The Good Landlord, by Ethan and Kalman Dean-Richards, Pound Road Productions
By James O’Brien
The living Hell of extortionate and excessive rent for substandard and insecure accommodation and all of it concomitant degradations are explored in this passionately engaging comedy-drama. Predicated on the totality of the scam, the drama is underpinned by a series of diminishing scams essentially degrading to all who participate in an attempt to find secure, liveable and affordable accommodation in the vicious world of the modern rentier universe.
The writers skilfully employ the metaphor of the ‘cupboard’ as a’ desirable’ outcome in a satiric device doubly compounded in that the cupboard is situated in a gas leak room on the verge of devastation.
This serves the characters well in a delusional world of dubious contracts and moral ambiguity; who is the good landlord in this morass of oppressive law and regulation? A telling scene is when Jack, the lovelorn former tenant tries to reinvent himself as the ‘good landlord’ (an excellent Jason Adam) with his ‘sweating agent’ Sean (an intense comic performance from Blayne Kelly) and attempt a Pinteresque justification of renting the ‘cupboard’ to naïve Sony.
Sony and her social media avatar, fearsome in a black wig and righteous anger, dominate the moral and political core of the play. Caroline Grey, as Sony, navigates a complex role with a command of her subject and the space she inhabits. Her wit and guile transform to a justifiable plan of action as she signs off her last post with an impassioned plea to end the nightmare of the renter’s present malaise.
The real ‘landlord’ Marianne (Julia Winwood), a potent mix of reasonableness and insanity, bookends the inexorable decline to an absurd conclusion.
Pound Road Productions have created a contemporary and vibrant night of theatre, addressing the immediate issues of the world of the rack rent. This is the theatre of here and now and deserves to be seen.
