29 – 30 May

Joe Orton was one of the great cultural disrupters of the second half of the last century  – how distancing that sounds – and in some measure we come back to him looking from a perspective he helped to create. The original production of 1969 benefitted from the great sigh of relief that the theatre made with the departure of what the critic Kenneth Tynan labeled The Royal Smut-Hound, aka the office of the Lord Chamberlain, whose blue pencil was, according to Shaw, the bane of creative playwrights and the chief instrument responsible for the dearth of the same.

Although nowadays we can put before the public pretty much whatever we choose, it’s interesting to note how current sensibilities have in a way leapfrogged over the concerns of Orton, particularly in the light of phenomena such as the ‘#Me Too’ movement. Dr Prentice (John Dorney) is interviewing a potential secretary, Geraldine Barclay (Alana Jackson) for his psychiatry practice. Part of the interview process is to give her a full physical examination, naked. Bemused yet compliant, Miss Barclay is barely out of her clothes behind a screen before Dr Prentice’s wife appears unexpectedly. From this point the play changes into full farce mode with hurried explanations, frantic hidings, mistaken identity and the whole farcical paraphernalia of opening and closing doors.

Mrs Prentice (Holly Smith) a nymphomaniac, is pursued by a bell-boy, Nicholas Beckett (Alex Cardall) who is attempting to blackmail her with photographs of their love-making in the hotel she was staying at. Dr Rance (Jack Lord) a perverted old roué and representative of the medical hierarchy tasked to review psychiatric practices, lasciviously takes charge of the examination of Miss Barclay who has by now been labeled as mentally ill. Rance has the happy talent for turning any piece of ‘evidence’ in support of one theory or other. Meanwhile a policeman, Sgt Match (Jon-Paul Rowden) is on the search for a phallus from a statue of Winston Churchill which killed Geraldine’s adoptive mother in a gas explosion.

The Director, Michael Cabot, keeps things moving apace with a cast that hits the ground running and perhaps too rapidly reach top gear. The dénouement, with its revelation of incest is a kind of deus ex machina, coming out of the blue as a final snub to contemporary sensibility. Nonetheless, irreverent and spicy, the play can still amuse even if time has lessened its power to shock.

★★★☆☆  Graham Wyles, 30th May 2024

Photo credit: Sheila Burnett