« The Brighter and more cheerful it is, the more it hurts » : l’inquiétante noirceur des comédies de Martin Crimp

Abstract

In Martin Crimp’s plays, humour only serves to make the ensuing anguish more acute. The playwright achieves this purpose by using two specific dramatic strategies: one that will be described as ‘generic oscillation’, the other referred to by Crimp himself as the ‘false happy ending’. Humour can never be perceived as creating comic relief in his theatre. The comic interludes framing horror scenes and macabre speeches enhance the spectators’ disquiet by making them deem their own laughter profoundly obscene. The false happy ending only reinforces such distress, as Martin Crimp himself underlines in an interview with Aleks Sierz, quoted in the title of this paper. The optimistic conclusion peculiar to comedy should always be read ironically. Such irony is achieved through a specific use of lighting and stage set which will be studied in detail in this paper. Martin Crimp thus revitalises the age-old genre of comedy, adopting its form while at the same time denouncing it as obsolete. Dark humour is at its fiercest, arousing self-conscious identification rather than alienation.