Review: THE WALWORTH FARCE, Southwark Playhouse Elephant

The answer as to why revive Enda Walsh's 2006 black comedy is not as obvious as it seems. Geography aside, the new Southwark Playhouse Elephant is down the road from the play's eponymous setting, Walsh's play is really a play about plays; theatre's power to convince us of the lies we tell ourselves in order to cope with an increasingly bleak reality. Perhaps it's not just the right place for a revival, but the right time too.

Dinny, a maniacal Irish father and his obliging two sons Sean and Blake (both suffering from Stockholm Syndrome) ritualistically perform a warped sitcom in their decrepit flat in a tower block in Walworth. The sitcom, uncannily played with disturbing freneticism by the three, is revealed to be a fantasy version of the real violent events that brought him to London interspliced with Dinny's genuine nostalgia for Ireland. Pinteresque monologues, like Goldberg's in The Birthday Party, paint a vivid picture of old times that are weaponised to oppress and coerce. His vision of the past is not just rose tinted, it's drowning in rose paint.

Dan Skinner plays Dinny with narcotic-fuelled adrenaline. He is caught in a vicious cycle of nostalgia where the boundaries between memory, reality, and time have long fragmented leaving nothing but debris. It recalls Mark Fisher's Hauntology, repetition of an unreal past ad infinitum. It's set in the mid-2000s, a plastic Tesco's bag is the only object that pinpoints the production's setting, but it feels jarringly atemporal. Maybe it's fitting then that the new theatre is tucked in the basement of a modern menacingly monotonous-looking tower block.

Yet for all its moral bleakness director Nicky Allpress polishes moments to let dramatic glint sparkle through the grime. Her vision is orthodox, letting the acidic metal-melting language burn for itself. The production unfolds across three rooms organised as a grime scarred triptych with peeling wallpapers and stained carpets. Good thing we cannot smell it, the stench would be overpowering.

Emmet Byrne's Sean and Killian Coyle's Blake share moments of poignant intimacy whilst coiled within the darkness of the flat. Both are acutely aware of their imprisonment but also plagued, and ultimately confined by pity and love for their delusional father. The door is there for them to leave yet they remain.

Today its shock factor seems to have resided. Written in the shadow of the high tide mark of in-yer-face theatre that languishes in filth and moral degradation (Philip Ridley's The Pitchfork Disney, Sarah Kane's Blasted) The Walworth Farce feels overly keen to repulse left right and centre; its predictably bleak ending feels more heavy handed than it would have done in 2006. Regardless this valiant production deserves applause.

The Walworth Farce plays at the Southwark Playhouse Elephant until 18 March

Photo Credit: David Jensen

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