Oh, The Humanity And Other Good Intentions

Will Eno’s Oh, The Humanity And Other Good Intentions is a quintet of short plays about what it is to be human. Something akin to The Love-Song of Alfred J Prufrock, life is set out in all its pathos and absurdity and in such a way as to create a sort of hyper-reality, more true to life than life itself. The Prufrocks we encounter in Eno’s play include a football coach facing the reality of ageing, a man and a woman recording profiles for a dating website—collapsing themselves into a list of their likes and dislikes—and a spokesperson who addresses the relatives of those who died in a plane crash with more honesty than formality.

Eno’s writing has the effect of making each line—even the most throwaway—seem to be imbued with deep meaning. Simple requests, such as that for a name: "And who are you, my love," take on a double life as existential queries.

A script so deliberately off-kilter, so self-consciously profound, could easily seem pretentious. But such is the restraint of Erica Whyman’s direction, and the understated exactitude of her actors, that for the most part this is avoided. Lucy Ellinson, in particular, is always recognisably human in the face of all the ramped up surrealism of the writing.

Between each short play, the simple white screens which form the backdrop of the stage open wide and the audience is given an unobstructed view of backstage: the ropes, the pulleys, the stage-hands. Sometimes in destroying the illusion of reality, you achieve something more real.