Reviews

This immaculate production by Sheffield University Theatre Company of Joe Orton’s final play is hugely enjoyable.  It’s directed by David Jeffery, who writes that ‘Orton shocks audiences into reflection and leads them to question the society in which they live, rather than shocking to offend.’  I’m not sure about this. Orton loved to offend for the sake of offending – it’s almost part of his charm.  At the same time, the quality this production possesses is one not often associated with Orton: an astonishing sense of innocence, which accompanies all the subversion and mayhem.  The set is excellent: designed by Anna-Zofia Szczesna, it creates an appropriately drab, characterless, institutional background for Orton’s frantic and idiosyncratic farce.  The six actors share the honours equally: Doug Dunn as the suave, evasive Dr Prentice; Jenny Pendriss as his uninhibited wife; Becky Danks as the dominating, paranoid Dr Rance; Fiona Primrose as the victim of the piece, who relishes her plight even when she is protesting; Alex Monks as the conscientious and later surreally unhinged Sergeant Match; and Connor Jones as the saucy Nicolas Beckett.  All have divided lives.  The cast deliver Orton’s epigrammatic lines with aplomb and make the most of every sly insinuation – using gesture and expression to bring out the humour in Orton’s clever dialogue.  The pace of the production is nicely judged.  Everything builds to an unlikely climax – in which following every twist and turn of the plot seems irrelevant.  This is a splendidly irreverent play, and is performed with skill and enthusiasm.

-Alan Payne, Sheffield Telegraph