Review - Brimstone and Treacle - Precisely Peter Productions, Toronto

✭✭✭✭✩

by Dennis Potter, directed by John Shooter

Precisely Peter Productions, Sidemart Grocery Theatre, Toronto

May 6-17, 2015

Mrs. Bates: “I feel as though I were scraping my nails on the lid of my coffin”

Precisely Peter Productions, which brought Toronto an excellent staging of Alan Bennett’s Talking Heads last year, has turned its attention to Dennis Potter’s Brimstone and Treacle, another play originally written for television. Potter is probably best known for two television series – Pennies from Heaven (1978) and The Singing Detective (1986) – that revolutionized the medium through their use of non-naturalistic devices. Potter wrote Brimstone and Treacle for the BBC in 1976, but the company rejected it because of its controversial subject matter. If people are familiar withe the title, it is likely from the film version made in 1982 starring Denholm Elliott, Joan Plowright and Sting. Unfortunately, the script had to be much altered to suit the American market. The BBC did eventually film Potter’s screenplay in 1987, but the DVD of that performance is not playable in North America.

To see what Potter intended, you have to see Potter’s own 1977 adaptation of the teleplay as a stage play, which Precisely Peter is now presenting in a masterful production. It’s easy to see why the BBC initially reject the play. Although the work is a comedy, the action involves the onstage rape of a mentally disabled woman. Disturbing as that is, the scene is essential to the play’s meaning.

The story concerns the lower middle-class Bates family who live in a North London suburb. Ordinary life for middle-aged parents Tom (Rod Ceballos) and Amy (Brigitte Robinson) changed when their daughter Pattie (Nicole Wilson) was struck by a car in a hit-and-run accident. Pattie sustained a severe brain injury that has left her weakened from the neck down and unable to speak or feed herself. For two years the Bateses have been caring for Pattie themselves in their living room since they can’t afford to hire a nurse. The play opens when the the couple are having dinner and complaining about the toll Pattie’s constant care is taking on them. All that keeps Amy going is the belief that Pattie is getting better and will one day return to normal as one of the doctors had told them. Tom, on the other hand, has no hope for Pattie’s improvement at all based on what another doctor had told them. Amy claims that Pattie understands what they are saying and is trying to communicate. Tom does not.

Into this fraught situation steps a stranger named Martin Taylor (Scott Garland). He had bumped into Tom earlier in the day and had come by to return Tom’s wallet. Though Pattie had never mentioned any boyfriend before her accident, Martin claims that he and she had planned to be married after he had returned from America. Seeing her in her present state shocks him but he expresses the wish to stay with the Bateses and to care for her. Amy is delighted at the prospect of having some bit of her freedom returned and well as finally meeting the man Pattie loved. Tom, however, who oddly has not liked any of Pattie’s friends, is especially suspicious of the motives of someone he’s never heard of. He allows Martin to stay only for one one night.

Though the play is naturalistic in all other respects, Potter hints strongly that Martin is not merely a con man but really a demon if not the Devil himself in disguise. Alone among the cast, Potter allows Martin to address the audience directly where through comments or facial expressions he contradicts the smarmy, too-goo-to-be-true impression he tries to create. His language is more literary than colloquial and his movements are are notable for their exaggerated precision. He confides in us that his plan is to stay with the Bateses as long as he can.

The next morning when Tom has gone to work, Martin convinces Amy to go out shopping for the first time in two years and treat herself to a new hairdo. Once she is gone Martin searches the house for the family valuables and rapes the helpless Pattie. “Will Tom and Amy find him out or not?” is the question we’re left with for the second act.

The theme of a stranger who inveigles himself into a family is one already explored in different ways by Harold Pinter in The Caretaker (1960), where an old man comes between two brothers, and by Joe Orton in Entertaining Mr. Sloane (1964), where a young tough comes between a brother and sister and murders their aged father. The difference between Brimstone and these is that Potter’s play has a political and theological dimension that the other two lack. Pinter’s play is an almost abstract examination of verbal power struggles among men. Orton’s play is a sex farce where the stranger grants sexual favours to both the brother and sister.

Potter’s play depicts in a humble domestic sphere the relation of evil to good according to traditional Catholic theology and early Protestant theology as evidenced by Milton’s Paradise Lost (1667). In both views the Devil may believe he is a free agent but, in fact, has no power other than what God grants him. Therefore, the evil he thinks he does may actually result in good.

Brimstone provides an excellent example of this in the second act. Tom, who is anti-black, anti-immigrant and anti-gay wants Britain to be more like it was when he was growing up and wants an end to the progressive loosening of morality that has been occurring. To that end he has joined the National Front, an extreme right wing party with neo-fascist connections, that saw an upsurge in growth in the mid 1970s. Having persuaded Amy of his usefulness by his help around the home, Martin sets out to court Tom’s favour by playing on his right-wing sympathies. Noting that Tom would like to deport all the non-whites, Martin takes Tom’s ideas to the natural conclusion of creating holding camps before sending them off and, if their countries didn’t want them back, turning these into extermination camps. When Tom realizes that what Martin says actually is the logical conclusion of National Front policies, Tom vows to quit the party. Martin thus accomplishes a good deed without intending to.

The same is true of the play’s action in general. Potter plays a risky game. Throughout the plays he gives us various pieces of a puzzle concerning the Bates family that do not fall in place until the very last words of the play. Once we heard those words we have to re-evaluate everything that has gone before. This technique creates a growing amount of suspense but it does mean we have no idea where the play is heading or even what it means until those final moments.

The cast is uniformly excellent. Brigitte Robinson, well-known from her work at the Shaw Festival, makes Amy a sympathetic character, too gullible, perhaps, and too naive, but good-hearted and therefore easily taken advantage of. Potter may satirize Amy’s submission to her husband’s authority and political beliefs and Amy’s own unquestioning religious beliefs, but her view of Pattie is both more compassionate and more accurate than Tom’s. Robinson gives Amy’s complaints real weight about how suffocating her life has become.

Rod Ceballos’ Tom is a generally unlikable character until his fine speech in Act 2 where he confesses that all he really wants is not the National Front’s goals, but simply is to turn back the clock by two years. Ceballos gives us the sense that

something much darker lies beneath his negative view the possibility of Pattie’s recovery that is eating away at him more than her disability itself. He gives the feeling that Pattie’s injury is retribution for something that only he fully understands.

Scott Garland is a marvellous Martin. The prime source of comedy in this rather grim setting is how far he goes both in word and deed to appear “nice” to this conservative couple. Garland’s Martin seems unaware that he is overdoing it, but then this is only a demon’s impression for what being “good” must be like. Garland definitely has the necessary charisma and he makes the prayer scene at Pattie’s bedside absolutely chilling.

For her part, Nicole Wilson takes on the immensely difficult role of Pattie with ease. She is so believable as a person suffering from a brain injury that it is actually quite disturbing. That’s as it should be. Potter himself suffered from a painful, debilitating disease and means Pattie’s condition to be the one bit of reality that tests the beliefs and personalities of all those around her. Wilson makes sure that Pattie’s movements and sounds are varied throughout the show, thus proving Amy right in in showing that she does understand what the others say and tries to react as best she can.

Designer Rachel Forbes has created just the right nondescript bourgeois interior that suits a couple like the Bateses, low cost but with vain pieces of tat here and there to reflect Amy’s attempt to liven the place up. Nelson Rogers’ lighting easily switches between the naturalistic and fantastic as the script require, with special lamps used for the prayer scene.

John Shooter’s taut, suspenseful direction makes us cringe with worry as much as laugh, but then this is about as black as a comedy can be. I don’t recall that the play has ever been staged in Toronto before, so those interested in modern British drama for its dark comedy in general should rush to see this production while they still can. You will find you have much to discuss afterwards.

Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.

For tickets, visit www.facebook.com/PreciselyPeterProductions.

2015-05-08

Brimstone and Treacle