Arts & Entertainment Performing Arts The Ruffian on the Stair
| The Ruffian on the Stair |
| Written by Andrew Shaw |
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By that time, Orton had made a significant contribution to the legacy of the Sixties: he helped take cultural power away from London’s arts elite, placing it in the hands of the ‘lower classes’. Orton’s play, The Ruffian on the Stair was originally written in 1964 as a radio drama, and subsequently re-written for the stage. It concerns a young man, Wilson, who forces himself into the home of Mike, a petty crook, and Joyce, a former prostitute. Mike has run down Wilson’s brother in his van, killing him, and while Mike is out, Wilson terrifies Joyce. Soon it becomes apparent that Wilson was in an incestuous relationship with his brother. Footscray-based company Le Poulet Terrible’s production of Ruffian is now playing at The Dog Theatre. Le Poulet Terrible is director Alice Bishop and actor Matthew Molony, who plays Wilson. Bishop says she first became interested in Orton as a teenager. “I designed a production of What the Butler Saw when I was 18 or 19, one of the first gigs I did. And I remember thinking ‘the actors have got this wrong’. It’s dark, biting satire. They were playing it as high camp. “What attracts me to Joe Orton is the muscularity of the language and the black sense of fun and style he has, while being able to make you cry and be poignant at the same time.” The play covers many themes – incest, homosexuality, grief, isolation – but Bishop says it’s innocence that informs Wilson’s character. “The foundation of the character that Mathew and I have been working on is innocence, child-like innocence and vulnerability. “[Wilson’s] grown up with a very close relationship with his brother, who has been taken away from him in tragic circumstances. He seems to be friendless, he doesn’t know how to approach women. He wants to know why somebody wanted to kill his brother.” |
British playwright Joe Orton was murdered in 1967 by his lover, Kenneth Halliwell.