A Passage to India in Pyjamas

Their ideas, says one, come from “the back of the brain”. “From the deepest recesses of the imagination,” says the other. David Woods, 33, and Jon Hough, 40, have been working together since 1992 but even now, 15 plays later, their Ridiculusmus outfit remains resolutely on the geographical and cultural fringes. Geographically, they have spent the last past eight years as theatricals-in-residence in Derry. Culturally, they’re right out there. Only fringe artists would be so determined to get into character that they would travel around India in their pyjamas. Only fringe artists would have devised a play that, because it combines commentary on the Anglo-Indian colonial situation and the experience of mental illness, would require such characters. And, quite possibly, only Ridiculusmus would make funny a play combining colonialism and insanity. Woods and Hough met at the Poor School in King’s Cross where, despite its commitment to the Method and low-cost productions, everyone was being typecast for television. Hough was branded “slightly creepy”; Woods was just plain “mad”. Mad and creepy enough to get away from all that, certainly: when they graduated, they formed a Dadaist anti-comedy night called the Tomato Club where the motto was “Don’t come”. Acts had to be bad enough to deserve the tomatoes the audience were invited to chuck. Already resolutely marching out of commercial step, Hough and Woods then set themselves up as Ridiculusmus. They have never had any money, which is why they leapt at the chance to go to Derry. They hated it, especially when they were finally turfed out in a dispute over their first touring grant. But Derry did provide the rich material for Say Nothing, their mocking take on the Troubles that is now, perhaps, their flagship show. Its starting point is the Ulster maxim quoted by Seamus Heaney: “Whatever you say, say nothing.” “In other words, don’t speak because it’s too dangerous to speak,” says Woods. “The terror mentality, really.”

Say Nothing has been dubbed the new political theatre, which may not be what Woods and Hough would say themselves, but they are pleased by it. “We want people to be citizens, to provoke them into making choices,” says Woods. “We don’t want them to accept.” Given this serious intent, it seems surprising that the pair chose to make comedy. “Hmm, yes,” says Woods. “People laugh at us, though. A lot. I’ve had this problem since I was born. I do something seriously but people laugh at it, so I have to be more provocative. They laugh more, but I get more said. And now that’s our form, to push reality, but in a way that people can have fun with.” They are patently uninterested in caricature or conventional stand-up. “One of the ongoing challenges is to think of yourself as straight,” says Hough. “That’s the challenge in the long run, if you have audiences coming and laughing. Because then you begin to expect laughter and if it’s not there, you get insecure. But Say Nothing is quite a serious play.”

Yes Yes Yes, which won the Time Out off-West End live award last year, is also grounded in darkness. On their trip to India, they planned to visit fake gurus and play the parts of Westerners looking for answers in Eastern mysticism. As it turned out, however, they spent a lot of their time visiting a psychiatric hospital. “It was a view into the void, really,” says Woods. “It was shocking.” Both performers have had close encounters with mental illness themselves. Hough spent over a year sectioned in a mental hospital with depression when he was 21. Generations of Woods’s family have suffered from delusions; his brother, following a psychotic episode five years ago, would chant ‘I’m a failure’, while Woods tried to snap him out of it. His lament is a song in Yes Yes Yes.

Their influences include Norman Gunston, Garry MacDonald’s hapless shaver and master interviewer. “I used to go to school wearing those shaving cuts,” says Woods. Just as Gunston turned celebrity interviews inside out, Ridiculusmus play with the conventions of sketch, quiz and chat shows, theatre and stand-up. “When we completely die on stage, it’s when people aren’t aware that we’re choosing to disrupt the form. Fortunately that doesn’t happen very often now.” One of their worst moments was in Adelaide, when a busload of girls arrived from Melbourne to see their show The Exhibitionists, about security guards in art galleries. “We checked them on the way in,” says Woods, “pretending to be security guards. Usually we would take coats, but because it was so hot people were in very flimsy clothing. So I took to measuring the amount of flesh they were showing.” One girl wore a boob tube that showed her stomach; he instructed her to cover herself and pulled the tube down a fraction. “Bang, out came her tits. “It was such an awful moment. She was crying in the front row and I was hiding behind the curtain shaking my head. Perhaps it was good for her development. It was certainly good for mine. I will be very wary of stretchy lycra from now on.”

Enjoyment will almost certainly depend on your mental health and the quality of the drugs you are taking. First rate physical skill and superb comic timing, it so cleverly creates its own world and is so endearingly, pathetically funny, you soon find yourself subscribing to its insanity. Men in white coats should be dispatched immediately…demand to be let into the asylum.