What a choice for a theatrical housewarming. Southwark Playhouse’s new subterranean offshoot opens with Enda Walsh’s 2006 play, set a stone’s throw away in a south London high-rise. It offers a grim vision of Elephant and Castle’s “grey and muck” and hardly celebrates the art of theatre itself as Walsh’s characters hopelessly stage a play within a play, caught in a cycle of tyranny and fantasy.
Director Nicky Allpress’s last production, Crackers at the Polka, was a fun family farce with a cheeky rodent. But in Walsh’s disquieting comedy we are told that even the rats have abandoned the flat where Dinny arrives from Ireland and settles with his two boys. Anisha Fields’ nicely grimy design has wallpaper whose wistful foliage suggests the green grass of home. There are pots, pans and a framed pope in the kitchen, a clutter of locks including an ornamental crucifix bolting the front door and a ghostly lipsticked bust evoking the sons’ absent mother. Under her eerie gaze, Dinny orchestrates a daily ritual forcing Blake and Sean to act out bizarre family scenes.
