Singular secrets of survival

10 April 2012

Stewart Permutt's four short monologues nicely define the meaning of the Yiddish word "meshuga" - an affectionate term for "crazy".

First there's a dapper East End caterer who has tea with Jesus Christ at the Waldorf hotel and advises the Messiah on a recipe for fried potatoes. Then there's a snooty lady of the manor who eagerly awaits her reunion with a son who has been locked-up as a gay serial killer.

The third is tweedy gent who wears ladies' cosmetics in the Austrian Alps. Lastly, there's an Jewish mother in an old people's home boasting of her psychiatrist son - the author of a fictional book The Painted Smile Of Despair.

Permutt's characters are "singular" thanks to their eccentricity and loneli-ness, but his writing revels cheekily in the camp artifice of their self-protecting delusions. As such, his monologues are each a spirited celebration of the split personality as survival strategy.

This is a strategy rooted in the fatalistic humour of the caterer's gag about the Israelites - "if Moses had turned left instead of right we'd have had the oil and they'd have had the oranges". But, ultimately, Permutt's writing exhibits more affection than insight, putting the Anglo-Saxon sugar into the Yiddish meshuga.

Andrew Wood directs with subtle finesse, focusing jokes and soliciting pathos. Mark Eden (formerly Alan Bradley from Coronation Street) opens the evening as the Christ fantasist, forcing the audience to attend carefully to his softly spoken delivery. Pauline Munro is airily proud as the lady of the manor and Kevin Moore is no less sad or plucky as the gent in cosmetics who swims the English Channel to test his tear-proof mascara.

Doreen Mantle is the sweetest of the four, seamlessly inhabiting the role of the catty old lady who's sure she's getting out of her old folks' home alive.

Singular People

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