Review: Sheppey (Orange Tree Theatre)

'An insane man gives all his money to the poor’, exclaims the doctor in Somerset Maugham‘s last play. 'The normal man is selfish… grasping.' It’s a bleak diagnosis of humanity, and one which is prodded and poked repeatedly during this intimate study of one man’s psyche, staged with sensitivity and intelligence by Paul Miller.

Sheppey (nicknamed after the island on which he was born) is a barber whose belief that he was born lucky is confirmed when he wins a life-changing sum on a sweepstake. Having spent the previous morning testifying as a witness in a trial, and realising that many of London’s ne’er-do-wells are simply good people struggling desperately in the 1930s Depression, he promptly vows to spend his remaining days 'living like Jesus', and donating his winnings to the poor. He is immediately dismissed as barmy.

The cast is full of fine actors, but even their spirited performances and expert delivery of a few decent one-liners can’t get around the fact that the play’s first act is turgid. Set in the barbershop where Sheppey works, it offers little more than an introduction to Sheppey’s down-to-earth charm (and my, does John Ramm have that down pat) and his recent epiphany at the courthouse. But by the second act, when Sheppey reveals his plans to his wife, daughter, and her fiancé (all of whom have his fortune earmarked for their own designs) better things are bubbling. Maugham’s script begins to distil meaty ideological questions around kindness, criminality and sanity into the bickering of this all-too-human family, and the cast grabs every moment with gusto, tempered by Miller’s precise direction.

Josh Dylan is superb as Sheppey’s prospective son-in-law, Ernie, a conceited young teacher with ambitions in Westminster (which Sheppey’s money would help very nicely with, thank you). Spouting economic arguments against helping the poor, and dismissing the Bible as the fiction of the uneducated man, his eye-watering pomposity is topped only by his staggering failure to see the self-interest behind his arguments. Sheppey’s daughter Florrie, meanwhile, is under no such illusions, and Katie Moore plays her greed with an intensity that dances artfully on the brink of deranged. But perhaps most beguiling is the gentle chemistry between Sheppey and his wife, played with tenderness by Sarah Ball. Their tacit understanding of one another’s quirks – born of a long and happy marriage – is one of the production’s most touching elements.

Less successful, however, are Miller’s nods to the play’s determinism, which appear in the form of bright white lights, filling the stage momentarily during the specific plot points that seal Sheppey’s fate. The cast’s performances are strong enough to make such an obvious device unnecessary.

But the questions this production raises are its greatest strengths. 'Sanity means doing what everyone else does and thinking what everyone else thinks,' expounds Ernie. At a moment when poverty and social division seem as pressing as in the 30s, is it time we all became a little less sane, and a little more kind?

Sheppey runs at the Orange Tree Theatre until 7 January.