Alas, the title is not a euphemism for masturbation - what Oscar Wilde might have called the self-love that dare not speak its name. There's little so stimulating in Peter Shaffer's 1958 drama about the middle-class Harrington family, who have recently moved from London to their weekend cottage in Suffolk.
Dad is a run-of-the-mill businessman boor and Mum fancies herself as a sophisticated continental type. They have engaged a young German on the run from his Nazi family to tutor their chatterbox daughter. But at the centre of the drama is the whining older son, Clive, a student struggling to separate from his parents and come to terms with his gay sexuality.
In the programme, director Dominic Hill argues that there's much more to this than meets the eye. He senses the shadow of Ibsenite social criticism in the play's structure. He detects the passion of Edward Albee coursing through the dialogue. He omits to mention a touch of Tennessee Williams in the doting-mother-and-gay-son relationship. The son is also a contemporary type like John Osborne's disaffected grammar school boy, Jimmy Porter, in Look Back In Anger - albeit with a smaller vocabulary. As such, the play is an uncertain, faintly derivative work from the subsequent author of Equus and Amadeus.
The proof of the pudding is in the performance and Hill's direction is less convincing than his short essay. Tim Meacock's design on five different levels, with assorted colours and materials, is visually and dramatically bitty. Although the cast apply themselves studiously to the text, the dialogue is generally tame - the father's minatory "go to bed!" is feebly rebuffed by the son's "I'll go when I'm good and ready!". Moreover, Hill's suggestion that this is tinged with existential angst is very optimistic. It feels more like a cowed tale of Anglo-Saxon repression. A not-coming-out-of-the-closet story. A play that dare not speak its theme.
Until Saturday 9 March, Salisbury Playhouse. Box office: 01722 320333.
Five Finger Exercise
