The Tiger's Bones and Other Plays for Children (review)

A poet can look at an urn and draw conclusions about the universe; but, a playwright, even a children's playwright, must examine a human being. The playwright has no choice at all. Human flesh and blood, human bones and foibles are the subject matter. The poet can roam the world and write about skylarks, pleasure domes, daffodils, wrecked statues. At bottom, of course, both playwright and poet are concerned with the existence of a very naked ape, but the poet can use other objects, other forms of life, to learn about this creature. The playwright must use the creature itself, one specific creature, a creature which, at the end of the play, might well be seen to stand for all creatures of its kind, but during the play, stands only for itself.

Because of the very special demands involved in constructing a play (one is a playwright, but not a poemwright or novelwright, etc.), it is simply not enough to be a good writer, not enough to be a sensitive and thoughtful poet, not enough to have a "significant" message handed down to an audience from a mountaintop upstage center. One must know how to put a play together. And Ted Hughes does not. His words are often lovely; but, with rare exception, his characters show little growth; and, with no exception, his plots are gratuitous.

Something happens, not because the events worked out that way, but because it seemed like a good idea at the time, as if one were free to develop a children's play by tossing in whatever the fancy pumps up. Even in children's theatre, where fantasy can have a different kind of run, the work needs to develop organically from end to end, one step following the next, not one step left out.

But, in this collection of ex-radio plays, there are tremendous gaps. The plays begin and end, but lack a middle. Sometimes, as in The Tiger's Bones, there seem to be two different plays. We know much more about the peripheral characters in Beauty and the Beast than the central ones, so love and transformation become a mere change of costume. A wonderfully bizarre devil enters mid-way through Sean, the Fool, the Devil, and the Cats for a three-page monologue, then we never see him again. It's no wonder. The monologue is, essentially, narrative. In three pages, we never see this devil act on anything or with anyone. His being there affects nothing. He simply talks himself out of the play.

Hughes' promiscuous use of a narrator, in one guise or another, in every single play, is like hunting hummingbirds with a howitzer. It might be fine for radio; but, on stage, the play is blown away. It would be so simple to convert just about every narrative passage into a real scene. In Story Theatre, the narrator is actually a part of the drama, weaving in and out of every scene, totally and actively involved (somewhat like Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof, to choose another style). Language is dialogue, a part of the dramatic process, but never used for its own sake. One of the ironies of theatre is that beautiful words, unless they are an integral part of the entire theatrical package, can ground a play as surely as pig-iron.

Mr. Hughes makes the mistake of telling us practically everything, including the message; and, in case the slower children don't get it, he'll often tell it again. His words do all the work. Either he doesn't trust the machinery of the stage, or he doesn't know how to use it, for theatre becomes poetry only when every one of its elements actively combines to form the image, not otherwise. Pure poetry is filet mignon; theatre is poetry on the hoof.

Ted Hughes must be given credit for attempting to create intelligent, imaginative and gutsy plays for children. Though...