Darkly comic, curiously timeless gothic tale sparks intrigue and chills galore at Barons Court Theatre
Directed by Macadie Amoroso, the action of Rob Hayes’ A Butcher of Distinction unfolds in a dark and eerie pub basement. Fittingly enough, Baron’s Court theatre is actually situated in the tiny basement of The Curtain’s Up pub, serving to suspend any remaining disbelief amongst the audience of this intensely intimate, 52-seater venue. Those who are sorry to see the end of spooky season should be sure to catch A Butcher of Distinction in the heart of West London until the 12th November.
Country-born and raised twins Hartley (Connor McRory) and Hugo (Joseph Ryan-Hughes) have been sent down to London upon their parents’ untimely deaths ‘looking like a couple of croquet referees’, as their new acquaintance observes: the inimitable Ethan Reid as Teddy, a wondrously sinister, scruffy, growling pimp, who manages to be all arms and legs yet incredibly imposing, with just about the most impressive swagger I’ve ever seen. Reid has one of those rare talents where he doesn’t even seem like he’s acting, but simply a real person going about his life – I caught him checking his beard in a mirror above the narrow stairs down to the theatre before the performance, where he said a knowing hello, paving the way for a heady blurring of fiction and reality as we unwittingly descended into his world.
Laura Mugford’s fantastic set design is peppered with careful details that draw us ever deeper into the dingy, unfamiliar landscape the boys find themselves in, navigating all the trappings of a sordid, secretive life stuffed under the streets of London in the hope no one would find it. While sorting through their father’s curious possessions in the search for things they can sell, including bottles of pills and ether, a broken hairdryer, various items emblazoned with the family crest, and a bag of human hair, they are interrupted by Teddy, who after hearing of the old man’s demise, demands they pay the odd quarter of a million he is owed. They are indeed penniless: the boys have apparently been given away like any other of their father’s assets, his most prized possessions used to pay off his debts.
Teddy has got fingers in lots of pies – ‘apart from the pie business, that’s a fortress’ – but his primary enterprise is ‘providing things money can’t buy…things you can’t speak about at the dinner table’. This turns out not to be ‘immigration!’ as Hugo pipes up, but the sex trade, going on to inform the disbelieving duo of their father’s after-hours affairs with a story involving their dad shaving a sex worker entirely bald, with not a single hair left on his body – ‘and we checked’, he says with a shake of his head. Suddenly the previously found bag of human hair takes on an appalling context, produced anew by a horrified Hugo (Hugo’s facial expressions are brilliant throughout).
Teddy knows all the tricks in the book, a master of emotional manipulation as he switches from threat and violence to being strangely empathetic, offering words of understanding and promises to look after them through their service. He pries his way into the boys’ weak spots to divide them, putting ideas into the more impressionable Hugo’s head – ‘does he make all the decisions’ – he jabs a thumb at Hartley (who is older by ten minutes) – ‘or do you ever get a chance to think for yourself?’ There is a particularly chilling scene in which Teddy speaks about his unenviable plans for Hartley on the phone to an anonymous business partner while staring straight at him, working to further his siege of terror and power over the unfortunate twins.
The ageless, timeless quality of the temporally ambiguously set and costumes – I had assumed these events were taking place at some point in the first half of the 20th century at the latest – is disturbed by Teddy’s manifesting a small, chunky Nokia, jolting the scene into the relative present. This still leaves much room for error in pinpointing an exact year, however, a technique employed by products of the horror genre such as David Robert Mitchell’s It Follows, which features black and white movies, old cars, and futuristic mobile devices. This serves to further disorient and unnerve us by placing the action in an in-between, liminal space, somewhere familiar but nonetheless uncannily Other.
Speaking of the horror genre, this show gets neo-pagan horror-core real quick – Hartley’s mannered performance gives way to an efficient and unhinged killer, coming into his own as the eponymous butcher. I will say no more, other than to beware the lonely goatherd. My main concern with the play was that of the issue of forced male prostitution being engaged with for seemingly no other reason than to lend seediness, dramatic intrigue or gravitas, without sufficient justification for or thoughtful exploration of the traumatic subject. While undoubtedly compounding the nightmarish situation the boys find themselves in, it simply feels unnecessary, and is moved on from strangely quickly.
Generally, however, Butcher is quirky, creepy, and often bleakly hilarious – it’s a real treat to witness these talented actors at such dangerously close range.