Pitlochry Festival Theatre, in repertory until October 2004

AS PLAYS and styles go in and out of fashion, there’s always a case for re-evaluating neglected works from the canon. Tastes change, society changes, ideas of what constitutes theatre change. There was a time in the 18th century when King Lear was considered unstageable – now, many people regard it as the greatest play ever written. In a more minor way, Stephen Daldry allowed modern audiences to see JB Priestley’s An Inspector Calls as something richer than the repertory warhorse it had become by presenting it in a fresh and original style.

Martyn James in 'The Shop at Sly Corner'

So there’s nothing implicitly wrong about artistic director John Durnin giving The Shop at Sly Corner a new look. Edward Percy might mean nothing to us now, but his all-but-forgotten play enjoyed considerable success when it premiered in 1946, enjoying a lengthy West End run, productions abroad and adaptations on television and film.

True, the growth of television pretty much led to an end to this genre of theatre. It’s a crime drama with a vaguely psychological bent about a career criminal who ploughs his ill-gotten gains into creating a high-class, law-abiding daughter. She knows nothing of his early years in France as a knife-wielding thug and is unaware that his antiques business is a front for a trade in stolen goods. This deception leaves him vulnerable to blackmail and his eventual undoing. Today it could be the plot of any episode of The Bill, but in the 1940s the theatre was the place for such fare.

A successful revival would require two things. One is for the audience to feel it’s getting more than a routine episode of The Bill, be that theatrical or philosophical. The other is for the anachronisms to be addressed: aside from its general staginess, the play has an uncomfortable whiff of xenophobia, homophobia and upper-class superiority.

In other words, the production needs to have an attitude towards the play. But Durnin approaches it as though its qualities were self-evident and its flaws non-existent. It simply doesn’t hold up to such an uncritical take. The cast tackle it with customary Pitlochry enthusiasm, but they can’t overcome the feeling that there must be something better to do with your time.

© Mark Fisher, 2004