Will Eno's Oh, the Humanity... is a play comprised of five vignettes, each an implicit diatribe against the milieu New York based Eno presumably inhabits.
1. Behold the Coach in a Blazer, Uninsured
A coach of a team participating in an unspecified sport attends a press conference. Hoping to illuminate the fans with valid reasons for the team's mediocre season, the coach instead displays the same narcissistic tendency that has resulted in the team's, and his own, inevitable decline.
2. Ladies & Gentleman, the Rain
A young man and woman attempt to find romance on-line. Each maybe seeking a separate partner, or they maybe attempting to connect with one another. Either way, the same level of narcissism achieved in Behold the Coach ... gives way to the shock realisation that banal appearances are always underscored by ambiguous sexual motives and troubled lives.
3. Enter the Spokeswoman, Gently
An ambitious young PR consultant metes out her airline company's spin to the surviving families of people killed in a plane crash. By reflecting upon an immense tragedy, the consultant only succeeds in displaying how insensitive she actually is, while simultaneously undermining her employer's supposed heartfelt grievance toward the victims and their families.
4. The Bully Composition
With camera aimed at the audience, a portrait photographer and a lighting technician aspire to photograph the profound inhumanity lingering in a landscape. Consumed by ambition, in-fighting, and an inability to find a method for reconciling their differences, they fail to comprehend the drastic inhumanity residing within themselves.
5. Oh, the Humanity
An upwardly mobile couple stranded on a country road inquire of a mysterious stranger the reason as to why the couple can no longer communicate with one another. The stranger obliges, but directs his opinion to the audience.
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Playwright Will Eno is quoted as saying "I try to exalt normal stuff... I like seeing people suffer under bright lighting. I like hearing people in pain in rooms with good acoustics". Easily missed in this smug, self promoting blurb is an unnerving sense of self loathing, anxiety, and general disquiet that also characterises Eno's plays. By using subtle and indirect writing techniques, Eno voices his own anguish, and the anguish of his generation, as together they search for a trace of humanity in themselves, and their surroundings. In a hyperreal world comprised only of surfaces, any depth of feeling that can be established, over time, becomes just another meaningless surface. Minus any moment of epiphany, while only ever striving toward a generalised sense of emotional release, Eno's characters spiral downward into a vortex comprised of nothing more than meaningless fluff. As Shakespeare famously pointed out in King Lear, "Nothing will come of nothing..." Of course, we know all too well that the end result of a nihilistic attitude is corruption, insanity and the insurmountable pleasure many people have derived from torture, murder, and the complete breakdown of a moral code. Will Eno is working in prime Brett Easton Ellis territory. Like the central character of Ellis' banal yet fascinating novel, the characters present in Oh the Humanity... devastated by indifference and a lack of feeling, are progenitors of a mutant strain of American psycho.
Oh, the Humanity and Other Exclamations
Writer: Will Eno
Director: Laurence Strangio
Performers: Pier Carthew, Emma Officer
Dion Mills & Drew Tingwell
Sound: Neddwellyn Jones
Light: Gwendolyna Holmberg-Gilchrist
Stage Management: Christine Scott-Young
La Mama, Melb. June 3-13
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