Kirjahaku

E. A. Whitehead's first play, The Foursome, had its premiere at the Royal Court Theatre in 1971, and subsequently transferred to the West End, winning the George Devine Award and Evening Standard Award for most promising playwright. Ostensibly a play about the battle of the sexes, it is actually an exploration of the assumptions that make such battles inevitable. Whitehead continued his exploration of sexual conflict in his next two plays, Alpha-Beta and The Sea Anchor. The plays were widely produced and won Whitehead an international reputation. The Punishment, shown live on BBC2 in 1972, is a one-act play about authority and corruption.

‘You know… when a structure has lost its essence but retained its shape, the geologists call it: a Pseudomorph. A false shape. That’s our marriage.’ Mr and Mrs Elliot have imprisoned themselves within a domestic incarceration of marriage, family and society’s twitching curtains. Battling through their self-made entrapment for the sake of the kids, they soon begin to destroy each other through an ugly routine of rows, affairs and suicidal blackmail. Written with a controlled irony and an underlying compassion for its tormented characters, Ted Whitehead’s bold and unflinching play asks questions about the choices we make to fit in with social conventions – questions that are just as relevant now as they were in 1972.