Good writers of farce are relatively rare in present day English theatre. It was therefore a considerable pleasure to encounter in the Oxford Playhouse Company's recent world première of Stephen Bill's The Bottom Drawer, the work of a writer who is obviously an important addition to those numerically small ranks. Bill is alive to the cardinal necessity in farce writing of treating ordinary people caught up in ridiculous situations. This is evident throughout The Bottom Drawer in which the author also uses the time-honoured device of multiple doors for exits and entrances, normal, flurried or tempestuous, as the mood dictates, with much ingenuity.
The basic situation is of a young girl suddenly announcing her intended marriage to her parents, her mother wrongly insisting that she must be pregnant. The mother, with whom it is not difficult to sympathise in her domestic tribulations, since she is the sole support of her shiftless husband (who is more adept at spouting Labour politics from the depths of an armchair than in making any effort to contribute to the household budget) and is not above a spot of sex on the side - with the breathily amorous uncle of the plot. Bill has exploited all the farcical possibilities of the main and contributory situations and written a play that is consistently funny even if a couple of four-letter words are sometimes overworked.
In the Playhouse Company production, very deftly directed by Nicolas Kent, a producer who invariably establishes a sympathetic rapport with an author and his aims, there was a range of alert, farce conscious performances. Helen Cotterill, as the flail-tongued mother, Sharon Maiden as the cause of all the bother and John Bird as the lecherous uncle, a character like a lusting octopus with multi-tentacles a-quiver with predatory movement, were in fine fooling form. Leslie Ash as the outwardly brazen, inwardly sensible wench, Jayne Tottman as the bride-to-be's garishly garbed younger sister, John Gordon-Sinclair as the gawky Scots bridegroom-to-be and Paul Sims as his teenage pal, "a right Herbert", gave specially good support.