MAN FOR HIRE. Scarborough to 16 February.

Scarborough

MAN FOR HIRE
by Meredith Oakes

Stephen Joseph Theatre To 16 February 2002
Runs 1hr 50min One interval

TICKETS 01723 370541
Review Timothy Ramsden 15 February

First of three new plays brightens the Scarborough winter with a wry comic tale of wrongdoing and terror.February's way off-peak for a seaside theatre, but bookings are good for the Stephen Joseph's first New Year new play season. The smaller McCarthy auditorium's in use and costs are kept down by limited décor productions – though season designer Pip Leckenby's cunningly simple creation of a superior block of apartments for play one (of three) suggests that's not going to be an artistic limitation. A black background throws the quality furniture, and high class acting, into relief.

And the play? Oakes' title indicates more than might initially seem. What starts as a specific plot fact becomes a general statement about society. It belongs to a tradition going back to 1960s plays like Orton's Loot or Giles Cooper's Everything in the Garden, and beyond that to Jacobean tragedy and city comedy. Here is a world where the occasional innocent discovers they're a moral loner, where respectability masks all-on-the-fiddle acquisitiveness.

So Rupert Holliday Evans' plain-speaking Kev finds his frankness at interviews doesn't count against him, while a refusal to accept backhanders in employment does. His blunt blue-collar honesty contrasts the smooth, smiling corruption of David Groves' collar-and-tie Ned (the character's name bespeaks private education and four wheel drive as much as 'Kev' does Mr Plain Bloke).

Ned's tiger-smile sophistication is shared by Lucinda Curtis's elderly millionaire apartment owner. She's a picture of mature respectability, whose moneyed assurance finding no niche for moral concern. And her self-interest finds no place for friendship; Petra Markham's hapless alcoholic, with her smudged eyeliner, is strung along as a potential source of income.

But this is now, and there's a dangerous world out there. Getting your palm greased by sub-letting absent tenants' apartments is nothing to the activities of the most smiling, corrupt and forceful character, Eliot Giuralarocca's Russian arms dealer.

Skilfully paced by Annie Castledine, whose production develops a dizzy sense of amorality spinning out of control, Man for Hire takes a stand on well-established dramatic ground, giving it a local habitation and name. As old English worldliness Kalashnikovs with global terror we find even guns and grenade can't dampen the English establishment's greed and duplicity.

Kev: Rupert Holliday Evans
Ned: David Groves
Lily: Lucinda Curtis
Daisy: Petra Markham
Mr Kalashnikov: Eliot Giuralarocca

Director: Annie Castledine
Designer: Pip Leckenby
Lighting: Dave Jackson/Katharine Williams
Costume: Christine Wall

2002-02-18 08:21:19