The Ruffian on the Stair
Reviewed by Deborah Klugman
Hicks Street Productions at the LGBT Center
Through July 28
Joe Orton was only 34 when he was bludgeoned to death by Kennegth Halliwell, his jealous lover and one-time writing partner. Halliwell envied Orton’s newfound celebrity as an up-and-coming playwright, launched after the BBC aired The Ruffian on the Stair as a radio play in 1964. The play was based on an unfinished novel, The Boy Hairdresser, that Orton and Halliwell had collaborated on. Orton later rewrote this one-act for the stage, and it was produced as a part of a double bill in the year preceding his gruesome murder in 1967.
As preface to Ruffian, he appropriated the first verse of a poem by W.E. Henley:
Madam Life’s a piece in bloom,
Death goes dogging everywhere:
She’s the tenant of the room,
He’s the ruffian on the stair
Set in London, the play is a three-hander that takes place in the shabby working-class digs of middle-aged couple Mike (Brian Foyster) and Joyce (Sile Bermingham). Mike is a small-time hood, a hitman whose most recent killing involved mowing a guy down with a van. His sexual predilections to swing-both-ways are hinted at when he places a flower on his lapel and tells Joyce that he’s meeting a man in a toilet. (She doesn’t get it.) But these plans for a tryst don’t prevent him from evoking the eternally noxious double-standard — threatening, before he leaves, to kill Joyce if she ever messed around, even though she’s done nothing to suggest that she might or would.
Soon after Mike departs, an intimidating stranger (Reed Michael Campbell) shows up, calling himself Wilson and claiming he’s come for the (non-existent) room they have to let. Joyce’s unease turns to terror after Wilson taunts her and points out how easy it would be to murder her — though he exits without causing her bodily harm. When Mike returns, she tells him of Wilson’s visit and asks for his protection, but Mike cavalierly dismisses her fears, and when he does meet Wilson, he takes sides against her.
As a satirist, Orton used his writing to go after numerous British institutions and human behaviors; here he renders judgment on the misogyny and hypocrisy of the working-class British male — and secondarily on the callousness of humanity in general. Done right, the play should sizzle with repressed homosexual tension and secrets begging to be revealed; Joyce’s panic when threatened by Wilson should be palpable, and her disquiet at the unprovoked belligerence of her mate should be contagious. The disturbing climax is meant to be bizarre and bewildering.
But none of the above transpires in this disappointing extension of a Hollywood Fringe Festival production rather negligently directed by Mike Kemble. Iffy dialects aside (they are distracting enough), two of the three actors — Foyster and Campbell — seem to be operating entirely without subtext. Foyster appears content to utter his lines in a cryptic manner and leave it at that, while Campbell’s intruder lacks menace, so there is absolutely no suspense to his scene with Joyce or his eventual mano-a-mano confrontation with Mike. Bermingham is more successful projecting Joyce’s fear, but there’s also much about the character that is left unexplored.
There are also some odd and/or careless aspects of the staging, such as having Wilson engage in a conversation while obscured by a curtain, with only his hands visible. (He’s supposed to be at the door but why not bring him on stage?) Kemble’s maneuvering of the actors does not always maximize the drama. The serving of tea is nowhere near how it’s done in Britain (or how it used to be done in the 1960s anyway); it’s one of many small testaments to the production’s untidiness. Most damning is the dramatic denouement, which is played minus requisite props, thus rendering the climax completely unconvincing — as if this performance were an early rehearsal instead of a bid for an audience’s heedful attention.
What does work is Foyster’s set design, appropriately dingy and detailed and spot-on in relaying the grim claustrophobia of these characters’ lives.
The Los Angeles LGBT Center’s Davidson/Valentini Theatre, 1125 N. McCadden Place, Hollywood; Thurs., 7/18 & 7/25, 8 p.m.; Sat., 7/13 & 7/27, 8 p.m.; Sun., 7/14, 7/21 & 7/28, 7 p.m.; through Jul. 28; www.lalgbtcenter.org/theatre or (323) 860-7300. Running time: approximately 55 minutes with no intermission.
Brian Foyster
July 12, 2019 @ 12:07 am
Here’s what the other critics had to say:
The Ruffian on the Stair reviewed by Rob Stevens, Haines His Way, LA Drama Critics Circle:
Joe Orton’s rarely staged BBC radio play, The Ruffian on the Stair, is being given the royal treatment by Hicks Street Productions at the Hollywood Fringe Festival. Brian Foyster’s set design is one of the most elaborate you will see in a Fringe show and perfectly sets the scene for the action that takes place in a London bedsit circa 1964. The one-hour dramedy is typically Ortonian in its working class characters and milieu. The bedsit is shared by Mike (Foyster), who claims to be an ex-boxer from Ireland now living on the dole, and Joyce (Sile Bermingham), a former prostitute who plied her trade under various aliases before settling down with Mike. As the action starts, Joyce reminds Mike it’s their second anniversary as a couple. He doesn’t seem to care one way or another and is soon off to a meeting in a public restroom about a possible job. An article Joyce reads in the paper about a tattooed young man who was run down by a white van distresses Mike just a bit. After he leaves, Wilson (Reed Michael Campbell) shows up at Joyce’s door looking for a room to rent. Even though Joyce thinks he made a mistake, she finally admits Wilson to the apartment and even serves him some tea. We discover it was Wilson’s older brother Frank, with whom he shared an incestuous relationship, who was run down by a van, a van that might belong to Mike. Wilson doesn’t really want revenge; he just wants to join his brother in the grave and has his last will state that. Wilson terrifies Joyce but when she relates her terror to Mike, he seems unfazed by it. When Wilson returns, he charms Mike by claiming to be an Irish Catholic, just like Mike. There is sexual tension as well as a whiff of violence in the air as the threesome interact. Even goldfish aren’t safe in this toxic atmosphere.
Ruffian has a lot in common with Orton’s first full-length play, Entertaining Mr. Sloane, which premiered on stage a few months before Ruffianfirst aired on BBC radio. The working class characters, the sexually ambidextrous young man—in Sloane he seduces a brother and sister, in Ruffian he uses his charm on a couple living as husband and wife. Orton, always the rascal rebel, rants and raves against British society, the Catholic Church and morality and sexual roles in general. Mark Kemble has deftly directed his trio of actors and the result is a laugh-filled, gasp-inducing romp. Foyster perfectly executes the seemingly distracted Mike while Bermingham inhabits Joyce with all femininity and motherly love an aging prostitute can muster. Campbell imbues Wilson with fresh, young exuberance and sexual energy. The three play off each other like careening billiard balls. Don’t miss this chance to see a rarely produced gem by the master theatrical anarchist, Joe Orton. I sat next to two young men who had never experienced Orton before and were now intrigued and eager to see more.
Morna Murphy Martell, Theatre Spoken Here:
THE RUFFIAN ON THE STAIR
If you’ve never seen a Joe Orton play you are in for a delightful surprise. An outrageous, farcical and absurdist playwright, the irony is that his characters are in many ways more believable than what is often presented onstage as “real” life. Sure, the man of the house is a professional assassin, the lady that he loves a former prostitute, and the violent young man who intrudes on their domestic scene is a charmer with a hidden agenda. Anyway, Brian Foyster, as ever-so- deadpan Mike, will have you chuckling before one word is out of his mouth, Sile Bermingham as bewildered Joyce, trapped in domestic bliss, will bring tears of laughter to your eyes, and Reed Michael Campbell as The Ruffian will win your heart as an innocent boy forced into violent acts in his search for justice. All three actors are just absolutely marvelous and share impeccable accents from various regions of the British Isles. This was Orton’s first success, as a BBC radio play in 1964 that he rewrote for the stage after other plays gained him recognition. Mark Kemble directs with the perceptive and carefree flair of one born and raised in a madhouse. This production is already being extended for a four week run. Not to miss!
Travis Michael Holder, Ticket Holders LA:
It was August of 1964 when BBC aired a remarkably shocking radio play written the previous year by a basically unknown new badboy upstart named Joe Orton.
So energized was Orton by the sale of his deliciously dark comedy The Ruffian on the Stair that, by the time of its broadcast, he had already completed and successfully sold his first full-length play. The groundbreaking Entertaining Mr. Sloane had opened several months before Ruffian was aired, playing the modest New Arts Theatre before being transferred to Wyndham’s amid an equal plethora of praise and outrage.
In the next three years before the 34-year-old Orton was bludgeoned to death with a hammer by his lover Kenneth Halliwell, he became one of Britain’s most celebrated—and vilified—playwrights. Sloane was followed by Loot (currently being resurrected in a wonderful revival at the Odyssey in West LA until mid-August) and What the Butler Saw, which sadly was to debut in a major production at the Queen’s Theatre, becoming his most successful play two years after his murder.
In his meteoric but tragically brief career that changed the course of comedy forever, among his accomplishments was reworking The Ruffian on the Stair for the stage and coupling it with another radio play, The Erpingham Camp, opening the two pieces together in 1966 under the title Crimes of Passion.
Originally based on a novel called The Boy Hairdresser Orton wrote in collaboration with Halliwell, Ruffian is nothing as well-known as his three other infamous plays nor, in its 60-minute playing time, is it often presented.
I must admit I have been an Orton freak since my teen years, also having once had the great privilege of playing Halliwell in Lanie Robertson’s brilliant Nasty Little Secrets, the role that garnered me a Best Actor nomination from LA Weekly and for which I won my first cherished LA Drama Critics Circle Award in 2001.
Although I have had the fun of directing students working on scenes from it several times over the years, I have never seen Ruffian performed before now and I couldn’t be more grateful Orton’s most obscure play has come to roost at the LA LGBT Center’s Davidson/Valenti Theatre for a post-Hollywood Fringe Festival extended run.
Luckily for anyone who mourns all the wonders that might have been unearthed if this guy’s career had not been limited to such a short yet prolific period of time, this overshadowed little theatrical gem is beautifully mounted here by director Mark Kemble and three actors who totally get Orton’s dryly farcical British humor and the signature rhythms written into his dialogue.
As Mike, the Irish working-class professional driver who shares his London bedsitter with the common-law wife he met under less-than perfect romantic circumstances, Brian Foyster is dead-on from his first appearance, sneering and preening into an invisible fourth-wall mirror as he readies for work, his mouth shaping itself around his character’s proletarian accent as former boxer Mike desperately tries to appear uppercrust.
Sile Bermingham is his perfect foil as Joyce, the former prostitute who is equally as determined to elevate her class, a major theme winding throughout all of Orton’s work. Her nervous, bird-like demeanor and quick ladylike steps bounce off Foyster’s misogynistic stiff-backed delivery like a British Burns and Allen.
Into the attempted normalcy of their lives comes Reed Michael Campbell as comely cockney youth Wilson, the brash unemployed “men’s hairdresser” who knocks on their door inquiring about a non-existent room for rent and stays on, of course, for a bit of Ortonesque shenanigans.
As in all of Orton’s plays, the cynicism that guided his Quixote-esque mission to skewer the hypocritical cultural and political mores of the time is distinctly present, as are a palpable sense of potential danger lurking just below his characters’ mannered demeanor and an abundance of sexual innuendo meant to be as relentless as the message or the menace.
Kemble directs with an austere but crystal-clear ability to heighten the tension winding through Orton’s curiously off-kilter tale, but if anything is missing in this production, there’s a rather surprising downplaying of the suggestive teasing inherent in the characters’ barely suppressed attraction for one another.
Still, having such an otherwise quintessential representation of the outrageous people and situations Joe Orton celebrated as he cleverly called out the societal and political corkscrewing we still endure a half-century later is indeed a treat, especially as The Ruffian on the Stair is brought to life by this trio of slickly harmonious actors, any of whom I suspect Joe Orton would have been thrilled to encounter by chance in the loo at Islington Station.
And I mean that in a good way. In an Orton-y good way, of course.