What a great homecoming for Hangover Square, Patrick Hamilton's novel of boozy desperation set in Earl's Court, to be staged in the intimate, garret-like space of the Finborough Theatre overlooking the very streets and stuccoed buildings where the novel's characters downed their gin and French. Hamilton might have sniffed at the gastro pub downstairs which has replaced the traditional boozer but the area's sleazy ambience remains intact.
       The interwar years with its fascist sympathizers and louche layabouts are grimly recreated in Fidelis Morgan's expressionistic production, whispering revelers in dinner dress huddle around a mantelpiece crammed with empty bottles while the dark streets of Earl's Court and its mansion blocks are conveyed by a chunk of balustrading and a grimy glass roof that runs with rain water.
       Matthew Flynn's George Harvey Bone is a big, shuffling protagonist, nervous as a deer and always apologetic. He looked like a baritone fallen on hard times. A sympathetic second-rater from a second rate Public School he's adrift in a community of exiles. Flynn is both a put-upon everyman and a banal killer. Once he slips on his anonymous drab raincoat with the frayed cuffs he becomes the Earl's Court punter with the whiff of the wife murderer about him.
       Flynn stares at the audience through bloodshot eyes with one lid drooping uncontrollably as he tries to pull himself together. His attempts seem doomed to failure: if he could only leave Earl's Court for the less hung-over hinterlands of Notting Hill and Bayswater (much laughter from the audience at this suggestion), if he could only get to Maidenhead where he enjoyed a moment of happiness on the river.
       The source of his misery is his infatuation with lazy, out of work actress Netta Longden who steadily depletes him of his savings. She ensnares him with a flash of black suspenders, always maintaining her chilly indifference. She doesn't even dislike him but is frightened he'll bore her as he does when he takes her to dinner at Perriers and tells her he loves her.
       Netta is played brilliantly by two actresses: Clare Calbraith and Caroline Faber in lovely understated period clothes brown high heels pack more erotic oomph than anything contemporary fashion can offer. Bone suffers from 'dotty periods,' 'come-overs' when he goes dead and is unaware of what he's thinking. In the novel we are privy to the seductive inner voice which tells him he must kill Netta. Morgan has decided to dramatize that inner voice in an idealized Netta, a good Netta that comforts Bone and lays plans to kill the bad, coarse-grained tormentor who humiliates Bone in the flesh. I was unclear why half way through the play the women swapped roles.
       Bone is a schizophrenic and around the walls are hung framed photos of ears and eyes highlighting his disordered senses. At times the cast whisper in the darkness creating an unnerving susurrus which haunts Bone's dreams. Bone's dreams are banal and hopeless: a plan to live with Netta on a chicken farm at Haywards Heath; a dirty weekend in Brighton with Netta where she will be 'nice' to him deteriorates into farce when she brings her fascist lover Peter (Gyuri Sarossy's pugnacious terrier modeled on Oswald Mosley down to the polo neck and belt buckle) and a drunk from the railway station. Netta remain unattainable, fuelling the masochistic misery of Bone as he hears her noisily making love with the railway pick up through the hotel walls. Hamilton prefers women to remain unpossessed by his unhappy male leads; they follow old-fashioned codes of honour in a world dominated with little vicious Peters. There's always a sense of impotence about these characters, their suffering is evoked in the doomed love poetry of Sir John Suckling which Flynn boomingly declaims in between scenes.
       All of the actors and actresses were outstanding, dancing to period music, fixing drinks and creating the whirl of a nightclub or railway carriage. Jonathan Kemp was particularly good as the theatrical agent Eddie Carstairs: his face a mask of cynicism and large plastic smiles beneath a pair of dead eyes. Gyuri Sarossy's Peter too deserves a special mention for his unrelenting revolted wince as he swigs the morning's first gin. Bone too shares the same alcoholic paradox- he's disgusted by boozing but until he gets to Bayswater he's in for a long night.
Daniel Jeffreys