Imperial pasts, dystopian futures, and the theatre of Brexit

ABSTRACT

Even though traditionally a major analyst of the status quo of the British nation, British theatre has barely responded to Brexit. Two recent plays that seem to have captured the Brexit zeitgeist particularly well look towards the past: whereas Albion (2017), Mike Bartlett’s take on the country house drama, depicts an Englishness nostalgically mourning its long-lost colonial prowess, Jez Butterworth’s dissection of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, The Ferryman (2017), appears dystopian as anxieties surrounding the Good Friday Agreement in a post-Brexit scenario resurface. Both plays, this article argues, situate Brexit as firmly rooted in Paul Gilroy’s notion of “postcolonial melancholia”. They suggest that it is only through confronting its imperial past that Britain can begin to address vital questions concerning the current state of the nation: constructions of selfhood versus Otherness, and the intertwinement of the domestic and the political, as well as the mythical nature of national identities.

KEYWORDS:

• Albion
• Mike Bartlett
• Brexit
• The Ferryman
• Jez Butterworth
• postcolonial melancholia
• the Troubles

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. New British writing is notoriously difficult to pin down, in terms of both thematic foci and aesthetics. Though frequently understood as denoting plays by emergent authors, the term “new writing” is misleading. Rather, as Middeke, Schnierer, and Sierz (2011) explain, new writing should be conceptualized as “a genre characterised by plays which are contemporary in their language, contemporary in their subject matter and often contemporary in their attitude to theatre form” (ix). Whilst some of these plays can be characterized as “confrontational and provocative”, all new writers position themselves “in opposition to the populist and commercial West End theatre” (x).

2. For a more comprehensive overview of post-war Black British drama, see Brewer, Goddard, and Osborne (2015); on British Asian theatre, see Hingorani (2010).

3. On further recent productions dealing with issues of migration, see Cornford (2018). Besides How to Hold Your Breath, he also discusses the South African Isango Ensemble’s production of A Man of Good Hope (The Royal Opera and Young Vic, 2016) and Zodwa Nyoni’s Nine Lives (West Yorkshire Playhouse and Òran Mór, Glasgow, 2016).

4. I use the common expression “Troubles” because it is more established than the official “Northern Ireland conflict”. However, the term “Troubles” has been deemed problematic, particularly if ascribed externally. Not only has the term been applied to a number of different conflicts in Irish history, but it has also been criticized for its somewhat euphemistic connotation. “Troubles” avoids the allocation of blame to one particular party, yet its dodging of the term “war” (the phrase preferred by IRA paramilitaries) downplays the involvement of armed British forces.

5. On Northern Ireland’s pre-existing status of “negative liminality”, see Heidemann (2016, 17–62, especially 18).

6. On earlier dramatic portrayals of the Troubles, see Lojek (2006); on post-agreement Northern Irish drama, see Heidemann (2016, 191–249).

7. Peake and Lynch (2016) specify that “as of 2015, the Provisional IRA (PIRA) has admitted responsibility for thirteen, and the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) one; the remaining victims have not been officially recognised as disappeared” (453).

8. For a more nuanced discussion of the contested status of Ireland in postcolonial theory and criticism, see Flannery (2009) and Cleary (2003).

9. For a more comprehensive analysis of the “fused postcolonial” status of Northern Ireland and its location in postcolonial discourse, see Heidemann (2016, especially 17–62, especially 22); see also Storey (1998).

10. If coincidental at all, it is certainly unfortunate that the play’s simple-minded Englishman bears the name of the famous academic and Irish nationalist Thomas Kettle (1980–1916), a leading figure in the political fight for Home Rule.

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Notes on contributors

Marlena Tronicke

Marlena Tronicke is assistant professor of British literary and cultural studies at the University of Münster, Germany. Her areas of research and teaching include early modern as well as contemporary British drama, Victorian and neo-Victorian literature, and adaptation studies. Her first monograph, Shakespeare’s Suicides: Dead Bodies That Matter, was published in 2018. She is co-editor of Black Neo-Victoriana (with Felipe Espinoza Garrido and Julian Wacker, 2021) and Queering Neo-Victorianism Beyond Sarah Waters Queering Neo-Victorianism Beyond Sarah Waters, a special issue of Neo-Victorian Studies (with Caroline Koegler, 2020).