Habeas Corpus
Grange Players
Grnge Playhouse, Walsall
****
Alan Bennett’s 1973 farce, complete with
trousers either missing or draped around ankles, is majestically vulgar,
with a light dusting of filth, a touch of music hall, breasts aplenty,
and, above all, it is wonderfully, belly-laugh funny.
Director Martin Groves has brought in some lovely
comic touches and has avoided the temptation to overdress the stage,
limiting scenery to just three simple rainbow coloured chairs – which,
according to Bennett, is his ideal staging . . . the chairs, that is,
the rainbow being optional.
It is a play with 11 characters who spend their
time arriving and leaving like trains at rush hour New Street so having
to manoeuvre around tables, desks, standard lamps or the like would only
serve to slow down the necessary breakneck pace.
The play is set in Hove and to help to comings
and goings Groves has cleverly surrounded the stage with seven gaily
coloured beach hut fronts, which not only add interest, but give us
seven exits and entrances, again speeding up the constant personnel
changes.
As for the play, it is a sort of smutty surreal
affair with Joanne James quite superb as Mrs Swabb the cleaner, amateur
astrologist and sort of one woman Greek chorus with a feather duster.
She introduces the cast as contestants in a game
show and keep us up to date with all the comings and goings - and the
contestants? There is Arthur Wickstead, a GP with a severe case of
cynical boredom and an even more severe case of lust, played with a
hangdog air by Carl Horton.
Then there is Esther Horton, delighting in her
role as his wife Muriel, blousy, sex starved and with still a flicker of
the flame for past love and now president of the British Medical
Association, Sir Percy Shorter, played with a nice touch of pomposity by
Ray Lawrence.
The BMA’s annual conference is along the coast in
Brighton and the diminutive Shorter, by name and by nature, is seeking
out his lost love – and anything else vaguely female that he can get his
hands on.
In fact, unrequited love . . . no, let’s be
honest here, out and out lust seems to be a theme here. There is Connie,
played with a lovely lack of enthusiasm by Louise Horton. Connie is the
doc’s younger sister, as dowdy as they come and with a chest that would
make East Anglia look mountainous. She dreams of being sexually alluring
– which is a bit of a long shot but with a fiver’s worth of false
breasts, who knows?
While Connie is saying thanks for the mammaries,
in comes Mr Shanks, a false breast fitter from the Leatherhead false
breast company – a job that seems to be sadly missing in school careers’
advice . . .
Dominic Holmes’ Shanks is the odd one out in all
this – he is sort of normal, or as normal as any bloke with a job
fitting false breasts is likely to be
Meanwhile in the celibate corner, and desperate
to get out of it, we have the man of God, the groin driven Canon
Throbbing, played with remarkable enthusiasm for all things carnal by
Rod Bissett. He has been courting and lusting after Connie for 10
unconsummated years.
And if this motley collection of lust driven
misfits is not enough, we have Lady Rumpers, played by a pith helmeted
Sue Evans, a sort of colonial Lady Bracknell, set on preserving the
modesty and reputation of her lovely daughter Felicity, played
curvaceously by Jessamy Ashton.
Felicity makes quite an impression in the groin
area and elsewhere on Arthur’ son Kevin or Leonard, or something like
that – he say’s his name is Dennis, so I suppose he must know.
Dennis, played at death’s door by Samuel Speed,
is a wimpish, unattractive nerd of a lad, whose thoughts of sex outstrip
his opportunity or even remote possibility by an insurmountable margin.
He has one attribute though, at least one that
appeals to Felicity; he is suffering from Bell’s Palsy and has only
three months to live. She is pregnant and needs a legitimate father.
Three months seems a small, and short, price to pay. Sadly, she doesn’t
know Dennis is a raving hypochondriac with access to medical journals
who can have several fatal diseases a month.
So, there you have it. Shanks confuses Muriel for
Connie, while Sir Percy takes time out from his plotting revenge on
Wicksteed for taking Muriel away from him, to take a fleshly fancy to
Felicity who is also lusted after by Arthur; the vicar has been looking
up ladies’ skirts, and Lady Rumpers has a confession of a wartime tryst
in Liverpool’s blitz that changes everything!
The plot is simple involving mistaken identities,
mistaken breasts – there are a lot of breasts involved – lust and
laughs. Oh, and then there is Mr Purdue, played by Craig Hobson, who is
a suicidal patient – the only genuine patient in the whole thing – and
no one really cares, even less so when they realise that he is NHS and
not private
There are some lovely moments which will cause
any man who has been in a doctor’s surgery and seen the rubber gloves
come out to clench his buttocks, as Arthur, in his medical capacity
gives the good Canon the once over including the finger in the Marigolds
and the old cough treatment, all in silhouette behind a screen – a
clever bit of staging engendering hoots of laughter, seemingly more from
women than men . . . there is a cruel streak that can surface in them at
times.
Lighting, from Stan Vigurs and Groves is
effective, using spots well aided by Sam Evans’ sound for such scenes as
seagulls on the pier.
Some of the references are a little dated almost
50 years on, but the play itself has stood up well, largely because it
is so daft, verging on theatre of the absurd. It has some gloriously
funny moments, keeps up a cracking pace and is full of laughs which will
bring a smile to anyone on a cold winter’s evening. A fine start to the
new year. To 19-01-19.
Roger Clarke
11-01-19
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