This February the Tron Theatre Company will present a Tron Stripped production Staircase, a pared-back staging of a taut 1960s drama by Charles Dyer. Last staged in London over forty-five years ago, Staircase, with its wicked Pinteresque humour and dark secrets, will feature Benny Young and Andy Arnold as East End barbers whose carefully constructed reality unravels over the course of an evening’s revelations as jibes become barbed and put-downs cruel. Read more …
Charles and Harry have been a couple for twenty-odd years, running an East End barber shop where they both dream of better days. Over the course of an evening, their camp, bitchy and very funny banter becomes increasingly bitter and previously unknown truths emerge with news of the impending arrival of Charles’ daughter from an early foray into wedded normality, a court summons for ‘improper conduct’ and the subsequent prospect of life apart should a jail sentence be handed down.
Designed by Kenny Miller, Staircase is the blackest of comedies shot through with the wretchedness of lives blighted by social stigma. Loneliness and despair, key themes in Dyer’s work, underpin Charles’ and Harry’s seemingly comfortable conversations, and the strength of Dyer’s writing lies in his compassion for these two men, social outcasts whose future together is threatened.
Andy Arnold and Benny Young successfully convey the complicated intimacy between the pair, but the dialogue is not always as clear or as snappy as it needs to be.
Staircase serves as an interesting reminder of just how recently lives were destroyed by society's attitudes to homosexuality, but it's difficult not to feel that a more contemporary consideration of the issues might have been more worthwhile.
Arnold's production gains in stature as it goes on. At first, there is little tonal variation and sourness overwhelms the comedy, but it finishes with poignancy.
The testy co-dependence between Charlie and Harry is laced with baroque one-liners that flit between cruelty and pathos, with Benny Young’s Harry even suggesting that Charlie, played by Arnold, is “one great tube of non-sequitur”.
In the end, though, for all the potential of the text, Arnold's Tron Stripped production boils down to two old guys in a room exchanging bitter and often quite repetitive thoughts about the bloody misery of growing old; and although those with a special interest in the subject may be drawn to the show, it never explores the wilder theatrical potential of the text in a way that would excite a less committed audience.
Staircase is still a timely reminder of what the non-swinging corners of the 1960s really looked like.
As a two-hander, the play doesn’t offer much variation, and this production could certainly stand to ramp the tension up a bit more. However, a twist at the end is played brilliantly, refracting everything we thought we knew.
By refusing to update or trivialise the context, however, Arnold has created two works in one: a study of 1960s' sexual mores and a moving tale of creepin insanity that goes beyond its historical detail.
Classic play Staircase comes to Tron Theatre
Staircase
Tron Theatre, Glasgow from Wednesday February 23, 2011, until Saturday March 5, 2011. More info: www.tron.co.uk
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