kennan and Zac Ghazi-Torbati and directed by Bird, it is a story of self-harm and recovery, exuberantly told with stand-up comedy and confetti. You can get tickets via the button below.
Feeling Afraid As If Something Terrible Is Going To Happen - Bush Theatre, until December 23
This one-man play was a big hit at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2022. Written by Marcelo Dos Santos, directed by Matthew Xia, produced by Francesca Moody and starring former History Boy Samuel Barnett, it is the story of a stand-up comedian who finally finds the man of his dreams, then proceeds to totally freak out about it. It is cleverly structured and brilliantly witty, and features a sparklingly funny performance from Barnett. It is now running at the Bush Theatre until Christmas and I cannot recommend it enough. You can read my four-star review of it for The Independent here and book tickets via the button below.
Thanks for reading
That is it for this week. If you want to get in touch about anything raised in this issue - or anything at all, really - just reply to this newsletter or email me at fergusmorgan@hotmail.co.uk. Or you can find me on Twitter/X, where I am @FergusMorgan.
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See you next Friday.
Fergus
Another great article! Your point about negative criticism is really important and such a tough balance to strike. I have reviewed theatre for a while and, I think, that you need to adjust your mindset depending on what you are experiencing. For example, I saw Wuthering Heights performed by four actors in a garden and it was as intense an experience as watching Moulin Rouge at The Piccadilly - even when the Coastguard helicopter zoomed overhead on an emergency call out. Clearly The smaller piece would never have the production values of Moulin Rouge but it had an intensity and subtlety of performance that would not have worked in the mega-musical.
There is also no point in being cruel about a show or anyone involved because a show should always be organic and growing so what you are seeing is a snapshot in time - you wouldn't judge somebody for their whole life based on something they did when they were 14. When you find that you didn't like something then, as you say, you should look for a way to be constructive. In situation where I have found it hard to offer something constructive I realise that it is my own lack of knowledge that I need to address.