The menace from Dennis

4:22pm Thursday 10th January 2008

It is a classic dramatic motif - the stranger who enters town and upsets the equilibrium. Be it a heroic figure or a darker force, many a tale hinges on the entrance of an unknown character and this is the key to Brimstone and Treacle, the Dennis Potter play that begins a four-night run at Putney Arts Theatre next week.

In Brimstone and Treacle, the stranger is the innocously named Martin and the lives which change inexorably belong to Amy and Tom Bates.

Up to this point, they have been nursing their daughter, Pattie, who lies permanently strapped to the sofa in the living room of their suburban north London home after a hit-and-run accident left her in a vegetative state. While Amy lives in hope of recovery, Tom shuns or fears such hope.

Enter Martin. He worms his way into the Bates's home after Tom came to his aid when he collapsed in the street.

Director Stephen Scammell says: "It is like Burt Lancaster in The Rain Maker, who arrives into town when the crops are dying and he promises to make it rain, or the Pied Piper - the idea of someone coming in and things never being the same.

"From (Dennis Potter's) point of view, it gives him a licence to have something out of the blue, a catalyst to move the everyman characters out of a rut. The author can be as free as they like with the outsider and it plays on the common fear of the unexpected."

Stephen also has his theories on the title of the play, which is probably the darkest by Potter, who is best known for his TV dramas The Singing Detective and Pennies From Heaven: "I did some research and found it goes back to old medicines - the idea of kill or cure."

Martin certainly performs some horrific acts once he has won over the Bates family with his sycophancy and good cooking but Stephen says he also releases Pattie, Amy and Tom from their entrapments.

Despite the dark subject, Potter is a tremendously witty writer and Stephen has eked out as much as he can. Outdoor Shakespeare productions are Stephen's bread and butter and you can see some Bard-ish trademarks in Brimstone - namely humour mixed with studying the human condition.

One big difference, though, is the setting. "Moving indoors and putting on a play with such a small cast makes it such a different prospect," says Stephen. "Putney Arts Theatre lets me build claustrophobia that you can't get in outdoor shows and I deliberately chose the smaller studio so people can get right up close to all the unsavoury things."

Brimstone and Treacle; Putney Arts Theatre, Ravenna Road. January 15 to 19, 7.45pm, £10/£7/£5, call 020 8788 6943 or visit putneyartstheatre.org.uk

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