I have read in the last days of Cate Blanchett’s performance in a controversial new play for the National Theater in London, When We Have Sufficiently Tortured Each Other, whereby the content is such that forwarning is given to the faint of heart and/or presumably the easily (or perhaps usually not so easily) offended. That it should have inspiration in the 18th century and Samuel Richardson’s Pamela (1740), and the very beginnings of the novel as a form!
This piece at The Guardian by John Mullan gives an interesting perspective; relating the power dynamics at play and the predatory behaviour of one protagonist and the dilemmas of the other, with concerns and incidents we only know of too well in the here and now.
Written as a series of letters, and mostly by Pamela, Richardson seems to have come by a literary form adequate in conjuring the immediacy of a complicated and evolving relationship. Martin Crimp and Katie Mitchell and their players have come up with their own modern version (or vision!), to the satisfaction and dis- in equal measure it seems!
Love the Blanchett, would have loved to have seen this! London (I do believe the aforesaid has forsaken her antipodean home – again!) and the theatre – that’s a thing not many places can top!