Cast

Synopsis

As the last back-to-back houses in Leeds are being demolished Mam and Dad are waiting to be relocated in a new maisonette. Their forty years of marriage have left them irritable with each other and disillusioned about what life has given them. A social worker arrives to observe and record their life as a chapter of social history. In this black comedy Alan Bennett’s acute observation of class values, town planning and the generation gap gives plenty of food for thought.

Directors Notes

Written in 1980, Alan Bennett’s Enjoy should really have been entitled Endure ! – his own words not mine. He even goes as far as to suggest Look on the Bright Side. I prefer the original. Dismissed in its day as “far-fetched” and “expressionistic” Enjoy takes the
audience into a world not too far removed from its own. Perhaps, dare one suggest it, the kind of folk that live next door ! An ageing couple coping with memory loss, disability, brutality, prostitution and transvestism – the usual finely tuned ingredients to entertain and amuse – but more than that this time. Enjoy focuses on the disassembling of a Leeds terrace (home to Mam and Dad Craven), piece by piece, to be rebuilt in a museum for generations to come to view, to amaze and enlighten. Far fetched? I don’t think so. I can recall the odd prefab on display in museums showing “what it was like”. With Enjoy, as the bricks are slowly removed, we see the people, the lives, and the heartfelt pain behind them. As ever with Mr. Bennett the truth, the comedy, the harsh reality is all too plain to see. Indeed Bennett never ceases to let his audience down; turning his mirror on them he captures Mam’s confused musings, Dad’s angry postulations and their offspring’s peccadilloes. Dad is convinced that Linda is a world travelling personal assistant, venturing to far flung
places that he and his misguided wife can only dream of; and that his only son does not in fact exist. The play examines physical destruction, the family unit and its infinite avenues for self-delusion, and the overall ability to “cope” whilst chaos ensues. And, let us not forget this is good theatre above all! A fine and experienced cast will bring the Leeds of old that Bennett creates to life. The two hours that this might take Bennett himself says is far too long. He advises cuts to the text ! With dialogue as robust and jocund as “Sweden – it’s where they commit suicide and the King rides a bicycle” – where would one possibly begin ?