OWNERS at the Jermyn Street Theatre

★★★½

“The production is deceptively complex and skilfully carried off.”

“Turning you out? What an old-fashioned idea!” the power-hungry property developer Marion exclaims at one point in Owners. Of course, what the play sets out to prove is that it’s not an old-fashioned idea at all, but a painfully immediate one: both in 1972, when Caryl Churchill first wrote it, and now, in Stella Powell-Jones’ production at the Jermyn Street Theatre.

Owners is concerned with property: with having and being had. Clegg wants a son, wants a butcher’s shop, wants Marion, who wants power, who wants Alec, who wants — maybe nothing at all. As Marion ruthlessly develops her London properties, she sets her sights on the flat where Alec is living with his pregnant wife. She also sets her sights on their unborn child. Owners is a play about the need to possess, but it is also a play about the need to be possessed. As it unfolds, sinews of desire stretch and flex between the cast, as they separate and come together, tangled in ever darker threads.

The production is deceptively complex and skilfully carried off. The set, designed by Cat Fuller, is a stroke of genius, with a panorama of doors pressing claustrophobically in on the little family. Fuller uses the tiny space of the theatre’s stage to her advantage. Throughout the piece, everyone vies for exactly the same tiny patch of hotly contested real estate, as a series of hinges and compartments turn one flat into the next. It also means that, even when one person’s life is carefully hinged away, it is still ‘present’ on-stage. All these lives stack on top of each other in a suffocating palimpsest that is extremely effective.

What is initially identifiable as something almost in the vein of farce, grows mesmerizingly misshapen and grotesque as the play leads us down darker avenues. This is underscored by increasingly sinister interludes of music (Sasha Howe and Max Pappenheim) and lighting (Chuma Emembolu) during scene changes, before the lights come back up and we revert to the brightly lit family moment. The sense of something dark and inarticulate shadowing beneath the mundane works very well, especially as Owners gathers speed and becomes more confident in its own surreal cynicism. By the end, it eschews the comfortable escape-routes that something ultimately closer to farce might provide, and instead embraces a grim cannibalistic quality that makes for some beautiful moments of dialogue. Ryan Donaldson as Alec delivers a stunningly haunting hospital scene, and Laura Doddington is incredible as the bullish, smarting Marion (“be quick, be clean, be top, be best”), and a personal highlight.

While the themes are still strikingly relevant, the production shies away from what could be a more current exploration of them. The choice to maintain the 70s setting so distinctly through music and costume (Agata Odolczyk) is visually very effective, but also serves to buffer the play slightly, making it a more comfortable watch. When Clegg the butcher charges a customer just 20p for a pound of mince, a titter goes up from the audience: this is not our world, really, then, and we can breathe a sigh of relief. In the second act, however, when the grim surrealism is allowed more space to unfold, Owners does begin to bite more. Ultimately, though frustratingly lacking in urgency, this is a well-executed piece that leaves you heading back to your cold flat and your rented room with a pit in your stomach.

OWNERS at the Jermyn Street Theatre

Reviewed on 18th October 2023

by Anna Studsgarth

Photography by Steve Gregson

Previously reviewed at this venue:

Infamous | ★★★★ | September 2023

Spiral | ★★ | August 2023

Farm Hall | ★★★★ | March 2023

Love All | ★★★★ | September 2022

Cancelling Socrates | ★★★★ | June 2022

Orlando | ★★★★ | May 2022

Footfalls and Rockaby | ★★★★★ | November 2021

The Tempest | ★★★ | November 2021

This Beautiful Future | ★★★ | August 2021

Owners

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★★★★★

“Beckett pares his later works to the extreme, wasting no words and here we are compelled to hang on to his every one”

Samuel Beckett is often misconstrued as writing inaccessible, absurd theatre with unconventional structures, intangible plots and bleak, sordid characters. Contrary to this, his ability to discard the trappings and complications which make up much of our literature and lay bare the most essential aspects of the human condition is both comic and cathartic. Angel Theatre Company offers two of his short, later plays, ‘Footfalls’ and ‘Play’, both of which are perfect examples of Beckett’s most musical orchestration of scripts, full of technical precision and producing dramatic aural imagery.

In ‘Play’ the scene is set to a background of chattering. Three large urns hold the visible heads of Man, Woman 1 (his wife) and Woman 2 (his mistress); the agelessness, indicated by Beckett, suggest souls in purgatory. Written separately and later interspersed, the three tell their story in short, often fragmented sentences and pauses at a rapid speed while lit by a spotlight which moves directly from one to another. Stage directions specify tempo, tone and volume, even a ‘da capo’ and brief coda. Sometimes appearing as victims of the light, each reacts differently to the sense of interrogation. Rose Trustman as Woman 1, shows the strong, fighting spirit of the wife but doesn’t know how to satisfy the light, telling it to ‘get off her’. Samantha Kamras portrays Woman 2 with a calm confidence, increasingly losing her poise when the light is on her and asking if she is not becoming ‘unhinged’. Ricky Zalman neatly defines the witty quality of Man’s wandering imagination as he speaks. Although the initial soundtrack and face makeup is significantly similar to Minghella’s 2001 film, John Patterson directs with immaculate precision and we are immediately caught up in the intrigue of this love triangle, devoid of stereotypical melodrama and romanticised fiction.

The muted yet detailed noises in ‘Footfalls’ – the bell punctuating the four parts, the pacing of May and the sound of speech – paint a softly poignant and personal picture but the play also brushes the wider question of existence. May, dressed in a dishevelled nightdress, is trapped in a moment in time, which she replays repeatedly as she paces slowly up and down, endlessly revolving something in her mind. She converses with her mother, normally an off-stage voice but in this case played by Pearl Marsland as a haunting, maternal face in the doorway, watching her daughter. In a deeply moving performance from Anna Bonnett, we feel May’s isolation and suffering in her tormented thoughts, her mind gradually fading with her presence on stage. In the two plays, Oliver Fretz’s lighting is impeccable in mood and movement.

The company conveys a rapport which absorbs us into the worlds of these relationships, linked by their raw nature but different in mood and manner. Beckett pares his later works to the extreme, wasting no words and here we are compelled to hang on to his every one.

Reviewed by Joanna Hetherington

Photography by Angel Theatre Company

OWNERS at the Jermyn Street Theatre

★★★½

“The production is deceptively complex and skilfully carried off.”

OWNERS at the Jermyn Street Theatre

Reviewed on 18th October 2023

by Anna Studsgarth

Photography by Steve Gregson

Previously reviewed at this venue:

Owners

Owners

Jack Studio Theatre

Reviewed – 28th February 2019

★★★★★

“Beckett pares his later works to the extreme, wasting no words and here we are compelled to hang on to his every one”

The company conveys a rapport which absorbs us into the worlds of these relationships, linked by their raw nature but different in mood and manner. Beckett pares his later works to the extreme, wasting no words and here we are compelled to hang on to his every one.

Reviewed by Joanna Hetherington

Photography by Angel Theatre Company

Footfalls and Play

Jack Studio Theatre until 9th March

Last ten shows reviewed at this venue: