This doesn't sit well with Clegg's 1970s feelings about the position of men and women in the workplace and the home, and his diatribe is both funny and surprising: Of course as a woman Churchill had more of an outsider's perspective than most successful writers of the time, but the gags making fun of the prevailing chauvinism sound exactly like what someone would write from a present-day perspective.
His wife is Marion (Laura Doddington,) who's made a fortune in property, and is currently taking a particular interest in one property she's trying to flip, and the family renting the top floor: Marion had an affair with Alec (Ryan Donaldson) and is still in love with him. His wife Lisa (Boadicea Ricketts) doesn't know about the affair but once she finds out the flat becomes a battleground, with Lisa refusing to vacate the property no matter what bribes Marion throws her way.
With its story about ruthless landlords making a fortune flipping properties while others struggle to afford a place to live, Owners certainly feels like a highly topical and prescient play to revive, while the ruthless capitalist Marion is a clear forebear of Churchill's more famous Marlene from Top Girls. But real estate is a bit of a red herring, as the play has a wider kind of ownership in mind, in the way people feel and express ownership of their own and other people's bodies and lives. In one abrupt plot lurch Marion and Clegg end up adopting the couple's new baby, with the rest of the play a tussle over him, and as the opening comic scene implied, the idea of men's sense of ownership over women is also explored.
Not everything has aged as well: In the darkest strand of what is essentially a black comedy, Marion's hapless assistant Worseley (Tom Morley) is constantly making failed suicide attempts offstage, resulting in increasingly severe and bizarre injuries. While Morley's awkwardly entertaining performance of Worseley as a strange mix of the Eleventh Doctor and Frank Spencer makes these scenes consistently funny, it's inevitably uncomfortable as well.
Aside from the fact that the younger Churchill can't say as much in two and a half hours as the older one can in 20 minutes, there's signs of inexperience in the way the plot struggles to hold together, while Alec being a character who's so flattened by life he essentially no longer experiences emotions is the kind of idea that looks good on the page, but in practice means Donaldson, through no real fault of his own, sucks the life out of any scene he's in.
But if Owners doesn't entirely hold together the individual scenes still provide a lot to enjoy - there's some very clever dialogue and the pitch-black comedy still works. Powell-Jones' production is slick and well-cast, and yet again the stage's, er, distinctive challenges lead to some creative staging, with Cat Fuller's row of blue front doors providing all sorts of hiding spots and scene changes to keep the story moving in all its unpredictable directions. Maybe I'll do a search to see if any of the original reviews from 1972 are online; I wonder if she was described as "promising," as that's certainly something she's lived up to.
Owners by Caryl Churchill is booking until the 11th of November at the Jermyn Street Theatre.
Running time: 2 hours 25 minutes including interval.
Photo credit: Steve Gregson.
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