Jez Butterworth’s early work Parlour Song is revived with impressive economy at the Golden Goose Theatre
“Why don’t you fetch me a lemon?” “Nothing is gonna hurt you in the buffer zone”
Given Jez Butterworth’s lauded position as such a critically favoured playwright, it is perhaps a little surprising that his work isn’t revived that often (he says, as a production of The River wrapped in Greenwich last month…). Drama Impact are trying to redress that, having done their own version of The River last year and now reviving his 2008 play Parlour Song at the Golden Goose Theatre (a show I saw as a baby blogger back in 2009 at the Almeida with the lovely Andrew Lincoln in the cast).
On the face of it, it’s a tale of suburban dissatisfaction. Demolition expert Ned is going through something, his wife Joy is seething with repressed frustration and their neighbour Dale is hating life as a carwash owner. But the newbuild estate on which they live is Butterworth territory and so things are more off-kilter than that and distinctly opaquer to read. Why do Ned’s possessions keep disappearing? Where’s Dale’s wife Linda? Does Joy really want a lemon for her G&T…?
Ben Grafton’s production has a keenly attuned ear for the loaded nature of Butterworth’s dialogue and the rhythm of his writing with its mix of strangeness and suburbia, which lands him here in a curious mid-point between Pinter and Ayckbourn. The deep unease felt by all characters is rooted in something beyond individual malaise, it’s a systemic problem that is infecting the interactions here, a point played up by Gรผlfem รzdoฤan’s fascinating design choices with its suggestions of flat-pack duplication and Stepfordian ‘perfection’.
David Houston captures Ned’s tragicomic nature – he loves his job of blowing things up but worries if he’s blowing himself up bit by bit too, his efforts to address his crisis offers real laughs, particularly where the sex advice scene is concerned. Jo Nevin’s Joy is coolly inscrutable in his presence but something is unleashed when he’s away and she can focus her attention on sexy Scrabble games with the younger and fitter Dale, trying her best to keep humdrum reality at bay.
Paul Boichat impresses as Dale too. In contrast to Ned’s love for his job, Dale hates running his team of illegal Kosovan car-wash employees but trapped in stasis by the continuing promise of suburban comfort, the constant thrum of fear at losing everything – virility, visibility, viability – resonating with him as it does, to different degrees, with the others. As such, this strange space caught between the abstract and the realistic feels like the ideal playing space for them.
