The Emblematic Structure and Setting of David Storey's Plays

The Emblematic Structure and Setting of David Storey's Plays AUSTIN E. QUIGLEY AS DAVID STOREY'S PLAYS AITRACf increasing critical attention, a disturbing note of concern can be heard in the midst of the otherwise general acclaim. This concern is voiced most clearly in Spurling's puzzled review of Storey's Life Class, which was first produced at London's determinedly experimental Royal Court Theatre: Mr. Storey has always seemed to me to epitomize [sic] precisely the kind of play against which, not long ago, this theatre resolutely set its face. His new piece is a prime example of the moderately entertaining, mildly pretentious and wholly undemanding drama which has traditionally provided the West End's staple diet ... Mr. Storey is an undisputed master of what used to be called the well-made play,Spurling goes on to compare Storey with Terence Rattigan and Noel Coward, and it seems difficult to reconcile this line of argument with another, also well-established, which would have it that Storey's work is both highly original and obscure in its method. Taylor, for example, comments on "the teasing and elusive feeling that the plays have a sort of weight and density which one cannot logically justify- fa quality ] which makes David Storey's plays ... so distinctive in the contemporary British scene.'" When such conflicting opinions are offered, it is as well to consider whether the conflict is real or only apparent. There are certainly several points of contact between the well-made play and the typical patterns of Storey's plays, but one in particular provides the impression of conventionality that irks Spurling and others: the pattern of artificial occasionality in the events which bring about character interaction. In In Celebration it is a wedding anniversary , in The Contractor it is a wedding, in The Farm it is an engage259 260 AUSTIN E. QUIGLEY ment, in The Changing Room it is a sports event, in Life Class it is a classroom meeting, in Home an encounter in a garden. Stock scenes, we might suspect, with stock characters, stock arrivals, stock intrigues and stock departures. Yet the injustice of such suspicions is quickly evident. We may well have isolated a familiar formal pattern here, but we have yet to explore its function in the plays. When we do explore that function, we discover an important aspect of Storey's originality as a dramatist-his ability to transform conventional technical devices into structural images which control the thematic implications of the plays. And it is precisely this aspect of his originality which generates the conflicting estimates of his work otTered by Spurling and Taylor. A glance at Storey's most popular play to date, In Celebration (1969), will help to clarify this point. The anniversary gathering seems conventional enough, as are the conflicts that develop when the family reunion gets under way. But the originality and complexity of the play begin to emerge when we note that the ostensibly climactic event, the anniversary dinner, is passed over between Act I and Act II. The concerns of the play are clearly elsewhere. And this leads us to wonder just what it is that is being celebrated here. The possibilities range over a successful marriage, successful sons, successful parenthood, successful family relationships and so on. But one by one these areas of apparent success are undermined as the process of examining them progresses. Yet, by the end of the play, something has emerged, some unity of feeling, some aspect of interdependence and mutual consideration that transcends the quarrels and gives the celebration an authenticity more subtle than that provided by the conventional occurrence of a wedding anniversary. The crucial event in the play is not the anniversary dinner but the conversion of Andrew to Steven's point of view that the damage done the sons by the parents simply could not be helped. Iconoclastic Andrew, who approaches the world in terms of a polarized opposition between the way it is and the way it ought to be, believes that he was emotionally crippled by his childhood experiences, and that revenge is therefore his due. As Colin remarks: "Formative traits have always been an obsession with our...