HOLIDAY FICTION Folk theatre runs riot

Press, 19 November 1977, Page 17

HOLIDAY FICTION Folk theatre runs riot

God Perkins. By David Pownall. Faber 142 pp. $9.85. (Reviewed by Joan Curry) Somewhere in the north of England the Dramacart Moving Theatre Company travels round in caravans taking the theatre to 1 the culturehungry masses, whether they like it or not. The masses, however, prefer to watch telly. Most of the people who do come are offended by the obscenities in the Dramacart playwright’s latest work and walk out before the first interval to demand their money back. The playwright’s wife runs a onewoman campaign to have her husband's play banned and its author disposed of in some way so that she can return to her rightful milieu of a select housing estate and a (new) husband in an establishment job. The Australian artistic director and the Irish general manager fight a running battle over Art versus Profits, involving members of the company, whenever possible, in a series of machinations. The Machiavelli of the Company is the front-of-house manager who occupies himself in his caravan with his portable Cordon Blue Gastronome Kit while listening to the plots and counter-plots which he manipulates to his own advantage. With everybody looking out for number one it is only natural that Fred, the engineer, who is so oily that his socks stick to his feet like paint, should also be awake. He has managed to fiddle his maintenance budget to buy a new generator so that he can

spare generator gives the director a brainwave. Why not use the parts of the old Perkins to build mechanical horse for a new plat abotu St Paul. Fred, the frustrated a<tor suddenly sees a chance to appear - the stage as the rider and operator of the mechanical horse with a star part God. Ail this happens within the first 20 pages, in case anyone should imagine that the whole plot has been expos d here. There is much more to come The book Js brimming with odd-Oal' all she has to persuade the p’avwr.ght Testament so that she can play the part of .St Paul's wife or mistress, to the ex-composer whose works are scored for some very strange instruments, including hub-caps off the Bedford. Watching nervously over all this theatrical hanky-panky are the limp wristed men of Iheatrefund, the national grant-aid body, tn whom the real obscenities are the middle classes, the nouveaux riches, and anything even remotely bourgeois. But the real star of this book is God Perkins himself. His picture adorns the dust jacket and he takes centre stage like the great ham that he is. He s not at all handsome. In fact he is described as “a terrifyingly ugly machine ridden by a soulful oily man in overalls.” But he has much charm and David Pownall must have had enormous fun writing about him