ARTicles vol. 6 i.2b: Michael Frayn: Renaissance Man of the Word

Those who know Noises Offmay think they know Michael Frayn. Copenhagen, however, is worlds away from Frayn’s early farces. To understand the depth of Copenhagen, one must understand the progression of its author from newspaper satirist to Tony Award–winning dramatist.

Writing for the ManchesterGuardianin the 1950s, Frayn earned the reputation of a wit. He was drawn into the 1960s satire boom that attacked the hypocrisy of the old regime in England and the decline of liberalism. Frayn lampooned everything from the obsession with class distinctions to the stupidity of London theater. Since Frayn disliked the malicious tone used by other satirists, he ridiculed satire itself, writing: “How … powerful is our appeal to men’s malice, resentment, destructiveness, and envy.’”

Like his satirical columns, Frayn’s first stage play, The Two of Us, throws the lives of ordinary couples into a farcical spin when day-to-day communication misfires. Frayn’s early plays provoke laughter by focusing on human mayhem. The backstage world of The Two of Usinspired Frayn to write his best-known play:Noises Off. As he watched from the wings one evening, Frayn decided to write a farce seen from behind. He felt that the anarchy of actors rushing madly about to get on stage in time reflected the lives we all lead. In 1982 Frayn’s farce about the performance of a farce scored his biggest hit, but beneath the merriment, Frayn was dealing with serious concerns. His farces explore the misunderstandings that color all human perceptions of reality — a theme that has intrigued Frayn throughout his career.

Frayn has used different genres to explore his concern. A Very Private Life, a dystopian novel, shows Frayn’s penchant for philosophy. The characters in the novel never leave their homes, experiencing the outside world through the 3-D manifestations of “holovision.” The protagonist argues with another character about his secondhand experiences:

UNCUMBER: “You got all those ideas out of books and … [holovision] manifestations …”
SULPICE: “That doesn’t make the experience any the less valid …”
UNCUMBER: “It’s all just inside your head.”
SULPICE: “Of course! That’s where the world is centered.”

With the 1974 publication of Constructions, his first book of philosophy, Frayn expanded his theories on how humans distort reality: Frayn continues this investigation in his newest book, The Human Touch: Our Part in the Creation of a Universe. Here Frayn questions how much reality depends on our perceptions versus how much reality informs our perceptions.

In Copenhagenthe misunderstandings of farce grow into philosophical inquiry. Frayn takes one short moment — a meeting between two scientists — and refracts it through the lenses of individual perspective, misinterpretation, and memory. In the blink of an eye, the situation alters, depending on which character is narrating the story. Thus, Frayn’s fascination with human foibles and subjective realities culminates in the hunt for a true account of an event that shaped history.

Heidi Nelson is a first-year dramaturgy student at the A.R.T./MXAT Institute for Advanced Theatre Training.6_22