Sex, Drugs and Pashminas
SNOBBERY WITH VIOLENCE
Are you sick of cressmunching, coffee-sipping socialites who think they’re streetwise because they smoke joints and read The Guardian? Mahatma Kane Jeeves sure is - in fact, he’s written a play about it. The Discreet Charms of the Shouting Classes bills alongside Georges Feydeau’s classic one-act farce Unplug my Son! in an evening of riotous social satire.
Written in 1910, Feydeau’s play depicts chamber-pot manufacturer Follavione chasing fortune and status as his family and reputation collapse around him; Kane Jeeves’s modern farce collides pashminawrapped Oxford toffs on a train with Burberry-clad pissheads. Feydeau’s maniacal farce assaults the audience relentlessly, lampooning petit bourgeois aspirations with the subtlety of a ballistic missile.
Gary Stocker is excellent as Follavione, a jittery bundle of nervous tics and forced grins throughout his attempts to conceal the steaming excrement of his trade. Georgina Paget is equally good as his pig-headed wife, sniping and screeching like a trapped weasel, nagging her hubby to distraction. Indeed, the rattling pace of dialogue grows somewhat wearying, the happy couple’s shouting matches becoming normal, even tedious, since there is scarcely a breath of silence to contrast.
Neverthless, Unplug my Son! froths with irresistible panache, set designs toppling around the protagonists as they shimmy up the social ladder. Kane Jeeves’s new play foregrounds the modern class divisions which New Labour would like us to forget about, cracking a pint-glass in the face of Cool Britainia. When was the last time you heard an Oxford thesp snarling, “Buy me a drink, or I'll rape ya?” Exactly.
Director Jaspreet Boparai takes full advantage of the claustrophobic train carriage setting, jamming well-to-do passengers in with leering wideboys and Kappa-slappers. Between either party sits Tarquin, the too-cool-for-private-school poser who thinks a penchant for Strongbow and marajuana means he's down with the kids. Rupert Stone is hilarious in this role, whispering lines like, "he gave me some ganja!" with spot-on pomposity.
Stocker exhibits wide versatility as the pugnacious lagerlout, Ned, complemented by Jodie Adams as the gloriously hammered Shaz. In the tradition of farce, both parties dupe and expose each other in equal measure, culminating in a surrealist punch-up. This is neither grim, kitchen-sink drama, nor sanctimonious polemic, but an enjoyable and important satire on liberal self-delusion. Relish it.
19th May 2005