Lively, clever, flawed

SATURDAY NIGHT AND SUNDAY MORNING, Royal Exchange, to April 7
AFTER making a slightly overlong play of the disturbingly prescient “1984”, Oldham playwright and director Matthew Dunster returns to the Exchange with a crowd-pleasing, lively production of an almost equally disturbing novel.

Alan Sillitoe’s story of — I suppose you would call him a sexual predator — Arthur Seaton, a character even the director of the famous film didn’t much like, remains in this very fast-moving evening a heavy-drinking, self-obsessed, live-for-the-weekend, late-Fifties factory worker who cares for little but sex from whichever girl is offering, married or not.

Seaton has no politics, not much education, little fear of consequences and no regard for authority, real or moral. He is a Midlands “Alfie” with even less of a conscience, cutting a swathe through the girls of Nottingham and the wives of his friends and fellow workers.

The trouble is the book is a bit unfocused and thin: you might claim that it is like life in that respect, but the social realism of Sillitoe’s 1958 setting, remarkable in its day, doesn’t translate so well today.

One thing Dunster’s production truly does have going for it is an ensemble cast of great energy.

He keeps them moving around the stage: here having two performers strip their fellow part-time soldier Seaton in the Scottish National Theatre’s “Black Watch” style as he moves around; there having an overhead conveyor bring in bicycle parts, clothes, even a shooting gallery for the Goose Fair scene.

Anna Fleischle’s set is a marvel of tricks, from the treadmill and turntables set into the stage floor to brightly lit doorways and columns.

But there is another problem, brought about simply by choosing this book and this character. Perry Fitzpatrick plays Arthur with panache but with a complete lack of expression on his face or life in his eyes. You could argue that this is the character, but I think not: Arthur is passionate about himself, Fitzpatrick is not.

The supporting cast, notably Clare Calbraith as his married bit on the side and Chanel Cresswell as his married bit on the other side, fare better, as does Tamla Kari as the likeable Doreen, his “real” girlfriend.

But for me this remains a lively and clever, but flawed, stab at a largely now-ignored work.