Humourous and dark acts

THE GOOD SAMARITAN/DEATH OF A HAWKER
Pentameters Theatre

HAMPSTEAD playwright Paul Birtill has a long association with Pentameters Theatre, it having previously staged a string of his works.
So it was a fitting venue to see the premiere of two new one-act black comedies, beginning with The Good Samaritan.
Volunteer Samaritan Mike Russell, commandingly played by Julian Agnew, is driven to distraction by one particular caller – an ex-lavatory attendant who isn’t as suicidal as he claims to be.
Jobless Arthur Darney harangues Russell incessantly, phoning him at work and at home, even using Russell’s wife as a shoulder to cry on.
Russell eventually cracks and enlists the help of a somewhat psychotic friend, Steve, to help Darney carry out his long-threatened suicide.
What begins as a fairly slow-paced drama snowballs into an unexpected firecracker of an ending.
Adam Lewis plays the scruffy, complaining Darney to a tee, comic in his despair, and who, incidentally, bears more than a passing resemblance to campaigning singer Bob Geldof.
Death of a Hawker is even darker, its black humour weaved around all too apparent domestic violence, desperation and fear.
Quivering victim Jane answers the door to her ex-fiance Peter, who has been reduced to hawking encyclopaedias following a calamitous stay in Australia.
Peter ends up gambling away all his cash plus his encyclopaedias to Jane’s cruel, rugby-playing husband Maurice, leaving him desperate and suicidal.
Of course it all ends in tragedy, but laced with enough laughs to leave you unsettled at your own heartlessness.

Until Aug 20
020 7435 3648

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