Dimensiones de la gestión de proyectos de inversión pública

the sermons confirm Martin's skill as a communicator, an orator par excellence clearly in the tradition of Jimmy Porter and Archie Rice.

IX

The central figures of the Plays for England are not so dominant

as

Tim and Jenny, in Under Plain.Cover^are,on the other hand, far from being reluctant in their roleplaying. In the previous chapter, a comparison was drawn between Tim and Jenny's private acting games and the 'bears and squirrels' charade of Jimmy and Alison in Look Back in Anger, but a significant point of contrast is the depth to which Tim and Jenny are prepared to go to bring authenticity to their domestic theatre. Their charades are altogether more complete; they dress up and act out roles in a manner which, for its success, depends on their enthusiasm and talent. At the beginning of the play, they perform the roles of doctor and housemaid:

Tim : Jenny Tim ; Jenny Tim: J enny Tim: Jenny Tim: Jenny : Tim: J enny Tim: Jenny Tim: Jenny Tim : J enny Tim: Jenny Tim:

Now, don't stand around here talking all day. Serve tea.

Yes, Sir. My Lord.

Yes, my Lord. Oh are you a Lord? Yes, I think so. Let's try it and see.

All right. I don't think its so good, though. Why?

I don't know. I don't think you look quite right in that. '

Yes, maybe you're right. OK, leave it as it was. (Reverting back to charcter.) Go on, then. You don't want your cards , do you?

No, Sir.

You don't want to be dismissed without a reference, do you?

Oh, no. Sir.

Think how upset your family would be if you lost your job. What would your father do to you?

Take off his strap to me. Sir.

Yes, there are plenty of girls just waiting, longing to step into your shoes.

Yes, Sir. Oh, is this the nineteen thirties? Yes .

When did" y du think of that? When do you think? Just now.

Oh, what a good idea! Oh, please Sir. I need the job badly. Dad's still on the dole, and both me brothers are down bad.

Well, then you'd better watch your behaviour, hadn't you?

Jenny; Yes, Sir. I will. I'll do anything you say, Sir - anything, (pp.17/18)

This scene, and several others in a similar vein, transcends the level of the mere party game. Complete with costume and properties, they assume the status of minor improvised plays. Thus, Tim and Jenny fall neatly into the category of the Osbornian actor—types; perhaps more neatly because of their obvious quasi-theatricality, than any of Osborne's prior creations, with the clear exceptions of Archie Rice and George Dillon.

The role changes of Tim and Jenny are all carried out with considerable attention to detail. As well as doctor and housemaid, they appear in a variety of guises: Tim as a boxer and a leatherclad motorcyclist and Jenny as a Girl Guide and an obviously pregnant bride. The multi- faceted nature of their roles is not only significant in that the acting out of a series of charades provides a necessary pretence for the marriage, but the nature of the roles is essentially sexual, adding a hint of spice to the proceedings. Osborne deliberately refrains from making explicit precisely what the physical outcome of the doctor/maid playlet is to be, but some sort of sadomasochistic activity is implied. This hint of spice suggests that something slightly out of the ordinary goes on when the actors are out of sight and this contributes to the mystery of the Osbornian actor type which accords with the views of Michael Anderson quoted in the first chapter of this thesis.

Inadmissible Evidence's Bill Maitland is, like his predecessors, a performer; it was observed in Chapter Two how he stands in the direct line of succession to the previous Osborne central figures. Like Jimmy Porter and Archie Rice, Bill displays an unappealing nature, yet he emerges as a character with whom the audience sympathizes. Osborne achieves this in a similar manner to that by which he achieves the same effect in both Look Back

in Anger and The Entertainer; he causes his leading character to dominate both the action and the dialogue. Bill has all the best lines (indeed, he has nearly all the lines) and, importantly, he entertains.

In creating the part of a lawyer, Osborne has not strayed too far from familiar territory. It has already been noted, in the discussion concerning A Subject of Scandal and Concern, that the courts were, to the younger Osborne, a branch of popular theatre, and the lawyers, like lecturers, preachers and, of course, entertainers are essentially communicators. Their

business is language and thus they fit easily into the actor-type mould.

Bill Maitland tells a good story. Like Jimmy and Archie, he is at home when dealing with words. He must be, as a lawyer who has experienced some success:

I have worked in the services of the law» if you can call being a solicitor working in the service of the law » for nearly twenty five years. In fact, I started work in this very office, this Court, when I was fifteen. Perhaps earlier. That is my old boss's chair. You see, I took his position over from him. My managing clerk, old Hudson, he was working for the old man even then. Not that he was much older than me. He just always seemed older. Anyway, he works for me now. I don't even know why I took up the law. I don't think therewas any reason at all much. I can't think of any now and I couldn't think of any then. Perhaps I did think I might land up on the bench even. Or with Learned Counsel...! have always been tolerably bright, (pp.12/13)

Maitland must have possessed that facility with language which would enable him to hold the attention of a courtroom audience. In Inadmissible Evidence, he is required to hold his audience,

both the characters on stage with him, and those front-of-house, through some exceedingly long and tortuous solo passages.

The most demanding of these, in terms of length and challenge to the performer, is Maitland's scene with his daughter, Jane. For some 1500 words, he confronts his totally silent daughter, voicing, through Osborne's pen,the insecurity of middle age in the youthful, swinging sixties. His rhetoric, unlike that of Jimmy Porter, is highly personal. Of the first performance, Bernard Levin wrote:

Mr. Osborne has written a modern Peer Gynt who was also told that 'Backwards or forwards, it's just as far' and who peeled an onion to find nothing inside. (15)

The scene with Jane displays the closing stages of this peeling process. The layers are layers of affection and identity, and, as he peels off the layer represented by his family, it becomes

clear that he has little left worth keeping.

You'll hitch hike and make your young noises from one end of Europe to the other without a thought of having the correct currency or the necessary language. And you're right. And

you dance with each other, in such a way I would never have been able to master. (He gazes longingly across) But, and this is the but, I still don't think what you're doing will ever, even, even, approach the fibbing, mumping, pinched little worm of energy eating away in this me, of mine, I mean. That is: which is that of being slowly munched and then diminished, altogether. That worm, thank heaven, is not in your litle cherry rose. You are unselfconscious, which I am not. You are without guilt, which I am not. Quite rightly. You are stuffed full of paltry relief for emergent countries, and marches and boycotts and rallies,

you, you kink your innocent way along tirelessly to all that poetry and endless jazz and folk worship, and looking gay and touching and stylish all at the same time. But there isn't much loving in any of your kindnesses, Jane, not much kindness, not even cruelty, really, in any of you, not much craving for the harm of others, perhaps just a very easy, controlled, sharp, I mean 'sharp' pleasure in discomfiture. You're flip and offhand and if you are the unfeeling things

you appear to be, no one can really accuse you of being cruel in the proper sense. If you should ever, and I hope you shan't my dear, I truly do, for I've leapt at the very

idea of you, before you were ever born, let alone the sight and smell of you; if you should one day start to shrink slowly into an unremarkable, gummy little hole, into a world outside the care or consciousness of anyone, you'll have no rattlings of shame or death, there'll be no little sweating, eruptions of blood, no fevers or clots or flesh splitting anywhere or haemorrhage. You'll have done everything well and sensibly and stylishly. You'll know it wasn't worth any candle that ever burned. You will have to be blown out, snuffed, decently, and not be watched spluttering and spilling and hardening. (He sits on sofa), (pp.84/85)

Theatrically, this works as a very moving scene, and the sympathy of the audience, in spite of the fact that Bill is scornful in the extreme of his daughter's values and those of the generation she represents, remains with him. This results from the manner of delivery rather than the message itself. 'Bill's torrent of

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