Howard Brenton has built a reputation on taking on uncompromising subjects. Carte Blanche Theatre Company have put together two pairs of short plays. This review covers the even dates.
By far the stronger of Miranda Lawrence's productions is The Education of Skinny Spew, a black comedy that starts while the protagonist, played by Be Hunt, is still in the womb and planning to give his parents hell.
Once he emerges it gets noisily worse dividing his tolerant mother (Jo Tyabji) from his maddened father, played by the best of the team, Dan Morgan. Setting the afternoon's theme, there is a doubly tragic ending to this entertaining short play in a sea created from the play's sole prop, a white sheet.
In the second play, set in a garden created from newspapers, Brenton's controversial subject is serial killer John Reginald Christie, executed in 1953 for murdering women and then secreting their bodies around his home. That house was at 10 Rillington Place, the title of the biographical film starring Richard Attenborough as Christie.
The cast of three now become Christie (Hunt) and his police interrogators. There is far too much red-faced shouting and the shock element of Morgan as the sleazy constable who gets too friendly with a corpse is dissipated.
Finally, we should like to thank technician Phil Brown for his assistance with casting information.
(Originally awarded 3 stars and 2 stars for the two plays.)