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Cat and Mouse (Sheep)

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Cat And Mouse (Sheep)
Written byGregory Motton
Date premiered23 April 1995
Place premieredOdéon-Théâtre de l'Europe, Paris
GenreSatire

Cat and Mouse (Sheep) is a 1995 theatre play by British playwright Gregory Motton. It satirises both the left and right in British society. It was premiered at the Odéon-Théâtre de l'Europe, Paris and then shown briefly in Britain at the Gate Theatre.It has subsequently only been performed outside Britain. It is published by Oberon Books.[1] In the play, Conservative, capitalist and contemporary left wing politics are merged and discredited, identified as middle-class in their nature and origin and hostile to working class interests.

The play's emphasis on working class interests as being distinct from left wing politics as defined by the middle classes, a phenomenon now broadly discussed and to some degree acknowledged including within the Labour Party,[2][3][4][5] was strongly at odds with opinion amongst British theatre practitioners at a time when left wing consensus centred around the emerging middle class leadership[6] of the Labour Party whose success was to dominate the political scene for the next decade.[7] Cat and Mouse (Sheep) marked the end of Motton's initial popularity with British theatres; The play was not accepted by any theatre managements when it was written in 1992, and has never been produced in Britain. Until that time Motton's major plays had been produced at either the Royal Court or Riverside Studios, Haymarket Theatre, Leicester, within eighteen months of being written.[8] Cat and Mouse (Sheep) had to wait four years before being seen in Britain for six performances in a foreign production.

First Production

Cat and Mouse (Sheep) was directed at the Théâtre De L'Europe à L'Odeon, Paris by Gregory Motton and Ramin Gray with actors Kevin McMonagle, Tony Rohr, Penelope Dimond and Patrick Bridgeman, in English. It was later directed by the same directors with a French cast at the Théâtre de Gennevilliers, Paris, run by the Marxist director Bernard Sobel. The same Odeon production was later taken to the Gate Theatre for six performances Notting Hill, Kevin McMonagle was not available for these performances and the part of Gengis was played by actress Rudi Davies.

Context and Significance

Cat and Mouse (Sheep) is notable for its 'plague on both your houses' stance at a time when, in literary and arts organisations in general and the British theatre establishment in particular, a conventional, by then middle class, version of left-wingism was more or less taken for granted[9][10][11] and expressed though the choices made by the theatre and other managements[12][13][14] Motton's new work was now as unpopular with managements[15] as it had previously been with critics alike and the play was only able to be shown in Britain as part of a programme of "foreign" plays in a production financed by French money.[16][17] Motton's was an early and isolated dissident voice,[18] but one of limited effectiveness due to his marginalisation,[19] in the nascent debate within the left over the direction of the movement. Cat and Mouse (Sheep) was written while the middle class leadership established control of the Labour Party and five years before it formed the centre-left government under Tony Blair[20] of 1997, and precedes by a decade and a half the last stage of the conflict within Labour over control and direction of the movement, surrounding the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn, which Motton, along with others, was later to describe in articles as the end of the same process.[6][21][22][23][24][25][26]

Cat and Mouse (Sheep) was the first of four satires by that author using the same characters. The others are Gengis Amongst The Pygmies,[27] A Holiday In The Sun[28] and The Rape Of Europe[29]

The play and the subsequent three plays in the series, are useful as a register of opinion that was left wing but nevertheless unpopular with the left wing establishment, concentrating as those plays did on the plight of the lowest stratas of the poor,[30][31] both in Britain and abroad, and eschewing, or even ridiculing the more popular issues of gender and race politics that appealed to middle class voters,[32] – and to theatre audiences and managements. The plays also tended to adopt an accusing tone towards middle class consumers especially, charging them with hypocrisy and complicity in the exploitation of cheap labour in the far east.These plays have never been produced in Britain despite some prominent French Productions.

The play marks Motton's open opposition to the middle class controlled left, and a switch from his previous a-political lyricism in plays such as Looking At You (revived)Again to political satire. This was followed by a further move to straight polemics in works such as Helping Themselves-The Left Wing Middle Classes In Theatre And The Arts and A Working Class Alternative To Labour. The latter book is now in the House of Commons Library.[33] These books and the articles that follow them give a clarification of a distinctly working class position in terms of left-wing advocacy and put the case for an independent political movement to represent work class interests.[34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41]

Characters and plot

The play introduces the character of Genghis Khan, an immigrant shopkeeper, an anti-hero with all the faults and attributes of a petty tyrant and a common man, constantly trying to gratify his lusts and greed, but whose very baseness is exceeded by the rapacity and ability to distort, of both capitalists and middle class leftwingers, who, to his annoyance and indignation, 'seem to have got there first'.

A British-Pakistani, shopkeeper, Gengis lives with his Irish uncle, 'a rather unpleasant middle aged man keen to follow every latest trend' and his English, prudish, greedy and lascivious maiden aunt. When he begins a price war with his neighbour his wife Indira immediately leaves him, but he ends up the despotic ruler of the whole country. He receives advice from his manipulative Aunty and Uncle and his misadventures are chronicled by obsequious and terrified poet, Dickwitts. Gengis' policies are parodies of mixtures of the worst excess of left and right, of capitalism and political correctness, inflicted with relish on a populace already suffering poverty, destitution and ignorance. His wife returns 'at the head of a large force' to defeat him and the play ends with Gengis on a chair facing the hangman's noose (the very noose that becomes a fashion accessory in the next of the series Gengis Amongst The Pygmies).

Reception

Critical reception in Britain was mixed, in keeping with the reception of previous plays, some finding it incomprehensible. Michael Billington for The Guardian, complained of a 'scattergun technique' and called Motton 'an absurdist with Marxist tendencies' more suited to European audiences than to British. Roger Foss for What's On[42] however wrote:

Its surely a sign of just how predictably parochial and whimpish British drama has become when Gregory Motton has to go to Paris to get this brilliant state of the nation play premiered. Almost totally ignored by our own theatrical establishment, Motton is much appreciated in Europe and is presently Britain's most performed playwright in France. But thanks to the Gate's inaugural Biennale season Londoners at least have a chance to hear a unique voice that totally defies any neat categorisation. Satirical, witty and mind boggling at just about every conceivable level, this all adds to a unique theatrical experience.Theatregoing can never be quite the same after this.

favourably overestimating its impact.

The Independent perhaps summarised the disorientation felt by most audiences when it said "Motton is in characteristically iconoclastic, strident form. You enjoy feelings of shock, curiosity, amazed bursts of hilarity, irritation, sudden clarity, confusion, more amusement. When the furious and adamantine block of political satire rises up, iceberg-like, from the sea of wilfully obscure wordplay, it is brilliant" but complained of some "monotony unrelieved by progression or tension"[43] The Oldie said it was "Pinter in reverse, Joe Orton accelerated, T.S.Eliot brought up to date" while Harold Pinter himself wrote a letter to the author saying that he had enjoyed the play and wished him "more power to your elbow".[44]

Criticisms

Like much of Motton's writing for the theatre Cat and Mouse (Sheep) antagonised and bewildered theatre managements and critics, as well as some audiences. The work comes from a position already reached by the author and makes no concessions to any need to lead the audience to share his outlook. Instead it deliberately seeks to confront and embarrass the audience by tricking them into thinking they are being invited to agree with ideas that are then quickly discredited and ridiculed. This process is what gives the play its title[45] The result, while startling and amusing when it isn't plainly confusing, does little to win over audiences. The resulting clash engenders a hostility that has effectively silenced the very views the author proposes to advance. The play's failure to communicate successfully remains a glaring and fatal fault. Its failure seems to be built-in. Also, he could have avoided the politically prescriptive and formally conservative nature of British theatre by writing television satire or novels.

References

  1. ^ Oberon Books ISBN 1-84002-021-0 Motton Plays Three, Cat and Mouse (sheep), In Praise Of Progress, A little Satire, A Monologue, Introduction by Simon Usher
  2. ^ "Things Don't Only Get Better – Why The Working classes Fell Out Of Love with Labour" New Statesman November 2016. Labour peer Glasman says;We are experiencing a crisis in our relationship with working people, the descendants of those who built the party and the movement
  3. ^ "Labour now third most popular party among working-class voters, poll finds" The Independent 13 February 2017
  4. ^ "What Drove Labour's Success"The New Statesman June 2017. Labour is getting more middle-class We already knew that Labour's membership skews middle-class (ABC1) and graduate, and its voter base is moving the same way
  5. ^ "New Electoral Map For Britain" The Guardian 11 June 2017 Britain's class politics has been turned completely upside down in 2017. Labour, founded as the party of the working class, and focused on redistributing resources from the rich to the poor, gained the most ground in 2017 in seats with the largest concentrations of middle-class professionals and the rich. The Conservatives, long the party of capital and the middle class, made their largest gains in the poorest seats of England and Wales. Even more remarkably, after years of austerity, the Conservatives' advance on 2015 was largest in the seats where average incomes fell most over the past five years, while the party gained no ground at all in the seats where average incomes rose most
  6. ^ a b "Jeremy Corbyn has consolidated a bourgeois capture of the party begun by Tony Blair". New Statesman, June 2016
  7. ^ BBC Politics August 2010 "The Rise And Fall Of New Labour" The Labour party won a 179-seat majority - the biggest in its history on a manifesto which not only promised no income tax rises, but also a pledge to stick to Conservative spending plans
  8. ^ "Other work by Gregory Motton, plays, books , musicals, publishers". www.gregorymotton.com.
  9. ^ "Where Are The Right Wing Voices?" The Guardian 11 November 2007. Jonathan Church, artistic director of the Chichester Festival Theatre, puts it in brutal economic terms. 'There's a particular link with state subsidy in the kind of theatre we're talking about, and that in itself promotes a left-wing culture
  10. ^ "Political Theatre's Final Curtain" The Independent 28 December 2011 This is therapy for the middle classes
  11. ^ [1]The Guardian 11 November 2007 Julian Fellows;'after the Second World War the avant garde became the establishment. That meant that no one was poking fun at the establishment any more because they approved of it.' It's just become impossible not to be a socialist within the artistic community these days.' Any reasonably free society must allow for a range of views, and we don't have that'
  12. ^ [2] The Guardian 11 November 2007]. For decades, British theatre has been dominated by playwrights sympathetic to a liberal consensus
  13. ^ "Where Are The Right Wing Voices?" The Guardian 11 November 2007. The most honest statement comes from Jonathan Church at Chichester. Through his work at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre, Church has been associated with strident left-wing political theatre. At Birmingham in the early years of this decade. 'I'd probably put on a play that talked about an issue that I'm passionate about even if it wasn't brilliant,' he says. 'A right-wing play would have to be superb to overcome my prejudices.'
  14. ^ "Where Are The Right Wing Voices?" The Guardian 11 November 2007. Famously,Ian Curteis became a victim of what was described at the time as the liberal-left establishment when his television play about the Falklands War was dropped by the BBC in the Eighties because his portrait of Margaret Thatcher was deemed to be too positive
  15. ^ (Patrick Marmion, Whats on.5 May 1993) Motton stands aside from the mainstream orthodoxy...now managements are afraid what he is going to say
  16. ^ "Cat And Mouse (Sheep) and Services at The Gate" The Independent 13 February 1996 The choice of Gregory Motton to represent Britain in the season of "the most exciting European playwrights writing at the moment" sets the tone for the next two months at the Gate
  17. ^ http://gregorymotton.com/AboutCatAndMouseSheep.html When it was over they found they hadn't spent all the budget, and with gallic generosity the Odéon allowed Ducks and Geese to use the remainder to take the production over to England. David Farr was at the Gate Theatre and being an old or ex Motton-enthusiast from his Oxford days, gave them a week in his theatre.
  18. ^ The Full Room, the A-Z of Contemporary Playwriting ISBN 0-413-77230-6 Methuen Drama Motton is the Tony Benn or Dennis Skinner of playwrighting
  19. ^ "Whatever Happened To Edward Bond" The Independent 2 November 2010 In my imagination there's a strange hinterland, an empty multi-storey car park standing at a point equidistant from both the Royal Court and the National Theatres, where the shades of once-celebrated playwrights such as Arnold Wesker, John Arden, Howard Barker and Gregory Motton wander up and down.
  20. ^ "1997 Election Archive – Centre Left Centre Stage" New Statesman May 2017
  21. ^ "Labour is now the party of the middle classes", by Ed West The Spectator June 2017
  22. ^ "Labour The Third Most Popular Party For Labour Voters" The Independent 13 February 2017
  23. ^ "Labour Slumps To Third Place Amongst Working Class Voters" Spectator February 2017
  24. ^ "How Britain Voted In The General Election" yougov.co 13 June 2017
  25. ^ "Jeremy Corbyn's Party Posher Than Blairs"The Daily Telegraph 21 January 2016. Labour has historically claimed to represent working people, but its analysis shows that the party - under Jeremy Corbyn - is failing to do that. Families "who have to budget to make ends meet" are under-represented in the party, comprising 4 per cent of membership, whereas they make up 8.7 per cent of the population. Parties regularly fight over who speak ups best for "hardworking families", but Labour's research shows that they are not rushing to join the party.
  26. ^ Lord Watts former leader of the Parliamentary Labour Party "My advice to my own party leadership is that they should take less notice of the London-centric hard left political class who sit around in their £1 million mansions eating their croissants at breakfast and seeking to lay the foundations for a socialist revolution." Daily Telegraph 21 January 2016
  27. ^ Oberon Books ISBN 1-84002-346-5 Gengis Amongst the Pygmies
  28. ^ Oberon Books ISBN 1-84002-520-4 A Holiday In The Sun
  29. ^ Levellers Press ISBN 978-0956436412
  30. ^ "Political Renewal and the Future of Labour" Maurice Glasman Labour peer speech to the Labour Together conference 2016 It would be wise for us to think seriously about how to heal our ruptured relationship with the working class
  31. ^ Whats On And Where To Go 23 April 1996, Roger Foss,Theatre Can Never Be The Same After This At first sight you are confronted with a no-hope scenario that includes everything from sex abuse to the housing crisis and education, although at its heart there is a strong thread of humanity that constantly pulls Motton's writing from the grunge of despair.
  32. ^ "The Class Issues In The UK Snap Election"World Socialist Website 22 May 2017 A key element in determining Labour's social composition is its embrace of identity and lifestyle politics, with affirmations of race, gender and sexual orientation providing the mechanism for a self-centred petty-bourgeois layer to secure special privileges in education and employment
  33. ^ https://www.parliament.uk/documents/commons/lib/BooksPurchasedBorrowed-ALL.pdf Page 18
  34. ^ "WorkingClassLeft-Corbyn-betrays-working-classes-again". www.workingclassleft.com.
  35. ^ "WorkingClassLeft-the-middle-classes-and-the-eradication-of-the-left". www.workingclassleft.com.
  36. ^ "WorkingClassLeft-A Return to Manufacturing". www.workingclassleft.com.
  37. ^ "the EU A Middle Class Coup Against Democracy". www.workingclassleft.com.
  38. ^ "Decline of Manufacture -export of Pollution". www.workingclassleft.com.
  39. ^ "WorkingClassLeft-PricesandWagesCommission". www.workingclassleft.com.
  40. ^ "WorkingClassLeft-Unemployment-Education-Industry-Investment banks". www.workingclassleft.com.
  41. ^ "Working Class Left; Upholding The Notion of Change". www.workingclassleft.com.
  42. ^ Whats On 14 June 1995
  43. ^ "Review of Cat And Mouse (Sheep) and Services"The Independent 13 February 1996
  44. ^ Gregory Motton's archives available on application to Levellers Press
  45. ^ http://gregorymotton.com/GregoryMottonInterviewedbyHannahGlickstein2016.html Well, the kind of satire I have in mind, where the satire attacks the audience, works by tricking them into not knowing whose side they are meant to be on, by keeping it all as a moving target and not letting them agree with the play – the opposite of the usual theatre experience. In such a play, the target can change a few times in each line, and the audience habitually try to work out which is the right side to be on, but it's hard for them.
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