Too close for comfort
The Arbor, 2010
The life behind art that imitates life.
At 15 years old, Andrea Dunbar was widely considered to be a genius. In 1977, she began writing a play for her high school English class, set on the notorious Bradford housing estate where she lived. Called The Arbor, it told the story of a teenage girl who falls pregnant to her neighbour and suffers abuse at the hands of her alcoholic father - a frank and insightful representation of the effects of poverty in Thatcherite Britain, filled with scenes from Dunbar's own life and written in the natural cadences of her working class neighbours.
The Arbor fell into the hands of the Director of London's Royal Court Theatre, who brought it to the stage in 1980 before commissioning a follow up work from Dunbar called Rita, Sue and Bob Too. Again set in Bradford, Rita, Sue... followed two high school girls through their joint affair with an older married man. It was adapted for the screen by Alan Clarke in 1986, bringing Dunbar international acclaim. By some miracle, or by sheer force of talent, she had overcome the disadvantage of her circumstances - or so it seemed. In reality, Dunbar never left the Bradfield estate. She drank heavily, had three children by three different men, and eventually died of a brain hemorrhage at the age of 29.
In her haunting biopic, also called The Arbor, director Clio Barnard unpicks the life of this talented but troubled playwright. Using interviews with friends and family, restaged scenes from her plays and documentary footage, Barnard exposes the brutality of Dunbar's life and its disastrous effects on the lives of her children. Rather than merely survey her success, this beautiful and affecting film explores the ugly truth behind her plays, creating a portrait of inter-generational tragedy that will "lurk in the memory for days" (The Guardian).
Published Thursday, 25 August 2011
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