Resolution written and performed by Pip Utton

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)

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

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Resolution by Pip Utton

Reviews