Simon Ward reviews God Don’t Live On A Council Estate at the Hen and Chickens Theatre

Dean Stalham’s 2010 play, God Don’t Live On A Council Estate, directed here by Jonathan Linsley, gives us another insight into the world that I was first introduced to in June of last year with So Help Me Dog. The dodgy art dealings are less to the forefront here, although the audience does sit under Marilyn’s Warhol-rendered gaze for a lot of the show. Indeed, Marilyn looms large in more ways than one, and her tragic story, including the way she was treated by the men in her life, forms the backdrop to the events unfolding on stage.

The writing is sinewy and full of repressed meaning. If before I heard echoes of Berkoff, this is Pinteresque. What is not said, what is left hanging in the pauses, is as important as what the characters say. The council estate setting affects everything – it is a bull-ring, a prison, an empire to be ruled over. The unlikely emperor, the self-styled God, is Arthur Dolan (Sidney Kean) – aging and infirm, yet still ruthlessly in control, manipulating those around him to do his bidding. Kean effortlessly brings to life the patriarch who has had his way too long – his mirthless smile cannot disguise his utter ruthlessness. He is constantly drawing on two huge oxygen cyclinders but refuses to admit that they are a sign of weakness – he is inhaling the finest mountain air which will keep him going forever. Into his lair comes his grandson, Danny (Francis Saunders), on a trip back to the estate from his new home in Spain. Danny wants to make a new life for himself and his son – if he can just sell a couple of paintings he can get settled there.

But there are nagging questions – how did his wife Caroline (Lisa Harmer) come to die? In the opening scenes of the play we witness how deeply disturbed she was and we understand Danny’s desire to rescue his child from such a toxic and disturbing environment, at least temporarily. Yet we saw nothing to suggest that she might not recover with treatment, still less that she was on the brink of death. And Danny may suspect that Arthur knows more about this than he cares to admit.

Meanwhile there are those paintings to sell, and for that, childhood companion and best friend Daisy (Jud Charlton) is on hand. Missing Danny, and resentful that he abandoned him, he nevertheless cannot resist falling back into the old rhythms of their friendship, brilliantly evoked by Charlton and Saunders. As the plot unfurls and the truth begins to emerge, the play gets murkier and murkier, with each revelation more disturbing than the last. The full horror of Arthur’s depraved actions culminates in a showdown that could go either way – and Stalham leaves it to us to decide which. This is an uncomfortable, uncompromising work, which deploys its own dazzlingly rococco demotic language to outline a tale of pure evil.

God Don’t Live On A Council Estate is touring to the Tom Thumb Theatre, Margate on Friday 10th October and the Lantern Theatre, Brighton on Friday 17th and Saturday 18th October