Brunton Theatre, Musselburgh, and touring 2006

Rapture Theatre's "The Collection"

THE EASY thing would be to say that Mike Cullen’s play was about the problem of debt and the inhumane practices of the loan shark. In 2006, even more than when the play was first staged in 1995, we are a society perilously reliant on credit.

A generation brought up on student loans thinks nothing of shifting thousands from card to card in an endless cycle of avoidance. ‘The Collection’ is set in motion by the suicide of a woman whose debts have got out of control – an act that is all too believable.

Yet that’s not really what the play is about. Despite the setting, Cullen takes as given the obscenity of poverty and the greater obscenity of those who exploit it. For the playwright, that’s almost too obvious to need stating.

What interests him more is the way poverty affects all those who come into contact with it. Like David Mamet’s ‘Glengarry Glen Ross’, a play with which it has many similarities, ‘The Collection’ is set in a testosterone-powered office where the male workers hone their ruthless business techniques. In Mamet’s play they’re selling real estate, here they’re picking up interest repayments, but the cynicism and bravado is much the same.

Although Cullen captures the desperation and shame of the clients – women who are prepared to go to any lengths to stop the debts being called in – his real focus is the emotional damage sustained by the men. To survive in this most merciless end of the capitalist system, the debt collectors must shut themselves off to emotion and objectify their clients as subhuman. Then comes the casual violence, meaningless sex and cold-hearted opportunism.

It means that when Bob Lawson, a collector with 15 years service, allows a chink in his protective armour, imagining that a more sympathetic approach will avoid the trauma he has witnessed, his whole personality crumples under the strain.

Rather than being admired, his behaviour is perceived as weakness not only by his bullying workmates but by the very women he is trying vainly to help. As Lawson fails to reconcile compassion with effectiveness, he stands as a symbol of nothing less than masculinity in crisis.

If that sounds weighty, there’s nothing in Cullen’s script that makes it seem so. Rather it is a tense, tough-talking thriller, at turns funny and vicious, that never lets up. You wonder why it’s taken over a decade to come round again, not least in Michael Emans’ muscular production for Rapture Theatre.

As Lawson, Jimmy Chisholm is superb, weather-beaten but dynamic as he balances the competing impulses that are tearing him apart. Paul Thomas Hickey makes a sinister boss, revelling in the nihilism of the job, while Stewart Porter as the new boy takes a chilling journey from self-hatred to cynicism. But for a tendency to smile at moments of tension, Fletcher Mathers brings dignity to the cash-strapped client, contributing yet another tough edge to a powerful show.

The Collection can be seen at Easdale Island Hall (20 May 2006) and Mull Little Theatre, Dervaig (21 May 2006).

© Mark Fisher, 2006

Links

• Rapture Theatre