Green for Go presents
Captain Oates’ Left Sock
By John Antrobus Directed by Russell Bolam
Finborough Theatre
7 – 31 January 2009
A review by Colette Gunn-Graffy for EXTRA! EXTRA!
The dividing line between mental health and illness is blurry – a point well made in the staging of the latest revival of Captain Oates’ Left Sock by John Antrobus. In the intimate space of the Finborough Theatre, the audience sits in a large circle on plastic folding chairs. Only gradually, do we become aware that not all of the people sitting around us are spectators; they are mental hospital inmates and staff, gathered to participate in a session of group therapy. Long before we get to know the patients’ back-stories, we discover their character traits. David is an angry young man obsessed with sex and antagonising authority; Carter, critical of everyone; Fergie, a neurotic musician who cannot make decisions; Juliet, lovely but self-loathing; and then there is comforting Celia who becomes excited by the prospect of other people thinking about her body. The discussions between these and a half dozen others are supervised by the Nurses Rogers and Bryant and led, in theory, by the rather pompous Dr. Parks, who comments a great deal more to the audience than he does to his patients. Although some criticise his lack of guidance, Dr Parks causes some consternation early on by introducing the idea that it is the patients themselves who should know when they are well enough to leave. After all, admittance is voluntary. The question of personal responsibility continues to resonate throughout the play as the characters pick at each others’ wounds, and we start to learn more about their past lives and how they ended up in hospital. Not all of these stories are entirely clear or trustworthy – indeed, Juliet is doubtful there is any ‘Truth’ – nor, it seems is Dr Parks’ thesis about sanity. If the patients are in control, why are they still organised and administered to like children? Why must the nurses intervene when they get rowdy? And what is it Dr Parks is really trying to advance – the mental well-being of his patients or the psychiatric discipline of group therapy? Although Captain Oates benefits from a terrific cast – Lloyd Woolf as Fergie is particularly talented at being simultaneously tragic and hilarious – the play, clocking in at two hours and fifteen minutes, frequently lags. Although those with patience are rewarded with several spirited moments, on the whole, the chatter amongst the characters does little to drive the story forward. Another oddity is the fact that of a rather enormous cast of fifteen (the audience didn’t even outnumber the actors 2:1), two characters never speak at all, and at least four others have only a handful of lines. While the purpose of these characters may be to make up group numbers to create a ‘more authentic’ experience, their effect is to distract, as the audience ponders their identities and anticipates hearing their stories. Perhaps if less emphasis had been placed on recreating the actual experience of group therapy, (e.g., cutting the number of characters, heightening the conflict) the play as a whole would pack more of a punch; yet, it’s questionable whether that was the playwright’s intention. A celebrated comedy writer for the BBC, John Antrobus has worked with a host of ‘greats’ including Spike Milligan and Peter Sellers, but it was his own two-week stint in a mental hospital that produced Captain Oates, a play which he describes as ‘my farewell to the further reaches of a disturbed mind’. If Antrobus does not provide clear answers to the questions he poses about mental health and therapy, it may well be because he is himself perplexed by the issues he raises. Although the circular staging of Captain Oates does much to provoke the audience recognition and compassion that Antrobus seems to have desired, it could have been taken a step further. Rather than segregating the actors to one side of the seated circle, they could have been sat next to and between members of the paying public, thus, there would be no telling which among them was ‘unwell’. Boundaries blurred indeed.
Tuesday – Saturday @ 7:30pm, Saturday and Sunday @ 3pm Tickets £13 / £9 concessions, with exception of Tuesday tickets £9; Saturday evening tickets £13 Box Office: 0844 847 1652; http://www.finboroughtheatre.co.uk/booking.html Venue: Finborough Theatre, 118 Finborough Road, London SW10 9ED
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y Couzen