54. Clockwork Orange - Southwark Playhouse

I can remember distinctly the booking thought process for this one as I spotted it on the Southwark Playhouse website: Oooh.... Clockwork Orange, that might be interesting.... Clockwork Orange with PUPPETS!?!?!?T That’s... that’s... that’s just wrong *books*. Which makes it a shame, really, that there weren’t actually any puppets.


Well, there were moments throughout the production where both Dim and Georgie were played by three actors forming their faces with rubber gloved hands but this idea was also dropped relatively regularly so that one of the three could step forward and become the character whilst the other two were relegated to henchmen at their shoulders. I wasn’t quite sure what to make of it, I suspect there was some element of trying to explore gang dynamics with it but I think in the end as an audience member it was just confusing. Perhaps just using more non-speaking roles would have been more effective. It certainly didn’t satisfy what had attracted me to the project as described, my interest in how puppets can act as more effective emotional surrogates for humans characters and how combining that with violence would work. But, then it’s probably safer not to go into a theatre expecting a certain idea to be explored.

The real issue here, and one that I think Georgie and Dim were symbolic of, is that whilst the company had some good ideas they were generally used haphazardly and were incorporated enough into the world they were creating. Personally though, this is a problem I’ve often had with representations of Clockwork Orange – people never seem overly interested in creating a sense of the totalitarianism of the society upfront and I think that robs the audience. We should be both repelled and entranced by Alex and his ruffians – they’re both criminals and revolutionaries.

That said, though I was disappointed with this production, there was a lot of potential, even if some of the more effective, like the use of classical music, was a hangover from the book/film. I thought Eamon Ali, particularly, did a good job of playing Alex – infusing the character with some interesting moments. I also thought it was an excellent decision to have him in character from the outset, trailing audience members as they arrived and creating an excellent sense of menace and violence. Plus even if the menace was lost overall, the violence was generally well portrayed (the slapping, for example, was certainly much better than the blatantly fake ones I’d seen in Wastwater at the start of the week).

Overall this didn’t work for me because whilst there were some good ideas, they were too scattered to make much impact. Plus I didn’t feel enough attention had been spent on creating a cohesive, dramatic experience and atmosphere for the audience.