If the Cap Fits | Sporadicity | Pinteresque

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The Review - THEATRE by SIMON WROE
Published: 30 October 2008

A Pinteresque comic waltz

REVIEW: IF THE CAP FITS/SPORADICITY
Hen and Chickens

TO say Dean Stalham’s plays are unusual does not even scratch the surface.
Unusual is a taxi driver telling you to keep a tip; Stalham’s cabbie would drive you down a dark alley and take liberties with your more delicate appendages, then buy you a Babycham and discuss the migratory habits of cormorants.
Depending on your preferences, that might cast If The Cap Fits and Sporadicity, his double bill at the Hen and Chickens, unfavourably – it is not intended to.
Stalham knows the criminal underbelly he writes about and has produced two hard-nosed, unflinching pieces of work with a fine ear for dialogue and a black vein of humour.
The best comes first. In If The Cap Fits, the well-spoken Adrian (Howard Teale) wanders into a working man’s boozer and becomes entangled in an exchange with the local thug, Billy (Benjamin Reeves).
The two men go through all the pirouettes of pub ballet: bragadaccio over the pool table, manly drinking bouts and the homo-erotic threat of terrible violence at any minute.
At 20 minutes, it’s a sinewy, comic waltz through the great class divide that owes as much to the mad wordplay of NF Simpson as it does to Pinter.
Teale completes his versatile brace of characters as a gangster in Sporadicity. He’s the rival in love and war of Joe (Ian Groombridge), a wide-boy drug dealer with a glamour model wife who hates his guts.
This saga of drugs and domestic abuse puts violence rather than humour to the fore; a shame because Stalham’s wit is razor sharp.
It needs a good edit, but the talented cast perform the work with the conviction of being part of the next big thing. They just might be.
Until November 8
020 7704 2001

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