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“A Monster Play on a Subsidized Stage”?: A Portrait of the Middle-class Radical in David Edgar’s Maydays

  • Journal of Modern English Drama
  • Abbr : JMBARD
  • 2010, 23(2), pp.189-211
  • Publisher : 한국현대영미드라마학회
  • Research Area : Humanities > English Language and Literature > English Literature > Contemporary English Drama

KIM, YOO 1

1성균관대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

When Edgar’s Maydays, a historical play on three generations of political defectors, was premiered by the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1983 at the Barbican Theatre, the degeneration of socialism in the post-war Britain and Eastern Europe was portrayed in such a vivid way. The controversy surrounding Maydays, condemned as “a monster play on a subsidized stage,” was even more compounded by the fact that the play was actually performed to the middle-class audience, which had been traditionally regarded as class enemy of the Left. However, as many critics both from the Right and the Left argued, Maydays does not simply dismiss the moral validity and relevance of revolutionary socialism. Tackling a range of significant issues such as adopting, re-discovering or silencing the ‘resisting’ human nature, the play investigates the centrality of the middle-class radicals to the process of social change. Edgar’s move to the RSC with Maydays was made with a recognition of the possibility of the middle-class audience as a potential political vanguard. The play is deeply related to his perception of a new political status quo in the 1980s.: the end of a period of considerable working-class militancy and the increasingly conservative middle-class theatre audience. The play is revolved around Edgar’s emotional and intellectual manipulation of the middle-class liberals at the Barbican. The Eastern strand of the story constantly counteracts the Western experience of socialism. The ideological journey of Martin Glass, an English middle-class radical, who eventually deserts his revolutionary self and returns to his old middle-class reactionary self, is juxtaposed with that of Lermontov, a disillusioned Soviet dissident, who finally reclaims the value of socialism. Concentrating on the shifting of political affiliations of the middle-class radical, Edgar brings the frequently ignored issues of human nature back into the British Left: what is the fundamental difference between Western socialism and its Eastern counterpart; what motivates the political defections of the middle-class radical; what determines one’s revolutionary stance (or identity) and does it form part of individual feelings? Aiming directly at the middle-class audience at the Barbican, Edgar discusses the relevancy of the British middle-class radical intellectuals to the process of social change in the post-war political history. Key Words David Edgar, Maydays, political defection, Western socialism, the middle-class radical, the resisting self

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