Rejects Revenge with Dog the Monkey, Whoredom

Review in Issue 11-3 | Autumn 1999

Rejects have chosen a feisty and darkly comic play for their first collaborative venture. Heather Robson's inventive and witty script supplies a feast of bawdy innuendo and rich plotting which follows a couple of Elizabethan trollops on their mission to outwit Bishop Canker, who also runs the stews. The label 'Blackadder for the stage' is apt.

The original script has been reshaped for Edinburgh, losing some of its rawness in the process, and gaining a rather cumbersome set which tends to limit the possibilities for physical or visual gags which are the usual trademark of Rejects Revenge. Melodrama serves the spirit of the piece extremely well, but leaves the darker aspects of Robson's writing untapped. The mockery of the bishop's sado-masochism, for example, offers entertainment without that edge of disgust that takes satire beyond the superficial.

Nevertheless, Whoredom is a jolly good romp. It's gloriously naughty and delights in boisterously rude language. This production successfully harnesses the libidinous verve of the play for laughs, with a performing quartet featuring only one Reject, David Alison, alongside writer Heather Robson and Helen Bright, as the harlots with hearts, and club comic Terry Titter, doubling as the revolting Toad and Toby Juggler. It's clearly great fun for them, and that (of course), makes it all the more entertaining to watch.

Presenting Artists
Presenting Venue
Date Seen
  1. Jul 1999

This article in the magazine

Issue 11-3
p. 21