There is a reason Alan Bennett’s Enjoy didn’t do too well in the 1980s - it isn’t very good. Examining a housing estate-cum-demolition-site through the eyes of an unexpected guest, it has a lot in common with Joe Orton’s Entertaining Mr Sloane.  But whilst Orton’s vicious energy holds his play together, Bennett is depending on his wit here. It isn’t enough and isn’t the right support anyway – the light language and heavy plot cancel each other out, so instead of rumbling into something real, the more threatening elements are dampened by a flurry of one-liners.

Alongside Orton, Beckett and Pinter are lurking here too, which gives you an idea of how confused this play is. This is evident as early as the first scene, when a knock at the door interrupts Connie and Wilfred’s harmless bickering. Wilfred’s extreme reaction to this intruder – ‘She’s come to kill me!’ – summons a Beckettian fear of an unknown but palpable presence. Instead of capitalising on this fear, Bennett mutes it with a quip from Alison Steadman’s Connie: ‘They don’t kill ya from the council’. It gets a big laugh but cuts short a potentially interesting moment.

There is something very clunky about the play. This is partly down to its conflicted tone, but also due to a contrived central premise, which revolves around this early intrusion. The intruder turns out to be an observer from the council, come to wordlessly note the ways of the estate, before it is demolished for good. The plot gets twistier still when we discover that the council representative is in fact this couple’s exiled and transsexual son. If this had been Beckett, Pinter or even Orton, there would’ve been a strange internal logic to this turn in events – but here it just feels silly. 

The best scene comes with a sublime comedy cameo from Carol Macready as nosey neighbour Mrs Clegg. She bursts through the front door somehow in tune with the ways of her estate and sensing trouble. Her hunch pays off and she is greeted with what appears to be Wilfred’s corpse. When Connie begs Mrs Clegg to confirm that her husband is indeed dead, she replies sagely: ‘If he’s gone – we’ve only just missed him.’ Macready’s comic timing is faultless and her wobbling, wonderfully expressive face captures the real spirit of Bennett’s play. She storms through the scene with gleeful energy and carries the audience with her. Her exit was met with a standing ovation and suggests the success this play might have been if the comedy had been allowed to shine.

Alison Steadman is the show’s victim. It is a plucky performance and she does what she can, but this is not the role that she or the casting director expected. It just isn’t that funny. So although the memory loss of Steadman’s Connie generates some decent gags early on (‘My mother lost her memory – I think’), it quickly becomes repetitive and grating.

It feels like Bennett was trying to write a strange, dark piece here, but couldn’t resist playing to his comic strengths. Perhaps a few plays into his career, he was aware of conforming to stereotype and had a go at breaking the mould. Whatever the reason the result is a muddled beast – neither farcical nor absurd, but a harmless shtick stuck somewhere in between. 

Till 14 May 2009