Why did William Carlisle kill most of his friends?
1. Mogwai made him do it. ‘Punk Rock’ is not the heat and horror of a musical genre but the same energy viewed through a telescope, far away, on another planet, thanks to a Mogwai song. The distant jack plug crackle, the amplifier’s hum, builds below the encroaching violence like microbes in the microscope, in Lindsay Anderson’s “If..”, which this school shooting drama resembles. The low lighting descending over the face of the bullied Private Pyle in “Full Metal Jacket”.
2. Mum and Dad. When you push people too far. Snap. Thing about parents is.. no-one can accuse them of being kids. They have a certificate to prove it. William makes up so many stories about his parents no-one knows who anyone is. They’re millionaires. They’re dead and buried. In life, you can approach any relationship as a parent, a child or an adult. Adults are those free from the parent-child cycle. Transactional Analysis. Even with a shotgun in his hands, William is a child, a self-shaped mould made from somebody else’s rules.
3. Girls. They pretend like they’re going to help. Something suggests they’re the cure. Make you feel connected to the universe. But they make things worse. The Irish girl, Lilly. William thought she’d be an outsider like him but she liked the brawny lad, Nicholas. Down the gym. Day after day. Shallow as any of them. Girls bring out William’s schizo side. He accuses them of doing all the things that he himself is doing. Follows them, needs them, hates them. They’re a screen where he projects his paradox. He is not gay. He wanks looking at lesbians, if anything.
4. Stockport.
5. Anti-matter. It wouldn’t be a modern play without a science nerd talking chaos theory or anti-matter for a few minutes to put the human interdependency in context. William Carlisle is jitteringly bright but not stable enough to build upon his brightness. The science nerd represents the smooth and striated problem solver that William’s jumpy mind cannot settle down to be. At best William will be a short-loved creative nerd.
6. Bullies. The school Flashman is called Bennett and he is a bastard. Bullies are good. We start to understand why the violent get violent. We almost want them to walk in with an antique shotgun, to blow their oppressors away, and all their girlfriends, appeasers and tolerators (stop pretending to be the outsider’s friend, just stop it). Blow them away, after their mocks. After the mocks. At 17. A crucial age. Important to this play. Some of us talk like adults and some of us talk like children and the crafty apply either when it benefits them.
7. Class. RADA’s Joseph Rain is truly great in this role but whether he is a new generation’s Day-Lewis or whatnot depends on too many things beyond his control. Bold writers, bold producers and directors. A bold culture. He could end up in Emmerdale. He reminded me fully of the working class gay flotsam that I have known (‘Coal for hole’ Stynes, Wully ‘tomatoes’ Greer, that kid in 4th year who shot himself and whose mum went grey overnight) meets the caustic northern cynic, mind outgrown his cultural boots. William isn’t gay, but there is something unformed about his sexuality, and his fantasist tales are evidence of a boy forced to cut off his feet to fit his bed. When asked what he will do if he ever gets out of confinement he says “Live in a modest house. Not spend too much money.” That’s not the rosebud of any aspirant. Working class dreamers used to become rock stars.
