N. F. Simpson - Style

Style

A Resounding Tinkle typifies Simpson’s aversion to plot and establishes his talent for memorable one-liners and non-sequiturs. As with all of his subsequent work, the play demands absolutely straight delivery from actors. Such an approach fosters a conviction within the audience that the characters are living in a form of reality, where the formation of a government can be arranged via door-to-door enquiries. The extraordinary and impossible are treated as perfectly rational everyday events. This comic balance is recognised as a major influence on the early work of Peter Cook, particularly the E. L. Wisty monologues.

Many comparisons have been drawn to the work of key absurdist playwright Eugène Ionesco. However, Simpson denies any link, adding that he had never even heard of the writer when he commenced a career in nonsense. In his own view, the valid literary parallels are with Lewis Carroll, James Thurber and P. G. Wodehouse.

Simpson’s early work must also be viewed in its cultural context. BBC Radio’s The Goon Show was widely admired, bringing surrealism to the masses for the first time. Plays such as A Resounding Tinkle arguably gentrified the idiom for London’s theatregoers, and with them the highbrow elite.