It may sound rather out of keeping with the festive spirit, but the Southwark Playhouse show for early December is The Grim. The set certainly lives up to the promise of the title – a white-tiled undertaker’s surgery, with a cold steel table centre stage and a pack of painful-looking surgical implements. Strangely enough, though, with the arrival of Shaun (the new proprietor of his family’s undertaking firm) and his assistant Robert the mood quickly switches to what would now be regarded as highly inappropriate banter – the date is 1964 – and the kind of black humour you might expect from those who work in this kind of business.
Shaun teases his Irish Catholic assistant for his religion (there’s a play on words with papist and rapist – did I mention inappropriate?) but mostly for his superstitions. These come in many forms but Robert’s ultimate fear is The Grim, a wolf-like creature with staring red eyes that you only see when you’re about to die. Shaun mocks all this but Robert says he has proof – his aunt who saw The Grim and died. When? Some six months later. How? She fell down a well, and oh yes, she was blind. So, yes, black humour but delivered with a deft touch by Edmund Morris (as Shaun, and also the playwright) and Louis Davison that it has the audience laughing very much out loud.
Shaun and Robert are just two boys, bantering about football results and sweets, from a seemingly innocent world until they have to address their latest client, a rapist and police killer by the name of Gallagher. When Shaun pops out to Woolworths, Robert experiences strange voices and flickering lights and is more than a little on edge when Gallagher – a huge man in white boxers – is put on the slab. There’s a bullet hole in his head and plenty of other wounds and Shaun begins to mock him. Until Gallagher (an aptly terrifying Harry Carter) springs from the table and threatens him with a hammer…
As you might imagine, the mood changes again. And this is indeed a night of changing genres and tones – as well as a short one, the play being barely over an hour in length – with farce, horror and political polemic close on each other’s heels. It doesn’t quite come off – Gallagher’s account of his set-up by the police and the truth of the crimes slows things down too much in the second half – but it very nearly does. This is no small part down to the actors, whose energy and vulnerabilities explode in very close proximity to the audience – and there is the odd gasp.
Hilarious and dark in equal measure, this could be just the antidote to Christmas sentimentality you’re looking for.
The Grim runs at Southwark Playhouse until 6th December. For more information, and for bookings, please visit www.southwarkplayhouse.co.uk.
