There is a moment near the end of this play when two women lie on the floor in slips and straight-jackets.  A short man in nothing but his underpants stands precariously between two psychiatrists, one of whom is pointing two guns at the other.  The man with the guns claims that the man in his underpants is merely a psychological delusion of the other psychiatrist's wife's id (i.e. the woman on the floor in a straight jacket, with a bullet wound in her leg and far too much of her undergarments exposed.)  And the audience is laughing.

Such is the playful absurdity of Joe Orton's farce, where one character aptly exclaims: "We're in a mad house.  Unusual behavior is the order of the day."  The action takes place in the many-doored room of a warmly decorated psychiatrist's patient-room and many of the best laughs come from the perfectly timed and unexpected entrances and exits.  Indeed, it has all the hallmarks of a great farce, with men dressed up as women and women dressed up as men; men slipping and tripping and falling over each other;
ridiculously hasty attempts to cover-up misdeeds; and lots of sexual language.  Even the plot itself becomes part of the farce, as every toss-aside reference comes back later as a joke and the play wraps up all its loose ends like a slightly unbelievable present.

The two psychiatrists, played by Toby Chapman and Tom Eyre-Maunsell, hold the production together from start to finish.  Chapman gives a darkly comic portrayal of the psychiatrist who conjectures into the air, diagnosing the most explicable of phenomena as the most ridiculous and unlikely of sexual perversions, and then gazing hilariously with bug-eyes into the distance at the fame this will bring him.  This is the perfect contrast to Eyre-Maunsell's everyday man, who works so hard to extricate himself from the consequences of his attempted infidelity, we can literally see the sweat dripping off him.  The supporting performances are strong across the board, whilst one or two are slightly less over-the-top and overtly sexual than the play calls for.

The original performance of the play in 1969 was interrupted by the audience, who considered it too shocking and outrageous.  Today, most of the sexual humour comes accross as relatively tame or slightly perplexing (e.g. the lack of outrage at rape).  The attempts to parody the psychologist's profession wear thin quickly and the brief attempts to imbue the play with some intellectual fodder are feeble.  (Who's insane: the psychiatrist?  The patient?  The whole world?)  It's sort of like Oscar Wilde without the
original wit, or Michael Frayn's "Noises Off" but without the clever play between performance and reality.

The pace of this show is fast throughout, and the few moments at which it does drag have more to do with weaknesses in the script than with the superb direction of Harry Lloyd.  Although there are times when we hear the overobvious joke, or jokes that just aren't funny ("She's harder to get into than the reading room in the British Museum") - it has its genuinely funny moments too.  Some of my favorite lines included "We may get necrophilia...as a sort of bonus", and "Doctor, help me! I keep seeing naked men!" - though context is everything. This is high quality entertainment worthy of a professional company - nothing more, nothing less.

Oliver Morrison 26.10.04