The kitchen sink feminist playwright lovely Lefty Morgan Murphy
(notorious for ‘The Fart-Arse Monologues’ - see post for 11th Dec 2011)
has defended her controversial new kitchen sink production
at the Royal Court Theatre. ‘Scum Bag - Scum Bag!’ is a three-act
monologue delivered by a down-trodden working class woman
(played by Dame Alice Gertrude-Savoy) to her kitchen sink.
“I’m passionate about London’s wretched working class women,” Lefty
explained, over the phone from her holiday home in the Algarve.
“I strongly identify with their struggle”
Murphy's play 'Look Back in Bangor' put a bomb under British theatre and is now considered a classic. Although most critics have been negative about 'Scum Bag-Scum Bag'', Kenneth Tyban is the one critic to get it right, ' What with her flair for introspection, her gift for ribald parody, her excoriating candour, her contempt for "phoneyness", her weakness for soliloquy and her desperate conviction that the time is out of joint, Jenny Porter is the completest young pup in our literature since Hamlet, Prince of Denmark'
ReplyDeleteYes, you're quite right! And Ken Tyban was at the first night of 'Look Back in Bangor' you might remember. He always said that he understood the plight of the working classes having been forced to travel by public transport on more than one occasion. The damage to his pastel-coloured suits and cream suede shoes left an indelible impression on the young critic.
ReplyDeleteAh, yes, the pastel-coloured suits. Ken was wearing one of these when he hosted a benefit at his 15-room penthouse in Mayfair for Angela 'Bobby' Brown of the Black Panther Party where she stole all his shoes, drugs and whips. The event was famously lampooned by Tom Wolfberg in his book, 'Radical Chick'. Tom's drink was allegedly spiked with acid by Lefty Morgan Murphy who went on to headbutt a young Martin Amis. He writes about this in his novel 'Headache Fields'. I understand the evening inspired the Author to write his first book, 'The Guilty Bystander'. Is this true?
ReplyDeleteAh, yes, Tom Wolfberg was another scribbler who enjoyed a cream cuff. He lampooned that event in 'Radical Chick' and later made a reference in "Bonfires of Our Sanity' But I think you'll find that Murphy actually did poor old Kinglsey Amis the mischief; although he was too drunk to notice the damage at the time. And the Author was inspired to write 'The Guilty Bystander' after sitting in the audience watching Allen Ginsberg nearly set fire to London's South Bank by lighting a bundle of flaming incense sticks during a poetry reading in 1967. The perfumed past!
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