Writer: Peter Mountford
Director: George Lazaris
Dramaturg: Abby Hampton

Staged Reading. December 2021. Victorian College of the Arts.

SYNOPSIS:
In a small Midlands village, a hair salon named Tangles is an arena of politics, prejudice and perms. Over the course of two days, we witness the public and private lives of this small community unfurl with liberating and devastating consequences.

Owners Stella and Terry, along with their boxer dog Oscar, facilitate the daily ceremony of conversing and cutting. With their marriage on the rocks daily chit chat is focused on the lives of others and kept light… where to go on holiday, which dress to wear to a daughter’s wedding, things like that. They employ a crew of eclectic misfits who serve a loyal community of regulars always asking for ‘the usual’. For the young employees their days are spent chatting about episodes of Coronation Street and chopping Princess Di’s new do from a magazine cut out. While their nights are consumed with finding that special someone at the only gay club in town, attending militant meetings to plot revenge on the Tories and just surviving to the next day. For junior stylist Amy answering phones at Tangles is respite from what awaits her at home. She lives vicariously through customer tales of Greek island holidays, socialist stylist Daisy's political jaunts and Adrian’s dating escapades. While Amy learns that domestic bliss isn’t promised to all, and that even in a small-town your life can change in an instant. In the time of Thatcher’s third term, young stylist Adrian finds his life at odds with the conservatism of his working-class town. Adrian navigates outspoken opinions about his “choices” at home, work and in those pamphlets, they’re shoving through the door now.

But someone watches over Adrian… Mrs B – a regular/part time goddess of hairdressing/Margret Thatcher’s hair stylist/acquaintance to Princess Di- steers Adrian to love, Ikea and hope.

While those not under Mrs B’s watchful eye are destined to fall into that which is destined to the working class- heartache and haircuts day after bloody day.

- Abby Hampton

INTRODUCTION:

I think the biggest disease the world suffers from in this day and age is the disease of people feeling unloved.
– Princess Diana 

Do you know that one of the great problems of our age is that we are governed by people who care more about feelings than they do about thoughts and ideas.
– Margret Thatcher

Tomorrow belongs to those who can hear it coming.
– David Bowie

In a way, the most political thing you can do is be yourself.
– Boy George

 The first AIDS related death in the United Kingdom was a 49-year-old man in 1981[1].

In 1986 the British Government approved the delivery of pamphlets titled AIDS: Don’t Die of Ignorance to every household in the United Kingdom; “By the time you read this, probably 300 people will have died in this country.”[2] It outlined public health information regarding how the disease could be transmitted and helplines for further information. At this time the UK was experiencing its third term of conservative leadership under Prime Minister Margret Thatcher. In the following year Princess Diana would open the first purpose build AIDS ward at London Middlesex Hospital, and the debate surrounding whether she would wear gloves to the visit blew up in the British media. In playwright Peter Mountford’s Tangles in the year 1986 these two women of differing appeal both make appearance at a small Midlands hair salon.

While Tangles does not solely explore the AIDS pandemic, it does share form and thematic likeness to many works considered within the AIDS play cannon. Most notably in the United States, Tony Kushner’s 1991 Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes and Larry Kramer’s 1985 The Normal Heart. Both of these seminal works depicted “…gay and lesbian people as legitimate subjects of the state and worthy of ‘equal rights’”[3] and premiered during the height of the epidemic. Kushner and Kramer both tackle AIDS head on, they are honest and striking depictions of the time they were in, and the boldness of their American authors is present on every page.
In contrast very few theatrical works have dealt with this time in the UK or from British writers. For Tangles it shares stylistic features with Kushner in its “…appearance of otherworldly figures”[4] such as Mrs B, the Goddess of Hairdressing. This departure from naturalism is a tenent of queer dramaturgy, and the reaching for the fantastical only broadens the scope of these already brimming narratives. Just as protagonist Adrian pushes against the boundaries of small-town life, the form of Tangles weaves fantasy among the mundane, with time jumps, musical numbers and spirit-like appearances from celebrities. Mountford has written a meticulous British portrait of a regional working-class community experiencing the early permeation of AIDS hysteria through the experience of growing up gay.
In January 2021 Russel T Davies It’s a Sin premiered on Channel 4, the series “…depicts how shame, nurtured by the homophobia prevalent in the British press and, of course, Thatcher’s government, intensified the crisis”[5]. The series set from1981 to 1991 follows a young group of gay men who move from regional homes to a share flat in London.

While in Australia, Timothy Conigrave’s 1995 novel Holding the Man remains a seminal text about AIDS in Australia. The novel was adapted by playwright Tommy Murphy and premiered in 2006 at Griffin Theatre Company, and again as a screenplay in 2015. Holding the Man shares narrative similarity with Tangles in its depiction of growing up gay in both an environment and time, where the two conflict.  

Underscored by The Bangles, Joy Division and the Dirty Dancing soundtrack hair salon Tangles becomes our slice of life window into questions of morality and life for the working class in Conservative led Britain. For the young, the isolation of the town is suffocating and for the old, it is a place that is always better than anywhere else. In the arena of hair and homosexuals who will reign supreme the Tory madam with the iron hairdo or Mrs B, goddess of hairdressing and protector of working-class gays? 

When considering the enduring dramaturgical questions: Why This? Why Now? We see this work as a reminder to our audience that while there has been great change, fear and prejudice continues to prevail in society. In a world where queer history and voices continue to be silenced, when access to equality continues to be based on gender, sexual orientation, race… a play like Tangles is relevant. With the National Theatre UK just opening a season of Larry Kramer’s Normal Heart, and the aforementioned premiere of It’s A Sin both in 2021, it is undeniable that queer stories and the fight for equality have an important place in both our history and our future.

Furthermore, in a time when the world is experiencing a pandemic that effects the lives of every human being, governments are responding swiftly to that devastation. There was a time when they did not. It is important to remember that it is when a virus or a leader singles out one group, a group that is marginalised, that society nor government is as quick to search for solutions. Tangles shows that fear and ignorance reside in corners of our history and our present. Till neither is the driving force behind our leaders and citizens Tangles remains someone’s story somewhere.

- Abby Hampton

[1] R.M.Du Bois, M.A. Branthwaite, J.R. Mikhail, J.C. Batten, Primary Pneumocystis Carinii And Cytomegalovirus Infections, The Lancet, Volume 318, Issue 8259, 1981, Page 1339.

[2] AIDS: don’t die of ignorance: government information 1987/ issued by the Department of Health and Social Security Britain, https://wellcomecollection.org/works/kx943x59

[3]Campbell, Alyson, and Farrier, Stephen, eds. Queer Dramaturgies : International Perspectives on Where Performance Leads Queer. London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2015, p. 14.

[4] Campbell, Alyson, and Farrier, Stephen, eds. Queer Dramaturgies : International Perspectives on Where Performance Leads Queer. London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2015, p. 14.

[5] Davidson, Alex. “It’s a Sin.” SIGHT AND SOUND 31, no. 2 (March 1, 2021): 78–79. https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=sso&db=edswah&AN=000630069100060&site=eds-live&scope=site P. 78