25 Years of Wiping My Mother's Arse
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As he prepares to star in a revival of Iain Heggie’s 2001 Fringe hit Wiping My Mother’s Arse at Pitlochry Festival Theatre, Johnny McKnight wonders if attitudes towards care for the elderly have evolved at all in the last 25 years
Some play titles announce themselves with a curious subtlety: The Cherry Orchard, Great Expectations, Wuthering Heights. And then there’s Wiping My Mother’s Arse. It’s a title that doesn’t so much glide across the floor as rip up the lino. A title that not only sticks in the head but also beautifully tells you what it is you’re about to watch. It speaks to conversations we’re still, all these years since the show’s initial run, refusing to have. The great taboos depicted on stage are no longer about sex, or monogamy, or religion. No, they’re about care.
How do we care for our loved ones? How do we, as a nation, treat the elderly? And, actually, do we? Do we care? Or have we created a system where our loved ones get put into facilities to slowly fade away, and we get to maintain a protective distance? Is the care system designed for the carer, as opposed to the person needing cared for? Some people on social media like call the older generation boomers, talk of them having everything, rage against their triple lock pensions and cheap houses, talk of them being financial titans. But we don’t talk about what happens next. What happens when a generation becomes frail? When everything they’ve worked for, everything they’ve saved and accumulated is sold off to pay into an exorbitant care system? Does the word “care” adequately describe the system? Is the care system care-based?
It’s a predicament so many people will find themselves in: when the parent becomes the person requiring care; when you’re supposed to return the love and attention that was given to you as a child. But with an ageing population, with ever-rising costs, and with so many other pressures to do with work and family, how is it possible that we do that?
That’s what Iain Heggie’s play is looking at. Is there dignity in ageing? Is the care system ever really about care? Is it possible to care for the people you love, or is distance required?
Of course I’ve made the play sound very grim, very dark and very nihilistic. It’s not. Iain’s writing is, through and through, Scottish. It’s hilarious. Dry as a bone. Wit as light as a feather. And underneath all that, pain and fear and anxiety. That’s what drew everyone to the play: these universal themes delivered with a deceiving wit and sense of play.
It’s a gathering of characters who are rich and nuanced – but still, most of them, selfish bastards. Because that’s one of the other taboos: some people don’t want to end up caring for their parents. Some can’t. Some won’t. Some don’t have the time, the energy, or the resources. Some don’t have the emotional capacity. But of course, saying that makes us dreadful people. Selfish people.
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But what if you visited your mother in a care home one day and your mother said to you: “I have to get out of here.” Would you listen? That’s the real heart of the play. That’s the predicament Derek has. Is he able to listen to his mother? Is he able to care for her? Is he willing to sacrifice his life to look after his mother?
Heggie’s writing feels, to me, like Joe Orton and Oscar Wilde’s love child. There’s a directness to it, but it’s always with a sharp and biting wit. It captures the brutality of care but uses humour as it’s shield. The characters use an in-built performance of solid, stoic Scots to hide the quivering, nervous wrecks underneath. It’s about loud, gallus, performative people who underneath it all share the same feeling: loneliness.
Every day we’re finding something new in the rehearsal room to obsess over. We’re starting to realise that sometimes the most profound acts of love are the least glamorous. That sometimes devotion smells of Dettol or TCP. Or that tenderness wears rubber gloves and maybe asks for your bank account details. And that sometimes a playwright has to choose a title that makes everyone blush, because it's the only title honest enough to tell us what the play is about. Wiping My Mother's Arse. Prepare to laugh more than you expected. Prepare to recognise more than you'd like. And, if we’ve all done our job properly, you might just leave the theatre wanting to phone your mammy. Or wishing you still could.
Johnny McKnight stars in a new production of Wiping My Mother’s Arse, running at Pitlochry Festival Theatre from 15 August until 9 September, www.pitlochryfestivaltheatre.com
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