If you could boil down Robert Tressell’s brilliant socialist novel to a single observation, it would be that rich people do nothing, while the poor work their (ragged-trousered) arses off. So it’s a very clever conceit on the part of Howard Brenton’s new adaptation for the Chichester Festival, as well as a thrifty move for what must be one of its lower-budget productions, to have members of the workforce play their well-to-do exploiters. They line up near the beginning as if queuing for stewed tea or tools, and instead receive padded waistcoats and rubbery facemasks, all tusk-like moustaches and flushed pink cheeks. It’s like the metamorphic end of Animal Farm going into reverse.
With a drinks gazebo for sponsors out on the lawn and a full house dominated by pinched accents and pearls, you could never accuse the CFT of preaching to the converted with this one. Based on the experience of its working-class author, The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists is the story of a group of poverty-stricken decorators in Edwardian England, the hardships they endure and their gradual politicisation. And while Tressell’s workers are a variously clued-up but generally sympathetic bunch – led here with watchful dignity by Finbar Lynch as the pained prophet Owen – the enemies to their cause bear the brunt of the author's Dickensian flair for satire.
They have names such as Slyme (a suitably sly-eyed Dean Ashton as the born-again Christian who advocates prayer over politics), Crass (a brilliant, Michael Palin-esque performance from Nicolas Tennant as the obnoxious overseer) and Hunter, the foreman who prowls about looking for excuses to lay off workers, played with bulging eyes and bicycle clips by Des McAleer. (Pictured below right: Will Beer, Tim Frances and Dean Ashton.) The firm they all work for is Rushton & Co: in the greedy pursuit of profit, craft and pride in work have been cast by the wayside. "Rather one-sided, wouldn’t you say?" asked a plummy voice behind me as the two hours drew to a close.
In a stab at engaging the typical Chichester audience, Howard Brenton has added a contemporary frame for his new adaptation. An upper-middle-class couple are viewing an old house – designer Simon Higlett has a two-storey cross-section with sliding screens to show the progress of the repairs. The husband, babbling into his mobile, is bent on a bargain. The wife loves the old trough sink and the Chinesey murals. "Beauty ain’t the ‘alf of it," says the ghost of Owen, stepping through a peeling door frame into the present. And so the woman joins the audience to watch as the clock is turned back to the twilight of the 1800s and the decorators begin their work.
One of the problems with making a thorough case against capitalism on the stage is that theatre struggles when it comes to conveying hard, laborious work. Tressell’s novel is a masterful interweaving of vibrant set-pieces – Owen’s explanation of "The Great Money Trick", the historical equivalent of the office Christmas party – with extremely real descriptions of the soul-, strength- and intellect-sapping intensity of manual labour. In adaptation, the drudgery tends to play second fiddle to the serious-minded japing about. We get a lot of work songs without seeing too much work.
There are some very powerful moments in director Christopher Morahan’s staging: under flickering lights, Owen plays out his violent fantasy of pounding Hunter to a pulp. When the spotlight lapses, he is merely impotently punching the wall. But you question the wisdom of actually showing the two deaths, with Hunter razoring his neck Grand Guignol-style and Old Joe’s death plunge being undertaken by a crude dummy whose fatal "thunk" unfortunately solicits laughter rather than shock. The second half is also hampered by two malnourished performances by Laura Rees and Louise Bush as the worker’s wives.
Perhaps most importantly, Brenton fillets the scene of "The Great Oration" so thoroughly that he omits most of the questions, still very much in currency today, with which the doubtful workers test the practicalities of life "Under Socialism". Who would do the disagreeable work? Would the frugal workman lose his savings?
This production is otherwise very much alert to contemporary parallels with the banking crisis and expenses scandal: the corrupt councillors’ solution to the failure of their company is to municipalise the "white elephant" while flowers for Mayor Sweater’s garden are stolen from the public park (you imagine, like the real Hastings Councillors on whom Tressell based him, he has his eye on the ducks, too).
Our system, like the decaying house, is corrupt from within, and when the frame returns us to the present, the trouser-suited wife responds to all she has seen by crying out, "Build it again, build it new!" But Brenton stops short of tapping the thirst for practical political discussion stimulated by the recent Leaders' Debates and interrogating socialism as a real, living and breathing alternative for the here and now. The fired-up feeling you get from the realism of Tressell’s writing and the powerful humanity of the central performances fades with Owen’s paintings. You leave merely eulogising the long-dead ghost of an ideal.
- The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists is at Minerva Theatre, Chichester until 26 August
- Find The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists on Amazon
