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Finborough theatre, LondonA grieving father and son lock horns over an alluring visitor in a magnetically acted revival of Philip King’s Freudian drama
Philip King is best known for See How They Run, which contains the unforgettable line: “Sergeant, arrest most of these vicars.” This play, which is the last of King’s 11 unaided works and first appeared in 1970, is a Freudian family drama that touches on religion but, although it’s well done, leaves me feeling that farce was this writer’s true metier.
Set in Lancashire, the play shows David, an earnest 19-year-old follower of the Salvation Army, taking in a lodger after his mother’s death. Since Bess, the paying guest, is a life-loving barmaid her presence excites the concern of David’s religious superior and the sexual appetite of his fugitive dad, who is paying an unexpected return visit home. What follows is a primal father-son battle over Bess, but for all the story’s Oedipal overtones I was struck by its improbabilities. You wonder why on earth Bess would be drawn to the blatantly misogynist dad and why King makes so little of David’s guilt over the lies he tells to the Salvation Army major. Continue reading...