Little Malcolm and his Struggle Against the Eunuchs

In a recent interview, legendary British director Mike Leigh proclaimed his friend and collaborator David Halliwell, who died in 2006, ‘one of the great writers who never happened’. Based on this superb fiftieth anniversary revival of this disturbing play (originally directed by Leigh), it’s easy to agree and hard to resist the urge to shout Halliwell’s name from the rooftops.

Halliwell’s skill is to start small, almost innocuously, then build up to something monstrous. And so we meet Malcolm Scrawdyke, kicked out of art school and festering in self-important rage in his shabby flat in Huddersfield. With bullying bluster, he sucks his friends Nipple, Wick and Irwin into his distorted view of the world, which sees him at its centre.

And, initially, the Party of Dynamic Erection, which Scrawdyke sets up, is funny – a painfully spot-on distillation of the pretentious things people tell themselves, rather than face reality. But as their play-acting shades from planning art heists to fascist salutes and secret tribunals, Halliwell’s satire darkens into a broader, profoundly disturbing political allegory for the dangers bred by disaffection and insecurity.

There’s a dizzying, obscene poetry to Scrawdyke’s paranoid rants. It’s masterfully vivid and superbly conveyed here by Daniel Easton, who’s magnetically grotesque as the self-appointed party leader, spitting out his words in impotent fury. And from Scott Arthur’s supercilious Nipple to Laurie Jamieson’s eager-to-impress Wick, the rest of the cast sketch their characters brilliantly.  

Clive Judd’s perfectly judged production captures a world in heightened microcosm – from the massive, Lowry-style, chalk-sketch backdrop of industrial Huddersfield, to the red banners that sprout up as Scrawdyke’s delusions of grandeur become increasingly fanatical. Feverishly scored and staged, its fantastical proportions embrace the seductive danger of the characters’ isolation.

And in one brutal, horrifying scene – when Ann (an excellent Rochenda Sandall), a girl Scrawdyke has been too afraid to ask out, is savagely beaten after trying to reason with him – we realise just how dangerous they have become. Judd switches seamlessly from dark comedy to bleak awfulness as Halliwell traces the trajectory of every blood-soaked despot in one squalid flat.