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Resolution by Pip Utton
 Is
it okay to think about revenge if it eases the pain?
Is it okay to plan it if it softens the anger?
Is it okay to do it if it resolves the remorse?
Boldly
reincarnating the 20th Century's most notorious tyrant, Pip Utton's Adolf placed
the audience in the presence of the Führer and faced them with their own
prejudices with astonishing - and often controversial - results. Utton combines
again with Adolf's director, Guy Masterson to create a new work of deeply
challenging theatre.
Resolution
addresses an issue very close to home... the need to see adequate punishment
exacted on the perpetrators of crime and the desire or need for revenge and
retribution in the face of great - or perceived - wrong. Precepts of justice are
challenged. In today's society, is it acceptable to think about getting your own
back if it eases your pain? Is it okay to plan revenge if it softens the anger?
Is it ever okay to carry out retribution if it resolves your remorse?
The bible
says "an eye for an eye" but also advocates forgiving one's enemies. In America,
you can carry a gun for self-defence, but they also advocate the death penalty
for murderers. Where does the ordinary victim stand? Can a wrong ever be righted
by another wrong? Can retribution ever be termed "justifiable homicide" or will
it always be "murder"?
Resolution
is theatre in its truest form. Challenging, divisive, provocative. It can't just
be watched.
(75 mins, 1
on the road domestically 2 internationally, strong language, workshops available)
Photo: Guy Masterson
Writer's Note
This idea was inspired by a newspaper story in Northern Ireland. It is not
about that story, but it is my attempt to express the passionate response that
I - and doubtless many others - felt upon reading it. To say more would give
it away.
I believe that theatre has many roles to play, one of them being to challenge
the complacency of our thoughts. If in any way theatre can persuade an
audience to think about and debate issues, then it can achieve as much as I
hope. I try not to pretend to have answers, but I do feel the need to ask
questions. I hope that this is a need that my audience shares.
Of course, The most useful key on the keyboard is "Delete". Whole chunks of
what has taken weeks to write can disappear at the touch of the button and
vanish into computer ether. A good director - and Guy is a very good one - can
take what is left, add to it, mould it, and hone it, until the words that
remain illuminate the original idea as clearly as is possible.
My belief is that the result of mine and Guy's collaboration is a challenging
and thought provoking work of theatre. There is nothing clever about it,
nothing contrived; it is intended as an honest revelation of emotions, doubts
and fears that few people are forced to face, but all of us have to confront
if we are to be true to ourselves. Pip Utton
Director's Note
Mr Utton seems to come to me when he has a bright idea for a contentious
work. He produces his populist stuff himself, but the heavy stuff, he sends it
to me... Why? You may well ask... Perhaps it's because I seem to revel in all
that stuff. It inspires me. Over the last seven years I have developed a taste
for theatre that is not merely entertainment, but also a powerful means of
communicating issues that one can otherwise push to the back of the mind, or
safely ignore. I like to put my audience in the presence of people or
situations that they might otherwise not face.
Of course, this can be entertaining as well as illuminating or challenging,
such as the story of Zelda Fitzgerald in Bye Bye Blackbird or Richard Burton
in Playing Burton, or Animal Farm & Shylock... But it can also be frightening,
provocative and dangerous as in Adolf, All Words For Sex and A Soldier's Song.
Resolution fits in to this category.
I won't give the game away, so to speak. Suffice it to say, Pip has written a
piece that again makes us face a situation that we are very unlikely ever to
be in, but one that we are more than very aware of... particularly at the
moment.
We can always turn the TV off and we can turn the page of the newspaper, but
in the theatre, once one has sat in one's seat, convention all but forces one
to sit there. If it's bad, of course, one has the option of walking out. But
if it's good and/or compelling whilst also being challenging, one is likely to
stay, go through the wringer with the artistes, and come out having safely
experienced something powerful.
My aim is not to preach - especially to the converted - as most theatre
enthusiasts might like to think of themselves! - but to make my theatre a
place where one can get more than through the two dimensions of the TV or the
Silver Screen. Guy Masterson
Reviews
The Stage 17/08/01
"... A thoroughly uncompromising examination of moral and legal justice ... It
resists the lure of sentimentalism, and you are freed of the obligation to
empathise, unless you can't help it ... Utton's engaging, empassioned and
equally committed performance of both characters will have you thinking more
than once."
Duska Radosavijevic Heaney
*****
Scotland on Sunday 12/08/01
"...with Resolution, his deceptively subtle one-man exploration of crime
and punishment, he takes us to the emotional brink again. ...an impressively
well-structured piece of theatre. ...a series of cleverly wrought objections...
The production itself is characterised by a simplicity and precision that we
have come to expect of director Guy Masterson. ... Utton's script is shaped into
a splendidly cohesive whole which is as compelling as the actor/playright's
extraordinary performance."
Mark Brown
Mail on Sunday 12/08/01
"Pip Utton's play has real guts. In the space of an hour, the writer and actor
took us from suburbia to hell... starkly effective... Mr Utton's performance was
gripping, open and raw. Simply and effectively directed by Guy Masterson,
Resolution is more than worth an hour of your time."
Kenneth Speirs
The Herald 10/08/01
"CRIME pays ... Pip Utton's new one-man play, performed by himself, tackles this
... Here one can understand the first-hand rage of the father if not the
name-and-shame thuggery that is its extreme conclusion."
Neil Cooper
****
Edinburgh Evening News 08/ 08/ 01
"Pip Utton brilliantly dissects this modern moral dilemma in a one-man show...
succinctly conveying the duality of this tragedy... he presents reasonable men,
average individuals with whom we empathise, and examines the paths they take and
the motives which drive them there.... very much worth seeing."
Thom Dibdin
*****
The Scotsman 08/08/2001
"... a dazzling collaboration between writer and performer Pip Utton and director
Guy Masterson starkly brings to light contemporary conundrums ... no strangers
to Edinburgh Fringe acclaim and this production does not disappoint ... The play
is brilliant for its apparent simplicity. Never preaching, avoiding sensation,
it goes straight to the jugular with brutal realism."
Julia Robertson
CRITICS CHOICE
**** The Guardian 11/08/01
"Peter wants to show you pictures of his little girl,
his Susie, his "little ball of DNA". Peter seems like an ordinary bloke, just a
little bit of a bore. But Peter has a harrowing story to tell. It is of how
Susie, on the night of her 18th birthday, was mown down by a just-over-the-limit
driver 300 yards from her front gate. She died in his arms. The driver, his
defence bolstered by glowing character reports, got five years. Will be out in
three. Peter and his wife, who has taken permanently to her bed, have got a life
sentence. Peter wants to know if we think that's right. Is that justice?
This is a very clever, very slippery little show. Initially I resisted its manipulation,
its middle England world view that it is the victims that get forgotten in our
justice system. But Peter is such an ordinary bloke, so reasonable, so affable,
that you gradually get sucked in.
Writer and
performer Pip Utton plays with the audience like a cat with a mouse. If Susie
had been murdered by a paedophile, the issues would be more clear-cut for an
audience. But a slightly over-the-limit driver, a man who made one mistake?
There but by the grace of god go almost all of us. But if it was your little
girl? Wouldn't you want to kill?
This
one-man show can never be more than what it is, but what it is devastating and
unforgettable."
Lyn Gardner
The Stage
"As both writer and performer, Pip Utton's strength lies in his ability to take
us deep into the psyche of his characters, and then make us discover unexpected
and unsettling things about them and, by extension, about ourselves. In his
latest piece he plays two roles in alternating pieces of monologue - the father
of a young girl killed by a hit and run driver, and the imprisoned killer. The
father is by far the more sympathetic, torn apart by an unbearable grief that is
compounded by the added insult of the killer's obscenely short prison sentence.
But gradually, while the man's sorrow imperceptibly evolves into a murderous
anger, we are faced with the discovery that the figure we have so sympathised
and identified with is on the edge of a dangerous madness. Meanwhile, against
our wills, we have been forced to recognise that the killer is suffering in ways
and depths we would not have guessed. Utton may telegraph the tragic but
dramatically satisfying ending a bit earlier than he wishes, but that does not
significantly impair the emotional power of his complacency-shaking work."
Gerald Berkowitz
Scotsgay
"He can certainly turn them out. At one stage I felt I'd have been happier back in the
bunker in Utton's earlier play Adolf than be here. Peter is a happy family man,
proud of his daughter, Suzy, who is doing well until a hit and run driver kills
her on her 18th birthday. We follow events over the next three years for Peter
and the man who killed his daughter. Where Adolf chillingly dealt with the
narrow band we live on between civilised society and racism, this dealt with the
edge between civilised society, lynch mobs, and the loathing for people who are
not "normal". What makes this all the more uncomfortable is that Utton speaks to
the audience, dragging us along in his crazy excesses. I came close to shouting
out "No, you're wrong", but hang on a minute this was just a play. Well it
didn't feel like just a play. I left the theatre emotionally drained.
If this
doesn't win major prizes the major prizes are rigged."
Martin Powell
Nominated: Stage Award for Best Actor 2001 for Resolution
Technical Specification
Click here for Resolution Tech Spec
Promotional Material
Click here
for Resolution Promo
Please contact me,
Pip to discuss
performances, copies of the script or performing rights.
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