It is astonishing that Joe Orton only wrote six plays in his short life and yet is still so famous. This is largely due to the fact that like all great writers, he managed to cover so many themes effortlessly, and in his case, through the medium of brilliant comedy. This play is his masterpiece, and it deals with madness, normality, sexuality, marriage, law and order, police brutality, hypocrisy and The Establishement. To a modern audience some of the jokes are truly shocking, especially the three or four about rape, but then Orton almost lived his life to shock people, and seems to have been a totally amoral person.
It being a farce (one of the characters asks why there are so many doors in the set, a marvellous in-joke about the nature of he genre) it needs to be played fast and frenetic. Set in a psychiatric hospital, mayhem ensues almost from the start as Dr Prentice (Jonathan Bullock) tries to seduce a young girl sent to be his secretary. His attempts to prevent his wife finding out set the tale spinning, proceedings further complicated by the arrival of a bell boy she has had sex with the night before in a hotel, and the mysterious Dr Rance, who turns out to be more mad than all his patients. When a copper arrives to investigate the disappearance of an intimate part of a statue of Winston Churchill the scene is finally set for one of the funniest and multi-faceted farces ever written.
This stuff is very difficult to perform, even for professionals. About Turn Theatre Company give it bags of energy, but their technique just isnt up to it. Many lines were fluffed, and the slapstick wasnt slick enough. I reckon there should be a laugh every thirty seconds, but the hit rate here is about once every couple of minutes. When lines like if were going to save our marriage you really must admit you prefer boys to women and my uterine contractions have been bogus for sometime dont raise a titter you know somethings wrong. The problem is compounded by the fact that in this bare space there are no doors at all. The characters fly in an out of gaps in the curtains, and it just doesnt work.
Bullocks performance is head and shoulders about the rest of the cast, and I think its largely due to him that the audience I watched with laughed as much as they did (that and the incredible writing).
There is another reason to see this show. If there were awards for the most ridiculous make up in Edinburgh this year, Matthew Johnsons Rance would win hands down. Someone should point out that in such a small space, drawing lines on your face and applying half a can of grey make up to an obviously young mans hairstyle does not make you look middle aged, just very, very silly indeed.
