The Audience as Victim

By Jesse Birnbaum

A SENSE OF DETACHMENT by JOHN OSBORNE

First comes fury (Look Back in Anger) and then mordant self-pity (In admissible Evidence). If these assaults on man's conscience do not take effect, what is left but to call it quits? That is not precisely what Playwright John Osborne has done in his new London play A Sense of Detachment (his kind never quits). It is only that, having failed with passion and rational argument to persuade us to open our eyes and ears and hearts, Osborne now resorts to the figurative pig bladder and slapstick. He never totally succeeds (his kind never does), but he knows how to make rousing theater.

Through his ingenious director, Frank Dunlop, and a fine ensemble of actors, Osborne has gone McLuhan and made the theater his message. Plot, structure, story--even that Osborne speciality, the long brilliant speech--all gone. Instead, we have half a dozen players on a sparse stage, and a "chairman," who opens the proceedings with a discussion of the printed program. Be fore long, the characters are asking each other, and the audience, what the hell they're doing there. A beer-swilling football fan issues periodic razzberries from the balcony, while from a front-row seat in the stalls an exasperated Establishment chap complains loudly about the dearth of any sense or decent language from the stage.

Explicit. Indeed, what is coming from the stage is a theatrical version of the toy kaleidoscope that gives you a black eye when you look through it. Recitals of 17th and 18th century romantic poetry are interspersed with luridly explicit readings from a porno catalogue. Every serious motion, every attempt at discourse, is interrupted by a song and dance, or a conga line, or a snippet of newsreel, or a blast of music, or a wisecrack from the audience.

And at the end, the chairman turns to the audience and says, "Well, that's the lot."

It is fascinating to see how effectively Osborne can make use of what is very close to improvisational theater, for that is the realm into which his play falls. A Sense of Detachment is in many ways a mischievous experiment in audience exploitation. Coursing through his apparently aimless and formless play is Osborne's conviction that man, in his superficial and petty preoccupation with dross, is forgetting how to love.

That a substantial number of his listeners can be depended upon to ignore the message is seen in the ease with which Osborne can provoke them to anger and unabashed public retort. Some nights it is hard to distinguish between the paid actors planted in the audience and the victims--the paying customers. In that respect, Osborne's title can be read as a subtle irony.

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