Edinburgh Fringe 2024
The Ruffian on the Stair
Edinburgh Graduate Theatre Group
Genre: Dark Comedy, Theatre
Venue: Royal Scots Club
Festival: Edinburgh Fringe
Low Down
Edinburgh Graduate Theatre Group tackles an early and lesser-known Joe Orton play and mostly delivers. Directed by Robert Wylie, featuring Trevor Lord, Lois Williams and Ollie Hiemann.
Review
Edinburgh Graduate Theatre Group deserves much applause for giving Fringegoers the great opportunity to see the rarely produced The Ruffian on the Stair, the play that kicked Joe Orton’s career off. Originally written as a radio play and broadcast by the BBC in 1964, Orton substantially rewrote the play for the stage in 1966.
Almost sixty years later, what a pleasure it is to once again hear Orton’s scabrous voice. For example, take this exchange at the start of the play between Joyce, a Protestant ex-prostitute, and her boyfriend, Mike, a Catholic ex-boxer-turned-thug who runs people down in a van for cash:
Joyce: Have you got an appointment today?
Mike: Yes. I’m to be at King’s Cross station at eleven. I’m meeting a man in the toilet.
Joyce: You always go to such interesting places.
Into this uneasy mix comes the titular ruffian, Wilson, who waits for Mike to leave before arriving and asking Joyce if there’s a room to rent. When Joyce tells him that there is no such space for him in the flat, Wilson starts threatening her and in so doing reveals that he’s been watching the apartment for some time. Then comes the twist. Wilson is not out to injure Joyce or Mike; he wants violence to be turned on him. The mystery is why.
The Ruffian on the Stair is a lesser Orton work, but lesser Orton remains better than most else out there. The play’s radio origins are rather obvious in various monologues where a character starts speaking on stage to no one and for no clear reason, and this current staging hasn’t solved that problem or ironed out the transitions, which likely would benefit with music to fill the dead air and create the desired atmosphere. Director Robert Wylie does manage to keep the comedic pace zippy and gets particularly strong performances from the two men in the cast. Trevor Lord may preen and prance and say outrageous things to voice Orton’s dim view of England’s working class (“I’m not a great believer in charity unless I need it”), but the current of anger that burns under his every gesture and line is never in doubt. As the louche Wilson, Ollie Hiemann flirts and sneers in equal measure but ultimately manages to make his dangerous intruder a sympathetic figure. His sly and charismatic performance much reminded me of the impressive Off-Broadway debut of Timothée Chalamet the year before he became a bona fide film star with Call Me By Your Name.
It’s remarkable the impact Joe Orton made as a playwright in such little time. Between 1964 to 1967 he wrote the beloved-but-withering comedies Loot, Entertaining Mr Sloane and What The Butler Saw, and had he not been murdered in a jealous rage by his lover Kenneth Halliwell in 1967, there’d likely be many more beloved titles still being produced today. I will always be sad that Orton’s life was cut so unmercifully short, but finally seeing a production of The Ruffian on the Stair reminds me to be thankful for the theatrical gifts he did leave us.
