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On the day of a funeral, the widower prepares with the help of his wife’s
nurse and berates his wayward son for his wicked ways. His son is trying
to hide the loot from a bank robbery that he did with the undertaker’s
assistant (who wants to marry the nurse). A policeman pretending to be
from the water board is poking around to find evidence of wrong doing.
Meanwhile the nurse flirts with everyone.
So far this is classic farce, with characters that we have seen many a
time before. The story is also littered with situations taken from a dozen
other plays, but what is different here are the actions of the characters.
We have scenes of police brutality, an undercurrent of homosexuality and
an amoral air to the acts. The treatment of the corpse is particularly
callous: in one scene the son chucks his dead mother headfirst into a
cupboard.
Joe Orton is often thought of as helping to lay the ground work for contemporary
theatre, and it is easy to imagine that his work was shocking in the mid
60’s. These things were not openly talked about then. Time however
is always going to lessen the impact of any art and the elements that
shocked here nearly 40 years ago do not do so now, though they still hit
home. The themes of amorality and detachment are relevant today and it
is only the religious aspect to the play that dates it.
Despite this it is still very much a comedy and it is here that the production
falls down. For the first hour laughs were thin on the ground and only
picked up in the last half hour as the situations became more and more
ridiculous. There were several funny lines in the first part of the play,
but the delivery fell flat for one reason or another. Partly I fell this
is due to the subtleties in the work itself making it a difficult play
to perform well.
All of the actors were enthusiastic and tried hard but they were clearly
nervous, fluffing lines or trying to keep a straight face, something not
helped by the intimate (i.e. small) nature of the Burton Taylor. Having
the audience practically on the stage must be slightly off-putting. Hopefully
they will overcome these opening night jitters and settle in to a more
rounded presentation of the work as the week progresses.
Before going to see this production I knew very little of Orton’s
work; all I had seen was the biographical film “Prick up your ears”,
and that was several years ago. I was very impressed by the quality of
the writing, and I am certain that in the future I will go out of my way
to see more of his plays performed.
Keith Ibsen, 11/03/03
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