In Romantic Friction, Michelle Read s hilarious Fringe Festival stage hit, Read herself plays Anna, a writer whose own stock-in-trade characters have left the page and come to life. While Anna tries to cope with an emotional setback (she has been dumped by new fella Declan), Sir Bob his fierce masculinity hiding deeply suppressed emotion and Minnie, the buxom, earthy barmaid, stalk the stage haranguing Anna about her relationship problems, her inadequacies as a romantic fiction writer, and better future plot lines for themselves.
Comic melodrama is this writer/actor s forte. Thus, during the play, bodice-ripping fiction writer Anna trumpets one of her genre s main conventions, i.e. no swearing except when male characters are pushed to the brink of their sexual control. Then they may say damn, as in DAMN IT, LYDIA, I MUST HAVE YOU!
Read utilises pulp fiction in a brilliantly comic way. What I love, she says, is the ludicrous set-ups they have. Like one woman goes out to the wild west with her family. And then conveniently her father and brothers all get killed off, so that this Apache chief can come and take her off. So you have this huge melodramatic plot we ve all seen these wonderful epic films reduced to a bit of soft porn, just so they can get rid of them all and she can go off and shag him.
Superb acting and direction showcase Read s play to brilliant effect. Another remarkable highlight for me was the light, clever and hilarious feminist subtext.
Oh good, I m glad that came out, says Michelle. I don t think my writing is massively universal I don t attempt to be Arthur Miller but I m very happy to be a womanist writer or a feminist writer and I m not scared of those words. I think this whole idea of post-feminism is bollocks.
paint palette
Though Romantic Friction is her second play, Michelle Read is better known as a stand-up comic. A founding member of Dublin s improv comedy scene, Read still facilitates improv evenings at Dublin s International Bar. However, theatre seems to have the greatest pull for her.
That s not saying other people haven t done wonderful things with stand-up. I ve watched brilliant stand-ups and I think yes, you can create a paint palette and move on; this is your forum, your medium. For me, I ve always wanted my medium to be theatre, but I m really glad of the comedy influence, improv and stand-up as well, because that s what interests me, and when you improv a scene it gives you an idea of structure and character. And when you re doing stand-up you have an idea of how to perform a gag, so I think those things come in.
In Romantic Friction, Read gets to act out her own words. Does that feel very different to speaking another writer s lines?
Yeah, she laughs, because you can t change other people s words! Obviously you can t muck about with a play, you can t improvise on stage, and I am a little fucker for that. We change stuff in rehearsal, but when you re doing someone else s play, unless it s a new writer, you can t change anything. And you ve also seen the show before.
The thing about doing a new play that s your own it s that terrifying thing, a new comedy so you go, What if nobody laughs? You think maybe you should leave the word comedy out just in case, and then we can just say, Oh no, em, it s a drama about, eh modern issues. If you re doing a comedy that s been done, then we know this is funny, so if we don t make it funny, it s our fault. For me, it was like: if it s not funny, it s not only me as an actor, it s me as a writer as well. n