Synospis
Giles Cooper died in 1966 when he was 48. He was
a compulsive writer from an early age and he crammed an enormous
amount of plays for radio, TV and the theatre into his writing life;
(he adapted the 'Maigret' stories for the 1960's television series.)
A Solstice is an "apparent standing still of the sun between two
equinoxes". The Solstice family of Giles Cooper's ironically titled
'Happy Family' is not a fanciful invention. We all know people who
are apparently standing still in their attitudes; who have failed to
grow up. All 4 of the characters arguably have arrested development.
Certainly they want to play only to their own set of rules. There
are terrible dangers of course, in refusing to come to terms with
the present and with one's own self. At it s most pessimistic 'Happy
Family' hints that we are all more or less unequal to those
realities. But closer to the play's comic overtness, Cooper observes
through the Solstices, the sort of fossilised Englishness Family
with it's ludicrousness, desirability and danger all at the same
time.
It is black gruesome and very precise.