Many contemporary works of realism that deal with working-class people and environments draw attention to the injustices of neoliberalism in similar indirect ways – displaying the lives of those ‘left out’ in order to expose the brutality and unfairness of the current system. Gary Owen’s play Iphigenia in Splott (Sherman Theatre 2015),4 for example, shows us the life of Effie as she struggles to survive in her small Welsh town that shows all the signs of austerity: ‘boarded up houses, NHS cutbacks and people too worn-out to care about those falling through the cracks’.5 Like Tempest, Owen draws on Greek mythology (in classical myth, Iphigenia is sacrificed to appease the goddess Artemis) in order to critique the conditions of the modern world, and highlight how even seemingly contemporary systems connect with timeless human concerns.
Youth culture
The transition from adolescence to adulthood, as we see in Wasted, is fraught. In Scene One, Danny encapsulates the crisis of early adulthood when he tells Ted how reflecting on the loss of Tony has made him realize he has been wandering aimlessly, letting his dreams fall away. He has become the person he is as a result of his actions, rather than through choice. (‘All the things you done, that’s just what you done. You weren’t even thinking. But now, suddenly it’s made you who you are. You can’t go back, can ya?’6) Although the characters in Wasted articulate a sense of hopelessness particularly tied up with the millennial moment, the struggle of finding your way as an adult in politically fraught times is, as I mention above, a universal human experience.
In Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet the struggle to become an adult and break out of the expectations of family and society end in tragedy. Jim Cartwright’s 1986 play Road (Royal Court Theatre 1986),7 on the other hand, is a seminal example of a social realist play that, like Wasted, explores how young people survive in times of social and political turmoil. It hones in on the young people on an unnamed road in Lancashire and records, ‘with exemplary honesty, the consequences of living in an economically run-down society’.8
The 2016 play We Are Ian (Edinburgh Fringe), a devised piece by the collective In Bed With My Brother, similarly explores the theme of transitioning to adulthood. In this production, three figures on the cusp of adulthood in the mid-2010s listen to the disembodied voice of a character called ‘Ian’, who tells them how exciting it was to be part of the rave youth movement back in 1989. Bewildered and politically adrift, the trio attempt to recreate Ian’s nostalgic rave stories, hilariously illustrating how little the millennial generation have to hold on to politically, utterly let down by a broken political system that is indifferent to their distress. The plays I mentioned above resonate with Wasted in both the ‘timeless’ ways they engage with the condition of becoming an adult, as well as, in the case of Road and We Are Ian especially, in how they interrogate the way contemporary political structures shape how young people are able to live their lives.