The Jumpy Generation

The Jumpy Generation

05 September, 2012
by: Naima Khan

Naima Khan talks to April de Angelis and Amanda Root about the women in Jumpy, the Royal Court play now running in the West End

Since I published a review of it on this very site last year, I can't really hide that I wasn't thrilled by Jumpy first time around. But it was then, and still is a solid entertaining piece of theatre with great opportunities to look beyond the world it sets itself in.

My major issue with it when I saw it at Royal Court Theatre was how introspective it is. It follows Hilary (Tamsin Greig) who, now in her fifties, is finding herself redundant at work and at home where her husband Mark is relentlessly passive and teenage daughter Tilly is relentlessly rude. It's Tilly sexual exploits that bring windbag Roland and uptight Bea (Amanda Root), the parents of her boyfriend Josh, into Hilary's life.

The play concentrates so closely on one woman's commonly accepted dilemma (a struggle to feel relevant in the lives of those around her) that I felt it failed to address the bigger questions such a dilemma raises. But I recently got the chance to quiz writer April de Angelis and actress Amanda Root about this in the bowls of Duke of York's Theatre in the West End, where the play is now running. Their answer was simple: the key here is to think retrospectively. 



They talk positively about “young people today,” the myriad of social opportunities and back-up plans available, they even see the immediacy of text messaging and online social networking as something that can be more supportive than what they had when they were growing up. Amanda is in awe of the confidence of youth and the platonic friendships that exists more commonly between men and women (“We don't need rigid structures to ensure we are cared for and loved!”), while April questions the collective feminist ideals that began the movement alongside the individualist freedoms that exist as a consequence. They make it apparent that when looking at progress for women, we have to consider every generation present, including the ones that got us here and the ones that come next.

“Now we're in a different place” April says of the position of women in society at large, “but it's slightly sad, we look back and think have we lost something?” She's talking about Hilary's commonly felt need to grasp what's left of her family as her daughter grows not just independent but increasingly distant and impudent, while her husband retreats into his docile, enduring position. For all the freedoms achieved by her generation, the central character of this story is still disappointed with life. 

Similarly, but more aggressively, Bea, Amanda's character also carves a purpose for herself now at middle-age with a failing marriage and a son growing up incredibly fast. She deals with it efficiently, undaunted by the distance between her and her son. “Bea's come through that era” explains Amanda, “she's learnt how to survive in a different way but there's no utopia. Those ideals have all been undermined. She hasn't seen life as very satisfactory so what she can do is what she will do: bring up her son well. But she's lost something of herself, something she represented, something she was passionate about. Hers is not a happy existence.”

“And,” adds April “she's quite individual. She's lost any notion of the collective women's liberation.” 



She comes from a cut-throat, corporate world Amanda explains “Those women who are so cool but so competitive, their lives are full of subterfuge. To exist in that world, you have to be incredibly strong. Bea's deceptively strong.”

“I don't know,” says April, “I think there might be something wrong with her.”

She is one of the hardest characters to sympathise with and one of the most over-familiar images of modern Western women. She's not one-dimensional or unrealistic but she is desperate. Thoroughly dissatisfied but completely hardened, her coping mechanisms are in overdrive. Next to Frances, Hilary's amateur burlesque performer best friend, they exemplify a couple of thought patterns too easily associated with contemporary feminisms. 

In Frances' case, sexual appeal gives her not only relevance but power. The question posed is whether this significance is just in her mind. Played by Doon Makichan, she seems to be there for comic effect but makes several important points about how we regard sex, dignity and age. It's also Frances who, in regards to the presence of a supremely disrespectful teenager asks the question every non-parent is thinking throughout this show: “Why does anyone ever have children!?”

In Jumpy, April looks at the domestic position of a few privileged women as they are today and she does it from multiple angles. In this sense, I'm wrong to bang on negatively about how introspective the play is. In fact, it needs to be introspective. The situations Bea, Hilary and Frances find themselves in were rapidly constructed with certain ideals and images on the horizon and April's script causes us to question how multidimensional those goals are now and crucially, whether the current teenage generation should cause us to consider them differently. 

Jumpy runs at Duke of York's Theatre until November 1st. 


 
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RSC Julius Caesar in the West End
Ray Fearon on playing Mark Antony in the RSC's all-black production

Naima Khan