It’s heartbreaking to give this show less than four stars, given its stellar cast, direction and set, but the script is just quite dull.
By Patrick Cash
A staging of famous playwright Joe Orton’s ‘forgotten’ first script, written at the age of 26, it serves to prove that writers’ first scripts should probably stay forgotten. At least a saving grace is that Orton himself has been dead for 47 years.
Fred and Madge follows a middle-aged English couple who slave dutifully away in their society-given working class roles. There are flashes of satirical brilliance against the futility of capitalism; Fred’s job is to roll a rock up a hill, a 1960s Sisyphus, and Madge sieves water. But Orton’s depiction of domestic tedium all too often feels like a very real tedium in the dialogue.
A highly imaginative set where baths emerge from floorboards, lampposts lean at angles, and vines climb to the ceiling, all under a beautiful lighting design, feels theatrically immersive and is enjoyable to watch. Every part is acted superbly, and the live music elements played at the side of the stage integrate seamlessly into the dramatic action.
But my initial thoughts were the play wanted to be Beckettian, without achieving the deep wit and cut-glass lines of the Irish writer. Halfway through the first scene, a director jumps up from the audience and marches on to the stage, opening up a layer of ‘meta’ theatre. Yet, speaking from experience, surely this is something of a hackneyed cliché that a lot of young theatre writers, struggling to find their voice, light upon as a revolutionary technique that’s never been done before? After introducing the concept, Orton didn’t seem to quite know where to go with it.
I very much wanted to like this play because it had so many golden ingredients in its broth. Yet at its core was an experiment in writing laced with theatrical valium rather than cocaine. Too many times my attention, try as I might, wandered off what was before me on stage, and even the character of the ‘Insultrice’ wasn’t very insulting. The Hope should be rightly lauded as a wonderful champion of new writers in London, and I hope they don’t find this review dispiriting, but I feel there may be many, more exciting scripts out there than the legendary Mr Orton’s first effort.
• Fred & Madge
• The Hope Theatre, 207 Upper Street, Islington, N1 1RL
• Running until 18th October. 7.30pm.
• www.kingsheadtheatre.com/hope-theatre
