When learning of a rare revival one immediately asks, ‘Why?’ Several reasons could be given for a revival: it’s a great play or good romp, it’s still relevant (has become relevant again), showcases the talents of the leading actors, the director has found something previous productions have overlooked. Then of course there is our interest in the recent past, the delight in the retro and the sniggering at how we were: how silly we were, how hung up we were, how gauche we all were. How easy to laugh at our mums and dads.
The Original Theatre Company’s revival of 60s double bill The Private Ear and The Public Eye seems to plump for the latter, but with the awareness that Shaffer is not Coward and that therefore there is something else going on beneath the dialogue that needs a bit of prizing out.
Shaffer once said that the key to Equus is that Dysart, the psychologist, is jealous of Alan, the young, sexually naive boy, who brutally blinds a stable full of horses. That is, he is jealous of Alan’s inner life, his sense of awe, his imagination. Last night’s plays, written over a decade before that triumph, could be seen to contain the seeds of some of Shaffer’s concerns as a writer. There is an emptiness at the core of each of the characters which in two cases does shade into jealousy.
In The Private Ear, Bob, the introverted music lover, played tautly by Steven Blakely (reminded me of Murray Melvin in A Taste of Honey – though obviously not as camp) is jealous of his brash, easy-going chancer of a friend, Ted. He is jealous of the confident ‘go get’ qualities of Ted (‘I look after number one’), which he inadvertently, but successfully sells to his would-be first girl, Doreen, played immaculately by Siobhan O’Kelly. Bob has enlisted a willing Ted (malice aforethought on the latter’s part) to help smooth the wooing of delicious typist Doreen. She wants a winner and Ted is happy to play the part. Bob has lived too long in his head and is looking for an ideal that Doreen clearly is not going to match up to. Well, you don’t need to be a ‘round-the-block-a-few-times’ roué to see which way the evening is going to develop; no spoiler alert necessary here. And this is partly why the first play is the least successful of the two and shows its age with little to rescue it.
The arc is an obvious one, at least to wise old us in the twenty-first-century. Then there is loser, Bob: how did he ever become friends with slick Ted and why, with his supposed sensitivity, did he ever think he stood a chance with vacuous Doreen? Today there is a place for people like Bob; it’s called the internet. Onto a dating website, ‘must have long neck, ability to cook and love classical music’. Job done, all the hopeful Bobs can find their perfect Doreens and vice versa. No Teds needed.
The Public Eye, by contrast, inhabits ground which is perhaps eternal; the jealousy of an older man for the imagined (or real) misdemeanours of a younger, attractive wife. After a bit of contrived mistaken identity stuff at the beginning when accountant, Charles Sidley, mistakes replacement private eye, Julian Shristoforou, for a client.
There is a clear change of gear in the second play which is marked by a similar expansion in the two characters which are doubled by Siobhan and Steven. Both actors clearly relish the change from little to big as their characters give them a chance to fill the stage in a way not possible with the earlier play. Siobhan O’Kelly’s elegant, Hepburnesque, Belinda Sidley longs for her stuffy and rather sordid husband to show some of the character that attracted her initially. The gap in her life, left by her husband Charles’s retreat into predictable middle age is filled when she mistakes Steven Blakely’s inept, but philosophical private eye for a benign stalker. His attention to her movements and unprofessional conduct in showing approval for her likes and dislikes nourish her inner life, sadly neglected by Jasper Britton’s green eyed husband and give her the psychological uplift she deserves.
The twist in the plot – the object of jealousy being in fact the tailing private eye – neatly sets up the pretext for the examination of a failing marriage. It also lifts the one act play out of the predictable, which is not the case with The Private Ear. Overall the plays do not now hang together as they may have done in the sixties, yet there is still much to enjoy, particularly in the performances. Notably Siobhan O’Kelly’s physicality in drawing her characters was both truthful and entertaining.
Lastly and notably (and perhaps a little sadly for that) we must mention the set change, performed ‘before your very eyes’ at the beginning of the second play. Hayley Grindle’s set change was economical and worked like clockwork. A delight. Alastair Whately’s direction of same was detailed and timed beautifully and makes me think he should have a bash at a full blown farce before too long. – Graham Wyles
