Lyle Kessler’s three-hander grips at Jermyn Street Theatre, driven by volatile performances and a story that refuses to behave.
Orphans director Al Miller says he ploughed through dozens of scripts looking for his next project. His mission: something with “real voltage”.
He alighted upon Lyle Kessler’s taut three-hander and thought, “It’s going to be a ride!”
The play has an impeccable pedigree from its 1983 LA roots with stars such as Albert Finney, Jesse Eisenberg and Alec Baldwin sinking their teeth into the deliciously ripe dialogue, with actors given meaty mouthfuls to chew up and spit out.
The set-up is this. Orphan brothers Treat and Phillip live in a rundown Philadelphia row house. Treat, with psychopathic tendencies, goes out into the world to rob innocents while tender and simple Phillip stays at home as a recluse fearing that if he were to step outside, he would die from his allergies.
Treat likes it this way, with Phillip cloistered at home. He cares for his sibling in his own demented way and strikes down any attempt by his docile brother to better himself. Treat is mutely terrified by the prospect of the boy moving on – the shadow of abandonment running through the entire piece.
Enter Harold
One spring day, Treat brings home Harold, a middle-aged businessman, drunk beyond his wits and telling tales of his own motherless past.
Handsomely dressed, Harold has stocks and bonds in his briefcase. With Harold tied to a chair, Treat heads downtown to see if he can find a friend who might pay to release the man they assume to be a well-upholstered industrialist.
But it doesn’t turn out that way. Harold is not a doughy journeyman in a natty suit but something altogether more intriguing. All conventions are upended. “You’re supposed to be a kidnap victim,” insists Treat.
Fred Woodley Evans and Chris Walley play the brothers
There are inevitable notes of Pinter – in the covert menace – and Mamet – in the masculine hierarchies – but the writer goes in decidedly oblique directions at every juncture. Power gets passed around like a cheap bottle of vodka as relationships blossom and fracture in the most unexpected ways.
The credibility of this engrossing narrative relies on the performances. Here, there is not a flaw. Chris Walley as thuggish Treat is intimidating and rangy. Fred Woodley Evans manages to convey Phillip without the tendentious sentimentality to which such a role might succumb.
At the heart of the matter, and showcasing a career of craft, charm and presence, is Forbes Masson as Harold, swivelling on a sixpence from violence to empathy to comedy to wit, all to dazzle and confuse the brothers.
Harold spins a story
Imagine a cross between Tony Soprano and Papa Smurf.
At no point are his true motives transparent – he doesn’t appear interested in escape or revenge. In fact, you could probably construct a plausible theory that Harold is a figment of the boys’ imagination, filling in for the father figure their lives so obviously lack.
The play, ornamented by Sarah Beaton’s distressed set, is never less than electrifying, as the director had hoped. The story never goes where you think it might – or even should. Although this erratic tendency brings with it the peril of tonal uncertainty, the sure performances always take the production back to solid ground.
In theory, Kessler’s Orphans should be a conventional genre piece about gangsters and violence. It is not. It is something far more bamboozling. Expect the unexpected.
Orphans runs at the Jermyn Street Theatre until 24 January 2025
This review first appeared on The Spy In The Stalls