Thom Pain (Based on Nothing) (Will Eno)

I tend to read these plays as the first thing I do when I get up, and try, if my day allows, to read them in one sitting. I usually haven’t eaten, I’m often groggy as my body stretches out the pains of waking up, and that undoubtedly harms my ability to understand at times.

So maybe I’m missing something when I say that Thom Pain (Based on Nothing) left me entirely cold and I don’t understand that praise for it and for its writer, the ascendent and popular Will Eno, as this is the first work from him I’ve read. I don’t know. Maybe it needs to be lived and seen live to appreciate what it’s doing.

Thom Pain is a rambling monologue, intentionally written as a man talking to an audience: he frequently repeats previous lines or loses track of his thoughts, or speaks directly to members of the audience. He’s callous and indifferent towards the audience, but maybe he’s looking for their understanding? I could be bringing my experience of The Torch Song Trilogy into my analysis here.

It’s just… odd. In a way I don’t find entirely repellant, but I don’t find attractive either. Why should I care what Thom has to say? Why do I struggle through his rudeness, his strangeness, my own discomfort to get to the end of an experience that does little to care about my experience or to give me anything in return?

If I’m being as open as the character I would say that this play epitomizes the idea of struggle as reward: I sat through the show, so I must have enjoyed it; it was hard to understand, so it must be brilliant; I kept looking at this man so I guess I love him? And if I love him I want to feel for him?

I don’t know. I don’t know what other people got out of this, or if my failure to understand is at the heart of why I have trouble writing things people want to see, but I think I’ve given it enough of my time for now.