This revival of Caryl Churchill’s pungent 1972 comedy about the battle for home ownership and the perils of renting is both rare and timely. The play was first staged as house prices soared during Conservative chancellor Anthony Barber’s “dash for growth”, a disaster with parallels to last year’s mini-budget.
Churchill’s thesis that “owners” call the shots in England still rings true: when Rishi Sunak dropped the target of building 300,000 houses a year, further thwarting those seeking a first home, it was to placate rebellious owners on the backbenches. Stella Powell-Jones’s revival comes amid the highest costs ever recorded for private renting, which research recently linked to faster biological ageing – suggested by the play’s weary young tenants.
It opens with boom and bust. Butcher Clegg (Mark Huckett, sporting lambchop sideburns) is closing his business, killed off by a new supermarket. But his property developer wife, Marion (steely eyed Laura Doddington), is riding high. She’s buying a house where damp rooms are rented by Alec (Ryan Donaldson) and Lisa (Boadicea Ricketts), who have young children and another due soon.
Their precarious north London nest is owned by the pointedly named Mrs Crow and Churchill captures the wariness felt by tenants towards unknowable landlords and the government, effectively depicted here as burglars. The recent switch from controlled to fair rents is noted by Marion’s underling Worsely (Tom Morley), intimidating the couple, and Ricketts’ eyes pop in horror at just what “fair” might amount to.
Worsely and Clegg, who trade suicidal and homicidal daydreams, form an outrageously funny Ortonesque double act. But the doors on Cat Fuller’s clever set (a few posh knockers suggesting a neighbourhood on the up) aren’t for farcical slamming despite some partner-swapping in the plot. The comedy is rarely physical aside from Marion’s power poses and constant snacking as she gobbles up fruit as well as land. On Jermyn Street’s handkerchief-size stage, the playing space is shrunk to highlight the cramped quarters fiercely fought over.
Churchill became a writer of crystalline concision but this production grows unwieldy and tonally uncertain. Marion, who has a personal history with Alec, plans to get him back either because of emotional investment or sheer greed but neither convinces despite Doddington’s swaggering performance. While Worsely’s emptiness is conveyed through Churchill’s bleak comic riffs, Alec is given more flatly unfathomable dialogue for his malaise.
The play smartly considers how every relationship has an owner and some of its satirical observations on consumerism, wealth divide and patriarchal privilege could be delivered with a more brutal streak. Churchill’s issues are still urgent but, played as a period piece with bursts of yesteryear pop hits, this is really a blast from the past.
At Jermyn Street theatre, London, until 11 November
