Brimstone and Treacle – banned Dennis Potter play returns

Rupert Friend as the mysterious Martin. Photograph: Faye Thomas

When Tom Bates, one of the characters in Dennis Potter’s 1976 play Brimstone and Treacle, yearns for ‘the England I used to know’, he expresses a sentiment that you’re just as likely to hear today.

This month, a revival of Potter’s most controversial play, banned for showing the rape of a disabled woman, is being staged at the Arcola.

It tells the story of Mr and Mrs Bates, an unhappy middle aged couple whose daughter Pattie is in a vegetative state following a hit-and-run accident.

Their home, a claustrophobic, closed environment, is infiltrated by a mysterious outsider, Martin, who earns their trust before raping their daughter.

An uncomfortable portrait of suburban fear, paranoia and xenophobia, director Amelia Sears thinks Brimstone and Treacle is a play for our times.

She says: “There’s a huge aspect of the play which is about people being trapped in a situation where they’re frightened of the world outside.

“At the time it was written there was a recession, IRA bombings and now since September 11 we are in a world where people don’t know who they can trust.

“It seems to me that the play is a metaphor for the country at the moment, with people frightened and wanting something to blame.”

The revival production is set in 1977, the year of the Silver Jubilee. Sears hopes this will help audiences draw a parallel with the current Jubilee year.

“I’ve just inched it forward a couple of years to give it that relevance. Jubilees, they’re such a snapshot aren’t they? They feel like sugar a lot of the time. People embrace it and they get behind it but actually the problems still exist, they’re still there.

“Something we’re interested in is the whole punk movement, with the Sex Pistols releasing God Save the Queen while the Jubilee was going on. It’s that counterpoint that’s really interesting.

“I think the character of Pattie is symbolic of what was happening with punk. She’s trapped in this world where people aren’t communicating and is unable to communicate in a way they accept as normal. So her kind of frustration feels quite synonymous with punk.”

Potter’s plays often attracted criticism for their sexual content, earning him the tabloid nickname ‘Dirty Den’.  But the controversy surrounding Brimstone and Treacle, centring around a rape, was more serious, with the BBC banning the broadcasting of the play for over a decade.

“It’s been definitely a journey of trying to keep my thinking in the right place,” says Sears.

“From a woman’s point of view it’s quite hard to think that essentially the message of the play is that someone comes and a rapes a girl and that it heals her. In the crudest possible sense that’s what was written.

“But for me, when I knew more about Potter and found out he was also sexually abused it made more sense, that it was, in a way, him saying ‘my sexual abuse was not the downfall of me’.

“I think essentially he’s saying, ‘we don’t ever like to consider the possibility that bad things can have positive actions but they can.’ And that’s the way life is. It’s just not the way we like to see stories unfold.”

Sears hopes the production will introduce Dennis Potter to a new audience of those who were not born or were too young at the time to remember his plays.

She adds: “I think there’s a whole generation now that wouldn’t know him. Yet his work still feels incredibly modern. He’s got that irreverence that so many writers don’t have.

“He’s out there saying things bravely. There aren’t many voices like that left. It’s not that he didn’t care what people thought, but he didn’t let it stop him saying what he wanted to say.”

Brimstone and Treacle
Until Saturday 2 June
Arcola Theatre
24 Ashwin Street
Dalston
E8 3DL
Box office: 020 7503 1646