Theatre
Does John Kazek share Blair‘s madness in Macbeth (left)? Damaged by Miracles (right) presents Freud‘s favourite nervous breakdown, while Van Badham’s Nikolina examines madness and politics
Prial scream
In a Festival packed with plays about what we choose to call madness, Steve Cramer explains why Beckham kicked Simeone in the 1998 World Cup second round for the same reason that mentally ill people don’t take their medication. Sort of.
he List is a pair of breasts. Metaphorically. But as The
List provides me. by my labours. with sustenance.
warmth and comfort. just like the breast did when l was a baby. it amounts to a similar thing to my infant experience. Not the same. though.
That’s the problem. you see. for me. you. everybody. We don‘t have our mum's breast any more. When we were babies. you and l. we had only to cry to be provided with comfort. food. whatever we wanted. We were the whole world in ourselves: there was no separation between ourselves and the myriad phenomena of the world around us. Not until we were of an age between six and 18 months were we even able to tell the difference between our own image in the mirror and that of our mother's. so whole was the world. It’s when you realised that you weren‘t your mother. Elvis. or the phone booth across the road that all the trouble started. Then you had to substitute words for things that were quite separate from you. and the problematical issue of substituting
58 THE LIST FESTIVAL MAGAZINE 5—1? Aug 2004
symbols for what you thought was a whole unified thing that needed no language came along with your father. the imparter of law. responsibility and obligation to others. And you’ll never be whole again. because you‘re not lilvis. or your mum.
It doesn‘t stop you trying though. I think we‘ll all know the experience of lying in bed with our lovers wrapped up naked and very close. Haven't you had. on these deeply intimate occasions. the feeling that these two bodies are one‘.’ We allow ourselves this little fantasy of wholeness. of being at one with ‘the other". the separated world of other people. and the comfort of our baby days subliminally returns. This is why the psychoanalytic theorist Jacques l.acan called this person who you desire the ‘significant other". a phrase subsequently popularised by men with beards and women with glasses. and vice-versa. The significant other is the person who completes your incompleteness.
That's the problem. you see. with The List as a tit. It‘s like your employer. It can’t make you whole because it‘s not