The Imitation  Game

Editor:  Ian McEwan
Published by Jonathan Cape, 
I9 8! 
Price:  R13.10

1 75 pp. 

Reviewed by John Cundill

Represented in South Africa
by Oxford University Press

Albert begins to turn Maisie inside out.  All the while he
continues to kiss her.  Maisie's groans  suggest the abandonment
of lovemaking, as well as fear and pain 
to disappear.

Haisie begins

What can one say about a writer who includes directions like that in a
television script?  And features, in the same play, a severed  12-inch
human penis floating in a sealed glass jar?

Several thoughts rush to mind.  Does he really expect to get away with it?
How do you show lovers in action to that extent on television?  How do
you get the female partner into a position which would tax the agility
of a professional  contortionist?  In the midst of all  this, how do you
get her to disappear into thin air?  How can you expect a producer to
tackle something like this in the first place?  Where do you find a
broadcasting authority willing to screen it?

As a script writer with only SABC - TV for a local market, I stand in awe
of Ian McEwan's audacity - and, oh, how I envy the man.  Imagine even
being able to contemplate scenes like that!

The irony, though, is that Solid Geometry, the second of the three plays
in this collection, was too hot even for the BBC - and this despite the
fact that it was commissioned by the corporation's Pebble Mill  studios
in Birmingham which encouraged experiment and allowed writers to "kick
over the traces."

The play was inspired by a fascinating  idea:  that it is mathematically
possible to postulate a plane without a surface.  In the script, the
phenomenon can be demonstrated by folding a piece of paper in such a way
that it can be made to disappear.  Albert discovers that the human body,
"folded" in similar fashion, can also be made to disappear.  Hence the
acrobatic love scene.

92

Forewards,  or  introductions,  to  collections  such  as  this  often  make  as
interesting  reading  as  the  scripts  themselves,  for  they  l i ft  the  veil
on  the  author's  creative  processes.  HcEwan  explains  in  this  introduction
that  Solid  Geometry  "seemed  to  t ie  up  odds  and  ends  that,  at  one  point,
seemed  to  belong  to  two  or  three  stories." 
I  fear  they  s t i ll  do,  and  I
cannot  for  the  life  of  me figure  out  the  significance  of  the  preserved
penis.  But  HcEwan  is  certainly  not  afraid  to  experiment. 
I  would  love
to  see  Solid  Geometry  in  performance,  i ts  obscurity  notwithstanding.

Jack  Flea's  Birthday  Party  is  an  innocuous  piece  of  whimsy,  reminiscent
of  Harold  Pinter,  wnich  works  because  it  is  hilariously  funny,  even  in
reading.  David  Lee  is  a  young  man  living  with  an  older  woman,  Ruth.
David invites  his  parents  to  celebrate  his  birthday  party  and  for  the
first  time  they  meet  Ruth.  The  two  women  start  competing  to  out-mother
David.  Reality  is  by  degrees  transformed  into  fantasy,  and  fantasy
back  into  reality,  culminating  with  our  discovery  in  the  final  30  seconds
that  David  is  mothered  by  Ruth  to  the  ultimate  extreme.  She  puts  him
to  bed  in  a  large  cot  and  leaves  a  night-light  burning  for  his  security!

Ian  McEwan eschews  "simple"  plays.  Even  The  Imitation  Game,  the  third
and  longest  of  the  three  plays  and  the  closest  to  an  orthodox  television
drama,  combines  multiple  ideas  and  themes.  But,  unlike  Solid  Geometry.
The  Intimate  Game is  held  together  by  a  clear  and  powerful  narrative  line
and,  for  me,  is  the  most  successful  for  this  reason.

It's  a  feminist  play,  punchy  and  uncompromising,  set  during  World  War  2.
Cathy,  just  out  of  school,  has  a  compulsion  to  contribute  to  the  war
effort  by  doing  important  and  meaningful  work.  The  nearest  she  gets  to
this  ideal,  after  refusing  to  work  in  a  munitions  factory,  is  in  a  radio
interception  unit,  tediously  writing  down  coded  wireless  messages  for
someone  else  to  decipher.  Her  determination  to  discover  more  about  the
deciphering  processes  leads  to  her  being  court-martiailed  on  a  charge
of  spying.

The background  is  meticulously  researched,  and  it  is  here  that  HcEwan
layers  his  work  with  additional  ideas  and  themes  which  raise  it  above
the  level  of  conventional  television  entertainment.  The  play,  for
example,  also  deals  with  the  work  of  Ultra,  the  decipherment  of  the
German  Enigma  codes  by  a  staff  of  Cambridge  mathematicians  who  developed
the  first  primitive  computers.  And  it  includes  an  authentic  radio  talk
on women's  contribution  to  war  which  is  so  callously  condescending  it
outsines  any  fiction.

Students  of  television  writing  will  note  the  dramatic  contrast  in  techniques
between  a  play.like  Jack  Flea's  Birthday  Party  -  a  studio  four-hander
requiring  a  single  set  -  and  The  Imitation  Game which  has  60  scenes,  and
was  shot  on  film  with  a  cast  of  27  characters.  The  two  plays  illustrate
the  extremes  of  television  drama  productions,  and  the  vast  descrepency
in  budgets.  The  Imitation  Game would  be  prohibitively  expensive  by  normal
standards, but the  production  is  an  indication  of  the  importance  the BBC
attaches  to  its  long-running  Play  for  Today  series  which  transmitted  the
play  in  April,  1980.

93