One thing that can be said with little fear of
contradiction is that Doris Lessing's work is anything but simple and
straightforward. She loves to wrap her characters and plots in multiple layers,
through which the reader must pick his way, often with only minimal guidance as
to direction and even, sometimes, intent.
Play With A Tiger was first performed at the Comedy
Theatre, London, on 22nd March 1964 and is set in the city. Whilst
it's very much a play of its time, it nevertheless carries some of its themes
fairly well into the modern day. Attitudes to unmarried mothers have changed for
many, political normality has become anything but, and extramarital affairs are
now so commonplace as to be almost expected, but the war of the sexes continues,
for some, at any rate.
As Anna and Dave reconstruct their pasts and
possible futures, their dialogue exposes their sometimes opposing, sometimes
similar stances. The descriptive passages that take them back in time explore
their development as people and depict the lives of their parents and families
in ways that explain, to some extent, the way they are now. But there is an
underlying tone of self-absorption and mutual distrust that was, as I recall, a
very common situation for men and women at the time. I'm not convinced it is
any better now than it was then, but the development of family planning aids
has definitely made things different for the single woman in search of love
without the wish to raise a family. This aspect of the relationship between men
and women is so different now that modern audiences may have difficulty
understanding the dilemma facing maturing women back in those early days of burgeoning
sexual freedom.
Dave is careless and unaware of the reality of the
effect of his philandering on the women he seduces and uses as an excuse to
bolster his ego. He's not a character I can find much sympathy for, with his
utterly selfish concerns. Anna is singularly confused and seems unable to make
up her own mind about much that troubles her in life. She yearns to be as free
as she believes Dave to be, and it's easy to understand this desire when set
against the strictures society places on her.
There are asides, set-based devices, and other
interactions that illustrate the differences between the male and female views
of life at the time, and I suspect these would have worked very well in
performance. They don't translate well
via the text alone, however. Would I go to see the play in performance? I wish I'd seen it at the time, when so much
more was immediately relevant, but I don't think I'd watch it today, unless it
was substantially re-written to accommodate what has changed. For all that, I
enjoyed the read.
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