MORE TREES TO CLIMB

Ben Moor

Portobello Books, Paperback, 140pp., ISBN 9781846271984. Price: £9.99

Christopher Teevan

If you haven’t heard of Ben Moor before, you may still recognise him. He was the face of Jif Lemon for a number of years and, during the nineties, he also appeared in a number of sketches for Lee and Herring among others. A regular performer on the Edinburgh fringe, Moor has been writing and performing his one man shows nearly every year for the best part of two decades. More Trees To Climb collects together the ‘bare naked texts’ (as Stewart Lee refers to them in his introduction) of three of Moor’s most recent theatre pieces.

There’s much to enjoy in these idiosyncratic monologues. Moor’s stories happily inhabit imaginative, offbeat worlds. The first tale, ‘Coelacanth’, might best be described as a romantic comedy set amongst the world of competitive tree-climbing. Along the way, we are introduced to imaginary flatmates, Underground Compliment Clubs (‘the first rule of Compliment Club is you must tell simply everybody about compliment club’), and the ‘National Indecisiveness Society, Association, Federation or Maybe Institute’. The eponymous Coelacanth – a prehistoric fish, for those who don’t know, once presumed to be extinct but rediscovered in the 1930s unevolved – provides a neat, if slightly one dimensional metaphor, scaffolding the mild mannered narrator’s quest for self discovery.

‘Supercollider For The Family’, which debuted on fringe back in 1997, has been described as a sci-fi conspiracy thriller weepy. The story centres on a scientist who working for the Military Industrial Entertainment Complex, is given the mission to build a Supercollider for the family. Meanwhile, the narrator’s wife, a former circus performer, is performing the first ever round the world tightrope walk.

As you have doubtless gathered by now, Moor’s style is somewhat quirky. His stories are by no means tethered to the real world. He has an almost exhaustive penchant for bad puns too – ‘lab coat and dagger work’, ‘joy of specs’, ‘dutch Capuchino’ – all in the first few pages of ‘Supercollider…’. And much of comedy in these pieces arise from Moor’s fondness of slightly off kilter logic, such as a tree climber who does ballet so she can afford to put herself through stripper school and, in the second work, a retro gaming arcade featuring ‘Morris Dance Dance Revolution and Grand Theft Tram’.

At their best, these stories are, like a Marx Brothers film, eminently quotable – ‘I am a manic repressive – in the school playground I used to play handshake chase’. That said the stories aren’t always nearly as successful written down as they are performed. Partly, it’s because Moor has a habit of telling you what the story is really about towards the end of the piece, a slight sermonising aspect which may be effective on the stage but on the page is far less subtle. Moor’s tales also have a tendency to recourse towards sentimentality, which again works much better on the stage than it does when being described by a disembodied narrator.

Far and away the strongest story is the most recent piece, ‘Not Everything Is Significant’, in which a biographer – who happens to be suffering writer’s block – is sent a diary detailing what is to happen to him during the coming year – or at least to September 22^nd. It is, like the other stories, highly contrived, but the conceit is brilliantly original and allows Moor to probe some interesting ideas regarding fate and destiny. The plot is complicated further by a secondary character who begins by offering a footnoted commentary to the biographer’s story, but then finds that he too becomes entangled in the narrative. The sentimentality is toned down, or at least better assimilated into the piece and the ending is poignant in its ambiguity. While the other two stories are a little too reassuringly pat in their conclusions, ‘Not Everything Is Significant’, works precisely because the ending is so open-ended. I wouldn’t want to spoil the ending, even if I could. I’m still trying to work it out.

At their best, these are witty and enjoyable, somewhat reminiscent of Woody Allen’s early prose pieces. Whether they’ll preach to the unconverted, I’m not sure. That said, if you’re a Ben Moor fan, More Trees to Climb is an unquestioned must and Portobello have produced a handsome edition. I’m not sure the translation to prose is entirely successful, but regardless of this, whatever Ben Moor does next, I look forward to.