In a production commissioned by the Finborough Theatre, for the first time in the UK theatre history, You’re Human Like the Rest of Them, an evening of three short plays by British literary powerhouse B. S. Johnson, will be staged together at the Finborough Theatre, playing nine Sunday and Monday evenings and Tuesday matinees from Sunday, 5 March 2017.
Spanning ten years of Johnson’s short yet prolific career, the evening features the first UK revival in many years of Johnson’s short plays You’re Human Like the Rest of Them and Down Red Lane, and the world stage premiere of Not Counting the Savages.
Hailed by Samuel Beckett as a ‘most gifted writer’, this is a rare opportunity to see the work of Britain’s ‘ultimate forgotten author’, one of the most irreverent, visionary voices to come out of post-war Britain.
You’re Human Like the Rest of Them is the wickedly funny portrayal of a young man facing up to the excruciating reality of the human condition. When plucky schoolmaster Haakon is sent to hospital with a minor back complaint, he finds himself in a lecture in back care alongside a cast of colourful octogenarians. Outraged by their exposure of the flaws of the human design, he returns to his own classroom a changed man, posing a new lesson of the day: what is the meaning of life? Originally commissioned by the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1964, Johnson’s first stage play later went on to become a ground-breaking film.
Down Red Lane was Johnson’s final work written before his early death at the age of 40. A man newly come up in the world, the Diner has found a new vocation – fine dining. Knowing only too well the weakness of his regular customer, the Waiter plies him with every temptation. Unable to resist, the Diner is seemingly intent on indulging himself to death until his angry working class body begins to fight back. It’s Man versus Belly in Johnson’s absurd tale of the consequences of indulgence and desire.
Not Counting the Savages was originally produced as a teleplay directed by Mike Newell and starring Brenda Bruce as part of the BBC’s Thirty Minute Theatre season in 1972. This production marks its world stage premiere. Wife is left traumatised by an encounter with a flasher in a local graveyard, but when she turns to her family for support, her doctor husband is indifferent, her son gets a voyeuristic kick and her daughter accuses her of overreacting. When the family conference is cut short by an emergency call from the hospital, Wife is left wondering why her husband is able to save a life, but desperately unable to save their marriage.
