If the theatre industry were to carry out an internal audit of what has been achieved since the #MeToo watershed of 2017-18, how would it fare? There were certainly great signs heralding a new epoch in the direct aftermath of the Harvey Weinstein case. Equity launched Safe Spaces, a campaign to reduce harassment in the workplace that is still active; artistic directors programmed new work addressing the issues head-on; and female practitioners became more visible. Even the uproar over the lack of female representation in a 2019 season at the National Theatre marked a grim kind of progress, in so far as everyone noticed and demanded greater balance. And the National has, in fairness, put on an encouraging number of works by women since. In terms of the real, calculable numbers around gender inequality, however, the optics sit at quite a distance to the cold facts. Last year, a report found minimal strides had been made in the industry, and post-lockdown research throws up yet more worrying numbers.
Whenever there is progress, there is pushback from those who feel most threatened. We are seeing a backlash way beyond theatre right now, from a rise in male sexual violence against women to greater political control over reproductive rights. But the backlash is visible in theatre too, and other cultural representations of women.
A film called My Name is Andrea, shown at the Sheffield DocFest in June, documents the life and work of the late radical feminist Andrea Dworkin, who spoke of rape, pornography and of “taking back the night” in the 1980s and 90s. What was so striking in Pratibha Parmar’s film, featuring footage of Dworkin’s speeches and interviews from decades ago, was that she could so easily be speaking about today. Where she was deemed a controversialist then, her ideas seem eminently reasonable and alarmingly relevant now.
I have seen some skin-crawling signs of regression in recent shows revived from the pre-#MeToo era featuring women being objectified or casually derided. First, the musical adaptations of the films Pretty Woman and Indecent Proposal, in which the central female character is a wholly romanticised sex worker who wins over a millionaire and a sexual bargaining chip, respectively. Then, at the Menier Chocolate Factory, Alan Bennett’s 1973 comedy Habeas Corpus, whose smut manifests mostly in puerile breast jokes. Many laughed heartily – most of the auditorium, at the performance I attended – but some of us were confused: was this being staged with an ironic wink? The production seemed to be playing it straight for laughs.
David Mamet’s 1977 battle-of-the-sexes drama The Woods was staged earlier this year at Southwark Playhouse and brought out dated debates on women and biology. Sally Rogers’ new play The Still Room dramatised rampant predatory masculinity from the 1980s, and showed us how barbaric it was, but its comedy sailed so closed to Benny Hill-style jeering and hormonal schoolboy humour that it seemed more like uncomfortable replication than critique, even if that’s not what was intended.
It is hard to tell if the industry is merely casting an appraising glance back at the gender politics of the past or if all this is the legitimising of sexism under the cover of irony and knowing humour. Is yesterday’s humour today’s abuse – or vice versa? Which way should we receive it? And is it less offensive if sexual pejoratives spill out of the mouths of characters as part of the drama, as is the case with Rooster and his crew in Jez Butterworth’s recently revived Jerusalem, who refer to women in graphic and demeaning ways?
Those who think so are branded sanctimonious, censorious or part of a “woke” brigade with a serious sense of humour failure. Defenders talk about artistic licence and the freedom to offend. In relation to Jerusalem, say, they would point out that it is not Butterworth speaking but that he is drawing a world in which these rough-hewn characters exist, and in which they have every creative right to say what they say.
Some defenders liken such jokes to Shakespeare’s bawdiness and sexual ribaldry. The difference, though, is that Shakespeare was writing in and for the Elizabethan era. Any enlightened contemporary director staging his sexist (or antisemitic) scenes now would surely frame them in intelligently subverted or undermined ways. A recent production of Measure for Measure at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse did just that, giving the play’s themes of predation and rape a 1970s makeover, thereby highlighting the misogynistic norms of that decade.
Beyond Shakespeare, there are many examples of revisionist retellings that leech the bigotry out of a story, such as Lucy Moss’s Legally Blonde. Or those that underline its chauvinism, such as Daniel Fish and Jordan Fein’s Oklahoma! and Marina Carr’s Girl on an Altar.
Of course, we don’t need to consign dramas that are beyond salvation to the rubbish bin – although Habeas Corpus might be one we should, in my opinion. But revivals like that do point to a depressing reality in the post-#MeToo era, in showing us that some people still consider breast jokes, female virginity jokes and obscenely sexualised pejoratives, funny.
Humour on stage can come close to a form of psychic violence or bullying. What society laughs at or regards as entertainment is an indicator of who and where we are. Pointing a finger at plays that use shades of sexist language may seem like nit-picking when held up against the growing body of work that critiques it. But the idea that we should be good sports and shrug off this chauvinism, laugh along or stay silent, sounds very 1970s to me.
