I sat on a train with a script for Loot in one hand and a newspaper in the other, hoping I might shield the text from the eyes of the decent folk on the Northern Rail eleven-thirty service. This was my first brush with Joe Orton. That regard for public decency was accountable by the simple fact that Orton plays make you feel dirty; they make you laugh at things you shouldn’t laugh at. They are sadistic works; when you’ve realized the depths of depravity in which the story has made you complicit, Orton catches you out. By the end, the joke is on you the viewer, for not knowing how to react. Disgustedly, nihilistically, sympatheti- cally even?
Nervously crossing Gloucester Green, you can understand why I was half expecting to watch some sort of distastefully costumed orgy. The Ruffian on the Stair tells the story of Joyce, an ex-prostitute, and husband Mike, a zealously Catholic (hit)man with a van. One day a deeply troubled young man, Wilson, intimidates Joyce in her apartment and interrupts the domestic bliss. Mike, more concerned with a lapse by Joyce, disregards the stranger until Wilson eventually ingratiates himself and makes a terrible demand.
What follows combines the depravity, absurdity and hilarity for which Orton is infamous. The actors really understand the cruelty of Orton’s humor. Think of the elegant brutality in Flaubert’s or Proust’s mocking treatment of the petite bourgeoisie.
Like Proust, Orton understands that the best satire involves a very gentle exaggeration delivered in a totally deadpan way. This is indeed what the cast mastered; a very subtle almost ironic overplaying of their characters, executed with a mock sincerity. It created some very nervous laughter.
The issue of irony is, however, not without certain problems. Orton’s characters are offensively ridiculous and this presents a subtle but very problematic sense that his excessive characters are written with a belief in their truth. One asks oneself, for example, whether the presentation of Joyce as a neurotic, fussy and totally dominated character is a representation of how Orton sees women.
This is a point director Emily Dillistone and Rachel Evans (who plays Joyce) are keen to address. They have accordingly tried to give more agency to Joyce by making her a bit more resistant to Mike than the text suggests. If Orton did pen this reductionism, should a production be complicit with it? If he meant it all ironically, should a production carry this irony to the end, even if it might come of as offensive?
I think Dillistone and Evans walked the line very well in this regard, but ultimately there is no safe Orton. I found this out myself when my neighbour on the train hazarded a peak over my shoulder. Whether or not this shock value is a good thing is perhaps a question for another day, but it is undeniable that Orton plays can offer the most interesting train journeys and certainly the most interesting productions.
