Social Criticism at the Theatre (Play Review)

Joe Orton, ‘The Good and Faithful Servant’

Black comedy is what Orton is famous for, and this play has its fair share of dark humour. It also succeeds as a social satire on two counts.

First, it reveals the hypocrisy of each generation’s criticism of the next, especially in the area of sexual morality.

Secondly, it reveals the gradual co-opting of every aspect of people’s lives by a corporation. Perhaps the best candidate for the title ‘good and faithful servant’ is the HR manager of the firm, who oversees literally everything from birth to death. She replaces the priest as pastoral adviser, while all the time promoting the needs of the company.

The other good and faithful servants in the play are the employees who give their working lives to the firm. A faulty toaster that administers dangerous electric shocks and a clock that runs backwards are a poor reward for fifty years of service and a work-related injury. Worse still, the firm’s employees are dehumanized, not recognized or remembered, and alienated from one another by the sheer scale of the enterprise.

It is by no means clear why anyone would want to work there in the first place, yet the retired employee is tireless in encouraging his lazy but pliable grandson to sign up.

Naturally, the firm depicted is paternalist in the old-fashioned way. Labour has not yet been outsourced to the developing world. The company offers a job for life. There is a benevolent fund and in-house childcare provision. Things are, if anything, worse today!

Whatever one might think of the recent production at the Corpus Christi Playroom (short scenes interspersed with appropriate music from the Sixties), the text certainly stands up to criticism and is itself a powerful critique of the corporate world and its co-opting of our humanity.

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