Review: DR ANGELUS, Finborough Theatre, 28 November 2016

Dr Johnson - handsome, charming, naive - has taken up a partnership with the eccentric Glasgow GP, Dr Angelus, about whom there are whispers of behaviour a little more than the merely unorthodox. But it's a good offer and Johnson's humble roots means that he needs to cash in on his brilliant academic career, having been lucky to miss the carnage of World War I, scholarships supporting his medical education in Durham and London. When he is browbeaten a second time into signing a death certificate by Angelus, the young man realises that the gossip about his senior partner is grounded in fact, and that he is horribly trapped by his financial position and prior indiscretions - as, of course, Angelus planned all along.

Director Jenny Ogilvie revives Scottish doctor- dramatist James Bridie's 1947 dark comedy (or is it a thriller?), in the claustrophobic consulting room set of the Finborough Theatre, the play's first English production for 70 years. Eerie, occasionally taut with tension, it is nevertheless very much of its time, its atmosphere reminiscent of a mid-career Alfred Hitchcock movie (a man with whom Bridie collaborated on projects). Was it worth resurrecting all these years on? Just about, would be my answer.

As befits a period piece, the acting is somewhat stiff and formal, the language often more suited to announcements than conversation. David Rintoul's Angelus starts pompously verbose, but the twinkle in his eye soon acquires an evil glint as his ego - as ever not far from the surface in a man of medicine - overpowers any residual morality left in his soul. Alex Bhat looks perfect for Johnson, Angelus's stooge, doing his best work when he reverts to an East End accent once he believes the game to be up and he can let fly about the hypocrisy all around him.

The principals get good support from Vivienne Heilbron as Mrs Angelus, all meekness until it's too late and Rosalind McAndrew's bolshie maid, whose power in the household isn't all she thinks it is. Lesley Harcourt's sexpot, Mrs Corcoran, is woefully underwritten, but delivered with the confidence one can expect from an accomplished temptress. Malcolm Rennie steals all his scenes, doubling as the complacent buffoon Sir Gregory Butt and the wonderfully relaxed Inspector MacIvor.

It's old-fashioned entertainment, the play's pace sagging in the second half with some fairly lengthy leaps of faith required to knit together a far-fetched plot, but it's all delivered well enough, Chris Drohan and Marec Joyce doing good and necessary work with the sound and the lighting. That said, post-Shipman and post-Savile, I wasn't sure what the play was trying to say to a 2016 audience - we surely know now that formal authority and social status can mask the most grotesquely evil narcissists high on their self-proclaimed Ubermensch status.

Perhaps that's a lesson society cannot learn too often.

Dr Angelus continues at the Finborough Theatre until 22 December.

Photo Lidia Crisafulli

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