AN IMPOSSIBLE HONESTY - Scenes from the life of Ludwig Wittgenstein

This play is loosely based on a recent biography of the man who was probably the greatest modern western philosopher and who led a lot more interesting and varied life than the average academic. For example, he won medals for valour in the first world war while writing his first great work of philosophy, and invented useful bits of medical technology in the second world war while writing his second.

The central theme of the play is Wittgenstein’s guilty conviction that he was fundamentally dishonest – about his class position, about his homosexuality, about his jewishness – and his life-long struggle to overcome that dishonesty and live a moral life. I suggest that Wittgenstein tried to do this by inventing a mask – a false persona – for himself. And in gradually becoming the mask, in actually adopting the identity he had assumed, he did indeed find ways to become more honest. However his struggle, though successful in a sense, also had costs.

A DREAM OF GAZZA

George Robson is a middle-aged university academic, intelligent, but lazy, who has long ago run out of enthusiasm for his chosen profession. However, given his background (from a working class home in the north of England) he is highly given to fantasy and daydream, much of it focussed on his soccer hero – Paul “Gazza” Gascoigne.

George’s laziness leads him to unload (quite illegitimately) the supervision of a keen but struggling Pakistani graduate student (Yusuf Mohammed) on to a young female colleague recently recruited to his department (Susan Carey). Susan soon complains, however, that Yusuf has sexually harassed her. She thereby puts George at the centre of an ideological furor involving allegations of racism, sexism and professional misconduct and soon embroiling the university’s professional feminists, Third World activisits and other assorted stereotypes. The University and George’s job both look under serious threat, but inspired by Gazza, George manages to find a way out and bring things to a happy and unbloody conclusion.

This is intended as a light comedy, albeit with serious undertones. Some have suggested that given the centrality of Gazza soccer footage in George Robson’s fantasy scenes, this might be better suited to a TV script than to the stage.

KARL MARX IN HELL

Karl Marx, as the title suggests, is in hell! He is trapped in his nineteenth century study with only a late twentieth century stockbroker (Jeremy Sanderson) for company in an adjoining cubicle. Although they can converse through a paper-thin wall, they can never leave their respective rooms or see each other. Despite their differences, and some surprising similarities, Karl and Jeremy have become firm friends and, under Jeremy’s influence, Karl has now radically changed many of his famous views and theories.

Things develop rapidly, however, when Karl is visited by a free-lance popular journalist wanting his views on the collapse of communism and then by a young American student who (to give a bit of the plot away) turns out to be Karl’s illegitimate son.

Generally to be played for laughs, although there are a few serious reflections on everything from the internet (Jeremy is a keen user) to the modern mass media.