From Sleuth to In-Yer-Face Theatre

Abstract

The 1970s saw the emergence of a new type of crime play, the type christened the “postmodern comedy thriller” by Marvin Carlson. What makes these comedy thrillers postmodern is that they use the parody of the established genre of the thriller as their starting point, in the manner of Stoppard’s The Real Inspector Hound. The traditional crime play turned out to be a particularly suitable genre for parody because of its rigid conventions, and because the necessity for innovation — the constant need to surprise audiences — is inscribed in the rules of the genre itself. As Carlson explains,

a genre dedicated to surprising audiences with unexpected turns inevitably finds audiences becoming more and more difficult to take off guard. On the other hand, they also become open to more and more radical and complex subversion of expectations. The result is a machine for increasing destabilization of generic givens and creating their replacement by ludic experimentation.¹