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# REVIEW: Ruffian on the stair@The Lantern @ ACT
- URL: https://www.scenemag.co.uk/review-ruffian-on-the-stair/
- Published: 2017-05-06T09:05:44.000Z
- Updated: 2017-05-07T10:00:25.000Z
- Description: Pretty much Joe Orton’s first play – written in 1964 – this 3-hander deals comically and darkly with love, sex for sale , Catholicism, homosexuality, lies, power and loneliness.
- Author: Brian Butler
- Tags: Arts, In The South, News, Reviews, Theatre, Brighton Fringe, Joe Orton, Lantern Theatre, Review Brian Butler

![](https://www.scenemag.co.uk/content/images/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/web-300-3.jpg)

Pretty much Joe Orton’s first play – written in 1964 – this 3-hander deals comically and darkly with love, sex for sale , Catholicism, homosexuality, lies, power and loneliness.

**If we believe what the characters tell us,** Mike is an ex-boxer fallen on hard times, and now involved in shady goings on in the toilets at Kings Cross. He’s living with Joyce alias Maddie, the 3rd generation of a family of whores. What’s certain is Mike has a loaded gun and a guilty secret.

Their dysfunctional domestic routine is turned upside down by the mincing arrival of the very handsome young male hairdresser Wilson, who knows a lot more about them than a stranger should.

What unravels is a story of death, revenge and coincidence – very reminiscent of the early writings of Harold Pinter. Orton uses the heightened language of a poet to comic relief in this most mundane and claustrophobic bedsit, getting laughs out of many excellent one-liners – as in *“They think just because you’re a criminal they can treat you like dirt “* and *“they enquired into my circumstances – I don’t have any circumstances “.*

When Mike murders Wilson , Joyce’s comment is *“this is what comes of not having a regular job “.*

The Blue Devil Theatre Company’s production at the Lantern Theatre, has very strong players who really spark off each other and rarely lose an opportunity for humour, pathos and menace. **Kiki Kendrick** as the bored and past her best Joyce, **Padraig Lynch** as the self-righteous Mike and **Elliott Rogers** as truly menacing Wilson all excel.

**The play runs again on May 26 and 27.**