Always been curious about the oevre of playwright Caryl Churchill, it is a great opportunity to start with her debut play, Owners, which is being performed this autumn at the Jermyn Street Theatre. I wanted to visit this intimate seventy seat venue for years, just around the corner from the noisy, glaring buzz of Piccadilly Circus. The studio theatre promises its visitors to be seated “never more than four rows from the action” and claims to own the smallest bar in the West End. Founded in 1994 (I guess London can expect big anniversary celebrations next year), the Jermyn Street Theatre also prides itself to be the smallest producing theatre in London’s West End. Another absolute first: Never before have I entered a toilet via a theatre stage, and especially not right through the stage’s props (has Narnia ever been staged here?).
The play Owners is dark and bitter, more of a grotesqueness than a comedy, even through the many laugh-out-loud moments which vary strongly between audience types, and always comes from different corners of the auditorium. First staged at London’s Royal Court in the 1970s, Owners tells the story about the on-going maddening unfairness of London’s property and rental market, of power abuse shamelessly executed by those with the long arm of possession, with the money to make more of it and the time to pursue it – and the helplessness of those relying on them.
There are jolly butchers, business people without a conscience put against already depression-torn tenants and their senile in-laws, an amusing network of extramarital affairs. At least to begin with. There is a competitive business woman always looking for the next challenge taking her husband to strip clubs in order to cheer him up. There is an estate manager’s lackey who befriends the Samaritan helping him through his ongoing suicidal attempts but in whose accidental death he is at least very present. There is a mother so desperate to lose the house she lives in with her husband and their children, that she gives up her baby for the landlords to adopt – only to “gain” the right to see and possibly nanny the boy later through sex with one half of them. Almost worse, the killing of another neighbour’s baby through arson follows. In the end, what is left are horrible people corrupting those depending on them to turn horrible as well. Or forcing them to give up completely which serves those benefitting from them even better. Nevertheless well played through and through by all on stage, the humour of this political comment with its zeitgeisty pop soundtrack and outfits appears questionable, even though its clearly showing out the perversion of the term “ownership” – and no, even though the living arrangements in London nowadays might be even more desperate for some, nothing of what happened on stage was alright in the 70s and is neither nowadays, even though it happens: The printed program shares milestones of the shocking history of property ownership chronologically, without doubt an insightful read.
A satire biting with sharp teeth or not, Owners is a bold, if not even odd choice to be put on stage in the month of Kinship Care Week, World Mental Health Day (which is the same as World Homelessness Day) and through National Adoption Week. If trigger warnings were displayed, I have missed them in the small studio theatre and its staircase foyer.
*** out of 5 stars
Owners has been written by Caryl Churchill and has been directed by Stella Powell-Jones
Running at the Jermyn Street Theatre until 11 November, tickets from £31
Sadie takes the Stage 