Enjoy
Alan Bennett
A dark, absurdist comedy set in a back-to-back house in Leeds that is about to be demolished. The elderly couple living there, Connie and Mam, are being observed by a sociologist who is actually their long-lost son in disguise. The house and its inhabitants are eventually preserved as a living museum exhibit, reflecting Bennett’s themes of the commodification of the past and the voyeurism of modern culture. It is a bleakly funny and surreal look at family, class, and the way we curate our own histories, often at the expense of authentic experience.
Mam: A forgetful, working-class mother who is being processed for relocation while unknowingly participating in a sociological study of her own vanishing way of life. Dad: Mam’s cantankerous, disabled husband who views the changes around him with a mixture of hostility and bewildered resignation as their world is turned into a museum. Ms. Craig: The mysterious, high-heeled sociologist who observes the couple with detached professional interest, eventually revealed to be their estranged son, Terry, in a complex disguise.
First Performance: 1980, at Richmond Theatre / Vaudeville Theatre, London
Initially met with mixed reviews for its dark tone, it has since been reassessed as one of Bennett's most prescient and challenging works.
Original Actors: Joan Plowright, Colin Blakely