This week, Steven Berkoff’s ‘KVETCH’ is coming to the Burton Taylor Studio. According to the website, this is a play “dedicated to the afraid” – the fear of “impotence, unemployment, losing your hair, getting fat, parking tickets, isolation, learning the piano, telling a joke, sweat, grease, dark cupboards, sex, fear of men, fear of women, fear of fear.” KVETCH explores the anxieties, fantasies and frustrations of a Jewish family in their claustrophobic 1980s Brooklyn apartment. Yet fear not – KVETCH is not a pessimistic play. Cherwell Stage talked to the director Ellen Page who reassured us that the ‘balloon breasts’ and whoopee cushions prevent any misery dampening this comedy.

The term ‘kvetch’ comes from the Yiddish ‘kvetshn’ and means a person who complains too much. Ellen is certain we can all relate to this; in answer to why she wanted to stage this show, she said, “Kvetch is an extremely funny show, and I’ve always thought that Oxford could do with more hilarity and dramatic variation.” Despite the promised whoopee cushion use it is not a frivolous play. The blend of Jewish heritage-based humour, anxiety and sex seemed reminiscent of a Woody Allen script, often held up as an example of dark comedy. We asked Ellen if she thought KVETCH could be classed as black comedy, and why she thought this particular genre was appealing. While asserting that KVETCH was far from the macabre, she replied: “Issues of anxiety, discomfort, and lack of self-confidence are timeless and extremely common.  Comedy provides a platform for problems that are otherwise considered difficult or awkward to talk about.  Knowing that you are not alone in your suffering is often a relief, and being able to laugh with fellow sufferers often puts the issue into perspective and lightens your mood.  All comedy does this, it is not a formula for entertainment related solely to ‘black comedy’.”

KVETCH looks to be light-hearted but not without substance. Ideally Ellen would like the audience to go away feeling cheerful and amused, which, after a play about fear, anxiety and frustration, would be an accomplishment: one it looks very much like she’ll achieve.

KVETCH is on at the Burton Taylor from 3^rd of December to the 7^th. Tickets are £5/6.

Roddy Doyle’s work has always had distinctive touches to it: that gritty focus on Dublin working-class life, that lively patter of dialogue, those dark glints of humour. It would be hard to mistake a snippet of his writing for anyone else’s.

But flicking through his recent books, you’ll find another pattern emerging. Doyle isn’t getting any younger – and neither are his characters. Looming over all of them is a dawning sense of unstoppable age. It tugs away quietly, sometimes breaking through, as it does in Bullfighting: 

I recognise what’s going on in my head, what’s been going on for a while, actually, on and off. It’s middle age. I know that. It’s getting older, slower, tired, bored, useless. It’s death becoming real. The old neighbours from my childhood dying. And even people my own age. Cancer mostly. 

Bullfighting is a short-story collection full of middle-aged men, contemplating what it means to be fifty-something. The reference to cancer is telling: The Guts, Doyle’s latest novel, shows Jimmy Rabbitte coping with a tumour in his (eponymous) bowels.

Is this the same brash Jimmy that formed The Commitments in 1987? Is this the same Roddy Doyle that wrote so convincingly through the eyes of ten year old Paddy Clarke, winning the 1993 Booker Prize?

“Paddy Clarke definitely is a product of my life at that time – full-time teacher, father of a new baby, with another one on the way, writing other things as well.” The classroom and the young family home are certainly the two arenas in which Paddy plays out his battles – but it’s not the only effect that life in 1993 had on the book.

“They’re tiny little episodes, that were written in the tiny little bits of time that I had”, he remembers. “I was writing a script for The Snapper, I was planning a television series that became Family”. That fragmentary, snippet-like style was something he also used in later, more leisurely projects; but it came from a hectic pace of life. “It seems in retrospect – how the fuck did I do all that? I think a lot of people, looking back, wonder.”

Doyle’s early writing experiences were anything but hectic. He started off with a satiric column in “a paper that came out occasionally called Student, believe it or not”, and only tried his hand at fiction after three years as an English teacher.

Even that wasn’t particularly stressful. “Secondary school holidays in Ireland are very generous – June, July and August”. Doyle came to London, to “get into the discipline of writing a bit every day”, away from the temptations of home. “I went down to Wood Green library and wrote, sometimes for just a few hours, sometimes I’d force myself to stay there all day. I’d go five or six times a week.”

“I had that tenacity or bloody-mindedness just to keep at it – which is something that never gets a look-in when you get to talks about writing, or the more academic stuff about writing.”

Any nostalgia? “No, I don’t miss being a teacher – it’s not a part of my life that I miss at all.” In fact, Doyle seems to have a fairly comfortable relationship with his past. “The memories generally are brilliant – fatherhood, the adventure that was, writing all these books, to be involved in films … but that’s lived. And I’m not looking back – there’s nothing about it that I would regret.”

Perhaps critics have been too hasty to attribute the angst that haunts so many of his characters to Doyle himself. “In terms of both my life, and the material that I have to write about, I’m quite content being at the age I am now”. “Material” is interesting; it seems that Doyle can observe the effects of age, and the associated qualms, without being too personally burdened by them. “Being a middle-aged man, watching a middle-aged world: there’s loads of material for writing”.

The interview ends with the sense that Doyle is aware of the passing years, without being troubled by them; keen to explore anxieties of change, but happy in the knowledge that something always remains.

Music and football are two constants that persist through the writing, from Paddy Clarke’s George Best kickabout games and Hank Williams records to Champions League Wednesday nights and the latest Springsteen album.

“I think it’s a good thing – that link back – it’s an enthusiasm”. He mentions dusting off Blood on the Tracks a couple of nights before (“no album I buy now at the age of fifty-five will ever mean as much”), and is a devout Chelsea fan. “I jump up and I shout at the telly – I went beserk went Torres scored yesterday”.

“I’m a fully fledged-adult – but there is that thread, because it’s not that different to my reaction as a twelve-year old”. It’s a comforting consistency, “like a guitar string: you can pluck it at any point in your life and the same note resonates”.

The Guts is published by Jonathon Cape and is available here.  

There is something intrinsically romantic about train travel – the idea of strangers’ lives temporarily touching as they are forced into fleeting contact with one another; all those different stories sitting side by side. Alexander McCall Smith’s latest offering, Trains and Lovers, is built on this notion, centring on four passengers from different backgrounds and parts of the world, who meet on a train from Edinburgh to London. His characters defy the unwritten rule of not acknowledging others on public transport, striking up a conversation that leads to the revelation of intimate details of their lives. The stories they tell are about love in its various forms and also all feature trains in some way, creating a narrative structure that jumps from their conversation into each person’s tale and back again.

The novel has its flaws: the premise feels improbable and occasionally forced, particularly the constant appearance of trains in each internal narrative; the characters aren’t always developed enough in the brevity of each story; the changes in narrative voice are sometimes a little jarring. The book can also seem quaint and old-fashioned at times; despite discussing several love affairs, sex is only alluded to once, and then somewhat prudishly.

However, perhaps this is the novel’s charm. It isn’t representative of the real world, but of a cosy and cushioned existence, painting an optimistic picture of a reality in which strangers on trains can have eloquent and contemplative conversations about love and romantic ideals. It is as sweet and comforting as a cup of hot chocolate with whipped cream and tiny marshmallows and, while sometimes feeling like a Richard Curtis film in book form, avoids sentimentality or triteness. The stories’ endings are never neatly tied up, setting them apart from the happy-ever-afters of most romantic fiction. The tales are told at a gentle pace, focusing on feeling rather than action, and despite our initial impatience for something significant to happen, we soon realise that this is not the point. McCall Smith presents us with the poetry of everyday (if slightly idealised) lives and loves, and implies that this should be enough to hold our interest.

This isn’t a book that will set the world on fire, but it was never intended to be. And while its characters might not stick with you for much longer than the aforementioned hot chocolate, most of us can still take something from it, even if it’s just an awareness that the harrumphing businessman next to us on the train might well have once been in love. That said, I still won’t be striking up a conversation with him anytime soon. 

Trains and Lovers is published by Polygon and is available here. 

Can’t Stand Up For Falling Down by Richard Cameron is, according to director Carla Kingham, “her baby.” Set to be staged in the Oxford Hub above the Turl St Kitchen, this production will be an intimate and understated affair, thanks to the small cast and closeness of the lamplit room. The issues the play treats, however, are far from low-key: Ruby (Phoebe Hames), Lynette (Claire Bowman) and Jodie (Zoe Bullock) are three women whose lives have been thrown off course by Royce, a man who never appears on stage but present in the characters’ monologues. Themes of domestic abuse are introduced through the voices of the three women, who have been subject to Royce’s rages for years.

The Bechdel test judges a film as feminist if it has scenes where women have conversations which are not about men: this script would probably fall short, and this is testament to the devastating effects of Royce’s abuse on each character’s life. The script is set in the late 80s or early 90s, but the cast are keen to make sure the action doesn’t seem too much like a period piece: the material is still raw and relevant.

What is important, however, is location: the play is set in Yorkshire’s Don Valley, in a small town where the three women are aware of each other without being friends. The script shows them at different stages of their relationship with Royce: Ruby is the eldest, and is able to look back on their marriage with some perspective. Hames, who plays Ruby, describes her as “scarred – but it’s definitely scar tissue, rather than an open wound.”

I saw Ruby’s monologue, given from a corner of the seating: she describes the beginnings of her relationship with Royce, the excitement of sex followed by the shock of pregnancy. Hames engages with the audience in a faultless Yorkshire brogue, drawing them into Ruby’s story and making them feel, in Kingham’s words, “uncomfortable for the right reasons.” Cameron delicately interweaves the three women’s lives until the very end, when the final moments bring them together. 

All proceeds of the production will go to charities supported by the Hub, and can be bought with a coffee in TSK. It’s a hardhitting and well-crafted portrayal of domestic violence, and all for a good cause. 

Can’t Stand Up For Falling Down is showing at the Oxford Hub above the TSK. Tickets £8/5, in aid of the Oxford Hub – available on the door or in advance from the TSK.

In the Brothers Grimm’s Kinder und HausmÓ“rchen are two tales of horrifying simplicity.  How Some Children Played at Slaughtering charts two stories that begin with the same scenario – children playing at ‘Butcher’, ‘Cook’ and ‘Pig’ transpose those roles quite literally into their games. In the first tale, a child is murdered but, thanks to his childish ignorance of the adult world, the ‘Butcher’ escapes punishment. In the second, a chain of death is triggered across the child’s family as the murdered child’s mother reacts in anger and grief.  

The violence of these stories is blatant and shocking.  And yet most of us would identify them as children’s tales.  Wilhelm Grimm, in the foreword to his first volume of fairy tales, clearly linked them with the essence of childhood, ‘pervaded by the same purity that makes children appear so marvellous and blessed to us.’  The implication that they are ‘child-like’ rather than ‘for children’ does not make his message any more comforting.  If his tales are emblematic of childhood, it is certainly not of the rose-tinted view most of us hold.  Instead, the Grimm’s tales are filled with inexplicable menace, undefined terror, and pure unadulterated brutality.

This year marks the 200^th anniversary of the Brothers Grimms’ most famous work.  Throughout Germany exhibitions, plays and film screenings are being held in celebration – you can even follow a Grimm fairy-tale tour that features Sleeping Beauty’s spinning wheel and Rapunzel’s rope of hair.  Considering the patriotic aims of the Grimm Brothers when they began their collection, the national importance of these tales is hardly surprising.  The Grimms were looking to reintroduce the stories of the German Volk and assert a uniquely German identity.

But the wider popularity and influence of the Grimms’ Tales is immeasurable. Over the past year, the world has been culturally overwhelmed by fairy-tales – in large-scale Hollywood productions like Snow White and the Huntsman or Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters, as well as on smaller art-house screens in Blancanieves; in plays, most recently Hattie Naylor’s Bluebeard at Soho Theatre; in ballet, with Liam Scarlett’s retelling of Hansel and Gretel.  And this does not even begin to include the sheer proliferation of new translations and retellings.  The range of adaptations is staggering. And it is for the brutality and darkness inherent to them, the suggestion that they may be for adults, rather than children, that they are being celebrated. 

The resonance that these modern fairy-tales have found with our age is undeniable.  However, in the process of making the fairy-tale modern, its ‘purity’, as Wilhelm Grimm envisaged it, has been lost.  New values, our current moral, psychological and social systems, have been ascribed to and explored through them.  These may differ wildly – from the simplistic heroism of Rupert Sanders’ Snow White to the feminist critique of sexual misogyny in Naylor’s Bluebeard.  But by filling in the undefined gaps of the Grimms’ tales, where ambiguity and menace fester, the terrifying simplicity and boundless suggestion of the original has vanished.        

Yet by comparing the fairy-tales to children, Wilhelm Grimm was identifying the absence of inculcated adult morality in them.  Much more primitive forces are at work here than the value systems we recognise.  The two stories of How Children Who Played at Slaughtering lay bare the root of our actions, the unadorned violence of our lives, and they are terrifying and pertinent because of, not in spite of, the child’s perspective. As A.S. Byatt, writing in 2004 for the Guardian, remarked, the implication of these tales is like ‘a glimpse of the dreadful side of the nature of things.’

There is no better image for this than the famous Wald, or forest, which is such a dominant presence throughout the Grimms’ tales.  It is a place where temptation, danger and menace lie.  Both visually and literally it has become a staple of our culture, an incarnation of indefinable impulses and fears.  If there is anything that embodies the endurance of these tales in our modern world, it is the forest as the Grimm Brothers saw it – full of hidden possibility and threat.